Goodman Ace

            On Sunday I went to bed a little before 1:30. I slept fairly well and got up at 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and found a few adults stuck to the carpet tape while a few more babies were on the walls, one of them near the curtain rod. I’m going to put some more two-sided tape on the floor beside the baseboards and on the wall near the curtain rod bracket. 

            I worked out the chords for the first three lines of the chorus of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished editing “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg in my Christian’s Translations blog and I’ll publish it on Monday after posting the video. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune about half the time. 

            Around midday I put down more two sided carpet tape along the bedroom floor beside the northern and eastern baseboards. I also ran a strip along the right side of the bedroom door and enclosed the right curtain bracket in a square of carpet tape in case there were bedbugs there so they wouldn’t try to build a nest in the rod pocket of the bedroom curtains.

            I weighed 92.35 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 91.25 kilos at 18:10, which is the lightest I’ve been in the evening since August 16.

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread, with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old-cheddar while watching part two of a roundtable discussion between Carole Burnett Show writers Gail Parent, Ken Solms, Buz Kohan, and Arnie Kogen. 

            Arnie says his aunt spoke just like Harvey’s character of Mother Marcus. 

            Buz has 13 Emmys. 

            Gail says two of her children are MIT graduates and they are funny engineers. Buz’s daughter Jenji worked with Gail on Tracy Ullman. 

            One time someone hired Gail and Ken because he mistook them for Buz and his writing partner. He thought they wrote music and lyrics. 

            Buz worked 4 years for The Carol Burnett Show and then did The Pearl Bailey Show. When he first met Pearl she was at Lake Tahoe and sitting by the pool with a pair of golden scissors hanging from a chain around her neck. She explained that she uses her scissors on the script because when she performs, god gives her the words. By the end of the third show they were close and she was sticking pretty much to the script. When Pearl was canceled Buz went back to Carol’s show. On the credits he was listed as a producer but he was still writing. Ken says that’s the time when everyone started being called a producer. Gail says if the show wins an Emmy for writing then the writers will ask for something. Buz says that Pearl started her show with the intention of cooking her famous macaroni and cheese for the entire audience after the show and she’d serve them on the rooftop lounge. By the third week they were calling KFC because the logistics of her cooking for everyone were impossible. 

            Ken says every variety writer ended up doing some sitcoms. Gail points out that Ken never liked writing for sitcoms and he confirms it. 

            Arnie says in 1968 when he came out to Hollywood there were 16 variety shows. He says if you wanted a date from the writers guild the female choices were Gail and Treva Silverman. Gail got pregnant and people usually send flowers when you give birth but Carol sent her a diaphragm. 

            Gail and Ken wrote the very first sketch that appeared on The Carol Burnett Show, which was the ski lodge sketch with Jim Nabors and Carol. 

            Buz says by the 24th show each season writers were running out of good material and so they would dig into material they wouldn’t have sniffed at earlier in the season. There was a sketch called Anthony the Wonder Ant that was always on the board but never got on the air. 

            After Bill and Buz left, Ken and Mitzi Welch came in to do the song material. 

            Buz worked with Barbara Sreisand many times and Gail wrote the screenplay for The Main Event for her. Arnie points out the part of Gail’s novel in which the main character writes a suicide note but her mother only reads it bit by bit every night before going to bed. 

            Ken says they lost the chance to have Bette Davis on the show because Joe Hamilton didn’t want to pay the extra $25 for the limousine she requested. 

            The Esther Williams parody was filmed at Carol’s house and in her pool. 

            Buz wrote the mini musical about the songwriters Potts and Panns. He included a song he wrote in summer camp and then used to sing it to his kids, “You Outta Listen to Your Mother”. 

            Buz says Nanette Fabray could play the musical saw. 

            Ken says Bob Mackie still looks 18. 

            Arnie wrote "the world’s oldest fireman" for Tim. 

            Ken says Harvey was a bit temperamental and Carol used to tease him with, “What mood are we in today Mr. Harvey Korman?” Harvey was the first actor Gail and Ken worked with on the Steve Allen Show. 

            Buz says Steve Allen was the best. Ken says he would save every first draft. 

            Arnie says he got stopped by a cop once who commented while he was writing him a ticket that the show is more fun with Tim being a regular. 

