Larry Kart

Might try out my recently acquired hearing aids tonight on this: 10:00PM at the Hungry Brain, 2319 W Belmont, 773.935.2118 Mike Salter Group Little Women : Darius Jones, Travis Laplante, Ben Greenberg, Jason Nazary am unfamiliar with both bands, though sound samples of Little Women suggest that they're not for someone with new hearing aids.

Holy cow -- without knowing about it in advance, just tuning it in, I saw the very first episode of the MTM Show on local TV tonight. Magic. It's the one with Ed Asner's famous line: "Mary -- you've got spunk [beat...beat]. I hate spunk." Also, the episode's final scene, in which Mary dumps her old visiting boyfriend, is beautifully written and played -- very emotionally true, I think, to what a lot of real-world analogues to Mary Richards were doing and feeling at the time. Finally, kudos to the writers for making it perfectly clear that the old boyfriend is there only because he thinks he can ball Mary that night.

Frank Whostock?? Here ya go: http://www.archive.org/details/psych-out_06

You're not wrong, lovely stuff. I think Cliff likes you, Larry...... The sly trombone strikes.

So I talked myself into it -- just ordered the set, which I should have done long ago.

Or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-gO9TpElS4...feature=related No Barbour solo here, but what he plays with and behind Lee is unreal.

Or this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2ho19VbOiU...feature=related where the implicit sexual frisson between them is something else.

Could have been this clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ1TA-LwQKw...feature=related but as nice as Barbour is here, my admittedly vague memory says that it was something even more impressive. Also, he sounds more Charlie Christian-like than I recalled (that languid swing!), though perhaps drawing from common sources (Barbour was with Wingy Manone as far back as 1934).

Wow -- I have no memory of that, though I do recall once hearing a Lee-Barbour performance of that vintage (perhaps it was a film clip) where Barbour took a stunningly good solo that very much in his own bag stylistically, IIRC hip and modern in every good sense but also related to the Carl Kress-George Van Eps tradition.

Solal makes the date.

I interviewed Newhart once, over lunch at I think the Bel Air Country Club in connection with that movie ("The First Family"?) in which he played a befuddled, Jimmy Carter-like president, with Madeline Kahn as his wife and Gilda Radner as his daughter. The movie was not so hot, but Newhart's account of it (I hadn't seen it yet) was hilarious. What a nice guy. One thing I loved in particular -- and this comes through in much of his work -- is that if he thinks something funny is up, he can (even if it's his own doing) step back from it a bit and find it genuinely funny himself. It's as though his sense of the multi-faceted absurdities of life is never-ending.

Lyle Delp.

That's it! Rickles was quite good and in character throughout, especially in the first episode. One heck of a Garry Marshall-Jerry Belson script that was.

Last night saw another MTM (an unhappy Lou at an awards banquet), part of a Newhart (another early rather blah one), and two Dick Van Dyke shows last night -- the one with Don Rickles as the hold-up man in the elevator, and the sequel where the the A. Brady show people entertain inmates at the prison where Rickles has been incarcerated for eight years (though Rose Marie's "hotcha" number could be regarded as cruel and unusual punishment). Lord, was Van Dyke a brilliant physical comic when things called for that, as these two episodes do -- very Keaton-like. And MTM on both her show and the Van Dyke shows -- given the "normality" of her characters, one tends to forget (or at least I do) what a terrific subtle performer she was. Those "takes" of hers!

Yes. I got choked up a couple of times.

Dutch contralto Aafje Heynis (don't miss the first piece, from Elgar's "Sea Pictures"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z8UVgyw3yw

Conchita Supervia (and pianist Frank Marshall sure is no slouch on the first three tracks). Someone once wrote that Supervia's vibrato was like castanets being clacked together:

For openers ... Fernando De Lucia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyPOJycMctw...feature=related Mattia Battistini: Dig the closing cadenzas on both tracks; Battistini's especially suggests what Louis Armstrong picked up from opera. BTW, I have a set of heavily pitch-corrected De Lucia recordings that are a revelation.

Interesting post ( from the Songbirds site) about Dearie from composer-pianist Richard Rodney-Bennett. Speculations about why she didn't marry Johnny Mandel are welcome. Songbirds poster Bill Reed commented, "God greatly gifted Johnny Mandel in more ways than one," but I'm still curious about the actual wording of Dearie's "quiet but definite complaint." Rodney-Bennett: I learned many of the best songs I know from Blossom. In the early 60s she used to come to stay at my house in Islington, London. She would always have a bunch of new Cy Coleman songs, that he had given her, unpublished. I'm talking about 'I Live My Love', 'For Once In My Life' (not the famous one), 'Little What-If'. "My How The Time Goes By" and so on. She was an exceptionally demanding house-guest (which of course thrilled me, since I idolised her.) She would march into my work-room, saying, with no introduction: "I'm hungry" Or "I'm cold." Or "I'm thirsty". And this had to be put right immediately. Mike Renzi does the ultimate Blossom speaking voice; often my phone would ring, and this imperious little voice would say "I'm horny". I was very much influenced by her piano playing, notably her beautiful harmonic sense and her economical, swinging style. Johnny Mandel told me that he met her when she first "came down from the mountains", and as he puts it, she had it all, right from the beginning. They were romantically involved, and there is a very funny story, told by John Wallowitch, about her reply when he asked her why she didn't marry Johnny. I can't possibly quote her reply (David would be shocked and might throw me off the list), but it was uttered in her usual tone of quiet but definite complaint. I shall miss her very much. Richard

Ah, Chewy, you're so predictable.

