I should preface this post by saying I've never been a big fan of Bob Newhart. That says nothing about him or me. I guess it's a generational thing. I was born perhaps ten or twenty years too late to join the ranks of the hardcore Bob-o-philes. Had I been born in the fifties or sixties instead of the mid seventies, I may have actually watched his first sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78). I would've been in college or older during his second and more successful sitcom, Newhart (1982-90). That was when they had the drinking game "Hi, Bob" on campuses across the country. Students would gather around the TV Monday nights when Newhart aired on CBS. Every time a character on the show said, "Hi, Bob," you'd have to take a shot. But that was the eighties. I was in elementary school. I might've become a bigger fan had his third sitcom, Bob, actually gone anywhere. Unfortunately it only lasted one season, 1992-93. I'm not sure even that would've helped. I was a high school junior. That was a big year of change for me. My stepmom had just passed away, and my father sold the Queen Anne in Mount Holly because it reminded him too much of her. We relocated to one of the small townships just outside of town. Besides which, I wasn't a big TV watcher. I'm still not, although I should say that's changed a little since getting a DVR three years ago.
Just because I've never been a fan, though, doesn't mean I don't know a living legend when I see one. And I did kinda sorta watch that second sitcom in the eighties. I lived with Mom in the late eighties, when Newhart was one of the top sitcoms on TV. Mom loved that show. I watched it when she watched it. And I laughed a lot. I thought his deadpan stammering was hilarious. So when Grant announced at one of the Aero screenings I attended last month that Bob Newhart was going to be there for a Q&A on February 19, I scooped up a ticket right away. Again, it doesn't matter if you're a fan. Bob's a comedy god. Plus, he's eighty now. If I'd passed up this chance to see him, I may never have gotten another. What makes me extra glad I went is that not only did I get to see Bob in person, I also got to see none other than Norman Lear. Speaking of gods, are you kidding? The brain behind All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Sanford and Son. And he's even older than Bob. Dude's pushing ninety, although for someone that age, he is remarkably together. He reminded me of Frank Pierson three weeks ago, another legend who's far more articulate than most people his age. I still can't believe I got to see Norman Lear tonight. I mean come on now. Norman Lear. How awesome is that? And he was just there, ya know? Like one of us, sitting in the audience. Tonight's program was officially a Bob Newhart event. Lear just happened to hear of it because both his daughter and Bob's son teach at Harvard-Westlake, an ultra-private, ultra-expensive school here in L.A. They have grades seven to nine at the Bel-Air location, which was originally the Westlake all-girls school, where my mom went in the fifties and early sixties. Here in the Valley, Studio City, I think, is the campus for grades ten to twelve. That was originally the Harvard all-boys school when my mom was still a kid. Anyway, Bob and Lear's kids teach at one of those locations. Bob's son mentioned to Lear's daughter that the Aero was putting on the event tonight. She tells Dad. And he shows up. She came with him too. Cool, huh?
Norman Lear had nothing to do with Bob's sitcoms, but he did write, direct, and produce Cold Turkey, the first of the two films they showed tonight. I had no idea Norman Lear ever directed features before. After tonight, now I know why. Cold Turkey was the one and only feature film he ever directed. Lear didn't direct much in general. In TV his bread and butter was writing and producing. He only directed two episodes of All in the Family, and not a single episode of any of the other shows I mentioned above.
The second film they showed tonight was Hot Millions, a British film co-written by and starring the late great Peter Ustinov and also starring Bob, Karl Malden, and a young and hot Maggie Smith. Until tonight, I hadn't heard of either of these films, despite all the acting pedigree attached to them (did I mention Cesar Romero had a cameo in Hot Millions?). They were both made in the late sixties, just before Bob started his first sitcom and Lear started All in the Family. But you see, that's one of the cool things about these movie events. When they get huge names to show up, they don't always screen the most mainstream and obvious stuff from their resumes. They proved this in spades a month ago with the Jeff Bridges retrospective. I saw Crazy Heart (and wrote about it on this blog), but only wish I'd had the time to see the more obscure gems they showed that Jeff did in the seventies.
