Camelot And Sacred Cow–Tipping

May 7, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Entertainment, History, Media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, TV, U.S. History, UK Politics | 2 Comments 

Whatever his obvious faults and flaws, it is somewhat understandable that Richard Nixon would ruminate about how Jack Kennedy got away with a lot during his assassination-shortened presidency. And there is no doubt that the 37th President of the United States saw all of the “Camelot” hype as mythology born of cynical public relations. While Nixon was being criticized for conducting a purported “Imperial” presidency by the likes of Arthur Schlessinger (a pro-Kennedy historian), he no-doubt resented the cult of personality that survived his old rival’s violent death.

RN would be 97 today—JFK would be 93 in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to envision the forever-young Kennedy as an old man, though we saw Nixon live into his 80s. They were friends at first, with Nixon the early-on transcendent figure. Then came the rivalry marked by increased and enduring bitterness. But it was always more complicated than that.

Americans too young to remember either man have been taught the party line that Kennedy was a great man and Nixon was a bad man. JFK was the hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis—Nixon was the villain of Watergate. JFK had charisma; Nixon had no charm—and so it goes.

The truth is actually quite different.

The History Channel is moving forward with production of an eight-part mini-series scheduled to air next year called, The Kennedys. Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) will play JFK and Katie Holmes will play Jacqueline. The producer is a man named Joel Surnow, who is the creator of the highly successful and soon to expire series, 24.

Surnow is also reputed to have politically conservative tendencies (Gasp! Horrors!). Reportedly, the upcoming dramatic portrayal of the years of the New Frontier will include material about some of Kennedy’s flaws—and the guardians of his image are mobilized to “stop the smears.”

I say it’s about time that popular culture is exposed to the truth about the man behind the Camelot myth—before fact is fossilized.

The John F. Kennedy who will be portrayed in the new series will, reportedly, be a real life character—warts and all. And some of those warts had the potential to morph into cancer. In fact, there is a credible case to be made that had Kennedy lived beyond that fateful fall day in 1963, and managed to be reelected in 1964, he may not have survived a second term, legally and politically. That’s right. As Hugh Sidey suggested before his death in 2005—the same Hugh Sidey, who as an editor at Time Magazine during the Kennedy years, was also a Camelot insider—JFK’s various and sundry moral, ethical, and judgmental, pecadillos might very well have led to his actual impeachment.

Was the Kennedy administration a Watergate waiting to happen?

Possibly this new mini-series will popularize information that has long lain dormant in histories that are hardly read anymore. All the pieces of the puzzle are long established matters in the public domain—hiding in plain sight, but obscured by the powerful rays of cultish brilliance. But finally, those pieces are being assembled in a way that may accurately characterize a man who was likely guilty of actions much worse than what brought Mr. Nixon down in 1974.

From the improper use of the FBI in matters of surveillance and investigation in matters not at all related to national security, to misuse of the Secret Service, to his affair with a mistress of a major crime boss with its attendant compromises, Mr. Kennedy played by his own rules against the backdrop of the last gasp of an age of media mercy. He lived on the edge, from his monumental sexual addiction, to his experimentation with illicit drugs, to his dependence on substances that, while not illegal, seemed grayish—John F. Kennedy’s time was running out. People were always covering for him (some of the same ones still are). But was it only a matter of time before someone broke rank?

If Watergate taught us anything, it was that it is hard to keep a lid on a big story—even in the White House.

The story of Jack’s faults is, though, more than the tale of a bad boy—he may very well have compromised national security. Mr. Kennedy’s fascination in 1963 with an unfolding scandal in Great Britain likely had to do with the fact that he was beginning to worry about his own bailiwick. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s government was then being rocked by a sex scandal involving one John Profumo, the Minister for War, and a notorious woman named Christine Keeler who had at least two boyfriends: Profumo and a Soviet naval attaché named Yevgeny Ivanov. And there were other women.

Why would this discomfit JFK? Well, because he had been flying rather close to the same kind of flame at the time. In fact, among the “other women” involved in the British scandal were two trollops, Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny. Both had been involved “romantically” with Kennedy. So it was quite possible that the scandal that eventually led to MacMillan’s government being voted out in 1964 might have by that time tarnished the name of the President of the United States.

Interestingly, while John F. Kennedy visited the United Kingdom and broke bread with MacMillan one Saturday in the summer of 1963, a story was beginning to break stateside. It appeared briefly in the New York Journal-American (Hearst paper) and spoke cryptically of “a man who holds ‘very high’ elective office” who was involved with some of the women being mentioned in the Profumo matter.

The story was pulled after one edition following pressure from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

But beyond this, there was actually another “bimbo” problem plaguing JFK, and this one had to do with a German girl by the name of Ellen Rometsch. Said to strongly favor actress Elizabeth Taylor, she was a 27-year old prostitute who regularly “serviced” Mr. Kennedy in 1963.

Rometsch was from East Germany and had been a member of the Communist Party and many thought she was, in fact, a spy. She was paid by JFK for sex and participated in what could only be described as orgies in the White House pool. The party girl visited Kennedy at least ten times that spring and summer. When confronted by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, about the fact that Rometsch was likely a spy, Bobby Kennedy worked feverishly to have her deported—and she was soon en route to her homeland behind the Iron Curtain.

