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 | 1 Comment 

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 | Leave a 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 | Leave a 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 | 1 Comment 

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.

RN Shares The Spotlight With Elvis

August 10, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

Over at the KNBC Channel 4 Los Angeles website, they are celebrating the life of Elvis Presley this week. He died on August 16, 1977, 32 years ago this coming Sunday. Interestingly enough, at the head of the page is the most requested photo from the National Archives, taken from Elvis’s 1970 Oval Office Visit. Former White House staffer Bud Krogh recounts the event here, you can buy his book about it here.

KNBC was also nice enough to plug the Nixon Foundation gift shop:

While “The President and The King,” a Richard Nixon Library exhibit detailing that iconic photo of the president meeting Elvis Presley in the Oval Office circa 1970, closed awhile back, the library still sells Elvis-Nixon memorabilia in the gift shop. The library is located in Yorba Linda

You can buy the gift shop memorabilia here.

The Case Of The Amiable Applicant

July 18, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon in the News, Senate, Supreme Court | 1 Comment 

This week marked the more or less official beginning of the Al Franken Slightly-Less-Than-Three-Fifths-of-a-Decade (Saturday Night Live fans, at least those of 1979-era vintage, will recognize the reference) and it started in a suitably bizarre way.

At the Senate hearings to consider the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the junior Senator from Minnesota bided his time, then sprang a surprise question. Judge Sotomayor had earlier said that she was in part inspired to become a prosecutor by watching the Perry Mason TV series.

It might have been a good time for Sen. Franken to ask how it was that seeing William Talman (in his role as District Attorney Hamilton Burger) losing the prosecution’s case week after week, season after season, could inspire her to follow in his footsteps.

Instead, Franken asked Judge Sotomayor to name the one case that Perry Mason lost on the show. She couldn’t do it. Another senator asked the former Stuart Smalley if he knew the name of the episode. Franken said he didn’t know.

This exchange, naturally, sent reporters to consulting the Wikipedia entry for the series and the several sites devoted to the show. There, they learned that Franken’s question was more confusing that it at first appeared.

There are three episodes in which Perry Mason loses a case. (At this point, TNN readers in Orange County can skip a few paragraphs, since I presume nearly all of them have seen these shows at least a thousand times apiece on KDOC during the last 27 years.)

“The Case Of The Witless Witness,” from 1963, which opens with Mason (played, of course, by the late Raymond Burr) losing an appeal (after his client, evidently, is convicted at trial). However, the plot of the episode does not focus on Mason’s defeat; rather, it sets up a situation where the judge who rules against Mason in appellate court is accused of murder and Perry gallantly takes his case and prevails in the courtroom.

During the show’s first season, “The Case Of The Terrified Typist” featured Mason losing a case, and discovering, on further examination, that his client is indeed guilty. However, it turns out that the name the client is using has been stolen from someone else, in a style somewhat anticipating today’s wave of identity thefts; that, and some other circumstances, enable the attorney to obtain a mistrial ruling, and at the show’s conclusion the implication is that the dishonest defendant will be tried again, with some other lawyer handling him.

The third episode, from 1963, seems to be the one that Judge Sotomayor had in mind, from what she said to Franken, but could not name. This is “The Case Of The Deadly Verdict.” In it, Mason’s defendant is convicted and it looks like Burger finally has the chance to find out what the thrill of victory is all about. But Perry, with Della and Paul’s help, looks into the matter further and finds out that his client has been withholding some facts from him. This leads him to discover the identity of the real murderer.

And at this point we come upon a conundrum truly worthy of the late Erle Stanley Gardner: why Al Franken would not be able to remember the title of “Deadly Verdict” when the actor playing the villain in it was his own second cousin, Stephen Franken. (Yes, the same Stephen Franken who attained pop-culture immortality as Chatsworth Osborne, the quintessential rich kid from Dobie Gillis – not to mention his role as Levinson the waiter in the 1968 film The Party, in which he displays prodigies of timing and comic skill that are to Al’s efforts what the arias of Kirsten Flagstad are to those of Florence Foster Jenkins.)

But I’ll leave it to wiser minds to puzzle that out. Right now it’s time to explain the title of this post. The Washington Post’s article about Franken’s exchange with the judge moved one of its readers to send a letter which the paper published today.

The letter’s writer, Beth Kravetz, said the colloquy of lawmaker and lawgiver put her in mind of a time in the early 1980s when she visited the offices of the National Association of Truck Stop Operators to talk to that organization’s president, former Nixon White House press secretary Ron Ziegler, about a job.

“With little in the way of general niceties” (as Ms. Kravetz tells it), Ziegler asked her to name the nine members of the Supreme Court. “I was surprised by the question,” Ms. Kravetz informs us, “and answered that I could more easily name the Seven Dwarfs, which I proceeded to do. The interview ended shortly thereafter.”

Now, it is most likely true that most Americans, at any given time since Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937, could more easily name Dopey, Doc and the rest of the gang than the nine justices. But I wonder if even the enormous investigative and logical capacities of Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake would be up to explaining why Ms. Kravetz was surprised that Ron Ziegler was asking her to identify the members of the Court when she, a 1974 graduate of Georgetown University’s law school who presumably had studied cases bearing the names of most of the justices, was applying to work as general counsel of his organization.

I have the feeling that we will be seeing even greater wonders as the Franken era continues.

Liddy, Hunt, And The Power Of Song

June 27, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon Administration figures, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

What are the citizens of Vermont doing, now that the United States is being remade along the lines most of them seem to favor, and they no longer have to plot to secede from the Union to join Canada?

Well, tonight, and next Tuesday, some of them will be going to see a new musical at the Paramount Theater in Rutland. The show is called Room 16, by the youthful team of Stephen Sislen (composer and co-lyricist) and Ben H. Winters (book writer and co-lyricist), and its subject is nothing less than the Watergate break-in. From what I could gather in these articles from the Rutland Herald and Vermont Public Radio’s site, the show focuses on the relationship of the break-in’s two main planners, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

The brief description of the musical at ASCAP’s site gives an indication of the plot: “though initially wary of each other, the two soon become successful co-conspirators…and pals.” Not much different from The Producers, in other words, and we all know what a massive success that show proved to be.

Last year Room 16 was featured in an ASCAP/Disney workshop in New York, and Youtube has clips of three songs from it: “Room 16,” “After November,” and “Under Control.” Watching these clips, it’s quite apparent that Sislen has a superior gift for melody in the grand Broadway tradition and that he and Winters can produce lyrics on the same high level. (Indeed, their songwriting style somewhat brings to mind Liddy’s favorites, John Kander and Fred Ebb of Cabaret fame.) It’s hard to say to what degree the show’s book would follow the historical record, but then again, The King And I and The Sound Of Music are not exactly models of fidelity to the facts.