Hot Millions came out in 1968. Cold Turkey was filmed in '69 but didn't come out until '71. Since Cold Turkey was the first film they showed tonight, I'll talk about that first. It takes place in a fictional Iowa town called Eagle Rock. The main character is the Reverend Clayton Brooks, played by the awesome Dick Van Dyke. To call Eagle Rock a depressed town is putting it mildly. Lear sets this up perfectly during the opening credits with the camera "walking" into town on a two-lane road, with all those old signs with graffiti on them. Some of the signs are marking the locations of businesses long since vanished. They're just rickety weather-worn landmarks surrounded by weeds and wasteland. We see a mangy dog wandering along. The Welcome to Eagle Rock sign reads population of 4,006. And we see all of this to the accompaniment of an original song by Randy Newman. If you follow movies as much as I do, it's impossible not to know who he is. Randy Newman's a singer, musician, and composer who's been nominated for Oscars billions of times. The only one he won was for an original song he did for Monsters, Inc. in 2001. Recently he's become well known for doing songs for Pixar movies, but the guy's been at it for decades. When the opening song was playing, I thought the voice sounded familiar but couldn't place it. Then when I saw Randy Newman's name in the credits, my jaw practically fell open. I had no idea that guy's been in the business so long. Having just looked him up on IMDb, I see that he was in his mid twenties when Cold Turkey was shot. Jesus, was he ever a starving artist? Or did his physician-to-the-stars father get him in? No matter, Randy Newman's been at it since the sixties and hasn't lost a beat. That's something.
Before the opening credits, there's an intro scene at the estate of this old codger named Hiram Grayson, the head of a tobacco company called Valiant Tobacco (hilarious). Hiram Grayson was played by Edward Everett Horton, eighty-three at the time of the shoot. By the time the film came out two years later, he'd passed away.
Cold Turkey was his last film. As Mr. Grayson, he never says a word. He's wheelchair bound and not totally with it, it seems. Bob Newhart plays a Valiant executive named Merwin Wren. During this prologue scene, Bob's pushing Mr. Grayson around in the wheelchair and spoon-feeding him apple sauce while pitching an idea he thinks would bring
more prestige to Valiant Tobacco. He thinks Valiant should offer a cool $25 million to any town that can give up smoking for thirty days. At first I was like, oh come on, $25 mil? That would be a drop in the bucket for a city's budget, and probably not much more for a small town. But then I remembered, of course, that this film's forty years old. When adjusted for inflation, $25 mil in 1970 comes out to about $140 million today. Well okay. That's a decent amount. And when you're a miserable depressed town of four thousand souls, a chunk of change like that could be just what the money doctor ordered. Of course when he pitches this idea, Bob's character is certain there isn't a town on earth that could categorically swear off cigarettes for a solid month. The whole point, as I said, is to make Valiant look, well, valiant. Other Valiant executives are kind of nervous about the idea, just like those Imperial officers who were nervous when they heard a Rebel squadron was going to attack the Death Star. Sure, the Rebels would probably lose, but what if, just what if, one of them did fire two torpedoes into the exhaust? What if there is a town out there that could quit smoking cold turkey for a solid month? Bob Newhart' s hilarious during this scene, especially at the end when he finally convinces them there's nothing to worry about. They all start laughing. When Bob laughs, his eyes go really wide and maniacal like Victor Frankenstein. Fucking. Hilarious.
Okay so that's the prologue. And then we have the Randy Newman-accompanied credit sequence introducing us to Eagle Rock, a town that could really use a cash infusion. Then we see Dick Van Dyke as the reverend riding in the back of a car with Eagle Rock's Mayor Wappler (Vincent Gardenia), and this Army colonel from the Pentagon named Galloway. The colonel's telling them the government would love to build a missile plant in Eagle Rock, which of course would bring more jobs and so on. But right now it probably won't happen unless Eagle Rock starts showing some life. You know, if Eagle Rock could improve its dilapidated hospital, schools, library, and retail, then the government would be very interested in building a missile plant there. It's sort of a Catch-22, as the reverend knows. If they could build the plant now, that would revive the economy right there. But to revive the economy without any external stimulus? Hmmm...