The story went away, but not all that far away. Less than a month before Kennedy’s fateful trip to Dallas, one Iowa newspaper broke a story: “U.S. Expels Girl Linked to Officials.” In the article was the tidbit that this woman had been involved with “some prominent New Frontiersmen from the executive branch of the government.” But those were the days before White House reporters went for the jugular asking tough questions.

Why is any of this important now? It matters simply because there tends to be a measure of selective amnesia when it comes to iconic figures. If a myth better serves current political purposes this trumps truth.

Had John F. Kennedy lived and had his shortcomings been investigated and written about with Woodward-Bernstein-like passion, he may not have been reelected in 1964. And if he did manage to win that race, and investigators did their jobs, JFK might very well have been impeached or brought to the place of resignation.

Then again, that may be fantasy, because it was unlikely that Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post in those days, and inbred Kennedy crony, would have allowed any such story to go forward. At any rate, it all went away that sad November day and we are left with a legend that does history, not to mention the American people, a disservice.

Stephen Kronish is the screenwriter for upcoming mini-series, The Kennedys, and he insists that they are “not out to destroy the sacred cow.” But as Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency, recently wrote:

In an age when Americans periodically swoon for imperial presidents, a little sacred cow-tipping would be a public service.

Got A Condo Made O’Stone-a

March 24, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Art, Comedy, Entertainment, Middle East, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Last night I read Born Standing Up, actor Steve Martin’s account of the seventeen years he spent making his way up the ladder of standup comedy. It’s a rather worthwhile book. In well-written prose, replete with many funny passages, Martin describes the process by which he rose from playing open-mike nights at obscure folk clubs around Los Angeles to filling stadiums across the country.

As many TNN readers know, Martin acquired his earliest showbiz experience in Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm near Garden Grove, the town in which he spent his teenage years, toward the end of Richard Nixon’s Vice Presidency. And RN figured in Martin’s struggling years as a standup; he mentions than when he played college campuses as an unknown in the early 1970s, he had only to mention the President’s name to be guaranteed a laugh. (In fact, the predictability of this response was one thing that led him to remove all political material from his act. Coincidentally or not, his career took off soon after.)

But I didn’t know that one of President Nixon’s decisions, toward the end of his Administration, led to one of the most celebrated episodes of Steve Martin’s comic career. It’s especially timely now, as the exhibition of the relics of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun finishes its run at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum and gets ready to go to Discovery Channel’s Times Square showplace in New York.

It was in 1974 that President Nixon decided that the United States should respond to the successful display of Egyptian art in the Soviet Union with a truly memorable exhibit to tour the United States. After bringing up the idea during his visit to Egypt’s President Anwar al-Sadat a few weeks before his resignation, he urged Secretary of State Kissinger to work on bringing such an exhibit to these shores. Dr. Kissinger got in touch with the late Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the process was begun which, a couple of years later, resulted in the spectacularly successful first visit of King Tut and his relics to the United States – a visit which inspired Steve Martin to write that immortal tune which was introduced to the world on Saturday Night Live.

More than thirty years after he last came for a visit, the boy king is generating some more memories to last a lifetime for countless Americans, continuing a process that started with President Nixon’s proposal for a tour to generate income to help Egyptian museums on that summer day so long ago.

John Waters And His Nixon Connection

February 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Energy, Entertainment, Environmental issues, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

This week the Australian newspapers the Melbourne Age features an interview with director, writer and raconteur John Waters, who will be traveling to Down Under in March to present his one-man show in several of that nation’s cities. In the article, Waters mentions that he was interested to see one of his childhood favorites, Patty McCormack of The Bad Seed fame, playing Patricia Nixon in Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon, which leads to the surprising fact that:

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

Reminiscing About RN and EP

January 14, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

“Picture Of Nixon And Elvis Worth A Thousand Words,” reads the headline in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, and, sure enough, the article by Faye Fiore, the paper’s Washington reporter, that appears below it spends about a thousand words (or more) describing the circumstances that brought about the now-familiar image of the thirty-seventh President and the one and only King meeting in the Oval Office.

(Interestingly, the photo from that day most often seen, with Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley both looking at the camera, is passed over in favor of an image of the President facing the camera and Elvis looking at him.)

The article is based on the eyewitness accounts of the event given by former White House advisor Egil “Bud” Krogh and Jerry Schilling, Elvis’s close friend, when they appeared at the National Archives last week. Most of what they tell has appeared in many books about Elvis and/or Nixon, notably Krogh’s own volume The Day Nixon Met Elvis (which includes a foreword by RN penned just before his death), and Schilling’s book Me And A Guy Named Elvis.

But at the archives, some interesting sidelights were mentioned. Krogh remarked on the little-known fact that toward the end of his Presidency, when Nixon was being treated for phlebitis, Presley phoned to wish him a quick recovery. (And in 1975, when Elvis himself was hospitalized, the President phoned him from San Clemente.)

Krogh also pointed out one remarkable aspect of the 1970 meeting at the White House; despite Presley spenting several hours in the White House after the meeting, getting a tour and meeting several dozen thrilled White House staffers (and their wives), not one word leaked out about the King’s visit for more than a year, until columnist Jack Anderson, looking at an advance copy of John Finlator’s book The Drugged Nation, found a passage about it. (Finlator, the former deputy director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, had helped arrange for Elvis to be presented with a BNDD special assistant’s badge.) It’s hard to imagine a megacelebrity’s visit to the Oval Office could be kept that much under wraps today.

