Tim Conway, 1933-2019, Doris Day, 1922-2019, R.I.P.

I was incredibly saddened to hear of the May 14th death of comedian Tim Conway, at the age of eighty-five. (Although you'd never know it by the fact that it took me more than a week to get this post written and... errr... posted.)

My very first exposure to Mr. Conway was when he played Ensign Charles Parker on the World War II sitcom, McHale's Navy (1962-1966).

I then began following his TV career faithfully, although at times, it seemed like I was one of the only television viewers to do so.

 After McHale's Navy, the shows Conway starred in throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s all died fairly quickly.

From McHale's Navy, Conway went to Rango (1967), and then The Tim Conway Show (1970).

Rango (1967)

With Joe Flynn, who had played Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy.
Both were regulars on The Tim Conway Show (1970).

Next, also in 1970, came The Tim Conway Comedy Hour. Maybe they felt that the word "comedy" would help sell the show as a... well... as a comedy? It did not. Personally, I enjoyed it. (Of course, I wasn't quite fourteen...) It had comedian Art Metrano as "The Tim Conway Orchestra" and a pre-All in the Family Sally Struthers as "The Tim Conway Dancer." Yes, dancer, not dancers. Folks, ya hadda be there!

The Tim Conway Comedy Hour

Conway joined the cast of Carol Burnett's show, which was imaginatively titled The Carol Burnett Show, during its 1975-1976 season, and he certainly seemed to have found his niche. He became well-known for making his fellow cast members -- primarily Harvey Korman -- crack up during filming, but Conway's comedic talents far surpassed that simple bit of business.

Conway's many regular characters on The Carol Burnett Show included Mr. Tudball (Carol played his incompetent secretary, Mrs. Wiggins)...

Mickey Hart in "The Family" sketches...

...and "The Oldest Man," who took forever to do anything or get anywhere. He even took a full minute or two to fall down a flight of stairs! Tim played the Oldest Man in countless scenarios.

One of my favorite Conway sketch roles was in an updated version of "Cinderella," where Tim played pop star "Elfin John!"

During the 1970s and into the 1980s, Conway did several films, many for Disney, and some (both Disney and non-Disney) co-starring Don Knotts.

After The Carol Burnett Show ended in 1978, Tim went on to do other TV shows, and began appearing as a diminutive character named Dorf.

I'll confess that I sort of lost track of Conway's career after The Carol Burnett Show, mainly due to the fact that my TV watching was rather limited during the late seventies and throughout most of the eighties. Having said that, the enjoyment he gave me throughout my youth cannot be measured.

* * * * *

Unfortunately, this is one of those "kiss of death" things which I often half-heartedly joke about on this blog.

A little over a week ago, on a Friday night, I was going through my hall closet, a closet which contains mostly hardcover and paperback books, and numerous magazines. I removed several items which I plan to have signed by various comic book personalities and TV/movie celebrities at this summer's TerrifiCon in Connecticut. I also "pulled" a few that I decided to part with by (hopefully) selling them at the flea market where I set up every Sunday.

One of several books I brought to the flea market was a biography of singer, actress, and animal rights activist Doris Day. I placed the book out for sale on Sunday, May 12th. She died the very next day, aged ninety-seven.

I wasn't very familiar with Doris Day's singing career until I was an adult. I did know her as a movie and television actress.

My favorite film of hers was 1961's Lover Come Back, where her co-star was Rock Hudson, and their supporting cast included Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Ann B. Davis, and Donna Douglas, and Tim Conway's old foil, Joe Flynn!

Her TV series, The Doris Day Show (Where do they get these titles?!?), was notorious for being plagued by constant cast and format changes throughout its five-year run.

Although I always enjoyed her work, I was never a huge fan of Doris Day's, hence the brevity of this so-called tribute, but thought her worthy of inclusion here, especially to make yet one more reference to that whole "kiss of death" syndrome which keeps occurring on this blog.

Thanks for your time.

Insect Asides, Part Five ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

If you've been wondering where I've been going with all this, well, so am I. I'll probably just stop somewhere in the middle of things. I actually started out intending to tell only the story I relate in today's chapter and my previous one, but thought I should give just a little background on how I came to write for Insect Man's Weird Tales to begin with, and -- surprise, surprise -- got carried away. So here I am with chapter five, of six, or seven... or more!

Before I follow up Part Four's revelations, let me tell you what was going on in my mind during that time. (As if you could stop me, right?)

Everybody wanted to jump on the Insect Man bandwagon, it seemed. Even as I was plotting and scripting IMWT, other That's Entertainment customers were writing, drawing, and submitting their own Insect Man stories. These were stand-alone tales that had nothing to do with the continuity I was trying to establish. Not only that, but there was at least one writer/artist who wanted to contribute a three-parter featuring his own character, a character that had nothing to do with Insect Man.

