Variety (January 1953)

96 RADIO-TELEVISION Forty-seventh Anniversary Wednesday, January 7, 1953 Hal Ranter TWO MEN ON A DOG By HAL RANTER Hollywood. The first collaborators I ever had were my town’s high school wits, Bert Gold and Ken Hart. We strove to fash- ion a script that would entitle us to ah appearance over WMCA, where Harry Hershfield was conducting a search- : * ■ ing-for-new-comedians sort of pro- gram. Our painful pursuit of humor was frequently interrupted by Bert’s du- ties as a gasoline and directions dispenser at his father’s oil station, Ken’s. duties as sports reporter and ad solicitor for a local weekly and my calling as a carrier of ulcer unguents and blister balms for Kanter’s Chem- ist Shop, Those interruptions were a. fore-warning of collaborations to come. Only in retrospect do I realize that. The hours spent in frenzied, argu- ment-riddled composition and the subsequent public ridi- cule over WMCA’s courageous kilocycles had an effect pn Bert, who now enjoys life as a successful purveyor of television art cards and on Ken who went on to amass a sinecure in the whipcord jodhpur game and now, I under- stand, owns a radio station in Kentucky’s rolling hills. Unheeding the storm flags that whipped that bygone wind, I went on to acquire over the years as motley a crew of collaborators as any a man can point to him with either pride, alarm or nibbled fingernails. For an impatient man, it is best to avoid a collaborator like Harry, who is the dreamer type. You will spend agonizing hours waiting for Harry to say something which constitutes a contribution to the work at hand. Harry once was staring unblinking at a bare wall for* perhaps 15 minutes while I waited. It was early in our association and 1 thought he was mulling a blackout. When •he finally-turned toward ine, I scrambled to tfie^typ ewriter and poised my fingers over j the dusty keys 1 in anticipation of his pearl. ^ This is what he, isaid: - • “Suppose you and me Was invited to a big party. One' of them ritzy sworrys. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is. giving it The guests is Professor Einstein, Herbert Hoover, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo, Cardinal Spellman, Mel Ott, Ruth Bryan Owen,,Harry Hopkins, Lady Mendl and Doug- las Corrigan. Which one of us do you suppose Would be asked back?” Now, Al was the gambling.type and we did a lot of Our work at Santa Anita between races. When the tracks closed, I . frequently discovered myself writing in a room with an added starter and I have yet to hear Al’s bookie come up with a suggestion we could use in a script. Every time the telephone rang, it was for Al, with results of eastern tracks, basketball game scores, future book odds and girls who just got in from Chicago. Al would gamble on anything. . • There was the time a producer objected to a joke in the script because it was|too old.. Al offered the producer 10-1 that the joke had never been done - before.' The pro- ducer shrugged a Way the bet and said, to settle the ar- gument, “It’s out anyway. I don’t think it’s funny.” “Not funny!” Al screamed, “Twenty to one it gets a bigger laugh on this show than it gdt on any other!” Al lost. Our job, that is. With Sound Effects hold appliances; later he began to accept certificates good for clothing. The time came when Pete (after losing a fight with Censorship over plugs) found himself without work. He was forced to live on-the fats of the land accumulated over a long career as a mention merchant. Today, he is the best dressed man in the Sain Fernando Valley operat- ing a household appliance and liquor store. Oh, there are so many others! Fred, the intellectual who will take a Judy Canova joke, use it as a quotation . “as Gide once said” and earnestly believe he has cori- r tributed to literature and his own reputation as ad intel- lect. There was Charlie, the health food addict who drank carrot juice by the quart and Whose wife served us both chopped liver made out. of fried eggplant for lunch. , There was Sam. Sam (and of course these are not any ,of their real names; they all have' lawyers) .is'already-a living legend in"the yock dodge. It is a legend he began constructing himself and by the time we met, it had gotten away from him. He is a pants-taker-offer-in-public-places-for-laughs type fellow. There are times when he will prepare in advance for his little joke by lettering lewd phrases on the flap of his long underwear. He also makes entrances'into dig- nified agency conference rooms by crawling under the rug; he flings himself across the desks of executives