Bud Krogh And Jerry Schilling

January 8, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

The two recounted the 1970 meeting between the King and the President in Washington Wednesday night. Watch the video here.

They hadn’t seen each other since they both took part in one of the more bizarre meetings in White House history 39 years ago, but Wednesday night at the National Archives, President Richard Nixon’s aide Bud Krogh and Elvis Presley’s friend Jerry Schilling met again to recount that Oval Office meeting in December of 1970.Schilling accompanied Presley on a flight from California, not knowing what he was intending.

On the flight, Presley wrote a letter to Nixon on American Airlines stationary, asking that the president agree to a meeting, and appoint Presley a special federal agent to help in the war on drugs.Schilling and Presley dropped off the letter at the Northwest Gate of the White House even before the sun rose.

Sitting at his desk inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue later that morning, Krogh got a call from fellow aide Dwight Chapin.

“And he says, ‘Bud the King is here,’” recounts Krogh. “And I looked at the president’s schedule and I said what king? There aren’t any kings on our schedule. What are you talking about? And he says, ‘No, not any two-bit king, the King of Rock, Elvis Presley. He’s right here!’ And I said, ‘Dwight, come on! It’s going to be a long day, four days before Christmas.’”

Still thinking it’s a joke, Krogh is floored when Elvis walks into his office with Schilling and gets another surprise.

“That was one of the most lovely half hours I’ve had, talking to you all and hearing Elvis talk from the heart about his country and what it meant to him,” Krogh told Schilling.

The White House chief of staff responded to the meeting request by writing, “You must be kidding.” But HR Halde gave the ok, and Elvis was ushered into the Oval Office by Krogh.

“He walked in the door and he looked at the eagles engraved in the ceiling and the eagles engraved in the carpets in the floor and I knew it sort of overwhelmed him. He’s wearing his cool glasses and his cape and his shirt. Nobody was ever dressed quite that way and the President has never seen anyone dressed like that,” Krogh said.

Presley made his request to get a federal badge, and Krogh surprised himself by what he then told the president.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, if you want to give him a badge we can get him a badge.’ So, at that point the president said, ‘Get him a badge. I want him to have one.’ Elvis is overcome and he steps forward and he grabs the president and he hugs him, which wasn’t the norm in that White House,” Krogh said to laughter.

Three Nixon-Related Events In Washington This Week

January 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, International Affairs, Music, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Saturday marks the 97th birthday of President Nixon, and the day before that is the momentous 75th anniversary of the day that Elvis Aron Presley (and, briefly, his twin brother Jesse Garon) entered this world. At the end of the year, four days before Christmas, will come the 40th anniversary of the celebrated meeting of the two in the Oval Office.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 pm, at the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, Nixon Presidential Library director Timothy Naftali will host “We Were There When Nixon Met Elvis.” Egil “Bud” Krogh, who arranged the President’s meeting with the King in his capacity as White House liason with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (Elvis sought the meeting for the purpose of discussing what role he could play in the war on drugs) and Jerry Schilling, who was a member of Elvis’s inner circle (aka the Memphis Mafia) from the mid-1950s until Presley’s death, will talk about their eyewitness memories of that event, which produced a photograph reported to be, even now, the most frequently requested image in the history of the Archives.

Almost simultaneously, at 6:30 pm at the Busboys & Poets cafe at 2021 14th Street NW in Washington, Len Colodny (co-author of the bestselling Watergate expose Silent Coup) and Tom Shachtman will discuss their new history of American foreign policy in the Nixon, Reagan, and (both) Bush eras, The Forty Years War. But interested readers do not necessarily have to flip a coin; the next day, also at 6:30, Colodny and Shachtman will talk about their book in an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council at UCDC Washington Center at 1608 Rhode Island Avenue NW; this event is also being taped by C-SPAN for broadcast on Book TV. All three events are free and open to the public, although the World Affairs Council site advises obtaining reservations beforehand at this link.

The Day The King Met The President

December 21, 2009 by Dwight Chapin | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Richard Nixon, White House | 1 Comment 

RN pictured with Elvis and Bud Krogh.

Working with HR (Bob) Haldeman and Bud Krogh, I was part of the team that made Elvis Presley’s visit to the White House on December 21, 1970 happen. The letter Elvis left at the front gate was delivered to my office very early in the morning. My secretary Nell Yates immediately brought it to my attention. I contacted Bud Krogh who was the staff person on Drug Policy and began the process of “staffing out” the letter. The memos and actual details of the visit are a part of Bud’s book, The Day Elvis Met Nixon.

The Nixon/Elvis meeting turned out to be one of the most historic visits by any personality to the White House. As many know the picture of the President and the King meeting in the Oval Office is the single most requested image ever from the Nationa Archives!

Recently, Bud Krogh and I did an extensive radio interview with the UK’s Radio One. The program will air on the 75^th birthday of Elvis in January and will document the story of the historic visit.