            Arnie says that Paul Lynd was difficult. He says he’s never seen Jack Jones funnier than on The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Carol was very approachable. 

            Jerry Lewis took the same picture of his daughter every day from birth until 5 or 6. 

            Arnie loved Totie Fields.

            Buz worked for Perry Como for four years. Buz had the distinct honour and pleasure of working with Goodman Ace, the dean of comedy writers in New York. 

            Gail says after Carol they worked for some mean and horrible stars. But she did The Golden Girls, which was a well run show and the stars could deliver lines. 

            Arnie says Bob Newhart was like Jack Benny. He would surround himself with crazy, funny people. He was very easy to write for because he was a reactor like Benny. 

            Ken says he and Gail made Vince Edwards funny. He lit two cigarettes the way they used to do in the movies but instead of handing one to his leading lady he smoked them both. 

            They all agree they’d like to do it all over again. 

            Goodman Ace was the editor of his high school newspaper. He studied Journalism at Kansas City Polytechnic Institute. He became a reporter and journalist for The Kansas City Journal Post. 

            He met Jane in high school and they married six months after their first date at an Al Jolson concert. 

            He started moonlighting as a radio announcer in 1930. He would read the Sunday comics and hosted a Friday night film review and gossip show called Ace Goes to the Movies. He starred with his wife Jane in the radio sitcom Easy Aces from 1930 to 1945. It started one night when the fifteen minute show that was scheduled after Ace’s failed to feed and so he was asked to fill in the time. His wife Jane happened to be there and so they simply had a conversation about playing bridge that the audience found so funny that they were given their own show. He wrote himself as the straight man and gave the jokes to Jane, and their comedy dynamic was similar to that of George Burns and Gracie Allen. One of Jane’s famous lines was “Time wounds all heels”. In 1935 they started doing comedy short films with their radio characters such as “Dumb Luck”. 

            In 1945 Ace became one of the writers for The Danny Kaye radio show, which he and Jane sometimes hosted. He created the radio series You Are There, which ran from 1947 to 1950. 

            In 1953 Ace wrote that TV stands for Terrible Vaudeville and that they call it a medium because it’s never well done. 

            After their attempt at doing Easy Aces on TV failed, Ace stopped performing and focused on writing. He created a show that re-enacted historical events that had been reported by CBS radio. The show came to be known as CBS Was There but Ace was never credited. 

           He was head writer for 23 episodes of The Perry Como Show (for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards). He wrote for Jack Benny, Milton Berle and Bob Newhart. After writing a few jokes for Benny’s stage show, Benny sent him a cheque for $50, saying your jokes got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” Ace sent the cheque back and said, “Your cheque got a lot of laughs. If you have any more send them along.” He ended up giving Benny jokes for free for years. 

           For radio Ace co-wrote The Big Show, hosted by Tallulah Bankhead, which ran from 1950 to 1952. 

           He wrote the screenplay for I Married a Woman, and said it was the best thing he’d ever written but the worst movie he’d ever seen. 

           In the early 50s he started writing a regular column for The Saturday Review. A collection of his criticism was published in1955 as The Book of Little Knowledge: More Than You Want to Know About Television. Later the column came to be called Top of MY Head and it became very popular. These columns were collected in two books: The Fine Art of Hypochondria and The Better of Goodman Ace.

           In the mid-60s CBS started a school for would be writers with Ace as one of the instructors. All six of Ace’s students became television writers and two became successful playwrights: George Axelrod and Neil Simon. 

           In the 1970s several Easy Aces scripts were adapted for the Canadian sitcom The Trouble with Tracy. 

           A relative of Ace’s once sent him a telegram threatening to jump from the 14th floor of his building if he didn’t send him $14,000. Ace wired back “If you jump from the 7th floor I’ll send you $5000.”

September 1, 1996: My daughter and I played adventures based on comic books

Thirty years ago today 

            On Sunday my daughter and I played on the back roof with her action figures and other toys. We made up scenarios based on the comic books that I read to her at bedtime.

Buz Kohan

           On Saturday I went to bed at around 1:30 and slept until I got up to pee at 3:00 and then slept again until the 5:00 alarm. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and the only ones I found were stuck to the two-sided carpet tape. My washing of the curtains yesterday seems to have wiped a lot of them out.