The reverend's not worried. Dick Van Dyke was the perfect choice to play him. He's got the perfectly coiffed 'do, that gleam in his eye. He just knows everything will be all right. "The Lord will provide." Sure enough, while jogging through the neighborhood one morning, he passes Mayor Wappler's house only to find His Honor all in a tiff because of something on TV. The mayor urges him inside to check it out. He won't tell the reverend what the matter is. He has to see it for himself. So they huddle around the little black-and-white in the
kitchen while the mayor's wife, Mrs. Wappler, keeps sneezing and making weird-ass heaving noises. It was supposed to be funny, which it kind of was, but it was even more annoying. Playing Mrs. Wappler, by the way, was the great Jean Stapleton. She did
Cold Turkey just before Lear signed her on for
All in the Family as Edith Bunker. On the kitchen TV is the
Early Early Show with Hugh Upson (played by Bob Elliott of Bob and Ray fame) interviewing Bob Newhart's character, Merwin Wren. It's hilarious. It takes forever for the reverend to see what the mayor wants to show him because the show keeps going to commercial. They come back from commercial, Hugh reiterates that Merwin Wren is the guest and that he has some important news, and then they go to commercial. They come back from commercial, Hugh reiterates that Merwin Wren is the guest, some big news is coming, but first! This message! A little heavy handed. Norman Lear's point is pretty clear early in this scene. Eventually Merwin Wren does make his announcement: Valiant Tobacco will pay $25 million to any town that can give up smoking for thirty days. The mayor thinks they should give it a shot. The reverend takes it all in stride. He smiles and says something like, "See? I told you the Lord would help us out."
Next comes the job of convincing all the smokers in Eagle Rock to commit to the contest. You know this is going to be tough. One great thing Norman Lear does right away after the opening credits is establish Eagle Rock as a town of heavy smokers. There's a hilarious scene in a bar with the reverend meeting and greeting people, and almost all of them, including his own wife, are smoking like choo-choos. This is where we meet the hilarious Tom Poston's character, Mr. Stopworth, who smokes like a chimney and drinks like a guppy.
Lear uses a montage of Dick Van Dyke single-handedly rallying the citizenry through public outdoor speeches and church sermons to give up smoking for the good of the town. Part of having a depressed town means people move away. Eagle Rock is practically hemorrhaging its citizens. Someone points out early on that eleven people have moved away that year already. Although it's never stated overtly, you can sort of see why people smoke so much: They're stressed out. Many are unemployed. How will they make ends meet? The reverend is not a smoker, although his docile wife is.
Valiant Tobacco sets a deadline by which time any town that wants to participate in the contest must have all citizens signed up. The reverend literally talks himself hoarse entreating everyone to sign the petition. They set up a huge receptacle in the center of town for people to dump their packs and cartons of cigarettes. Soon enough it's chockfull, but not everyone's ready to commit. Tom Poston's Mr. Stopworth is the biggest obstacle. He can't imagine giving up smoking. The scene's hilarious. Drunk off his ass, Mr. Stopworth goes on and on about how his lungs are smoke sacs. They were made for smoking. So you know what the reverend does? He convinces Mr. Stopworth to leave Eagle Rock for the duration of the contest.
The biggest smoker in the town after Mr. Stopworth is the town doctor, Dr. Proctor (Barnard Hughes, a.k.a. Grandpa from The Lost Boys). He's a chain smoker. The reverend makes a personal appearance at the doctor's house and convinces him to give it a shot. The last tough holdout, ironically, is the nonsmoker Amos Bush (Graham Jarvis). Amos is the head of an ultra-conservative club who refuse to participate in the contest, not because of smoking itself, but because they don't want anyone telling them what to do. They're the card-carrying NRA types. Anti-government. Pro-aggression. And that's how the reverend gets Amos to go along. He says that if the town participates in the contest, they'll need people to inspect cars coming into town to make sure they're not carrying cigarettes. They'll need citizen police, in other words, to enforce the no-smoking rule. Amos's eyes light up at the prospect of him and his club policing the streets. He immediately decides that their uniforms will include yellow and red arm bands, which is Lear's heavy-handed reference to the brown shirts who bullied German citizens during Hitler's rule. While Amos would make Sarah Palin proud, the real "gem" of the right-wing club is this crotchety old gal who insists Amos let her carry a gun. To her, almost everyone who's not part of their club is a Commie.