One of the most interesting points about the visit is the confidentiality that surrounded the it. Elvis did not want the meeting publicized because he thought he could be more effective in helping to stop drug use if he did not look like a White House agent. Elvis kept it confidential and so did the White House. No word leaked out for two years. As I recall, it was ultimately journalist Jack Anderson who printed the story and no one knows who was the ultimate leaker.

Imagine this, Elvis entered the White House through the Executive Office Building, went to lunch in the White House mess, was introduced to several secretaries in the West Wing and no one ever mentioned it to the press. That would never happen in today’s White House.

12.21.1970

December 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The story told by White House official Bud Krogh, the famous letter (written on American Airlines stationery) read by Priscilla Presley:

From Bat To Amos To….Richard?

December 10, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

Word came from Los Angeles this evening of the death yesterday of actor Gene Barry at the age of 90. Barry’s career was a very long one – he made his Broadway debut in 1942 – and highly varied. In 1944, he performed opposite Mae West in her show Catherine Was Great. A decade later, he was starring in what probably still is, despite the best efforts of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, the most loved film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War Of The Worlds. By the end of the 1950s he was starring as the dapper Bat Masterson on television, and a few years after that was a hit as the wealthy policeman Amos Burke on Burke’s Law. Another popular series, The Name Of The Game, followed.

The next decade proved rather more low-key, as Barry shuttled between TV guest spots and that vanished institution which is an even more cherished memory of the 1970s than pet rocks or Pong, the dinner-theater circuit. Then, in 1983, he came back to Broadway for the first time in 21 years as Georges, the gay nightclub owner in the blockbuster musical La Cage Aux Folles, a role which earned him a Tony nomination and ultimately helped win him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But it came as quite a surprise, reading Barry’s obituaries this evening, to find out that the previous year, he had starred in a show that seemed destined for Broadway but (according to this interview with the actor) opened and closed in Atlanta in July 1982, proving so expensive to produce in its three-week run that plans to bring it to New York were set aside.

The show was co-written by Tommy Oliver and Edward J. Lakso, and its title was simple yet quite descriptive – Watergate: The Musical – with Gene Barry starring as Richard Nixon. His wife, Betty Clair Barry, played Pat Nixon. Ed Herlihy, the instantly recognizable narrator of countless ’40s and ’50s newsreels, played Sen. Sam Ervin.

I imagine many readers of TNN are trying to visualize TV’s Bat Masterson trading in his embroidered vest for a dark blue suit and wingtips, so here’s a photo of Barry as RN – before the offer to play Georges came and he went back to his finery.

No Laughing Matter

November 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Culture, Entertainment, Media, Popular Culture, TV | Leave a Comment 

“A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

The philosophy of Chuckles  the Clown.

Comedy writer David Lloyd died last week at his home in Beverly Hills; he was 75.  A fitting epitaph was provided by Cheers co-creator Les Charles (for whom Lloyd wrote many episodes):  ”I do think he was the preeminent writer of television comedy.  If you consider how long his career was and how much he wrote for such really popular shows, he’s got to have been responsible for a record number of laughs in this world.”

Many of those laughs were concentrated in the seventh episode of the sixth season of the Mary Tyler Moore Show: “Chuckles Bites the Dust.”  In this script, the rarely seen Chuckles —host of a kid’s show at WJM, the Minneapolis TV station at which the series was set— meets a sudden and tragic end.

As Grand Marshal of the annual circus parade, he dresses as one of his many beloved characters Peter Peanut.  Station manager Lou Grant (Ed Asner) informs the shocked newsroom that, in this goober incarnation, Chuckles was shelled by a rogue elephant.

Here, from the show’s script, is that memorable moment:

               Lou enters, genuinely stricken.

                                     LOU
                              (Mutters)
                         Oh my! Oh, dear...!

                                     MARY
                         Mr. Grant...?

                                     LOU
                              (Really shaken)
                         Something terrible has happened.

                                     MURRAY
                              (Sober)
                         What is it, Lou?

                                     LOU
                         Someone we all know is dead.

                                     MARY
                         What! Mr. Grant--who?

                                     LOU
                              (Getting control)
                         No... I won't tell you about it now...
                         I don't want to upset you...

                                     MARY
                              (Frantic)
                         Mr. Grant!!...

                                     LOU
                         Where's Ted? I gotta tell Ted...

                                     MURRAY
                         He's on the air, Lou. What happened?
                         Who died? Tell us!

                                     LOU
                              (Still dazed)
                         Chuckles. Chuckles the Clown is dead.
                         It was a freak accident. He went to
                         the parade dressed as Peter Peanut...
                         and a rogue elephant tried to shell
                         him.

               They are both stunned.

For many years “Chuckles Bites the Dust” stood at the top of TV Guide’s list of the Top 100 Episodes of All Time.  (It has now been edged down to Number Three by Seinfeld’s 1992 “The Contest” and The Sopranos’ 1999 “College” episodes.)