Here's a link to that MTM show episode, "Lou's Second Date" --1974: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0789511/ Unfortunately, you can't watch it from this link, as you apparently can watch that whole BN show episode from the link in my previous post. BTW, a possible explanation for the difference I think I see in the two episodes is not only that, as previously mentioned, the BN show episode is from early in that show's first season, but also that the MTM episode is from 1974, when everyone in that series was really into things.

Well, what do I know. Having tracked down that BN show episode, "Goodnight, Nancy" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0528366/ it was directed by Sandrich. But it was the fifth episode from the show's first season (1972), and things must not have been in gear yet.

The principal director of the MTM show by a large margin (see totals below) was Jay Sandrich. Info about Sandrich, from here http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/...sandrichjay.htm follows: Although he ventured briefly into the field of feature films, directing Seems Like Old Times in 1980, Sandrich decided quickly that he preferred to remain in television. "The pace is much more interesting," he explained. "In features you sit around so much of the time while lighting is going on, and then you make the picture, and you sit around for another year developing projects. I like to work. I like the immediacy of television." For many of his colleagues, Sandrich has defined the successful situation-comedy director. "I think it was Jay who first made an art form of three-camera film," said producer Allan Burns, referring to the shooting technique most often used for sitcoms. Although he was modest about his own accomplishments, and quick to note that good writing is the starting point for any television program, Sandrich asserted that he cherishes his role as director in a medium often viewed as the domain of the producer. "If there's a regular director every week," he stated, "[television] should be a major collaboration between the director and the producer--if the director's any good--because he is the one who sets the style and the tone of the show. He works with the actors. And a good director, whether he is rewriting or not, he is always making suggestions ... and in many cases knows the script a little bit better than the producer because he's been seeing each scene rehearsed and understands why certain things work and why they don't.... So when it's a regular director on a series, I think it's not a producer's medium. It is the creative team [that shapes a series]." P.S. I'll try to investigate further, but it sounds like three-camera technique means that three cameras were shooting while the scene was done as few times as was necessary to capture good performances, then results from those cameras could be edited/combined (this modifying my earlier thought that editing may be less important in sitcoms than in films; rather, this suggests that it is may be as important but different in nature). P.P.S. My memory is that a lot of Newhart show episodes were better than the one I saw (though despite its clunkiness compared again to the MTM episode, it had its moments). I would guess then that it was not directed by Peter Bonerz, who directed many BN episodes, but by a director who did few of them. MTM show directors: Jay Sandrich (119 episodes, 1970-1977) Peter Baldwin (10 episodes, 1970-1973) Alan Rafkin (4 episodes, 1970-1974) John C. Chulay (4 episodes, 1973-1974) James Burrows (4 episodes, 1974-1976) Marjorie Mullen (4 episodes, 1975-1976) Jerry Paris (3 episodes, 1971) Jerry Belson (3 episodes, 1972-1973) Hal Cooper (2 episodes, 1972) Nancy Walker (2 episodes, 1973-1974) BN show directors: Peter Bonerz (29 episodes, 1974-1978) Alan Rafkin (23 episodes, 1972-1975) Michael Zinberg (15 episodes, 1975-1978) Peter Baldwin (12 episodes, 1972-1974) James Burrows (11 episodes, 1975-1977) Dick Martin (11 episodes, 1977-1978) Jay Sandrich (10 episodes, 1972-1975) George Tyne (6 episodes, 1973-1974) Jerry London (5 episodes, 1973) Alan Myerson (4 episodes, 1976) John C. Chulay (3 episodes, 1976) Martin Cohan (2 episodes, 1973) Bob Claver (2 episodes, 1975)

The MTM show (1970-77) and the earlier BN show (1972-78) were contemporaneous, so I don't think there would be any "'next generation' of actors" problem. Also, I had no impression that Newhart himself (the only standup in his show's cast) was doing less or other than he should in terms of inhabiting his character effectively. MTM regulars: • Lou Grant (Edward Asner) Mary's boss • Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod), the head copy writer • Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), the vain, pompous, dim-witted news anchor. • Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) (1970–74), Mary's best friend and upstairs neighbor. • Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) (1970–75), Mary's snobbish landlady • Georgette Franklin Baxter (Georgia Engel) (1972–77), Ted's sweet-natured girlfriend and eventual wife. • Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) (1973–77), host of The Happy Homemaker show. Her superficially ever-cheerful demeanor belies her true, man-chasing nature. She is particularly attracted to Lou Grant. BN show regulars: • Bob Newhart as Dr. Robert Hartley, psychologist • Suzanne Pleshette as Emily Hartley, his wife, a school teacher • Bill Daily as Howard Borden, their next-door neighbor, an airline navigator • Peter Bonerz as Dr. Jerry Robinson, Bob's friend, an orthodontist • Marcia Wallace as Carol Kester, their receptionist

Yes, certainly nothing obtrusive, and editing would be part of the meaningful fluidity I'm talking about. Also, though I'd have to look again to be sure, I would think that for reasons of economy alone, edits were/are less plentiful in sitcoms than in movies, that the flow of incident from one moment to the next was handled mostly on the set -- by the performers themselves and through the movement of those performers within the sitcoms' relatively familiar, given spaces. About performances, though, there was nothing about Newhart's performance on the episode I saw that was less than topnotch, but the relative clunkiness of the direction seemed to preclude much flow from his work into and off of the work of the other characters, although most of them were old hands on the show. On that MTM episide, by contrast, everything seemed to bounce off of everything else.