and demands they give him an ink rubdown; he asks police- men to shoot off their guns “for my kid.” This desire to impress himself upon the world as a comedian in his own right robbed us of many precious hours of creation for established comics'. We spent more time discussing his public pursuit of parlor , stardom thaiii we did fashioning fables for professional buffoons. But it must be admitted that this chap is a master craftsman and as great a joke and idea man as ever misspelled, a word.. Finally, there is the collaborator who meets you when and where you have agreed; he discusses the events of the night before concisely and intelligently; he has some ideas .for today’s work allotment; he doesn’t call his wife, his bookie, his garage, his mother or his agent; he writes beautifully, doesn’t argue, accepts your word as final and , be types. This, of course, is the perfect collaborator. And the man was right;'nobody .is perfect. The obvious way to rid yourself of collaborator nui- JSito work-alone. Rut; then, whenthe' 3 c r iphcQmes_ hurtling bafetr in your face, who can you blame? ' ■ , Virginia, lust as Sure Jack was the perfectionist, bom of deep distrust for any technician.' He’s a step-counter and ashtray-dropper. We had a joke that depended on a man’s footsteps across a room, then the dropping of several iron balls. I was at the typewriter and wrote: Sound : Many, many footsteps , then several iron balls dropped on floor. Jack looked over my shouldler and ripped the paper out Of the, machine with a startled cry: “You got to Count it for those stupid sons of stopwatch- ers! Put it down like this: Sound: “ . . . and then he walked to the door, opened it, slammed it, then deliberately paced his way across the room, where he picked up two ashtrays, dropped them to the floor, picked up and dropped them again several times.” 'Satisfied, he said: “Sound, two dots, door opens and closes, three dots, 16 footsteps on hardwood, four dots, eight iron balls dropped on hardwood.” I typed that. “Now,” he said with a prayerful look heavenward, “let’s hope we get a soundman who can count.” ‘ Jack is a rugged defender of your work and has been heard to tell comedians whp changed words in scripts: “Don’t tamper with perfection. This stuff wasn’t written on the bus coming to work;” Comedians have also been heard to tell Jack: “Leave!” They speak, of course, in the plural, for your collaborator is your wife until death or agents do you part. The sex fiend, such as Frankie, is an arresting type of collaborator. I remember the first time he was arrested. It was in his. development at the age of 18. He would prefer to gambol with a secretary than dictate to her. The difference between him and me is that he admits it. He also pursues it. In a six-week association with Frankie (the limit my constitution would permit) we had six dif- ferent secretaries. All of them are < now unhappily mar- ried. Two of them to Frankie. Arnold was a social butterfly. The only reason he worked was because he needed an identification when he was being introduced to strangers at house parties. Amie’s main contribution to Our collaboration was pre-testing ma- terial. He would come to the office to begin his day at 12:30—in time to break for a two-hour luncheon—and usually start by-pointing out that the last two- pages of dialog are not funny. How did he know they Weren’t funny? * • “I tried every gag at Norman's party for* Groucho last night,” he explained with a dramatic shrug. “Nothing played.” 1 Payola Pete | There exists a group of organizations who give whiskey by the case to writers who are able to sneak mentions of commercial products into their scripts. These mentions are called plugs and Peter was a plugmaster. He would never sit down to work without first consulting the list of products the plug pirates were pitching. Then he would struggle to compose dialog which wouldmentionthose products. Because he made all the deals with the so-called public relations men, Pete handled the loot. When his garage was full of whiskey, he began bartering for house? By SID GARFIELD (CBS Radio Exploitation Director ) Editor, Variety: I received the following letter about a week ago from a little girl whose name is Virginia, and who lives in Hazlehurst, Mississippi: “Dear Mr. Garfield^ ■ am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no such thing as Radio. Papa says, ‘If. you see it in Variety, it’s so.’ As exploitation director for a big network, you should know. Please tell me the truth, does Radio exist?” The letter touched me deeply and I answered it with- out wasting a moment. I am attaching herewith the carbon copy of my reply. Please put it in your paper so little Virginia no longer need be perplexed. Dear Virginia : . Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected unduly by the skepticism of a cynical age. They do not be- lieve anything-they cannot see on a 20-inch screen. Their small minds begin with “I Love Lucy” and end with “Colgate Comedy Hour.” Most minds, Virginia dear, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. Including my own, many times. In this great show biz of ours, man is a mere, insect, an ant in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, and as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of universal truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, Radio does exist. It exists so long as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy exist, so long as the Bing exists and John J. Anthony. It exists so long as Art Linkletter does “People Are Funny” and Jean Hersholt is “Dr. Christian.” It exists so long as Dimitri Mitropoulos cues the Philharmonic downbeat each Sun- day at Carnegie Hall, and Nila Mack can say “once upon a time ...” It exists so long as Red Barber and Mel Allen and Russ Hodges call the plays in baseball parks and “Lux Radio Theatre” comes to you from Hollywood. It exists so long as Ed Murrow and Eric Sevareid and Bob Trout • and Lowell Thomas read the teletype dispatches and in- terpret the news. It exists everytime a gun is fired on “Gangbusters,” a question is muffed on the Bob Hawk show, a clinker is heard by Guy Lombardo’s band. Yes, Virginia, Radio does exist. It exists as certainly as joke switches, option pickups, and arrangements of “Winter Wonderland” at Xmas time. Alas, how dreary would be the William Morris office and Goodson and Todman if there were ho Radio. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no poetry, no romance, no mike-believe to ren- der tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoy- ment save “Howdy Doody” and Pinky Lee. Not believe in Radio? You might as well not believe in Santa Claus or Arthur Godfrey! Nobody sees Radio, true. But that is no sign there is no Radio. The most real things in the world are those neither children nor adults can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but is that proof they are. not there? You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside. But there is a veil covering, the great mass buying market which not even the strongest man can tear apart, save by Radio. Only faith and fancy and supreme determination, besides Radio, can push aside that curtain and view the supernal glory beyond. - And who among us possesses all of these except, perhaps, Cy Howard! Is Radio real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing much else as real and abiding. No Radio! Thank ♦ God your little friends are wrong. A hundred years from now', Virginia, nay 200 years, a man will come along and . say “We pause now for station identification.” ’ And what follows will make glad the hearts Of all dialers. ' ~" With Love, SID GARFIELD. LIFE IN A PRESSURE COOKER By FLETCHER MARKLE (Producer of CBS-TV 'Studio One’) This piece will never be written. There isn’t time. There are scripts to be finished, actors to be found sets to be designed and built, costumes to be fitted, music to be selected: each to be related to the others all to be assembled and rehearsed and,, finally, to be crowded together into the flat end of a tube not much bigger ( or smaller) than, your insurance company’s new calendar And all to be done again next week. And the week after And the week after that. And no chance to write ari article',/however brief, about the time it takes to do all of it or any of it. The man’from Variety smiles his knowing smile and observes that you have not been long in television (as if to say you are not long for this world) and asks for your reactions, A half-dozen paragraphs. A few hundred words. Just a few notes when you have a moment be- tween rehearsals and meetings. r NOw and again, morning or noon or night, you remem- ber the smiling man’s request and you think about what you might say if ever there was time to sit down and say it on a typewriter, and somehow it all comes out fire and ice; Purple passages rush in where facts and figures fear to tread. You think of the midday and midnight oil burning slowly aWay, the lovely lights at each end of the candle ' hurrying toward their deadly rendezvous like night trains facing each other on a single track, and you know per- fectly well that’s a hell of a way to run a railroad—to say nothing of your own trains of thought tearing along through the wagging metaphors.