No word yet on when or if the show will reach Broadway, but considering that John Adams’s Nixon In China is probably the most produced opera from the second half of the twentieth century, Room 16’s chances of further success may be quite good.

A Different Kind Of Inauguration

June 26, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Michael Jackson was always a keen reader of comic books, and in the 1980s he was often referred to in them. Comicbook.com takes a look at some aspects of his association with the comics world. It’s been widely reported that in his last weeks the Gloved One enlisted the help of TV’s Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, to help get in shape for the marathon series of London concerts he planned to undertake next month before tragedy struck.

But did you know that Jackson reportedly once met with Stan Lee to discuss buying Marvel Comics – the whole shebang? With Spidey and the Fantastic Four in the hands of MJ, the whole course of history might have been changed.

And speaking of Marvel, back in the early ’70s it had a short-lived title called Spoof, somewhat in the tradition of the 1950s Mad. The cover of issue #3 (for January 1973) featured the first appearance of Jackson on the front of a comic book. He was depicted with his brothers, Bob Dylan, the former Beatles, Elvis, the Stones, and the Osmonds in the grandstand of that year’s Presidential inauguration in Washington, watching as John Lennon swore in David Cassidy as Chief Executive. The foreground of the cover showed Spiro Agnew casting a baleful glance at Richard Nixon and saying, “You had to lower the voting age to 18.” (The scene was clearly inspired by that wacky old movie Wild In The Streets.)

Ed, Farrah, and Michael

June 25, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, In Memoriam | 1 Comment 

Within a forty-eight-hour period the world lost three figures in the world of entertainment. Farrah Fawcett, in the days when she had Majors appended to her name, was the nation’s most popular sex symbol a year or so after Richard Nixon left the White House. Ed McMahon’s work with the late Johnny Carson spanned eight presidencies (if one includes their late 1950s game show Who Do You Trust?) but for many viewers their true heyday came in the early 1970s, when no weekday in the Nixon era was complete without at least a few minutes watching Ed holler “Heyyy-yo!” or hearing him intone the magic words, “I hold in my hand the last envelope.”

But both of these deaths were inevitably overshadowed by the unexpected passing of Michael Jackson. It would take thousands of words to come close to describing the triumph, tawdriness, and tragedy of his 40-year career but it is worth mentioning that it all started in the Nixon years, with “I Want You Back” in the fall of 1969. Indeed, his first big solo recordings, like “Ben” (which was nominated for an Oscar), happened during the thirty-seventh President’s first term.

May their families be comforted in their time of sorrow.

Raising The Curtain For Nixon’s Granddaughter

June 13, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Jennie Eisenhower, the actress who is the great-granddaughter of the 34th President and granddaughter of the 37th (and the daughter of David and Julie Eisehower), is the subject of an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by that paper’s theater critic Howard Shapiro. Ms. Eisenhower is currently featured in the show Forbidden Broadway’s Greatest Hits at the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia, a production in which she portrays such legends as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, and Liza Minnelli. This versatility has been a hallmark of Ms. Eisehower’s career; she plays several other characters in the show, recently performed in the title role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and also just directed productions of Our Town and Kiss Me Kate at her alma mater, Conestoga High School.

The article describes how Ms. Eisenhower, after graduating from Northwestern with a dual major in theater and communications, settled in New York, where she went through the customary round of endless auditions and getting roles that, as often as not, took her far outside the city. After a period of working at Bloomingdale’s as a personal shopper, she moved back to Philadelphia and has made it her base for performances in that area and further afield. (Several years ago she appeared at the Olney Theater near Washington, in the title role of Shaw’s St. Joan, and also had a small role in the Julia Roberts film Mona Lisa Smile.)

The actress also mentions the support she received from her parents and grandparents as she chose and worked on her career, and points out that RN’s very last public appearance (unless one counts the wedding of a family friend, the weekend before his death) was in the audience at her high school production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods. (So the next time you find yourself at a Sondheim trivia contest – and whenever two fans of the man who gave us Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music are in the same room, there always is one – that’s your chance to deliver the stumper: “Which Sondheim musical did Richard Nixon see just before he passed away?” My bet is that the first guess would be either West Side Story or Gypsy.)

Comedy Isn’t Pretty — And Often Not Even Funny

June 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Entertainment, Sarah Palin | 6 Comments 

After five years of working for and with David Letterman at Late Night, my respect and affection for him are pretty darn close to unbounded.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I think everything he does is OK — much less that every joke he tells is funny.

A recent unfortunate —and uncharacteristic— case in point is the small run —in the opening monologue and the Top Ten List— of marginally tasteless and arguably unfunny of material about Sarah Palin on Monday night’s show.

The hook was the Governor’s highly-publicized whirlwind trip to New York that had received saturation news coverage over the preceding weekend.

On Sunday’s itinerary was a family outing to the new Yankee Stadium with Rudy and Judith Giuliani.  And that’s where the trouble started.

Then, as you look at it, insult was added to injury a couple of minutes later with Number Two on the Top Ten List from the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska.

TOP TEN HIGHLIGHTS OF SARAH PALIN’S TRIP TO NEW YORK

10. Visited New York landmarks she normally only sees from Alaska.

9. Laughed at all the crazy-looking foreigners entering the U.N.

8. Made moose jerky on Rachael Ray

7. Keyed Tina Fey’s car

6.  After a wink and a nod, ended up with a kilo of crack

5.  Made coat out of New York City rat pelts

4.  Sat in for Kelly Ripa. Regis couldn’t tell the difference.

3. Finally met one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson’s always talking about.

2. Bought makeup at Blomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look

1. Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman

I know at first hand and from considerable personal experience and observation that Dave is —despite his ostensibly prickly personality and self-proclaimed dumb guy persona— a highly intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, and sensitive fellow.

None of the jokes in question are very funny —with the exception of Numbers Ten and Six it has to be one of the lamest Top Ten lists in a long while— but that’s the law of averages, not the law of unintended consequences.  And I can assure you that the notion that he intentionally set out to insult or demean a pre-teen is, simply, off the table.  (The technicality is that the Palin daughter present at the ball game turned out to be 14 year old Willow rather than 18 year old single mom Bristol.)

To the extent that there may have been any operating principle behind what happened, I suspect it’s hiding in plain sight in the Number One Highlight of Sarah Palin’s Trip to New York: “Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman.”