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll start figuring out the chords for the chorus. 

            I uploaded “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. I might have it done on Sunday. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast.

            Around midday I rode to Freedom Mobile and paid for my September phone plan. Then I rode to No Frills where all the cherries are gone and the grapes are too soft. I bought a Canadian watermelon, two packs of Canadian strawberries, a basket of Canadian plums, some bananas, a pack of Canadian cheddar, a pack of chicken legs, a pack of two T-bone steaks, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of wedge fries, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 91.95 kilos at 14:35, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since last Saturday. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and woke up too late for a bike ride downtown but not for a ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 91.75 kilos at 17:45.

            It’s been a week since I was that easy on the scale in the afternoon. I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, wedge fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching part 1 of a roundtable discussion between Carole Burnett Show writers Gail Parent, Ken Solms, Buz Kohan, and Arnie Kogen.

            Ken says that the public thinks they all sat around a table but they were really all in separate offices. Gail says the offices were not equal though because she and Ken didn’t have a window. Joe Hamilton had a window painted after the show picked up. Gail sent him a picture of her child with the caption, “Will this child be eating next year?” Their head writer didn’t want them to talk in the hall.

            Buz says the studio is now the home of Bill Maher’s show Real Time. Ken says that Carol loves Bill Maher. Ken adds that on that stage he wrote a show saluting Jack Benny, starring Kelsey Grammar. Then Ken and Buz did the 25th anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show. 

            Gail and Ken wrote the first As the Stomach Turns and all of the episodes until they left the show. Other writers wrote them afterwards. Arnie says that The Californians on Saturday Night Live had a similar rhythm. Ken adds that SCTV also had a soap opera parody called Days of the Week. When Lucille Ball and Nancy Wilson guest starred all the women in the town were widows. Carol didn’t ad lib a lot but when Nancy Wilson came to the door she said, “A black widow!” It was Gail and Ken’s idea to have Carol say “I’ll get it!” before the doorbell rang. Arnie says that was good writing. 

            Carol depended on a sound man for things like falling. Arnie says he keeps a soundman at his home to do the sound when he falls. Ken says that would be a great idea for a sketch: A comedy writer with his own sound man. Arnie says he used to physically fall into Buz’s office whenever he entered but it didn’t get a laugh. 

            Gail used to come in on Tuesday nights just to punch up a show. When they would meet with the head writer Arnie Rosen, if he pulled out his typewriter they knew there was going to be a rewrite and it was like seeing a dentist approaching with a drill. 

            Ken says the first sketch that he and Gail turned in was 28 pages. Gail says it was their first job and they learned while working. Ken says they were flown out earlier from New York to work on the Carol and Sis sketch. Buz says Saul Turtletaub created Carol and Sis. Ken argues that it was actually Carol and her husband Joe Hamilton who wrote the first treatment but Carol’s name originally was Hilda DeRage. He says maybe Sol wrote the first one. 

            Ken says he just wrote a book called Bits in which he calls himself the co-creator of The Carol Burnett Show. Arnie says he and the other writers are offended. 

            Buz says Harvey Korman used to come into Buz’s office and lie down on the couch. It was like a session with a psychiatrist for him. There was a piano in Buz’s office and so the musical guests like Ethel Merman would come in and sing. Buz says the day they did the Three Little Pigs they had Eileen Farrell and Marilyn Horne in there. Gail says that she and Ken would listen at the door and would have fallen in if anyone had opened it. 

            Buz talks about the Flip shows. At the end of every season there would be a party in which the cast and crew would perform something from the season that had just ended. One of the highlights was Bob Wright the line producer. He got dressed in full drag and recreated a tango dance number from the parody of Gilda they did. 

            Buz says before he worked on the series he came out to work on a Carol Burnett special called Carol and Friends. He was on his first and last vacation in the West Hamptons when Carol called to tell him she’d gotten Rock Hudson, Ken Berry and Frank Gorshen to star in her special. When Buzz came out to write the special he met Rock and asked him if he knew anything about music. Rock told him he knew very little so Buz sat at the piano to show him a scale. He had trouble teaching it to him but thought that at least he was trying. The second rehearsal happened in Rock’s beautiful house. When Buz walked in he saw a three meter Steinway grand sitting in his living room. It turned out that Rock had just been putting him on and he’d been studying music for years. 