I have to admit, all of these submissions bothered me, just a bit. You see, although Insect Man was definitely not "mine" -- he was and is Paul Howley's -- I was already becoming a bit... territorial... with the character. Not that I had any real right to be territorial, I hasten to add! But I was having fun, and didn't want to relinquish the plotting reins, as it were. I was also aware that issue #100 was fast approaching. Some time earlier, Paul had received a gorgeous Insect Man cover illustration by professional comic artist Will Blyberg. (More on that later.) This cover drawing was perfect for issue #100. I wanted to write a story suitable for this landmark issue, and I only had issues #98 and #99 to set everybody up for it.

I was lucky enough to get all of those other submissions postponed until some vague time after #100.

One of those "postponed" stories had been written and drawn by W.W. Bird -- "Bill" to me -- and for one reason or another, he ended up penciling, inking, and lettering my script for Insect Man's Weird Tales #98.

I've made a lot of jokes on this blog about my having the "kiss of death." All I have to do is think about someone I haven't thought about in ages, and he or she f***ing DIES.

Well, as I told you in Part Four of "Insect Asides," at the end of the story I'd written for IMWT #97, I blew up a space shuttle... and this was plotted, written, drawn, and published in 1985. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28th of the following year!

The beginning of #98 dealt with the immediate aftermath of the explosion which I caused, sorta.

Now, I want to call your attention to the word "villain" on page two. I'll even give you a close-up:

Looks almost like the A and the I were lettered by a different person, dunnit? Well, they were. They were lettered by me. Regardless of having my freakin' script right in front of him, Bill misspelled "villain" as "villian," like so damned many people do! And I had to fix it so nobody would think it was my goof.

And no, I wasn't being paranoid. A couple of years later, when I co-wrote the script for my first "real" comic book, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the artist of the book also lettered it. Although every use of the term "compact disc" was spelled just that way (D-I-S-C) in the script, artist Ken Penders wrote "disc" sometimes, and "disk" other times! And a magazine review of U.N.C.L.E. #1 made a wisecrack about how the scripter couldn't decide on the spelling of the word.

For that matter, the script and the scripted dialog in that very same issue referred to a man wearing a fedora. But when Ken Penders drew the man, he drew him wearing a derby.

*sigh*

Back to Insect Man...

You're probably wondering how Rex "Insect Man" Mason and Greg "Mr. Secret" Nile survived, right? Well, to make a long story relatively short, this multi-billion-dollar advanced prototype of the space shuttle had a flight recorder (a/k/a "black box") on board. And since I'd read all of Paul Howley's original Insect Man stories, I knew that during his career, IM had acquired the ability to shrink, like Marvel's Ant-Man or DC's Atom, years ago.

So! When the shuttle was attacked, a quick-thinking Insect Man removed his power ring, and handed it to Mr. Secret so Greg could turn into a tiny bug. Simultaneously, Rex shrank down to a similar size, and both heroes got into the black box! (I know, I know, kind of a cheat, time-wise, but hey...)

Issue 98's "Mummy Dearest," by the way, was as deadly serious and gruesome as the previous issue had been silly! I came up with the never-before-revealed origin of Insect Man's foe (and long-time leader of SKULL), the Mummy. Paul Howley himself told customers that it was one of the best six comic book stories he'd read that month. And since the rest were "real" comics, I considered that to be quite a compliment.

Finally (for this chapter, anyway) let's jump ahead a few months to when the real-life space shuttle disaster occurred, okay?

By the time of that real-life shocker, IMWT #97 and #98 were "old news." A few more issues had come out in the interim, and That's Entertainment had the last five or six on its new comic rack, along with all the "real" comic books.

Paul's cousin Steve also owned a comic shop, called The Outer Limits. Paul and Cousin Steve would telephone each other constantly during the day just to share goofy jokes, questions, stories... Whatever crossed their minds was fair game. After all, if you "sell funnybooks for a living," as Paul often said, you have no right being totally serious.

As you'll no doubt recall, I wasn't just the sometime-scribe of Insect Man's adventures, I was also an employee of That's Entertainment. So Paul and I were both in the store on January 28th, along with several customers.

Suddenly, the phone rang. (Well, how else could it ring?) Paul answered it. It was Cousin Steve. Steve told Paul that the Space Shuttle Challenger had just blown up after liftoff. Typical Cousin Steve phone call. Naturally, Paul thought it was a joke... but only for a second.