—No, very little to be said for that approach. You think of water becoming steam in a pressure cooker, and the steam becoming nothing in the air —Not much there either. ‘And I Like Television’ i - You think of how it is for the moth in the flame, for the clinking: cubes in .the glass in the warm hand, for the feather in* the wind—No sir, brother, you’re-reading the cuts. ’ •. ■ You think of the clock and the calendar, both of which figure importantly in the way you live, both telling you the time you haven’t got. And you’re right back where you started from. It’s all a matter of time, first and last. But if the scripts can be written and edited and cast,, the sets built and dressed, the whole business rehearsed and performed this week and next week and next week—a lot of it impossi- ble, but all of it somehow accomplished—then surely a man can find a few. more minutes to answer a smiling and civil question in the same way he finds other hours that don’t exist for other matters that must have atten- tion. I like television, thank you. Especially the. kind I’m doing now, not to be found in the captivity of film. It’s alive, all right, and kicking high. And I’m impressed. Not that there’s time to stand around and react and recollect in tranquillity, but I’m very impressed indeed. With what? Welt, staying in my own backyard (from which there isn’t time to stray), I’m impressed with^writers who can turn out a script for an hour drama show that is at least twice, if not .10 times more intricate than its opposite number in radio—and almost two-thirds as long as a feature film—and who repeat the process a dozen times a year. I’m impressed with directors like Paul Nickell and Frank Schaffner who call more shots in a month than most of their co-workers in feature film call in a year. I’m impressed with actors who memorize and per- form 80 sides in a week, facing triple the amount of mechanics in a stock company schedule. I’m impressed with set designers and lighting men who create mount- ings that easily equal and often exceed the requirements of a Broadway production, and who do it every week. Even to the Lowest Denominator Then there are all the people in the overlooked-and- under-estimated department: cameramen who are hum- mingbirds on wheels; assistant directors who somehow manage to remind the hummingbirds a hundred times an hour what they are going to do three or four seconds be- fore they have to do it; technical directors or “switchers” or whatever you call them at your network who punch almost as many buttons as there, ar.e keys on a typewriter, with no chance to x-out or erase or slide in another page; with the unit managers and program co-ordinators who work out all the figures and figure out all the work. I’m impressed with the work, that's 1 : what it all comes do.wn to: how much of it there'iSi how complicated it becomes and, more than any other part of it, how it al- ways gets done. To meet the week and the day and the hour, the calendar and the clock, and then start all over again like some kind of perpetual amoeba. Sometimes you think the show will never go on—there isn’t time. But it does, and there is. Hamlet and the Boy Scouts have provided us with a. reminder: to be or not to be prepared, that is the question. This piece will never be 1 written. There isn’t time. Different Perspective A comic who worked with me at Minsky’s Gayety when burlesque was flourishing in New York was an irrespons- ible drunk. Despite the rigors that working in stock bur- lesque demanded; this joker “lived up.a storm.” What I mean is it was normal for him to down a tumbler of hour- . bon, for a chaser! The incident I have in mind was the day he just, didn’t show up which meant that besides my own scenes, I had to handle his. , * All during this emergency “Operation Where Is He. was going on backstage, phone calls, etc., an usher came through the iron door leading to the front of the house and “psst” at me sotto voce, “If you’r.e looking for . ♦ ■ he’s sitting in . the jnezzanipe.” . I .qqjckly followed the ; usher through the door out front; instinctively knowing “this is gonna be a lulu.” Sure enough there was our hero draped over the mez- zanine gazing at the stage red-eyed, glazed expression ana fractured.. As calmly as I could, I sidled over to him, *nudged him ’and whispered, “Hey.what are you doing out here?” It took him some-30 seconds to turn and get nv? in focus and answer, *T wanted to see how I looked ironi. out front.” Phil Silvers.