            Ken says Gail loved Dick Van Dyke and Sid Caesar. 

            When Carol first called Buz about writing her show he was in New York working on The Steve Lawrence Show, The Sammy Davis Junior Show, and the Perry Como specials. But you could see the writing on the wall that everybody was moving west. Carol guaranteed him 30 weeks of work. Buz brought his family out and never went back east. Gail and Ken were offered a solid six weeks. David Geffen was their agent and every time they got picked up they’d get less money. Buz hired Bernie Brillstein for his agent the second year and he got him a $200 a week raise. Bernie wanted 10% of the whole salary but Buz said they’d be happy to give him $20 but not 10% of the sum they’d negotiated before hiring him. Gail and Ken were also with Bernie. 

            Buz wrote The Fun Family, which was the first musical spoof that took up half a show. 

            Buz says there was a segment of The Garry Moore Show called That Wonderful Year. Carol said she wanted something similar so they came up with Salute to the Studios. 

            Gail says The Smothers Brothers were down the hall and they were doing political stuff and getting in trouble with the censors. For the most part Carol was not political but they did the Fireside Chats of presidents and their families. 

            Gail says that when they did the movie parodies they got two hours off to watch the original films. 

            Gail says Tim Conway was the best. 

            Gail and Ken say they wrote The Dentist sketch and Arnie tells them they are his new idols. Tim was offered to become a regular but he had to bring in six sketches the first year so he paid Gail and Ken to write three of them. But Tim added a lot to the sketches. Gail says dentists tell her all the time that sketch is shown to all dental students in the first year. Arnie says it’s one of the funniest sketches ever. Tim and Harvey do that sketch in their road show and Ken teases them that they don’t have permission. They got paid $500. 

            Ken says Harvey is one of the funniest men alive up there with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. 

            Buz Kohan studied at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and earned both a Bachelors and a Masters degree. He wrote for 109 episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. He produced TV specials for Carol Burnett, Bing Crosby, Arthur Godfrey, The Keane Brothers, Gene Kelly, and Shirley MacLaine. He wrote several songs with and for Michael Jackson, including “Gone Too Soon”. He wrote the duet “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” that was sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie on Bing Crosby’s Christmas special. His son David co-created Will and Grace. His daughter Jenji created Weeds and Orange is the New Black.

August 31, 1996: Nancy brought our daughter to my place

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday Nancy brought our daughter to my place and she spent the weekend.

Betty Ford

            On Friday morning after midnight I put down two sided carpet tape all around the edge of my futon underneath the fitted sheet, then I did the same to the outside of the fitted sheet. While putting the last strip of tape at the foot of my bed I noticed a bedbug on the bedroom curtain that covers the inside of the passage between the bedroom and the living room. I killed it and noticed another and killed that one as well. Then I did a search of the whole curtain for more monsters and discovered at the top, in and around the rod pocket a shitload of bedbug nests. They looked like they’d been there for quite a while as I’d never looked up there for bedbugs. I started killing them and spent at least half an hour, probably destroying at least fifty. I realized that my project for today was going to be washing and drying those curtains as well as using my steamer on the wooden curtain rods. I didn’t get to bed until 2:45 but I slept well until 4:43 when I got up to pee, then went back to sleep for fifteen more minutes. After yoga I didn’t find many bedbugs stuck to the tape on the bed but there were a few on the tape on the floor at the head of my bed. 

            I worked out the chords for line 3 of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. There’s one line left in the first verse and I’ll probably have it done tomorrow. I think the chords for all the verses will be the same so after that I’ll work out the chords for the chorus. 

            I ran through singing and playing “The Seduction of Doctor Faust”, my translation of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two sessions and it went out of tune constantly. 

            Around midday I did my laundry nine days after the last time specifically to wash the two sets of curtains that separate my bedroom and living room because I’d found several bedbug nests in the rod pockets of the curtains on the bedroom side. I also washed whatever else had gotten dirty in the last 9 days.

            I weighed 92 kilos at 16:10. 

            I took a siesta and woke up too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92.3 kilos at 18:35. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I grilled eight chicken drumsticks and had two with a potato and gravy while watching an interview with Vikki Carr. 