After the reverend and mayor get everyone to sign the petition, the Valiant executives start shitting bricks. But again Merwin assures them there's no way the whole entire town can do it for thirty days. They tell Merwin to go to Eagle Rock to make sure no one's cheating. There ensues my favorite part of the film: Practically the entire town suffers nicotine withdrawal. Fucking. Hilarious. The crossing guard yells at the kids. The mayor's wife, Mrs. Wappler, is stuffing her face, having eaten umpteen pickles by nine in the morning. Poor Dr. Proctor is having a horrible time, much to the delight of his wife. He's ready to smoke the first cigarette-shaped thing he sees. And my favorite part of the withdrawal montage: A close-up of this adorable little pooch on the sidewalk. And then....BAM! Some guy boots it like a soccer ball clear out of sight. One particularly shrewd Swedish masseuse sets up shop in town and makes a killing with clients who go to her to relieve their withdrawal stress.
Merwin Wren eventually does show up. His first attempt to sabotage the contest is to stuff a whole bunch of cigarette cartons in the hood of his car. This is where that gun-lusting granny's paranoia pays off. She and the other members of Amos's crew inspect each car coming into town. Merwin Wren pulls up, and she immediately doesn't trust him (again, she doesn't trust most people). She makes Merwin pop the hood. Sure enough, you've got all those cartons of cigarettes warming themselves on the engine. He tries to explain it away as an accident. The car's a rental. How was he to know it had all those cigarettes in there?
And then for a long stretch we don't see Merwin Wren at all, which kind of sucks because that means Bob Newhart's out of the picture for a while. The main conflict here is how the town's national popularity causes it to sell itself out. News crews from the big three (at that time the only three) networks move into town. During one of the reverend's sermons, this news guy interrupts him and tells him to start over and not move past the podium so the cameras and lights don't lose him. Businesses move in, a lot of them those temporary vendors that set up shop along street curbs. Hippies show up, led by Paul Benedict's Zen Buddhist. It was soon after this that Lear cast Paul Benedict in The Jeffersons as that English guy Harry Bentley, a role with which he became so identified that a lot of people thought he was actually English. Anyway, he tries to help people with their withdrawal symptoms as well. There's this one hilarious scene where he's trying to help Dr. Proctor by convincing the doctor that he can taste the nicotine and see the cigarette smoke. It's not working. They're facing each other sitting cross-legged in a field. The doctor can't see shit or smell shit. He gives up, but Paul Benedict continues the imaginary cigarette game. He's like, "You dropped your cigarette on your pants. Your pants are on fire!" He grabs his ice-cold drink and douses the guy's pants.
Lear's a bit heavy handed with the town-giving-up-its-soul-for-celebrity theme. It's the kids who call their elders on it, the same kids who, before the contest came along, liked to smoke and play pool at the bar. The reverend makes the cover of TIME. But he's more complicated than you realize, and credit Dick Van Dyke for a solid performance. Yes, Reverend Clayton Brooks just wants to help revive Eagle Rock, but the lengths to which he's willing to go not only hurt the town's character, but his own as well. His very docile wife, who normally can't get a word in edgewise when he talks, finally snaps. All during the movie he keeps dominating their conversations while telling her not to slouch. Finally she reaches the end of her rope and literally screams from the rooftop.
As much as you want to see Newhart more, it's probably better for the plot that he's offscreen for large gaps of time. You know he's in the town and has designs on sabotaging the town's efforts to quit cold turkey. The Valiant execs are concerned, but he assures them he has a plan. So even when he's not around, you can't help but wonder where he is and what he's up to.
Cold Turkey was hilarious. Yes, its message is in your face, but what do you expect from a broad comedy? The cast is terrific. You've got Dick Van Dyke, Newhart, Jean Stapleton, Tom Poston, Bob and Ray. A young up-and-coming M. Emmet Walsh has a small part toward the end. Good stuff.
As for Hot Millions, I enjoyed that too, but not as much. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not English and wasn't around in the sixties. The pacing might also be part of it. Don't get me wrong. Hot Millions is hilarious and I would definitely recommend you see it at least once. Hey, it did get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, co-written by the film's leading man, the legendary Peter Ustinov. He was about fifty or so when he made this. He'd already won the two Oscars he would ever win, both for Best Supporting Actor: Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). Besides those two trophies and a writing nom for Hot Millions, he'd gotten another supporting actor nom for Quo Vadis in '51, when he was thirty. As with Bob Newhart, I've never been a devoted fan of Peter Ustinov. Like Newhart, I've always been aware of him, but I was born a decade or two too late to be an honest-to-God devotee. As much as Ustinov has done, I can't even say with any certainty that I'd seen any of his stuff before tonight.
