C'EST LA T-VIE

C'EST LA T-VIE

Audie Murphy Jr.

Thanksgiving and Xmas television thrills are at a new low point. You’ve gotta be less than 4 years old in order not to have seen the show at least 2 or 3 times before. Even if you were only 2 the first time it was on it was not past your bedtime cause it was on at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. That’s the case with March of the Wooden Soldiers. Everybody in the picture is dead and they still show it. It’s got more to do with Halloween than either Thanksgiving or Xmas but they persist on showing it on the latter: what gives? The only good part is the dunking part where they dunk Ollie, I bet you wish you could get as wet as him but if you’re not in the tub you can’t, not while you’re watchin’ it at least.

The crestfallen Paul Anka has sure slipped into some hard times lately and his guesthood on Johnny Carson was no exception. Guests always gotta have a reason for being there and he didn’t have much of one. Specially since the host wasn’t Johnny but Joe Namath who had his sleeve slit up the side so he could fit his cast thru. Paulie sang his heart out to Joe to the tune of that one that he wrote for Frank Sinatra to have a hit off of. That’s the one about “bit off more than I could chew” and in the Joe version he left that in cause he knew that was the big part but he added some new good parts. Including “his GO GO GO made him fameth” which rhymes with Namath, tameth, flameth and strameth. Rhymes blow.

You know what else blows? Not Kenny Williams, the English Johnny Mathis. He doesn’t blow. Neither does The Morning Dust Tile Show out of Pittsburgh. Neither. does the last TV gasp of cigarettes. They’re on the way off the tube so they’re doin their darnedest to stay afloat. There’s enough of ’em to form a raft and the raft’s big enough to stay afloat by itself but if you step onto it it’s gonna sink. Pity the poor fuckin cigs, namely Vantage which is the only cigarette you can find in the dark by its hole in the filter and New Leaf which features leaves in its blend. The leaves in its blend — however — have nothing to do with its flavor: it’s the wintergreen in its taste that does it. Wintergreen’s never been done before except in snuff and dentistry so why don’t they go and do it in TV broadcasting. They could funnel it into your tubes and dials by means of pipes. Pipes would mean plumbing and that would mean more jobs for the unemployed: sounds like a fine idea!

There are fine people and there are fine ideas but rarely is it both all in one. That one is Carol Ehrlich who just happens to be the number one drunken floozy of New York City right now. She had one entire bottle of Chablis but that wasn’t enough. She had two and it still wasn’t enough. She had four and she had enough. But she woulda had another if it wasn’t for her wanting to go out and get some fresh air. Once she got the air she v/as rarin’ to go for more but it was too late because all her friends were there to carry her home. She didn’t wanna be carried so she walked and she only fell two major times, neither serious. She described the wine as sour but it wasn’t vinegar. Vinegar’s for salad and she had that, too, also some steak and some bread and some butter. And she has GREAT TEETH, the lowers are really pretty goddam good and her dentist wants to wreck them but don’t let them: send your cards and letters to Dr. Martin Wexler (he’s treated the teeth of Tommy Boyce and he’s skied with Joe Franklin’s wife), 30 E. 40 St., New York, N.Y. After all Carol’s gonna be starring in Kelly Was My Middle Name over CBS-TV next fall and she might as well look her best, doncha think?

One cat who don’t look his best is Geraldo Rivera of ABC news. Those glasses he got could stun a blind man. Not if the blind guy was wearing them but if he was looking at them. How would he see them? He’d see them on Eyewitness News from coast to coast. His home’s on the East Coast (Geraldo) and he witnesses a lot of stuff with his own eyes and it’s so visionary that it’s bound to rub off even on the blind. Such as His coverage of the Blunktown mustard factory fire that cost lives and limb. He got there after it was over and the people were still cleaning up and he pitched in with one hand on the broom and the other on the mike.

Sandpaper has never by itself sponsored a show although Black & Decker’s entourage includes a sanding device. Why is that, do you think? Is the paper too roughl Is it too papery? Is it too cheap so that the profits from advertising it would prove negligible? Well that would be a.false assumption all around because 1. cement is rough too and it’s sponsored 5 or 6 shows so far; 2. paper is found in mags, toilet tissue, napkins, newspapers, cigarette packages and papers, etc., all of which have had successful runs on the channels; 3. price doesn’t mean shit when you multiply it by millions. Therefore look for Carpenter’s Daily Toil starring Bob Cummings and Todd Rundgren’s brother Dave in the near future.

Since Inger Stevens died they just replaced her with Yvette Mimieux on The Most Deadly Game. That may not seem like much but have you ever seen the tampons Yvette uses! Sheesus H. Christ but they’re big! She also played the epileptic surfer girl on Doctor Kildare who got killed by the big wave she was waitin’ for all her life No she’s not really dead, just a great actress with a capital a. Incidentally, it’s her real name too!