            Vikki was onstage at the age of 4 in school. 

            At 18 her father allowed her to go on the road to sing for 5 or 6 shows a night in Nevada lounges. The casinos were 24 hours and so the times of the shows would change from week to week: 6:00 to 12:00; 9:00 to 15:00; 12:00 to 18:00; 15:00 to 21:00; and then 18:00 to midnight. 

            Over the years she developed one of the finest microphone techniques in the business. She would tell the sound person not to change the levels once she started because she knew what she was doing. In the casinos they would turn off the singer’s mic to announce the jackpot even if they were in the middle of a soaring vocal. 

            On television she was not allowed to sing the word “god” in her hit song “It Must Be Him”. And yet they were okay with her singing the line “and I thank god I’m alive” in the song “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”. But once “It Must Be Him” hit #1 in England it was re-released in the US and she was allowed to sing it. Her song “Sleeping Between Two People” was banned in Boston. 

            She has a reputation for crying while singing sad songs. After she performed “It Must Be Him” on Ed Sullivan Ed came over with a handkerchief and asked if she was alright. 

            She worked with Perry Como in Mexico and he complimented her on her cologne. He asked what she was wearing. She said it was Chloe and he said, “I’m gonna get a gallon of that for my wife and if she doesn’t smell like you I’m gonna get rid of her.” 

            She says Dean Martin never rehearsed and so the guest had to be the one to carry the musical number that he would join in on. 

            The song line-ups for Vikki's shows are subject to change based on the audience. 

            She was performing in a show with Jack Benny and Bobby Vinton and Jack was watching Bobby perform. He said, “I don’t know whether to watch or listen”. If you move around too much the audience gets confused. 

            She can’t wear the thirteen centimeter heels as much anymore because all those years of wearing them have given her hammer toes and bunions. Her beaded gowns weight 16 kilos. 

            When she guest hosted The Tonight Show she had just come back from entertaining the troops in Vietnam with Danny Kaye. They asked her who she’d like to have as a guest and she said Danny Kaye but they said he’s always refused to appear on The Tonight Show. So she asked him and he came. After her opening song she went and sat in the guest’s chair until Ed McMahon reminded her that she was the host. 

            Vikki was at the White House to present Gerald Ford with the latest Easter Seals. She told him if there’s anything he needs to just call her. Later she got a call from Ford who told her that he and Betty would be receiving the chancellor of Austria and wanted to arrange for some entertainment so he asked her to sing. But when she started making arrangements to bring her band in the White House hadn’t been informed that she had been asked to perform. She had to inform them that their boss had invited her. Betty had just had a double mastectomy and Vikki wore a low cut dress. Later she told Ford that if he’s ever in LA feel free to visit and she’ll cook him some Mexican food. She asked him what was his favourite Mexican dish and he answered, “You”. The next day it was in all the papers and Vikki was on Betty Ford’s black list for performing at the White House along with Raquel Welch. Vikki’s mother called her and demanded to know what she’d done at the White House. 

            Vikki doesn’t have many show business friends because her social life is about family. 

            Vikki was getting bronchitis 8 or 9 times a year from performing in places with cigarette smoke. People called it “Vegas throat”. She started losing her voice and so she went for allergy tests until it was discovered that she was allergic to everything but especially cigarette smoke. At the Riviera she asked the management to request that the audience refrain from smoking but the owner refused because the gamblers are more important. So Vikki asked the audience herself to not smoke and the room was clear of smoke for the first time. It made the headlines. After that she became an anti-smoking activist and the chairman of the American Lung Association. She started boycotting clubs that allowed smoking. 

            It was a joy to work with Carol Burnett and her crew. Inspired by Carol, Vikki started taking questions from the audience before her shows. 

            Vikki always wanted to be a dancer but Debbie Reynolds told her to just keep singing. 

            Vikki doesn’t think Carol could make a career as a singer but it worked as part of her comedy.

            Carol made her guests feel they were part of the family. 

            Lyle Waggoner had an incredible home in Mazatlán, Mexico and she could see it from her hotel room. It was featured in Architectural Digest. Lyle acted more professionally than the rest of the cast.

            Vikki was mistaken for Vicki Lawrence a lot. 

            She would watch Sonny and Cher just to see what Cher was going to wear. 