There has been bad blood —entirely and gratuitously McCain (and by indirection McCain-Palin) generated— between the 2008 GOP presidential ticket and The Late Show with David Letterman.  Even after Senator McCain admitted screwing up and tried to set things right, he failed to deliver on a promised joint appearance  with his running mate.

To most people these events might seem like tempests in teapots.  But having been there and done that I know how seriously Dave takes his show and treats his audience.  Besides, he comes from a time and a place where, if you make a promise, you’re expected to keep it.

What would otherwise have been a minor blip noted only by those with highly sensitive blip monitors, has been turned into a brouhaha bordering on a cause celebre by the Palins — who have effectively charged Dave with pedophilia.  Whether this was done in a misguided attempt to make a point or in order to further an agenda will be the subject of debate for some time.

I think they made a mistake in not accepting Dave’s apology and moving on.  Partly because I think it would have been the right thing to do; and partly for the reasons put forward by Margaret Carlson on today’s Daily Beast:

…picking a fight with a trained comedian, refusing to accept his apology and continuing to battle after the white flag is shown reveals a complete lack of political sophistication.

Letterman apologized at unprecedented length for a comment about Palin’s recent trip to New York. There was, he said, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee, during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” To which the Palins shot back: “Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is… disgusting.”

Who said anything about a 14-year-old girl? Not Letterman. That would be… the Palins. It turns out it was Willow, not Bristol, who went to the baseball game. But who knew that until the Palins brought this “disgusting” comment so painful to their younger daughter to the attention of the 300 million people not tuned into David Letterman?

Letterman’s joke was indeed tasteless—he even owed A-Rod an apology. But I doubt there was another soul in the world who didn’t understand the joke to be about the older Palin daughter, who lapped Jamie Lynn Spears as the most famous pregnant teen in the world once she was trotted out at the Republican National Convention in August. Not that Bristol should have been left at home in the dark, but if you want a “zone of privacy” around your daughter, do you have her appear on stage with her then-fiancée hinting at prospects of a White House wedding waving to the crowd like Charles and Diana of the Klondike?

Woebegone: Garrison Keillor’s Memorial Day Song

May 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Entertainment, Music | Leave a Comment 

Last week’s edition of The Prairie Home Companion was broadcast from Wolftrap Farm, just over the Potomac from the nation’s capital.

During the show, Garrison Keillor did a good thing and a bad thing.

This is is praise and his comeuppance.

The good thing: He invited the audience to stand and join him and the cast and musicians in singing the National Anthem. It was a stirring and fitting moment.  So kudos to Mr. Keillor for that.

The bad thing: He closed the segment that preceded singing the “Star Spangled Banner” by mangling one of the most powerful anti-war songs ever written in order to bend it to an inappropriate and tendentious purpose. And in doing so he managed to desecrate the day that honors the memory of the fallen and to dishonor the sacrifice of the many wounded in battle by appropriating them for his own bathetic use.

The song is  Eric Bogle’s 1971 “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”

It is impossible to listen unmoved —or unshaken— to this chilly and chilling masterpiece. Not the least of its power lies in its site-specificity. It was written about the ill-conceived and mismanaged Dardanelles expedition and the Gallipoli Campaign of April 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops were thown against superior Turkish positions and succinctly massacred. It refers to the thinning ranks and equivocal emotions of the survivors of that brutal and bloody disaster as they celebrate Anzac Day each April.

Bogle brilliantly uses “Waltzing Matilda” —a song that is deeply engraved on each strand of Anzac DNA— as an ironic leitmotif, until, at the very end, it finally manages to break free in time for a mordant and melancholy finale.  After listening to “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” you will never hear “Waltzing Matilda” again in the same way.

Here is Eric Bogle’s song performed by Liam Clancy, You can read the lyrics here.

Mr. Keillor full well understands the power of music.  Indeed, he understands the power of Eric Bogle’s song — which he has sung on his program in its original form on Anzac Day.

But last Saturday he hijacked it on Memorial Day for his own purposes.  In his ersatz version, the band plays the “Star Spangled Banner” (now incongruously to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda”), and Mr. Keillor equates the Anzac bitterness over the Gallipoli debacle with the American mobilization after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

He introduces the segment by describing his visit to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery near the Anzio battlefield, where the invasion of Italy began in December 1943.  He describes walking around the marble memorial to the 6,000 men killed, the 18,000 wounded, and the 6,000 taken prisoner or missing.  Then he observes that “People are still arguing about the allied campaign in Italy.  If it should ever have been done…the decisions that were made.  They’ll never resolve that.  But there they all lie.”

And then he sings his misappropriation of “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”  — the apparent point of which has now become the futility of  having fought World War Two.

You can hear it here (at 58:50).

This is dishonest historically, musically, and emotionally.  Prairie Home listeners deserve better on Memorial Day.

Frost/Nixon: The Supporting Players Speak

May 15, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Over the last six months we’ve heard quite a bit from the major players in the Frost/Nixon film – director Ron Howard, writer Peter Morgan, and stars Frank Langella and Michael Sheen – but it’s been somewhat difficult to find interviews with the supporting cast members.

So I was happy to come across an interview that Oliver Platt (who plays Bob Zelnick in the film) did with Film Monthly last December. In it, he’s asked whether it’s true that Langella insisted on being addressed as “Mr. President” on the set. (Here, I should mention that in the commentary to the Frost/Nixon DVD, Ron Howard tells an amusing story about the moment when Langella finally dropped character and gave everyone permission to call him Frank again, just before the last scene was shot.)

Platt confirms this, but observes that:

[I]t really didn’t end up having a lot of bearing on us, because Ron kept the two camps very much apart on the set. He really didn’t want us to mingle. I mean, I’m surprised he didn’t have, like, separate craft services and makeup trailers for us, But he really encouraged—he said, “I really don’t want you guys to hang out together.” The people on the Frost team and on the Nixon team. And so we rarely—we actually rarely saw them.

This article is titled “Oliver Platt vs. Richard Nixon,” but this month, in another interview done to promote the DVD, Platt reveals, when asked if his opinion of the 37th President was changed by his work on the film:

Absolutely, and that is one of the things that is so beautiful about the movie I think. We have been handily villainising Nixon for almost four decades now and my view is that there are very few real heroes or real villains, there are people who do heroic things and there are people that make mistakes and I would put Nixon in the latter category.

Matthew Macfadyen, who plays producer John Birt in the film, is asked in the same article whether the scene depicting Birt joyously stripping off his clothes and jumping into the Pacific was based on fact. Macfadyen replies:

He might have done [that]. It would have been something that he could have done. I asked [Birt] about that. He was sort of hazy but he said it was something he could imagine himself having done. It was a wild, spur of the moment kind of thing. But actually he would have had to get into the car and drive down to the beach and then dramatically, spontaneously run into the sea.