The most unusual telecast of all time is the one that Luden’s cough drops sponsored about shark fighting in movies. Stunt men were called upon to do all the dirty work (this was in 1949) and that meant knives, blood, death, and danger. Sharks can’t be killed in just any spot and the same was true in 1949. One man walked out stark naked from after the sharks and there were still 35 seconds to go on the show. He was not wounded from the battles but his ass was grass anyway as they fired the poor sucker. That event led directly to the formation of the TV Stunt Men’s Guild which wields a heavy stick to this day.

You can now talk to people and see them 25 miles away via prototype videophone if you’re lucky enough to live in the cities of Beaumont, Waco, Saskatoon and Beverly Hills. Installation fee is 45 bucks but if you break it then the cost is a good deal more. You’d have to be Betty Grable to afford one but that’s all right: maybe you are Betty Grable! Or maybe she’s your mom. Kiss her for me if she is. But don’t kill her, it might upset the ecological balance in your state and statistically it would be a dangerous upswing.

Love at first sight is the only way to describe the professional relationship established by stammering Henry Osgood and Michelle Hartz on the cast of The Young Lawyers. There was an episode to prove the point where she looked face down into a sewer only to see her client right before her eyes. Henry was there to comfort her and there was nobody there to pay their legal fees so they decided not to report the death to the police, not even for the sake of the network sponsors. So later on when it was discovered they were in the boiler room of a ship and the sweat was pretty thick on their brows and pits alike. Even though the smell didn’t come thru over the screen you could almost smell it and she hadn’t taken a bath or shower for at least two weeks of being on the run so he didn’t have to stand so close to her stench if he didn’t have to (the script didn’t call for it, the screenplay by Norman Fosdick) BUT HE DID.

S.O.S. is getting ragged in its made-for-TV 60 second spots. There are now more than two characters and that spells trouble. Next thing you know a character will be Ray Charles doing Love Country Style and it’ll be an hour length program and not an ad. If that happens who’ll be the sponsor since S.O.S. couldn’t afford that much time just for soap? Maybe it’ll be Brillo and the whole thing’ll start all over again!

Billy Fury’s worst picture is better than Elvis’ best. But that doesn’t include photographs, just moving pictures of 15 frames per second and up. How far up? The sky’s the limit.

TV sizzler Kathy Nolan knows the key to success: “We lived in Rockaway, New Jersey at the time I was a kid and it was so big it seemed like the whole world. Before we moved when I was 10 I knew it was going to be bad for two reasons. First was moving meant leaving and saying goodbye to all the many friends. It wasn’t far to move but it was far enough. Next I knew the worst would be when my father threw out all my comics and the boxes from my Revell model helicopter. But he let me keep the models but not the boxes. They wanted to get rid of my comics and the one I had a lot of was Tarzan. Here’s what he did, he said I could keep the last story in each one because he liked what it was, it was called Brothers of the Spear and it was all he let me keep. It was only one third of the whole comic but he wouldn’t let me keep all three thirds. What a dunce and I knew I had to go into acting.”

It’s a good thing kids don’t stay up that late. Late enough to see the first rate, first run movie terrors that they’re masquerading as the real thing nowadays. That does double for monster pictures and single for space pictures. Space pictures have always lagged behind, they were never (never for a second) as far out front as monster movies, especially in the mid-50’s. Only invasion from outer space was any good, but the best ones were monsters. Monsters were the best because they were fantasy incapable of being anything but fantasy, you couldn’t believe them unless you wanted to. The reason you wanted to was they were so good. Space was taken for granted as believable shit and when the actual stuff happened it was duller by far than even the lousy space movies like the one about Mars with Guy Madison. BUT NOW THEY’RE EVEN FUCKING WITH MONSTER STUFF! Gorillas were never actually science fiction or monster but at least they weren’t an anthropology textbook like in Skullduggery and Trog, when those stinkers make TV don’t watch. The Son of Godzilla has it over both of ’em put together. It’s obvious that 2001 ain’t worth its weight in piss but when they do the same job onmonstersbro-ther! Like these dogs are confusing insight and professionalism with validity, what a pack of dumb donuts!

The New Park Pizza on Woodhaven Blvd. has a great new neon sign that only works for the New Park but not the pizza. But it’s always crowded even though it’s next to a bowling alley. Part of the sign that doesn’t light up is the illustration of the pizza itself and the smoke coming off it is the shape of two strips of bacon. No bacon is served, only pizza and accessories. So what’s what I always say, it could still be a worthy pla'ce to spend some good times. Most of it will be eating but there’s conversation too, and once in a while there’s some blowing under the table. But that’s only the preliminary, the main event is watching the brand new Webcor color set that’s nailed to the wall. The favorite show treat in the house is Donna Reed, if they don’t sell any meat at the place they might as well pump it in onto a picture tube.

“Ford Motor Company listens” but do they listen to the national anthem? Do they listen to the Moody Blues? Do they listen to John Barrymore who acted exactly the same as Fredric March? Do they listen to sick people who are mute? Do they listen to tough skin being bruised? Do they listen to Peaches & Herb? Do they listen to Omar Sharifs guest appearance on Portrait of a Star with the picture turned off? In other words the only thing they listen to is cars. And cars can’t talk. So what gives???