            Vikki later took ballroom dance lessons and won several trophies. 

            She asked George Burns what to say to young people who ask how to get into show business. He told her, “The minute they ask, they’re never gonna make it.” 

            Betty Ford studied ballet, tap, and modern movement when she was 8. At 14, in the wake of the Great Depression shew made money buy working as a model and teaching popular dances to children. She started her own dance school while still in high school. After graduation she was accepted as a dance student of Martha Graham in New York and worked as a fashion model to pay her tuition. She joined Graham’s troupe and performed at Carnegie Hall. 

            She was married unhappily to Willian G. Warren from 1942 to 1947. She married Gerald Ford a month after divorcing Warren. They had four children and Gerald was often away campaigning for half the year leaving Betty to raise the children. She never used corporal punishment. 

            In 1964 a pinched nerve on the left side of her face led to valium addiction. She also became an alcoholic. 

            She was a supporter of abortion rights. 

            When her husband’s political career became more intense in 1965 she suffered a nervous breakdown and sought psychiatric help. She did not enjoy being a politician’s wife and was thrilled when he suggested that he might retire from congress in 1977. But when Spiro Agnew retired as vice president in 1973, Richard Nixon appointed Ford his new vice president, and so Betty became the Second Lady of the US. 

            When interviewed by Barbara Walters she expressed her support for the Supreme Court making abortion constitutionally protected. She also supported Federally funded daycare, which Nixon opposed.

            After Nixon resigned her husband was made president and she became First Lady. The press caught Gerald patting Betty’s behind the day he was sworn in. They also broke the tradition of the president and his wife sleeping in separate bedrooms. After a 1975 interview with McCall’s Magazine she commented that they’d asked her everything but how often she and the president had sex. Then she added that if they had asked she would have answered, “As often as possible”. 

            She was the most politically outspoken First Lady since Eleonor Roosevelt. She surprised the media by supporting a woman’s right to an abortion, which went against the official stance of her husband’s Republican Party. 

            After her double mastectomy she became the first US First Lady to make public her medical records since Florence Harding in 1922. This raised awareness of cancer, which the US public had been reluctant to discuss. 

            In 1976 she made a cameo appearance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

            She lobbied her husband to award Martha Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

            She revived dancing as an activity at White House state dinners. 

            She became a symbol of Liberal Republicanism. Some of her views were even more liberal than those of Jimmy Carter’s wife Rosalynn Carter. When Gerald was running for re-election some supporters created buttons that read, “Betty’s Husband for President” and “Keep Betty in the White House”. 

            When her husband was defeated by Carter, Betty became the only First Lady in history to deliver her husband’s concession speech. 

            In 1978 she submitted herself to treatment for prescription drug and alcohol addiction. As she had been about her cancer she was outspoken about her addiction. In 1982 she established The Betty Ford Clinic for the treatment of chemical dependency. 

            She spoke out against the bans on gay citizens serving in the military.

August 30, 1996: Brian and I busked on Bloor for beer and a bite

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday Brian Haddon and I busked on Bloor Street and made enough for lunch and beer. Then we busked some more before going to perform on the Spit Fridays open stage in the back room of The Cameron.

Tina Fey

            On Thursday I went to bed at 1:30 but barely slept because there was a major bedbug invasion of my bed and body. I got up at 2:45 and I must have killed about fifty, half just from running the lint roller over my mattress. Quite a few were caught on the carpet tape around the edge of my futon, mostly on the wall side but they seem to only get caught after they are bloated with my blood and only some get stuck while crossing the tape before they’ve fed. I went back to bed but still couldn’t sleep because soon I started feeling them again. I still haven’t been able to find any nests to know where they are coming from. I killed some more and tried to sleep again but no dice. At 4:30 I got up to kill some more and lint rolled again. At 4:45 I had fifteen minutes before the alarm so I went back to bed and dreamed I was underground and traversing a tunnel with a dark haired troubled woman. Then we were walking in the street behind a guy who might have been her boyfriend and they were arguing about abuse and a child they had together. Later she and I were back in the tunnel while I was carrying a long yellow staff. She offered to carry the pole and so I let her but she was drunk and lost it. I escorted her out of the building with the intention of returning to look for the staff but she stood on a landing and jumped to the street from a second floor height. It looked like she must have hurt herself but when I looked for her she was gone and I woke up. 