To which Platt ripostes, “in real life it was Zelnick who did it but he has a much nicer bottom.” That witticism aside, it sounds like the romp in the surf might well have been another scene meriting an admission by Howard on the DVD commentary that it departed from the historical record.

The After-WHCA Scene In A Nutshell

May 15, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Media, Social Networking | Leave a Comment 

Chris Lehmann, once the Washington correspondent for the New York Observer, now contributes to theawl.com, founded by some former staffers of the gossip site Gawker. This week at the site he described a party he attended after the White House Correspondents Association dinner. One paragraph, especially, caught my eye, since it illustrates how wonkery and showbiz are sometimes inextricably linked in Beltway society:

The most engaging conversation of my night, for instance, was with a learned and witty UK economist—“for my sins, I try to teach this discipline to the young,” he explained. We lamented the lack of any systemic approach to health care reform in America, the decline of the 19th century “political economy”—to the detriment of latter-day economics and politics alike—and compared the limitations of the two-party system in America and Britain. It was only when he was fetched away by his brooding-hunk son that my wife informed me that he was the father of Ed Westwick, of “Gossip Girl” fame.

Ron Howard’s Missed Chance

May 1, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

TNN reader Tom van Oosterom recently emailed our master of ceremonies Jonathan Movroydis after he and his wife saw the Frost/Nixon DVD, and observed that (comments in brackets are mine):

[W]atching the DVD extras…one historical fact seems to have passed [up] by Ron Howard. Interestingly enough, Nixon’s “Final Press Conference” [of "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" fame] was given at the very same Beverly Hilton Hotel where David Frost stayed while preparing and conducting the Nixon interviews. In fact some of the routes that the character of David Frost walked in the movie were caught on film when Nixon left the “final” press conference, walked through the hotel, shook hands with a worker at the front desk, proceeded outside ([from] the back of the hotel) and hopped in a car that then drove away. [Mr. van Oosterom saw this footage in PBS's American Experience special about RN.]

It would have been fun if Ron Howard had picked up on this historic parallel, compared footage, etc.

Frost/Nixon On DVD

April 27, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Over the weekend I picked up the new DVD of Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon. As noted last week, this has a number of interesting extras.

One of these is a seven-minute short about the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, featuring former Library Executive Director Rev. John H. Taylor (though his ecclesiastical status is omitted from the subtitle identifying him) and Acting Executive Director Kathy O’Connor. Despite its brevity, this extra is sure to bring many a new vistor to the Library; it features such major highlights as the replica of the White House East Room (though I didn’t spot the room with the life-size statues of the leaders RN knew).

Another extra compares footage of Michael Sheen (as David Frost) interviewing Frank Langella (as President Nixon) with the actual Frost-Nixon interviews from 1977. It’s especially interesting to see the way in which Langella, while varying considerably from RN’s phrasing, somehow remains faithful to the spirit of what was being said.

The making-of featurette, lasting 25 minutes, includes a lot of useful and informative material. If you watch it with the subtitles on, you’ll spot an amusing moment about halfway through: Matthew Macfadyen, in a voiceover, begins talking about his performance as Frost’s producer John Birt. But the subtitles identify the speaker as John Taylor. This extra also has the one typo I spotted in the subtitles: a reference to the “Houston Plan” (though the correct spelling appears in the subtitles to Frost/Nixon itself).

This brings us to the feature. It includes a full commentary by director Howard that’s full of fascinating detail. He emphasizes, time and again, that the film was shot on a limited budget and on a very tight schedule. He observes that he made the most of existing places to shoot, rather than trying to put together expensive sets: for instance, it was a fortuitous happenstance that the Beverly Hilton Hotel, at the time the film was made, had been redecorated in a sort of retro-1970s style in keeping with the period depicted in the film (when the hotel was used as the Frost team’s headquarters).

It turns out that the scene in which Sheen (as Frost) pitches the interviews to executives at the three networks was not in the original script and that the decision to film it was made nearly on the spur of the moment, when shooting was almost over. Howard says the set representing the networks’s offices (the same room in each shot, with posters of TV shows on the wall changed to represent CBS, ABC and NBC in turn) was put together in a matter of hours and that Sheen improvised his dialogue,as he did with the scene where he pitches his series to Weed Eater honchos.  (The director praises Sheen’s performance, incidentally, for reasons akin to those I cited in my previous posts about the movie.)

Howard goes to some trouble to explain his use of dramatic license in four scenes. Regarding the controversial sequence in which RN drunkenly phones Frost, Howard insists that since RN was reported to have made such calls from time to time in the wee hours of the morning during his Presidency, and since the scene had been an effective one with the audiences who saw Peter Morgan’s play, both he and Morgan felt it should be included, despite the fact that no such call ever happened when the interviews were being put together.

Howard also acknowledges that the line “when the President does it, it is not illegal” was lifted out of the context in which it was spoken in the original interviews (a discussion of the Huston Plan in 1970) and inserted by Morgan into RN’s reply to a question from Frost about the Watergate events two years later. Again, the director argues that the dramatic effectiveness of the scene justifies this license, though Howard’s tone suggests he doesn’t completely feel on sure ground in this claim.

The third example of license Howard mentions is the scene in which Frost shows RN footage from the Vietnam War. Although such footage was inserted by Frost and his producers into the original broadcast of his interviews, the President did not see this material on monitors, in the way depicted in the film. Howard, again, argues that the dramatic point made by having Langella see the footage justifies this departure from the historical record.

After these weighty examples, it’s a bit startling when, in the concluding scenes set at La Casa Pacifica overlooking the ocean, Howard mentions that dramatic license has been taken again, but in a way that would not be that easy to spot: because the “Western White House” was not available for these scenes by the end of shooting, he found a nearby house which had a similar view of the Pacific and shot there.

This sets the stage for Howard to mention that there were several endings shot for the film, focusing on Frost’s gift of the Italian shoes to RN. In the version shown to early audiences, the President puts the shoes on and walks around in them. This elicited a very favorable response at the previews, but Howard was wary of this reaction (because he thought that it depicted RN abruptly shedding his introvert’s persona and so wasn’t true to character) and finally concluded that the way to go was to conclude the scene as it now appears, with RN simply taking the shoes out and looking at them. Because the shoes were absent from the long shot Howard wanted to use to close his feature and there was no time or money to do retakes, the footwear was inserted into the image through computer-generated imagery.