Paul shared the awful news with the rest of us, and a few minutes later, I looked at Paul and said "Do you know what I just thought of?"

His eyes got a bit wider. "Your Insect Man story?" I nodded.

That was eerie.

One day soon after January 28th, I was all alone in the store, behind the counter. One of TE's regular customers -- we'll call him "Conrad" -- walked in, strode purposefully up to the shelf holding the recent IMWT issues, grabbed a copy of either #97 or #98, and waved it in the air, yelling "The FBI is going to be looking for this David Lynch guy!" or words to that effect.

Obviously, he didn't know me by name.

I had to explain to him that:

1. I was David Lynch. (Still am, last time I checked.)
2. I'd merely written a fictional story. I didn't really blow up the Challenger.
3. The FBI couldn't give a rat's ass about me.

A lengthy aside here: In 1988, Marvel Comics was publishing several titles as part of what they called their "New Universe." The New Universe titles took place outside the Marvel Universe, home to Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, etc.  One of the New Universe's storylines had the entire city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, destroyed by an otherworldly force. Well, right around that time, that same "Conrad" found some sort of weather chart on some computer somewhere, which had a huge dark spot in the area of Pittsburgh. He thought the city had really been wiped off the face of the Earth! (Let's just ignore the fact that no TV or radio news mentioned this supposed tragedy.) "Conrad" brought a print-out of the weather chart (or whatever it was exactly) into That's Entertainment, declaring (IIRC) that all comic book fans were going to hell, because their hobby had obliterated Pittsburgh.

*sigh*

And back in 1985, I was developing the story that came to be called "Fractured SKULL!"

To Be Continued...

And next time? The issue that non-artist David M. Lynch drew 90% of!

Thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Bill Dana, 1924-2017, R.I.P.

Comedian, writer, and screenwriter  Bill Dana (born William Szathmary), has died at the age of ninety-two.

Once again, I seem to have the Kiss of Death. I talk or think about a person whom I haven't thought about in quite a while, and soon learn that he or she has died, or then discover that he or she has recently died. 

At my flea market stand, one of the items I have for sale is the album pictured below, José Jimenez in Orbit (Bill Dana on Earth). Just last Sunday, my display of this LP prompted not one, but two conversations about Bill Dana. One was with a gentleman who assumed that Mr. Dana was dead, but I promptly corrected him, informing him that the comedian, now ninety-two, was still alive. And as far as I knew, I was right; the news outlets had yet to report that Bill Dana had died on Thursday, the 15th.

Starting in 1959 and continuing throughout the 1960s, Dana appeared as José Jimenez, a somewhat simple-minded Bolivian (or Mexican, as has often been stated) character who spoke broken English and was an astronaut at one point in his fictional history. The character was warmly embraced by the real U.S. Mercury astronauts (not to mention a very young Silver Fox). Dana portrayed Jimenez until 1970, when it was decided that the character was too stereotypical, this in spite of the fact that "José" was actually relatively well-accepted by Latinos (well, depending on whose version you believe).

Early in his entertainment career, Dana had written routines for stand-up comic Don Adams. When Dana got his own show in the mid-1960s, Dana played José Jimenez as a bellhop. Adams was hired to play a hotel detective named Byron Glick. After The Bill Dana Show was cancelled, Adams took Glick's persona with him to play Maxwell Smart on Get Smart. (Bill Dana's brother Irving Szathmary wrote the Get Smart theme, yet another Don Adams connection.) Dana also co-wrote Don Adams' 1980's Get Smart movie, The Nude Bomb... which was just that, a "bomb."

Among many other credits in his long career, Dana wrote "Sammy's Visit," the well-known and incredibly popular episode of All in the Family which featured Sammy Davis, Jr. In the 1980s, Dana appeared as the father to Howie Mandel's character of Dr. Wayne Fiscus on St. Elsewhere. (Odd that I found out about Mr. Dana's passing on the same day that I heard about the death of Stephen Furst, who appeared on St. Elsewhere as a regular.) Dana later played Estelle Getty's brother on The Golden Girls.

With Danny Thomas.

 With Ed Sullivan.

In a cameo appearance as José Jimenez on Batman.

Sorry I couldn't find a shot that actually included Batman!

With Steve Allen.

With buddy Don Adams on The Bill Dana Show.

As Bernardo in Walt Disney Television's Zorro and Son,

a comical sequel to their 1950s Zorro series, which premiered

in 1983. Dana is flanked by Paul Regina and Henry Darrow.

With Adams, Jonathan Harris (later of Lost in Space), and Maggie Peterson.

With "son" Howie Mandel on St. Elsewhere.

With Estelle Getty on The Golden Girls.