            After yoga I worked out the chords for line 2 of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll run through my translation and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 91.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            I weighed 92.65 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on the way back. There were no more cherries and the grapes were too soft so I bought a basket of Canadian peaches, a basket of Canadian plums, a Canadian watermelon, some bananas, a packet of sliced smoked turkey, a packet of sliced Black Forest ham, and a lint roller. 

            I weighed 92.4 kilos at 18:40. 

            I slipped back to being two days behind in my journal and worked on catching up. 

            I grilled a striploin steak and had it with a potato with gravy while watching three interviews: with Tina Fey, Tony Bennett, and Vicki Lawrence on the subject of Carol Burnett. 

            Tina says Mama’s Family is like the precursor to The Office. On 30 Rock, Matt Damon’s character was named Carol Burnett. 

            Tony Bennet says Carol is one of the best singers he ever met. I don’t know why people keep saying that. She could sing well but lots of singers are better. She was a good theatrical singer because her voice was loud and she could carry a tune but she was no Barbara Streisand. When he was a guest on her show he did sketches of her and the rest of the cast and the sets. She asked him to make a painting of Times Square for her and he did one in oil that she adored. In later years he painted every day. Carol was like a next door neighbour to her audience. The only other performer who took questions from the audience was George Burns. On Tony’s birthday no matter where he was in the world, Carol sent him one rose. 

             Lady Gaga is very spontaneous and a great singer. 

             Vicki says it was her mother who encouraged her to write the fan letter that caught Carol’s attention. She hadn’t even seen Carol on television very much. She’d seen the play Once Upon a Mattress because they were going to do it for their high school musical. Vicki wasn’t that interested in musical theatre. She was already singing with The Young Americans. She did the comedy songs and some funny bitts for The Young Americans movie. She remembers seeing Carol on The Entertainers but she watched that because she had a crush on John Davidson. As far as female performers are concerned Vicki was more of a fan of Mary Tyler Moore. She was also in love with Dick Van Dyke. It was only because she cut her hair short before high school that everybody started telling her that she looked like Carol Burnett. Vicki was a big writer of fan letters and so her mother said she should write one to Carol. She had no pictures of Carol on her walls. She had Johnny Crawford, Fabian, and Clint Eastwood. Carol told her later that her fan letter was unique because it was written well and had something to say.

             When Carol invited her to audition for her new show, Vicki went to the director of The Young Americans to tell him. He told her the chances were miniscule of her audition leading to anything and warned her that if she backed out of the summer tour she wouldn’t be allowed back into the group. It was a very traumatic decision for her. 

            She thought she was going to be a dental hygienist, marry a rich dentist and hang it up. 

            Vicki learned from Carol how a show should be run. She was very giving, loving, caring, and nurturing. Carol knew everybody in her crew and cared about them. Vicki barely even spoke to Carol for the first few years because she put her on such a pedestal even while she was learning from her. Vicki doesn’t know if the fairy tale story of her success would ever happen nowadays. The suits would come down today and just say, “Get rid of her and get somebody who knows what she’s doing.” A lot of older people she’d meet on Carol’s show would tell her it’s nothing like the real world of show business. Carol’s show was a special place. 

            Vicki says a good executive producer hires the best people then backs off and lets them do their jobs. That doesn’t happen much anymore. 

            Harvey Korman never gave up on a sketch even after everybody else said it wasn’t working. Vicki says that she thinks he thought that since he was stuck with having her around, it was his duty to train her. He worked with her on dialects and props. He told her, “Make your props your friends!” When they did the old movie take-offs Harvey would have to explain to her who her character was based on because she didn’t know those films. He taught her most everything she came to learn about comedy.

            Vicki started at UCLA the same year she started on Carol’s show. When it came time to declare a major she picked theatre because of what she was learning on Carol’s show. But Theatre students were required to do a quarter of a year in crew work; they were required to audition for parts and take them if accepted, which would have conflicted with The Carol Burnett Show. She went to her favourite Theatre professor who told her to sit in the audience of The Carol Burnett Show with a notepad and watch the best teachers in the world. He told Vicki she was already where every kid in the Theatre department would give their right arm to be. She devastated her parents when she told them she was thinking of dropping out because her father went to UCLA. Vicki decided to appease them and declare a Dance major because Dance schedules were more flexible than Theatre. She was told she had to take Dance 1-A, which was Interpretive and Creative. In the first class she was lying on the floor with the other students and the instructor said, “Today we will be seaweed rolling on the ocean floor”. Vicki was more interested in learning a Travelling Time Step so she got up, grabbed her bag and quit UCLA. Coincidentally she left after two years just like Carol did. 