There are a lot of other interesting details in the commentary. I’ve seen the film three times so far but, until Howard mentioned it, didn’t realize that most of the figures in the background of the audience shots when RN is speaking to the audience in Houston were actually plastic dummies (a trick the director says he picked up when filming the Madison Square Garden scenes in Cinderella Man).

And people who immediately recognized the name of Patty McCormack, who plays Pat Nixon in the film, as that of the actress who won an Oscar nomination at the age of eleven for her unforgettable performance in The Bad Seed, will be interested to know that no such bell rang with Howard; it was not until an assistant mentioned this to him after McCormack finished her audition that he recalled that role. “Of course, I’d be the last person to hold being a child star against her,” quoth Opie. There’s a lot more in the commentary, which is nearly worth the price of the DVD in itself.

There are also about 25 minutes of deleted scenes, primarily featuring Langella delivering longer excerpts from RN’s resignation speech and his August 9 East Room remarks than appear in the finished film. The actor’s expressions just before he begins his resignation address, and as he concludes the East Room speech, are just as superb and moving as his acting in the interview sequences, and it’s unfortunate they couldn’t be included intact in the feature. All in all, this is a superb package, and it’s a relief – especially since this DVD is sure to be seen by high school and college students interested in the events it depicts – to hear Ron Howard identify and acknowledge the departures he made from the historical record.

Don’t Forget The Cheeseburgers

April 24, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The lineup for next season’s Brinker International Forum series at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts has been announced. Most of it is not especially out of the ordinary: Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Swank, Lisa Ling (formerly of The View). But the final event, on March 16, 2010, raises the old eyebrows a bit: “Frank Langella and Sir David Frost: A Conversation.” If that meeting is filmed or taped, footage from it will make a nifty extra for the 2013 commemorative re-release of the Frost/Nixon DVD.

Which reminds me that the first-run (so to speak) DVD of that film is now in the stores. It features a number of extras, plus a commentary track from director Ron Howard. Among the notable revelations in the disc’s  making-of mini-documentary: the scenes in which Michael Sheen (as Sir David) pitches the Nixon interviews to Weed Eater, and in which Oliver Platt does his RN impression, were improvised on the set. Another 6-minute extra is devoted to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. There are also 22 minutes of deleted scenes; I wonder if these include one of Swifty Lazar grabbing the check (a highlight of Peter Morgan’s play which was omitted from the film).

Richard Nixon Helps The First “Millionaire”

April 22, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under Entertainment | 2 Comments 

Who wants to be a millionaire (First $1,000,000 winner)

Sinking His Teeth Into A New Role

April 13, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies | Leave a Comment 

This November, Michael Sheen, whose performance as David Frost in Frost/Nixon impressed critics and audiences both onstage and on film, will undertake a somewhat different part – the leader of the Volturi vampire clan in New Moon, the sequel to the massive box-office hit Twilight. No telling if this choice of a part represents Mr. Sheen’s effort to compete with his co-star Frank Langella, whose best-known role, prior to playing the 37th President, was perhaps that of Count Dracula in a legendary Broadway tour de force later captured on film in the 1970s. But this is not the British actor’s first venture into playing otherworldly characters – he was a werewolf in the film Underworld and its sequel. (Indeed, there was something just a tad vulpine about his initial encounter with Caroline Cushing on a jet in Frost/Nixon.)

Presidents Of The Twenty-First Century

April 4, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Entertainment, George W. Bush, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Today in io9.com, the science-fiction blog which is part of the Gawker.com online group, Alasdair Wilkins takes a look at comic books, movies, science-fiction novels, and TV shows over the last half-century which have speculated on who might be sitting in the White House from 2001 until century’s end.

He begins with Lex Luthor. The real world had the saga of Bush vs. Gore, but in the sometimes tidier universe of DC Comics, the chrome-domed entrepeneur had little difficulty winning the Presidency in 2000. However, once in office, his popularity somewhat diminished with the public. Like his real-life counterpart, Luthor’s Administration faced many challenges and crises, but old Lex was inclined to let most of these sit on the back burner while he focused his energies on annihilating Superman. (Of course, many liberals would suggest that President Bush had a similar preoccupation with Saddam Hussein in his first term.)

After a couple of minor figures from the DC universe fill out Luthor’s term once Superman straightens things out, the next President in Wilkins’s chronology is the one figure who, so far, is actually the Chief Executive in real life: Barack Obama (who has been a character in a multitude of comics lately, joining forces with a host of superheroes from Spiderman on down to defeat various villains).

After Obama comes Arnold Schwarzegger, who, as Wilkins notes, showed up as President in The Simpsons Movie. (This raises the question, still unanswered in the two years since the film’s release: why did the film’s makers posit the Gubernator as President instead of his doppelganger from the TV show, Rainer Wolfcastle?)

Wilkins follows that with a list of Presidents that includes both fictional and real names. He points out that the short-lived CBS series Century City, set circa 2030, presented a United States over which Oprah Winfrey presided. (And, though he doesn’t mention it, an episode of The Boondocks, set in the present day, concluded with Oprah announcing her candidacy.) The three Zenon: Girl Of The 21st Century movies on the Disney Channel, set in 2049, portrayed an America run by Chelsea Clinton. (Hillary doesn’t show up in Wilkins’s chronology.)

During the 2080s the President is another African-American: Jim Briskin, from the late Fullerton resident Philip K. Dick’s 1966 novel The Crack In Space. (Dick, as his two biographies attest, was very interested in the Presidency, and especially in the 37th President: RN figures as “Ferris Fremont” in his Radio Free Albemuth.)

The chronology winds up in 2099 with Steve Rogers aka Captain America in charge, But never fear; as all regular viewers of Comedy Central know, just over 900 years afterwards, RN (or rather his head in a jar) will be Earth President, getting the planet through crises of varying magnitude. The Presidency of 2100 through 2999 awaits its chronicler.

More Sleepless Nights For Elizabeth Drew

March 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Last night Stacy Keach completed his run as RN in Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, triumphantly fighting back, in the best Nixonian tradition, to retake the stage after being hospitalized for a week by a mild stroke. Tomorrow through Sunday, he appears with the production at Arizona State University in Tempe. (As was the case with the final weekend at the Ahmanson, understudy Bob Ari will take over as RN for the Saturday and Sunday matinees.)

Yesterday Kerry Lengel of the Arizona Republic interviewed Keach. As he has done in nearly every press interview on this tour, the veteran actor emphasized his belief that Richard Nixon, in the decades since he left the White House, has emerged as a figure as compelling as any in Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and just as worthy of portrayal by an actor seeking to reach the heights of his profession. (Or maybe I should add “her” – could it be that one day we might see, say, Meryl Streep or Glenn Close in a Frost/Nixon revival, much as Dame Judith Anderson or Sarah Bernhardt once played Hamlet?)