Here’s TV Guide’s citation:

3. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
“Chuckles Bites the Dust” 10/25/1975
Take one unlucky peanut-clad clown, a rogue elephant, an irreverent newsroom, an Emmy-winning script and a virtuoso performance by one of TV’s greatest comedians, and you get one of the biggest laugh-out-loud sitcom episodes ever. When kiddie-show host Chuckles the Clown has his tragic culinary misadventure, it’s catnip to the WJM-TV crew—except for a disapproving Mary Richards. The comic payoff comes with Mary’s unsuccessful attempts to stifle her snickers during a eulogy celebrating Chuckles’ alter egos Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo and Auntie Yoo-Hoo. The pièce de genius: When the minister gives Mary permission to laugh, she begins to bawl. Amazingly, not everyone was on board, recalls star Mary Tyler Moore. The series’ usual director opted out of the episode “because he thought it was not in good taste,” says Moore. CBS also had misgivings about the show’s tone, she says, “but we knew it was something special. It’s not just about laughing at the funeral, but also the tensions and talking about it in the newsroom. It really is a uniquely funny episode.”

Here are links to the first, and second parts of “Chuckles Bites the Dust.”  And here is the final segment (which is even funnier if you watch the set up).   The audio is slightly out of sync but the laughs still arrive on time.

       Organ music stops and Reverend Burke steps to the lectern.

                                     BURKE
                         My friends... "Any man's death
                         diminishes me, because I am involved
                         in mankind. Therefore, ask not for
                         whom the bell tolls--it tolls for
                         thee."

                                     TED
                              (Sotto: scandalized)
                         Hey, Lou, he stole your poem!

                                     BURKE
                         Chuckles the Clown gave pleasure to
                         millions. The characters he created
                         will be remembered by children and
                         adults alike: Peter Peanut, Mr. Fee-
                         Fi-Fo, Billy Banana, and my particular
                         favorite, Aunt Yoo-Hoo.

               Mary stifles a laugh.

                                     BURKE
                         And not just for the laughter they
                         provided--there was always some deeper
                         meaning to whatever Chuckles did.
                         Remember Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo's little catch
                         phrase, remember how when his arch
                         rival Senor Caboom would hit him
                         with the giant cucumber and knock
                         him down? Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo would always
                         pick himself up, dust himself off
                         and say, "I hurt my foo-foo."

               Mary again stifles a laugh. The others in the row glare at
               her.

                                     BURKE
                         Life's a lot like that. From time to
                         time we all fall down and hurt our
                         foo-foo's.

               Mary again stifles a laugh. Other people turn to look at
               her.

                                     BURKE
                         If only we could all deal with it as
                         simple and bravely and honestly as
                         Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo. And what did Chuckles
                         ask in return? Not much--in his own
                         words--"A little song, a little dance,
                         a little seltzer down your pants."

               Mary has great difficulty in stifling herself here. Many
               people turn to look at her.

                                     BURKE
                              (Looking right at
                              Mary)
                         Excuse me, young lady... yes you...
                         would you stand up please?

               Mary, with no alternative, stands up.

                                     BURKE
                         You feel like laughing, don't you?
                         Don't try to stop yourself. Go ahead,
                         laugh out loud. Don't you see? Nothing
                         could have made Chuckles happier. He
                         lived to make people laugh. He found
                         tears offensive, deeply offensive.
                         He hated to see people cry. Go ahead,
                         my dear--laugh.

               As Mary bursts into tears, we:

                                                                   FADE OUT

                                      END OF ACT TWO

Bruce Weber in The New York Times and Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times offered excellent obituaries. One of David Lloyd’s sons, Christopher, is co-creator of Modern Family —- the superb sitcom which, along with FlashForward, will save the 2009 season from the trash heap of TV history.

Marvin Minoff, RIP

November 14, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies | Leave a Comment 

Ron Howard’s acclaimed film Frost/Nixon, based on Peter Morgan’s play which was a hit in London’s West End and on Broadway, depicts two men as the architects of the famous set of TV interviews with President Nixon: the future Sir David Frost and the future Baron John Birt, the host and producer, respectively, of the broadcasts which mesmerized the nation in 1978. However, the play, and movie, leave out the contributions of a third man: Marvin Minoff, a veteran agent and the president of Frost’s Paradine production company, who was co-executive producer of the interviews.

It’s hard to say why Minoff’s role remained undepicted in the play and movie; it may be that Morgan, and later Howard, thought that the late Irving “Swifty” Lazar was such a colorful representative of showbiz mores in Frost/Nixon that adding another agent, while truer to history, would diminish the effect. In any event, Howard does not mention Minoff’s absence in his DVD commentary to the film, though the director gets around to discussing many of its other departures from the historical record.

Minoff died this week in Los Angeles at age 78. After the Frost-Nixon interviews, he went on to marry Bonnie Franklin, One Day At A Time’s Ann Romano, who survives him. He also joined forces with Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H* fame to produce a series of TV movies and two features: the little-remembered Dominick and Eugene with Tom Hulce and Ray Liotta, and Patch Adams, which elevated Robin Williams’s tendency to bathos to such a staggering level that the star has ever since downplayed sentimental roles in favor of “edgy” and “dark” dramatic parts. But with the Frost-Nixon series, Minoff made his mark on American history as well as American entertainment.

Audition For “Frost/Nixon” In Memphis

November 6, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon | Leave a Comment 

There’s good news for everyone who, after an evening spent watching Dan Aykroyd or David Frye in the 1970s, would turn to their friends and say, “OK, wanna see a real Nixon impression?” The Playhouse on the Square in Memphis is taking on Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon as its next production, and, to that end, is holding an audition on November 14 for all the roles.