Hot Millions was directed by an Englishman named Eric Till. He was in his forties when he did this. It was his first big project. Over time Eric's work has become more TV centric, both with serial TV and made-for-TV movies. In the eighties he caught the eye of Jim Henson, who tapped him to direct A Muppet Family Christmas and a whole bunch of Fraggle Rock episodes. That's awesome, I loved that show. Eric just turned eighty last November, but he's still at it. You know, I have to say that's really inspiring. In the past month I've now seen several octogenarians at the Aero: Frank Pierson, Bob Newhart, Norman Lear. Eric Till wasn't at the Aero, but still. Peter Ustinov lived and worked into his eighties, having only just passed away a few years ago. And all of these people retained enough of their faculties to work until literally the very end. What's more, most of these people didn't really make it until their forties. As someone still trying to break in, I can draw inspiration from that.
Maybe I'd like
Hot Millions if I saw it again. That can happen, appreciating a movie more the second time around. Like
Cold Turkey, it certainly isn't lacking in talent. You've got Ustinov as the leading man, Maggie Smith as his love interest, Karl Malden, Bob Newhart, and even a cameo by Ces
ar Romero, of all people, toward the end. Ustinov plays this white-collar career criminal named Marcus Pendleton. The film kicks off with Marcus on the last day of a prison stint. He's sitting at a desk in his cell filling out some paperwork with the warden standing there telling him it's time to go. Marcus will leave in just a second, just as soon as he's finished preparing the warden's taxes. Okay so right away we've established that Marcus has enough charisma to charm the socks off a prison warden. And he's good with numbers. The warden's parting comment to Marcus outside the prison gates is that computers will make financial crimes impossible. This got a real chuckle from tonight's audience, knowing what we know now. But that comment in fact planted a seed in Marcus's head. Like the audience, he knows computers will not only not put a cramp in his style, they could be his ticket to getting his game back.
Marcus doesn't waste a beat hanging out at various private London clubs frequented by high-ups in banking, investment, and insurance. He eventually finds this one gullible weirdo named Caesar Smith, who's aspiring to go to South America to hunt butterflies. Caesar's goofy as all hell, but he knows a thing or two about computers. Under the guise of having drinks and being social at this one club, Marcus asks him all kinds of questions about computers. The last time he was on the streets, computers hadn't gone mainstream yet. Everything was old school, with ledgers and whatnot, like what you see in The Producers when Leopold Bloom goes to the office and everyone's hunched over those stand-up desks wearing green visor hats.
Marcus convinces Caesar to follow his dream to the Amazon to hunt butterflies. As soon as he's gone, Marcus assumes his identity and applies for jobs. Since he's using the credentials of a tech wiz, it doesn't take long to attract the attention of an American insurance company with a pretty nice office in London. Running the office is Karl Malden's Carlton Klempter. He's smitten with "Caesar Smith." You can't say the same, though, for Carlton's number two, Willard Gnatpole, played by, you guessed it, our man Newhart. He's wary of this Caesar Smith fellow from the get-go.
While Klempter and Gnatpole are showing him around the office, you can see Marcus's mind at work, particularly when it comes to that flashing blue light on top of one of those super computers. The light, they tell him, means the computer is locked and protected. No, I don't mean protected in the anti-virus software sense. The thing's literally encased in a giant metal box. Only when the light isn't blinking is the box unlocked. Therein lies Marcus's first objective, finding a way to break that lock without setting off the alarm.