“Nixon has become an iconic figure, a tragic American figure,” Keach says. “Just as there are many great Hamlets and many great Lears, there are many great Nixons. Anthony Hopkins was a great Nixon. Rip Torn was a great Nixon. So I am adding a notch in my belt in the Nixonian tradition.”

And what does he add to the Nixonian tradition [asks Lengel]?

“I think my contribution is the humor,” [Keach] says. “He’s very engaging, and humor is one of the means of humanizing the character, which is one of Peter Morgan’s objectives.

“This play has done more to rehabilitate Nixon’s image in the world than the original interviews ever could have.”

Indeed, Keach’s temporary departure from the production and his replacement by Ari for a week emphasized, perhaps better than anything else, that playing Nixon is starting to become one of the litmus tests for an actor’s range and capability. The understudy’s performance in the role was examined by Mike Boehm at the Los Angeles Times’s site (“Ari, who was also Frank Langella’s understudy on Broadway, revealed a markedly different take on Nixon than Keach’s: gruffer, deeper-voiced, more raw and less able to disguise the insecurities and disappointments that nag at him”) and at considerable length by Evan Henerson at Examiner.com. That is to say, Ari’s handling of the part received almost the kind of attention at those sites that New York newspapers would have given to the performance of Richard Burton’s understudy in Hamlet in the 1960s had that eminent thespian been laid up for a week.

And, at Canada’s National Post, in the course of a review of Susan Jacoby’s new book on the Alger Hiss case, Philip Marchand suggests a new area of RN’s career for any playwright with the skill and ambition to take it on:

It is strange that Hollywood, which has aimed to make high drama out of such relatively insignificant political events as CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s televised attack on Senator Joe McCarthy (Good Night, and Good Luck) and David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon (Frost/Nixon), has neglected the story of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. The 1948 confrontation between the two men — Hiss, the cool, handsome, high-ranking government official, versus Chambers, the talented, scruffy, emotionally erratic, repressed homosexual writer and editor — truly was dramatic.

There was a PBS miniseries back in the 1980s in which Edward Herrmann played Alger Hiss, but it was a rather undistinguished affair. And the story is rather too complex for a 100-minute movie. A carefully constructed 3 1/2 hour play, however, might well be as spellbinding from beginning to end as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial or Inherit The Wind. Any takers?

Stacy Keach Returns As RN

March 24, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

The Los Angeles Times reports today that actor Stacy Keach, having recovered from a mild stroke that disrupted his run in Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, will resume his role as President Nixon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights to conclude this engagement and move on to the four other cities on the tour. Bob Ari, his understudy, will play the role at the weekend matinees.

Mixologist-In-Chief

March 23, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Humor, News media, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The Daily Princetonian published an article today about the imminent departure of Jim Kelly (a member of Princeton’s Class of ‘76) as Time’s managing editor. In the course of reminiscing about his long career with the magazine, Kelly recounts this story:

On one especially memorable occasion, he even dined with former president Richard Nixon.

“[Nixon] asked if anyone wanted a drink, and we all said white wine. And he said ‘Well, I’ll have a martini, and if anyone else wants a martini, I’ll mix one for you,’ ” Kelly said, laughing. “Suddenly, everyone wanted a martini.”

In other news, word came from Los Angeles this evening that actor Stacy Keach, whose work as RN in the touring production of Peter Morgan’s play Frost/Nixon was interrupted when he suffered a mild stroke last week, has been released from the hospital. Still no word when or if he will return to the production, though the Ahmanson Theater, where he was performing before falling ill, is offering refunds to ticketholders uninterested in seeing understudy Bob Ari take on the part.

Bowling For Atonement

March 21, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Entertainment, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports | 1 Comment 

The one truly embarrassing moment in President Obama’s sit-down with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show came when Jay asked the Chief Executive if he had followed through on his promise, often articulated on the campaign trail, to replace the bowling lane installed at President Nixon’s request in 1969 with a basketball court. (The comedian was apparently unaware that Obama had announced back in December, after a chorus of dissent from the nation’s bowlers, that he’d decided to keep the lane.)

Obama replied that he’d been practicing his bowling but was still scoring so low that his game was “like the Special Olympics or something.” This lapse in taste quickly resulted in the President apologizing to Tim Shriver, the head of the Special Olympics. And, yesterday, at least one Special Olympian offered to take Obama on at the White House lane, and though the President has counterproposed a basketball game, it appears a sure thing that bowling will be staying in the Executive Mansion.

Last December, the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher half-whimsically suggested that RN’s lane be changed to accomodate duckpin bowling, the century-old variation on the game which originated in either Baltimore or Lowell, Massachusetts, and which is played mainly in areas fifty or sixty miles east or west of I-95 in Maryland and here and there in New England, as well as some parts of southern Quebec. Duckpin uses a much smaller ball than regular bowling, cupped in the hand rather than held, and it could be that the President would find it easier to excel in this sport than in standard bowling.

Defining Dignity Down

March 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Entertainment, Obama administration, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The President made his ground-breaking appearance on last night’s Tonight Show — the first sitting President ever to grace this particular gig.

He looked great; he sounded great; he was thoughtful; he was clever; he was convincing; and, with the exception of one cringemaking offhand remark that was, at least, delivered sotto voce, he demonstrated, yet again, that he was made for the camera.  It was pretty much a perfectly pitched performance in which he made his points while rolling with the flow.

But the question was never about the performance.  The question was always about the venue.

In the midst of a cratering economy, was it appropriate for POTUS to choose this particular forum?   For the matter of that, would it have been appropriate even if things were going great?   Does the dignity of the office comport with the site specs of a late night comedy variety show?

If  majesté does it, can it still be considered lèse majesté?

I realize that I approach this question as not only a geezer, but a codger.  Besides, I am a Nixonian and therefore steeped in the DeGaullian notion of the vital element of mystique in leadership — as expressed in one of RN’s favorite books, The Edge of the Sword.

But in the world of 2009 dignity has long since been redefined.  Downward as I see it.  But things change and stuff happens and if you don’t wake up each day and smell the roses currently on offer, before very long you’re bound to find yourself out of touch with reality.

Then was then and now is now and different strokes for different POTUS.  I’m sure there were geezders (combination geezers/codgers) who were convinced that FDR’s use of the newfangled radio for his Fireside Chats represented the end of Civilization As We Know It.