So if you, gentle reader, are up for getting on a plane and heading to the land of Elvis, Big Star and B.B. King – or if you already live in Memphis – this is your chance. Or, if you prefer, you could try out for the roles of David Frost, Caroline Cushing, John Birt, Manolo Sanchez, Irving Lazar, Col Jack Brennan, James Reston, Jr (a part much more substantial in the play than in Ron Howard’s film), or even Evonne Goolagong. So order a copy of the play from Amazon, and make your showbiz dreams come true.

RN, Sammy, And The Highlight Of The 1972 Convention

October 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Singer and performer Sammy Davis Jr. famously embraced RN at a youth rally at Marine Memorial Stadium. The structure, located in Key Biscayne, largely neglected by city officials, is at the center of a preservation effort.

The Associated Press is reporting that the World Monument’s Fund is working to save the dilapidated 6,566 seat Miami Marine Stadium (shut down since 1992 after Hurricane Andrew) in Key Biscayne, Florida because of “its historical and architectural significance:”

The marine stadium is unique because of its cantilevered, fold-plate roof and its construction of lightweight, poured-in-place concrete, which was popular in mid-century European and Latin American sports stadiums. The modernist design appears to float over the glimmering water of Biscyane Bay; when bands used to perform there, they would play atop a floating stage. Boats clustered in the water and fans packed the stands.

It’s also the first structure in Miami built by a Cuban exile architect.

“It’s quintessentially Miami,” said Becky Roper Matkov, the CEO of Dade Heritage Trust, a local historic preservation group. “With the water and the sky and how it’s open to the air.”

Jorge Hernandez is a Miami architect and, along with Candela, is the co-founder of Friends of Marine Stadium, a group dedicated to bringing the venue back to its rockin’ heyday.

Hernandez, who saw a Boston Pops concert, a Fourth of July celebration and attended an Easter sunrise celebration at the stadium as a child, said that even though the structure is relatively new, it needs to be saved because of it’s importance in the modern architecture milieu.

“We’re just starting to understand the importance of preserving our recent modern past,” he said.

Miami Marine Stadium was also the site of a youth rally at the 1972 Republican convention, where singer and performer Sammy Davis Jr. famously hugged President Nixon. RN in his own words on the memorable moment:

I flew to Miami on Tuesday afternoon, August 22. That night I made an unscheduled appearance at the open-air youth rally, and the reception I received overwhelmed me. Pam Powell, the daughter of Dick Powell and June Allyson, escorted me onto the stage. Hands above their heads, four fingers outstretched, the thousands of young people took up a chant that I was hearing for the first time: “Four more years! Four more years! It was deafening. It was music. This was a new king of Republican youth: they weren’t square, but they weren’t ashamed of being positive and proud.

The picture that is probably most remembered from the 1972 convention is of Sammy Davis Jr., impulsively hugging me on the stage at the youth rally. When the crowd finally quieted down, I described my first meeting with him at the White House reception a few weeks earlier. We had both talked about our backgrounds and about how we both came from rather poor families. “I know Sammy is a member of the other party,’ I said. “I didn’t know when I talked to him what he would be doing in this election campaign. But I do know this. I want to make this pledge to Sammy, I want to make it to everybody here, whether you happen to be black or white, or young or old, and all of those who are listening. I believe in the American dream. Sammy Davis believed in it. We believe in it because we have seen it come true in our own lives.” For me – and, I think for many others – the youth rally was the highlight of the convention.

According to RN, Sammy Davis, Jr. was invited back to White House in March 1973 for an evening concert, where he suggested that RN hold “a gala entertainment honoring the POWs.”

On May 24 of the same year more than 1,000 POWs and their wives were invited to the White House for a formal dinner and afterward delighted in entertainment from Bob Hope , John Wayne, and other “famous pop and country singers, comedians, and motion picture personalities.” Sammy Davis Jr., was given a “place of honor” at the end of program:

He sang and danced and, with tears in his eyes, had special praise for the women whose prayers had “brought you cats home.”

Sammy Davis, Jr pictured in the Yellow Oval Room with RN in March 1973.

Reason To Believe

September 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Humor, Internet, Lifestyle, Sports | Leave a Comment 

Dude Perfect is a collective of six roommates at Texas A+M who have developed what you might call a G-rated family-friendly frat boy version of Jackass.

In their expanding cottage industry, there are no visible tattoos, and nothing is stapled to anything else.  But they manage to retain  a sufficient quota of don’t-try-this-at-home stone craziness to keep the parents worried and the kids engaged.

The question on some of the more than 3 million minds that have viewed the group’s videos —including “the world’s longest basketball shot”—  is whether these dudes are, well, maybe just a tad too perfect.  And the dudes consider it the greatest compliment that their doings are so derring that people aren’t sure they can believe their own eyes.

Here’s the view from the third deck of Kyle Field at College Station:

And here’s the feat viewed from the field:

Based on their other videos, there’s no reason to believe that this one is doctored. (Nor, of course, is there any reason to believe that this one didn’t follow seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine prior unsuccessful attempts at this particular stunt — and what difference would that make if this one is legit?)