Now, I have to wonder, who's next? Celebrities who've been running through my mind one way or another lately are Carl Reiner (who's ninety-five), Norman Lear (who's ninety-four), and yet another St. Elsewhere alumnus, Norman Lloyd (who's 102)! Watch this space.

Thanks for your time.

Roger Moore, 1927-2017, R.I.P.

Once again, I seem to have the kiss of death. Only three days ago, I was thinking that I hadn't heard anything from Sir Roger Moore lately (Not personally, of course! I mean in the news, in publicity releases, etc.). I thought, "...and he's got to be getting 'up there' in terms of age..."

Well, just yesterday (Tuesday) I read that he had died after a short bout with cancer, at age eighty-nine. Moore had quite a lengthy career, and was best known for playing James Bond in seven films in the series featuring Ian Fleming's 007. Also in Moore's resume were roles on Maverick, and as Simon Templar on the show The Saint. And if you wanna get technical, he also (very briefly) played Inspector Clouseau in the film Curse of the Pink Panther! Moore was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003!

Thanks for your time.

Two More...

1. Don Rickles, 1926-2017, R.I.P.

Once again, yours truly has the kiss of death. Last night, I watched 1970's Kelly's Heroes, which prominently featured comedian and occasional actor Don Rickles, and I just found out that he died today at the age of ninety, from kidney failure.

I've been a fan of Don Rickles and his "offensive" insult comedy -- no ethnic or religious jibe or stereotype was beyond his reach, but people let him get away with it even in today's PC world -- ever since I saw his frequent appearances on talk shows and variety shows when I was a child in the 1960s. I was and am the proud owner of his 1968 comedy album, Hello, Dummy! In the late '60s and early '70s, I slavishly watched two of his very-short-lived TV shows, and I was finally vindicated by his two-year success on C.P.O. Sharkey in the late 1970s. He even supplied the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the Toy Story films.

Rickles was a friend of Frank Sinatra's. Rickles could get away with remarks toward Sinatra that would have been inconceivable if delivered by anyone else. An example? "Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody!" 

*  *  *  *  *

2. Joe Harris, 1927(?)-2017, R.I.P.

I must admit, I never heard the name Joe Harris until I read his obituary. But I was very familiar with many of the characters he created!

Joe Harris, who died March 26th at the age of eighty-nine, was responsible for the Trix Rabbit (Joe's the one who wrote the line "Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!"), Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, King Leonardo (an old favorite of mine from my youth, little remembered today), and several others during his career.

(An early blog post of mine, in which I wrote about Underdog, may be found here.)

Thanks for your time.

Angus Lennie, 1930-2014, R.I.P.

Long-time readers of this blog – meaning those who've been with me since last Thursday or so – may recall my claiming to have a rather unique “kiss of death” power when it comes to various celebrities.
Here's how it works:

 Every so often, I'll think about some celebrity – actor, singer, politician – who hasn't crossed my mind in years. And I'll wonder whatever happened to him or her. Well, with the handy-dandy nature of the internet, it's easy enough to do a quick search and find out whatever did happen to him or her.

Unfortunately, in the great majority of those instances, I'll learn that the celebrity in question has died. Recently.

Or, in a similar vein, I'll be watching a DVD of some old movie or tv show and wonder whatever happened to an actor or actress. Then I do an internet search on him or her, and again, discover that the person in question has passed away. Recently.

It's almost as if my sudden interest in a person either causes their death, or perhaps is in response to their death. I'm kidding, of course, kinda/sorta, but sometimes I wonder!

Anyway, the other night I was watching my DVD of 1963's The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and an impressive ensemble cast.

The first time I ever saw that movie, it was in the late 1960s, a few years after its 1963 release. It was broadcast in two parts, on consecutive evenings, on the NBC network. Part One ended dramatically with the attempted escape and machine-gunning to death of a character named Archibald Ives, nicknamed "the Mole."

Ives was played by Angus Lennie.

Ives the Mole was probably Lennie's best-known role during his long career, although he also appeared in the cast of the British soap opera Crossroads from 1974 to 1981... so my British readers may also know him from there.

Wouldn't you know it, but just a few nights ago, as I watched the movie, I wondered whatever became of Mr. Lennie. After all, the movie was made 51 years ago, and those who played most of the principal characters -- McQueen, Garner, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, even director John Sturges -- are no longer with us.

So on a whim, I did a Google search for Angus Lennie, only to find -- you guessed it -- that he had passed away on September 14. Recently.

Anyway I decided to write a rather long-winded post about the death of "Ives," whose cinematic demise made such an impression upon my young self... and to spin the tale once again about my tendency to "off" celebrities!

Thanks for your time.