One thing RN understood was the power of television.  And, although I think he would have regretted his successor’s strategy he would have admired his tactical aplomb.  The Tonight Show is unquestionably a more effective way of reaching and convincing —and reassuring—  a wider popular audience than dozens of major speeches or scores of Sunday morning thumbsuckers.

Whether or not you think that President Obama should have done it, there’s no denying that he did it very well.  So at least he set the highest possible standard for co-opting an undignified setting without losing his own personal dignity.

Here’s the whole 25 minute segment:

Natasha Richardson RIP And Stacy Keach Update

March 18, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, In Memoriam, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A few minutes ago word reached the major news media outlets that actress Natasha Richardson had died at the age of 45, a few days after suffering head injuries in a skiing accident. Though her movie appearances were generally in out-of-the-way, little-seen films – The Parent Trap and Maid In Manhattan being the major exceptions – she enjoyed considerable success on the stages of the West End and Broadway, most notably as Sally Bowles in the 1998 revival of Cabaret, and won the sort of acclaim that proved her a worthy member of the Redgraves, the most respected acting clan in the English-speaking world. She will be missed.

The tragedy of Ms. Richardson’s last days has rather overshadowed the illness suffered by another prominent actor. Yesterday morning, Stacy Keach, less than a week into an 18-day stint playing the 37th president in the touring production of Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, was hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. This evening it was announced that he has suffered a mild stroke which does not affect his movement or speech, and is making a steady recovery. It is not clear, however, whether Keach can return to the Ahmanson’s boards to complete his run or when or if he will rejoin the production for its remaining dates in Tempe, Arizona, San Antonio, Sacramento, and Dallas.

In the meantime, Keach’s understudy, Bob Ari, is taking over the role of RN. Ari has previous experience with the part; he was Frank Langella’s understudy in the original Broadway production of Frost/Nixon and, in the role of Bob Zelnick in the touring production, does a rather broad Nixon impression at one point in the play.

Having seen Keach portray RN at the Kennedy Center last year, I can assure TNN’s readers in the aforementioned four cities that I hope for his quick recovery, not least so that they have the chance to see his incisive and memorable portrayal in this role.

Frank Langella 1, Bonehead 0

March 11, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

The “Frost/Nixon” actor coolly disses a guy with a video camera and not enough to do. Especially deft: He graciously stops and thanks a legitimate well-wisher without ending up engaging the bonehead. Well played!

Jimmy Fallon’s McCain Joke: T’ain’t Funny McGee

March 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Jimmy Fallon’s second show last night was no more comfortable or focused than its predecessor.  His nervous and ponderous first night interview with Robert DeNiro was understandable and excusable.  (It’s the devil’s bargain to book the biggest talk show name knowing in advance that, in talk show terms, he’s a stone dud.)  But a talk show is a daunting undertaking and it will take some time before —and if— Late Night with Jimmy Fallon finally starts to settle down and feel at home.

But there is no excuse for closing his monologue with an unaccountably and gratuitously ungracious joke:

Meghan McCain, John McCain’s daughter, says she’s tired of constantly dating guys who are obsessed with how great her father is.
Fortunately for her she already dated all three of them.

While Ms. McCain’s unfortunate most recent attempt to extend her fifteen minutes of reflected fame lacked decorum —and was, therefore, fair game for comment— it was harmless enough.  So I wonder who thought it would be funny to trash her father — and why no wiser head prevailed before the “joke” reached the flashcards.

On The Road

March 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Entertainment, Music | Leave a Comment 

A new art gallery in Manhattan’s Flatiron District,Manhattan art gallery will open tonight with fifty never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photographs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones during their 1964-1966 American tours.   The Not Fade Away Gallery presents just the tip of the iceberg of the 3,500 down-time images snapped by Bob Bonin, who managed the two groups’ American tours.  Each group toured the USA in ‘64, ‘65, and ‘66.

The Beatles arrived here with a lot of hype but only one big hit (“I Want To Hold Your Hand”).  Their legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February set the stage for their tour later in the year.

In August 1964, Hurricane Dora derailed some of the Fab Four’s Florida gigs and gave them some unanticipated down time.

A nattily attired John Lennon waits in the locker room at New York’s Shea Stadium before a show in 1966.

The Stones’ first American tour was more like a cold call.  They were part of a bill headed by Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers.  Bonis could hardly have known the futures that lay ahead for these two groups.

Bob Bonis died in 1991.  His son Alex found the 3500 images in a duffel bag and has only recently revealed their existence.  Some were auctioned and now these fifty are being exhibited.

Only in America: Mick Jagger meets James Brown, already the Hardest Working Man In Show Business and soon to be the Godfather of Soul.

A Look At The Magazines

March 3, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Media, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The new issue of The American Spectator has a column by Jonathan Aitken (former British cabinet minister and author of the one biography of President Nixon published in the post-presidential years that enjoyed RN’s full cooperation) discussing Frost/Nixon. It turns out that Aitken’s wife Elizabeth is an old friend of Frank Langella and that the actor, when preparing for Frost/Nixon’s initial incarnation as a play on London’s West End, conferred with the biographer in order to give his portrayal of the president additional accuracy and depth.  Aitken, whose high regard for Langella’s performance was previously noted in TNN, offers further very illuminating insights into it in  this column, which, at the moment, is only in the print version of TAS.

This week’s issue of The New Yorker is also of interest.  It includes a review by the late John Updike of Blake Bailey’s long-awaited biography of John Cheever, whose byline appeared alongside Updike’s for nearly three decades in the magazine’s pages.  It is as good as nearly any essay the author of the Rabbit tetralogy ever published; nothing in it gives the slightest indication that it would prove to be among his last writings.

The magazine also features an excerpt from the late David Foster Wallace’s last, unfinished novel, which is all about IRS agents in the Midwest – I kid you not, though somehow, coming from this writer, it makes sense.  Be warned: though the long essay about Wallace’s tragic but heroic career by D.T. Max that accompanies it says that Wallace was seeking a more straightforward approach in this book, the excerpt is, in some passages, nearly as complex as much of his masterwork Infinite Jest. But it’s still worth examining.

Wonders of Wonder

March 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Obama family, White House | 1 Comment 

Last week at the White House Stevie Wonder was awarded the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Award for Popular Song. (The Award program is recently minted; Wonder is the second in line after Paul Simon last year.)

The program was taped for broadcast by PBS, and the video is of satisfyingly high quality.

The Obamas’ connections with Wonder are warmly felt and long-standing, as the First Lady’s introduction indicated.  (My apologies for the commercial message imposed by CBS, which thus profits from the use of your time.)

Wonder provided a tight performance of his song “Superstition” — which, back in February 1973, became his first Number One hit as an adult. (His first #1 was “Fingertips (Pt. 2)” in 1963.)