Meantime Marcus has moved into a flat, which is really a bedroom in this big old converted house. Occupying another room is this adorable traffic cop named Patty, played by a thirty-four-year-old Maggie Smith. Mind you, I didn't even know of Maggie Smith until Steven Spielberg's Hook, when she played Wendy Darling as an old granny. She was still only in her mid fifties at that point, but Spielberg made her look older. And of course these days she's Minerva McGonagall, professor of transfiguration and head of Gryffindor House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, I'm a Potter fan. Although not a Potterphile, I should say. Actually, I did see Maggie Smith one time before Hook: Clash of the Titans. She was Thetis. But I was so young when I saw that. Hook was, for all intents and purposes, the first time I actually saw Maggie Smith. And she's been hard to miss since. The gal's got range, now more than ever in her golden years, tackling everything from Potter to Ladies in Lavender with her frequent partner-in-crime Judi Dench. Tonight, though, seeing her as the gorgeous but ditsy Patty, I kept having to remind myself I was watching Maggie Smith. Seriously, she may as well have been a different person. Hot Millions was one of her first features, certainly her first big feature considering the names she was sharing the screen with. Peter Ustinov must've liked working with her. About ten years later she was cast opposite him in Death on the Nile, one of several movies with Peter as Poirot.
Even though Patty's dim as Marcus is bright, he's smitten. Hey, they do say opposites attract. She's also opposite in size, a wafer to his King Kong Bundy. He lands her a job
at the insurance company as his secretary. It's hopeless. She can't type, can't take dictation, any of that stuff. Unfortunately her adorable face and voice only go so far. One morning when she gets in late for the umpteenth time, this one woman who I guess was the office manager sacks Patty on the spot. She goes back to work as a traffic cop but doesn't last there long. With a pure heart, she has a tough time fining people for stuff. One of her duties is to patrol the buses to make sure people are paying the fare. She's so nice, though, that she lets people off the hook if they haven't paid. Her boss spots her being a saint one time too many and sacks her. Patty tries her hand at other dead-end jobs, but nothing takes. Marcus asks her to marry him. And so Patty's last name becomes Smith. Oh yeah, I should mention that, even by the time they get married, she has no idea who Marcus really is and that he's embezzling money from the insurance company.
They get a nice place, and he tells her not to worry about working. Meanwhile he goes off on these trips to places like France and Germany and whatnot to set up phony businesses, telling Patty that the company's sending him to meet with clients. He travels a lot, but Patty never gets annoyed, let alone suspicious. The scheme goes off without a hitch for a good while. Marcus breaks into that super computer with the blinking blue light. He patiently reads company books and computer manuals until he learns how to infiltrate the system so he can route money to his phony businesses. He almost gets caught right away when an alarm goes off during his first failed attempt at the blue light computer. It's the middle of the night. Karl Malden is woken by the cops. He storms into the office in his robe. Newhart's well dressed. They demand to know what the hell "Caesar" was doing. He wasn't really trying to break into the computer, he tells them. It was all a misunderstanding. He feeds them this bullshit story which Karl Malden believes, and Newhart sort of believes only grudgingly. It's a near miss, and Marcus's scheme eventually commences. But something's got to give at some point, both at the company and on the domestic front. What will happen to Marcus?
Synopsizing it here, I find I liked Hot Millions better than I thought I did. I don't know, maybe because it was a long day and I was tired, and I'd just sat through one movie and an hour-long Q&A. If I'd seen this on its own, wide awake and, better yet, from the comfort of my recliner, I'd probably enjoy it much better. At any rate, I've synopsized the bejesus out of these films. Let's get to the Q&A.
As I said above, although Bob Newhart was the official guest tonight, Norman Lear was also in the audience. Bob came up to join Grant, who was moderating, took the mic, and told us Norman Lear was in the house and that he should come up as well. So Lear came up and took a seat. We'd already done a standing ovation for Bob. Now we did another one for Lear. Bob asked him something or said something to him to try to get him involved in the Q&A straightaway, but Lear deferred and said it was Bob's event so it should be all about Bob. Lear eventually did contribute to the discussion, as you'll see.
Since we'd just seen Cold Turkey, Grant started with that. How'd Bob get involved? Bob said when he first got the script from his agent, he wanted to play Mr. Stopworth, the drunken smoker Tom Poston ultimately played. That obviously didn't work out, so Bob was stuck with Merwin. Someone in the audience much later asked about the way Bob played Merwin, which was by far more over the top than we're used to from him. You know, Merwin's downright psychotic, with those wide eyes and the maniacal laugh and the lengths to which he's willing to make people smoke, even if it means igniting a lighter in front of their faces just as cigarettes are dumped from a plane. Bob's answer to this cracked me up. And he cracked himself up too. He said that no, he didn't really want to play everything as over-the-top as Merwin. And then he was like, "Remember, I'm not Cary Grant. I'm not Paul Newman." The implication being that he's never had anything close to the movie career of those two icons. And as he said that, he was cracking up. A lot. Which made us in the audience crack up. I mean it's not like he's had such an extensive career that he's been able to pick and choose from a wardrobe of comedy styles. He played Cold Turkey over the top because that's what the role called for. But his preferred style, if you know even a little about Bob, is much more subtle.