            Lyle Waggoner was the second greenest member of the cast. She used to go to his little apartment with him and his wife would cook them lunch. Lyle made a side living with a fan club that cost $2 to join and members would get a button that said, “Be Relyleable”. 

            Bob Mackie didn’t want people to sit down in his costumes. At Halloween Vicki would take her kids to where his costumes were stored and borrow them. He knew how to express comedy through his costumes but Vicki thought Mrs. Tudball's costume was a little over the top. Many times you didn’t know your character until Bob Mackie dressed you. The only thing Vickie added to her Mama costume was to push the stockings down so they were wrinkled because that reminded her of her grandma. The first time she put on the costume she looked in the mirror and said, “Good lord! I’m dysfunctional!”

            Vicki doesn’t know why they thought she was worth the trouble of teaching her. Neil Simon’s brother Danny Simon was the director of the comedy sketches and he would get frustrated with Vicki.

            The first sketch she was fully part of was a takeoff ion The Newlywed Game and Kenny Solms played her husband. That’s when she first did her high voiced bimbo character. She didn’t feel like she pulled her weight until halfway through the series. 

            Dick Clark’s favourite blooper was the one in which Vicki’s character Mama calls Tim’s character Mickey Hart a “little asshole”, which causes Tim to collapse laughing on the floor. She got paid every time Dick showed that blooper, which was a lot. That was the first sketch in which Vicki went off script. 

           When she and Tim guest appeared on the sitcom Yes Dear the suits thought it was funny when Tim went off script but still insisted on him doing it the way it was written. 

            Vicki played Miley Cyrus’s grandmother on Hannah Montana. She taught Miley what Harvey taught her, to make her props her friends. 

            Vicki says if when she was growing up on The Carol Burnett Show there had been people with cell phones in the audience recording everything and uploading it to the internet she might not have chosen this profession. 

            The producers of Mama’s Family asked Vicki to do a Q & A with the audience just like Carol before the live taping. She was terrified at first but came around. 

            When Vicki did her talk show it was for the wrong company and a nightmare. She had learned that television was supposed to be fun or you’re doing it wrong but the producer didn’t agree. They were at each other’s throats for two years. 

            Tina Fey studied Drama at The University of Virginia and then went to Chicago where she took the first set of Second City courses. Nothing she’d studied about acting at university clicked for her but at Second City she learned to focus on her partner and it all made sense. After nine months a teacher told her to skip ahead and audition for the Second City Training Centre. She eventually entered the training program. She became a cast member for several years. In 1995 she was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. After a few years she became the first female head writer. In the 25th season she began doing Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon. Her character of Liz Lemon on 30 Rock was meant to be the opposite of a Sex and the City character. She co-created the sitcoms Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mr. Mayor, and The Four Seasons, She co-produced Girls5eva and Mulligan. She co-hosted The Golden Globe Awards four times. She wrote and co-starred in Mean Girls. She wrote and co-produced Mean Girls the musical. She starred in Baby Mama, Admission, Sisters, and Whisky Tango Foxtrot (which she co-produced). She co-starred in Date Night, Megamind, This Is Where I Leave You, Maggie Moore, A Haunting In Venice, Muppets’ Most Wanted, Wine Country, and Soul. She wrote the memoir Bossypants, the audio for which won a Grammy Award. She’s won ten Emmy Awards. 

            She was a virgin when she met her husband at the age of 24 and he’s the only person she’s ever had sex with. 

            She says Paris Hilton is a piece of shit. Paris told the writers they should do a skit about Jessica Simpson “because she’s fat”. 

            Tina doesn’t have a driver’s license but while I was writing this I fell asleep at the computer and dreamed that I went on a car trip with Tina Fey. She drove us out to the middle of nowhere and then stopped. We were getting out of the car when I woke up.