The President conferred the Award with a graceful speech and Wonder responded eloquently.

Watchmen, What Of The Opening Weekend?

February 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Somehow, I should have known that a movie with a nuanced and more or less sensitive portrayal of the 37th President, Frost/Nixon, would soon be counterbalanced by one trading on the Evil Nixon archetype favored by so many of popular culture’s tastemakers.

Such a film will be in the multiplexes next weekend when Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, the cinematic adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s groundbreaking 1985 comic book series, has its opening.

Until now, the best-known science-fiction portrayal of RN has been Matt Groening’s animated series Futurama, in which the man from Whittier’s disembodied head is Earth President a thousand years hence, battling both alien invaders and the never-ending hippie menace. But by this time next week Watchmen will be competing with its vision of a 1985 in which President Nixon still governs the nation and grapples with an ever-escalating Cold War.

Moore and Gibbons’s comics portrayed a 1980s Nixon presidency as one of continuing paranoia and corruption, which functions in their work as a parallel, or a background leitmotif,  to the paranoia and corruption with which the superheroes of Watchmen and their human acolytes become involved.  But Snyder, as director of the movie, has chosen to play up the Nixon theme considerably, adding touches like actors playing Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, and John McLaughlin on a fictional McLaughlin Group. (An Eleanor Clift fact you perhaps didn’t know:  her first husband was the older brother of legendary actor Montgomery Clift, which means her great-grandfather-in-law was Lincoln’s Postmaster General Montgomery Blair who once owned the property where sits the house where I write these words.)

So far the reviews of the film haven’t discussed the Nixon angle much. (Newsweek and CNN have weighed in.) But this interview with Snyder indicates the degree to which the president figures in the film. (Nixon, incidentally, is portrayed by Robert Wisden, a British actor given what Variety describes as “a comically elongated” putty nose for the role. The showbiz bible’s review further notes that the actor “doesn’t quite give Frank Langella a run for his money.”)

One unfortunate side effect: it seems a sure bet that many a middle-school student who sees the picture will be giving the wrong answer on any history exam that asks “Who was the President of the United States in 1985?”

Apologies to Mssrs. Little, Aykroyd, Frye

February 23, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Last night Frank Langella lost the Best Actor competition in the Academy Awards to Sean Penn.  But the veteran’s sterling performance in Frost/Nixon is still gaining accolades, not least from those who knew and worked with the 37th President.  This weekend the Fort Myers News-Press interviewed two Nixon White House staffers living on Sanibel Island, Florida, who recently saw the film:

“I think [Langella] had [Nixon] nailed,” [Richard] Cook said. “Absolutely, the fact that he didn’t look like him but immediately, five minutes into the film you’re looking at Nixon[...] The mannerisms, the movements and voice were just uncanny.”

And his colleague Max Friedersdorf calls Langella’s performance “spot-on” and the second-best portrayal of RN he’s ever seen.  That, of course, raises the question: Whose Nixon could be better?

According to Mr. Friedersdorf, Langella’s RN is topped by that of Ron Walker, the backbone of the Nixon White House’s advance team:

“If [Walker] had a couple of beers in him, he could impersonate him better,” [Friedersdorf] said. “But he had to have a couple of beers.”

Straight From The Great Escape

February 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Europe, Humor, International Affairs | Leave a Comment 

Though Greece’s most notorious criminal Vassilis Paleokostas and his Albanian sidekick Alket Rizai are no match for Steve McQueen’s heroic Captain Hilts, their escape from an Athenian prison deserves some props from prison break aficionados. Then again, the conservative government is on the verge of collapse:

The prison break was just the latest in a litany of embarrassments for the conservative government, which is teetering on the verge of collapse after Greece’s worst riots in decades, a resurgence of homegrown terrorism and a failure to stop the economy from crumbling.

The police said Sunday that the escape by the two prisoners, the serial armed robber Vassilis Paleokostas and his Albanian sidekick, Alket Rizai, came one day before both were to face trial for their 2006 escape from Korydallos prison. They were serving time then for armed robbery and kidnapping.

In the Sunday getaway, both were whisked from Korydallos prison after a helicopter — hijacked from Greece’s main international airport — flew into the heavily guarded compound and landed on the prison roof. A member of the helicopter crew cast them a rope ladder.

It remained unclear late on Sunday who hijacked the helicopter and how the getaway plan had been coordinated with Mr. Paleokostas and Mr. Rizai. Nor was it clear whether they were the only inmates to have escaped from the prison, situated in a congested residential district about seven miles southwest of the Greek capital.

“Sirens were blaring and shots were fired by the guards,” a bystander told Alter TV, a private television broadcasting network. “The helicopter swirled over the compound twice before swooping in to make the pick.”

Hours later police located the helicopter in a field near Polydendri, north of Athens, with no traces of the fugitives.

The pilot was found hooded and gagged but unharmed, according to the police. Interjet, a small Greek aircraft charter that owned the helicopter, refused to comment. Local news media, however, said the pilot had been taken in for questioning at the country’s national police headquarters in Athens.

Handicapping Best Actor

February 21, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

An AFP story out of Hollywood takes a look at the odds that bookmakers are offering as to what film or actor or actress will win the “Golden Dude,” as Robin Williams tearfully dubbed his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor when he won for Good Will Hunting. Slumdog Millionaire, according to the heavy-duty thinkers at bookmaking firm William Hill, is the 1/10 favorite for best picture, with The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button running a distant second. Hill and America’s Line in Las Vegas give Kate Winslet the winning odds for Best Actress for her performance in The Reader. Heath Ledger is given 1/40 odds to win posthumously for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

As for the Best Actor category, William Hill projects Mickey Rourke as the 8/15 favorite for his work in The Wrestler, with Sean Penn (thought by many to be the favorite among longtime Academy voters) at 2/1 for Milk. Brad Pitt is listed at 33/1 for Benjamin Button, and Richard Jenkins is at 40/1 for The Visitor. And smack in the middle is Frank Langella, given odds of 8/1 for his performance as the thirty-seventh President in Frost/Nixon.

Quite intriguingly, William Hill’s spokesman Rupert Adams is quoted thus: “We’re just starting to see a little bit of interest in Frank Langella. There’s one guy who bets with us every year who we regard as our Oscars guru and he has chosen Langella, which is interesting.”

Meanwhile, Sir David Frost has let it be known that he hopes Langella will be handed the statuette.

Passing Strange

February 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

It turns out that when the going gets weird, the weird go to Julien’s Auctions.  

This, alas, is far too sad to be amusing much less funny.

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