The name derives from the moment when Sean, setting up the camera on the railing of Tyler’s backyard deck,  looked thorough the lens and saw his buddy in the center of the frame. “Dude perfect” was his response and the rest is history.

On their impressive website, they introduce themselves this way:

Ultimately, Dude Perfect is a group of college guys that follows Jesus. We didn’t plan on this type of interest in our videos and we’re incredibly grateful. We want to use this platform for something bigger than us.

Right now, that something bigger is the sponsorship of children in Africa through the organization Compassion International.

They started out betting lunches on trick shots in the backyard.  Eventually (“after quite a few free lunches went the bearded guy’s direction”) they decided to make a video and upload it to YouTube.  In the last several months, they’ve broken out with appearances on Good Morning, America (whose computer analysts couldn’t guarantee that the videos are unedited but couldn’t find any edits or figure out how any might have been made) and in Sports Illustrated.

Although they each have definite personalities that emerge in the videos, the ID caption on their website photo reads: “from left to right: this guy, that guy, the bearded one, the tall guy, the next tallest guy, the guy who looks just like the other guy.”

A Career That Just Keeps Rollin’ Along

September 25, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon family | Leave a Comment 

Three months ago I wrote a post about a Philadelphia newspaper’s profile of Jennie Eisenhower, President Nixon’s granddaughter whose stage career has taken her to theaters around the country. Starting on Wednesday, and continuing until November 1, she can be seen in the Media Theatre, near Philadelphia, in a production of that venerable cornerstone of the American musical, Show Boat. In it she plays Julie, the role created on Broadway (and continued in the famed 1935 film) by Helen Morgan, and also enacted in the 1951 film remake by Ava Gardner, and so will be singing those two classic Jerome Kern tunes “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and “Bill,” with words by P.G. Wodehouse. This article from the Delaware County Daily Times discusses the upcoming show and in it Jennie discusses the various roles she’s undertaken. One thing for sure: there aren’t many thespians out there who have played both the Artful Dodger (in Oliver!) and Hedda Gabler. But Jennie has.

Arthur Ferrante, 1921-2009

September 22, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam, Music | Leave a Comment 

In August of last year I noted the death of Lou Teicher, who, with Art Ferrante, formed the “grand twins of the twin grands,” a duo trained at Juilliard whose instrumental renditions (often of movie themes) were a mainstay of American easy-listening stations throughout the Sixties and Seventies and earned them invitations to perform for Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. Last Saturday, Ferrante passed away as well, at his home in the Florida Keys. Here are Ferrante and Teicher circa 1970, complete with their trademark bushy sideburns and mustaches, inimitable dinner jackets, and black-rimmed glasses, at their back-to-back pianos, performing the “Theme from Exodus.”

Frost/Nixon Is Forever

September 12, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies | 2 Comments 

Now that Frost/Nixon is comfortably settled in the racks of your local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, and the touring production with Stacy Keach has run its course, Peter Morgan’s play has started to be produced in repertory theater, with the Austin Playhouse’s production in Texas apparently the first out of the gate. In another year or two, TNN’s readers might be seeing Frost/Nixon at their local community college, with the leads undertaken by student actors who were toddlers in the days when RN was still living and David Frost was not yet a knight. And who knows? Perhaps for the Nixon centennial in 2013, there will be a revival on Broadway with Dan Aykroyd finally getting to play his old Saturday Night Live role in a serious way – as, reportedly, he wanted to do in Ron Howard’s film.

Meanwhile, Michael Sheen, who played Sir David in the film, continues to line up surprising roles; the most recent is the voice of the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s upcoming movie of Alice In Wonderland. And after reports circulated that he might play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in what is provisionally titled Bond 23 (to be scripted by Peter Morgan), Sheen issued a statement that this would not be the case. (Note to Elizabeth Drew: Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Gray have previously portrayed Blofeld, the arch-villain with the white cat. None of them ever played Nixon.)

Larry Gelbart, 1928-2009

September 11, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Humor, In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

As I write, either on TV Land or the Hallmark Channel, the inevitable strains of Johnny Mandel’s “Suicide Is Painless” are beginning, the chopper is coming down, and the men and women of the 4077th are getting ready for another session of OR drama and off-hours hijinks. Sooner or later Cpl. Klinger will be showing up in his heels and skirt, dog tags clinking around his neck in lieu of pearls. (There’s plenty of M*A*S*H* trivia on Wikipedia so I’ll just limit myself to mentioning that Jamie Farr, who played Klinger, really served in the Army in Korea, albeit a few years after the end of the war in 1953, and that the dog tags he wore when stationed there were the very same ones that were seen on all eleven seasons of the show and, of course, in today’s reruns.)

The difference is that tonight, Larry Gelbart, the main creator of M*A*S*H* the series, will not be around. He died in Los Angeles this morning at the age of 81.

Gelbart had a long and successful career in most of the branches of entertainment that involve comedy. He got his start working on Danny Thomas’s radio show, moved on to television when he worked on Caesar’s Hour (the followup to Your Show Of Shows), co-wrote the book for the hit Broadway show A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and wrote the screenplays for Oh, God and Tootsie. He always had a knack for the offhand, rib-tickling line. (My favorite is from Forum, when Zero Mostel, as a slave sometime in the first century A.D, examines a bottle of wine and hesitantly remarks: “1 was a good year, right?” This was cut during the show’s out-of-town tryouts because it was thought some theatergoers might think it blasphemous, but restored in the film.)

But it was a trip to Korea with Bob Hope, when the latter was entertaining the troops for Christmas, that gave Gelbart the background he needed over two decades later to make a success of the project that came his way in 1971: the adaptation of Robert Altman’s antiwar comedy M*A*S*H* as a television series. The show premiered in September 1972, while the Vietnam War was still going on. During its first season, it got only middling ratings, but its network, CBS, decided to stick with it. During the summer of 1973, viewers looking for something to watch besides Watergate coverage.started to tune into the reruns, and by the fall of that year, as the fortunes of President Nixon declined, those of M*A*S*H* steadily rose, until it entered the top 10, then top 5, of the ratings, and never left.

Over the next decade, the show became, as they say, an institution. Gelbart was its mainstay during its first four seasons (back in the days when Wayne Rogers was Trapper John, before that Hunnicutt guy showed up); he wrote nearly every episode of the series during that time. He smoothed the abrasive edges of the characters as they appeared in the Altman film, and the outlines of all the supporting characters – Father Mulcahy, Klinger, Radar, Maj. Burns, and “Hot Lips” Houlihan – did not change much from the way in which he (and the cast members) delineated them. His “Hawkeye” Pierce was more Grouchoesque and less annoyingly earnest than was the case after Alan Alda wrested more control of the series following Gelbart’s departure.

Well, I see that, like many people of my generation, at the drop of a pin I can launch into as complete an analysis of early M*A*S*H* as the next person – and I only used to watch every other episode of the show in those days, since I was finishing high school and starting college. But my point is that anyone who was around back then can attest that the show was a big, big part of American life – both during its original run and through the remainder of the 1980s.

James Poniewozik at Time.com lovingly recalls how he found common ground with his blue-collar father (a cross between Archie Bunker and Hank Hill, by his account, who also “grip[ed} at Richard Nixon on the TV news during Watergate”) when they watched M*A*S*H* together. As Poniewozik says, the show was anti-war in tone throughout its run, but it was not anti-soldier.  Like innumerable shows before it, it poked fun at pomposity and hypocrisy among officers (both as personified 24-7 by Frank Burns and periodically by visiting generals). But for all his perplexity, McLean Stevenson as Col. Blake was a decent, warm man doing the best for his unit that he could, and Harry Morgan as Col. Potter, of course, embodied the best of the American officer corps – firm, yet always thoughtful and understanding.

Regular TNN readers will remember the occasional discussion here last year of the role that the movie Bonnie And Clyde plays in Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, in which he presents it as emblematic of the mood of rebellion in the late 1960s.  As he works on his new book, which takes the story of American life from RN’s re-election in November 1972 until the triumph of Ronald Reagan eight years later, he might want to take a look at the way in which M*A*S*H* helped to inspire better understanding of the American military during the 1970s, and helped to bring about reconciliation after the traumas of the Vietnam era. A quarter-century after the final episode of the show aired, that finale still has the highest Nielsen rating on record – 125 million people tuned in for it, more than for any Super Bowl or even any American Idol finale. And Larry Gelbart was the indispensable man in that story.

If You’re Tired Of “Frost/Nixon”….

August 20, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

….then the Orlando Sentinel has an article that may tickle your fancy – about Bill and Sue Wills, a Maryland team of husband-and-wife actors who, for years, have been presenting two-person shows in which they portray a President and First Lady. So far they’ve portrayed no less than 32 Presidential couples – from the famous ones, like FDR and Eleanor and Harry and Bess, to the lesser-known ones like the Fillmores and Pierces. This month, they’re touring as Richard and Pat Nixon. There’s a photo of them in makeup and costume. Be advised that Bill Wills looks something like Lyndon Johnson doing a Nixon impression (or maybe LBJ impersonating David Frye impersonating RN), and that Ms. Wills does not look much like Pat, though she seems to have a very slight resemblance to Betty Ford.

8.16.77

August 16, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam, Music, Richard Nixon, White House | Leave a Comment 

Over at the very popular Powerline blog, Scott Johnson honors the life of Elvis Presley — who died thirty-two years ago today — with the wonderful narrative of his  December 1970 visit to The White House:

Upon his arrival in Washington on the morning of December 21, Elvis dropped the letter off at the White House and went off to a meeting (arranged by Murphy) with the director of the BNDD to seek a badge. He instead met with BNDD deputy director John Finlator, who refused Elvis’s request for a badge. Back in the hotel room, however, Schilling received a call inviting Elvis to the White House for a meeting with the president.

Elvis’s letter had prompted internal deliberations over the wisdom of a presidential meeting. Dwight Chapin’s memo to Bob Haldeman summarizing Elvis’s request is a bit clueless. The second page of the memo has Chapin’s earnest advice and Haldeman’s somewhat more astute response. Chapin writes: “[I]f the President wants to meet some bright young people outside of the Government, Presley might be a perfect one to start with.” Haldeman responds: “You must be kidding.” The meeting was nevertheless promptly approved and arranged. Elvis, Schilling, and West met up with White House aide Bud Krogh for Elvis’s 12:30 meeting with the president in the Oval Office.

The rest his history. Read Scott’s post here.

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