Grant asked Bob how he fell into comedy. And falling into it is probably the best way to put it. Bob never had any designs to become an actor and comedian. Ever. Not at all while he was growing up in the Chicago area. He went to college in Chicago and eventually became a Certified Public Accountant. He hated it. I wish he'd gone into that more. Did he not know he'd hate accounting until he had to earn a living from it? Was there no sign at all during college that this wasn't the field for him?
His savior was a DJ friend of his. Bob would write little comedy bits for this guy, like Abraham Lincoln on the phone. He had an accountant friend who also had a knack for comedy writing. Sometimes they'd do radio shticks together. This continued throughout the 1950s with no end to the CPA hell in sight. And then an agency that promoted concerts showed up in town. The DJ friend arranged a meeting. They thought Bob's comedy showed promise, but they had a terrible time finding him a venue. They tried all the theaters in Chicago, including big ones like Second City, but Bob couldn't get arrested. The agency didn't give up. They scoured the country and eventually found this nightclub in Houston of all places. Bob had done his act live before, but the Houston gig marked the first time he was doing it officially, ya know, live, as the main event in front of a paying audience. So he goes and does the gig for a couple weeks. They make a recording of it and call it The Buttoned-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. And you know what? It won a Grammy. No, three Grammys, including Album of the Year. It climbed the charts and beat out the likes of Elvis and The Sound of Music cast album. Bob was all of thirty. I guess he could kiss his accountant career behind, huh? One thing I wish he'd elaborated on was that one accountant friend with whom he'd done some of his comedy bits. Apparently this guy decided not to stay with the comedy. He went to New York to work at a bigger firm or something. I don't remember if it was before or after Bob's career exploded with The Buttoned-Down Mind, but I can only imagine the guy wishes he'd stuck with Bob. Unless he suffered awful stage fright or something. Anyway, what could've been...
Bob was a complete innocent. During the CPA grind, he didn't have much time to follow showbiz and the various annual award shows. Back then they only had the four: Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and Grammys. Nice and simple. But Bob didn't know the first thing about any of that. He said tonight that when he won those Grammys, it took a while for the celebrating to begin because he didn't have the slightest idea what, say, Grammy for Album of the Year even meant.
After the accolades for
The Buttoned-Down Mind, in 1960, Bob was invited to the Emmys by its host that year, the legendary talk show host Steve Allen, whose eponymous show was about to end. It was at the Emmys that Bob met Tom Poston, a comedian about ten years
older who'd already racked up a lot of TV credits, including a recurring stint on
The Steve Allen Show as the perennial amnesiac. If you know anything about
Newhart, you know that their meeting at the 1960 Emmys was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Bob and Lear were both smokers before they made Cold Turkey. When asked if making the film had any effect on their habits, Lear said absolutely. After wrapping the film, which really was shot in Iowa, in and around the Des Moines area, he flew back to L.A. and decided to quit. And you know what? He hasn't smoked since. That's pretty cool. Lear was already pushing fifty at that point so it just goes to show it's never too late to quit. As for Bob? He was hilarious. Did playing a slimy tobacco exec inspire him to quit cold turkey? He was like, "Uh, no." He didn't quit for another fifteen years or so, during his Newhart stint. He was in his mid fifties at that point, so again, never too late.
Des Moines made an impression on them, and their film left an impression on Des Moines. Lear was saying that to this day, people in Des Moines mark time by the Cold Turkey shoot. Ya know, like, "So-and-so got married three years before Cold Turkey. That family moved in five years post Cold Turkey." Stuff like that. Interesting. I mean Des Moines as well as Iowa in general feature such awesome vistas from a photographer or filmmaker's point of view. You've got to figure Cold Turkey is hardly the only production that's ever been filmed there. Then again, I'm sure most productions there don't include people like Bob Newhart and Norman friggin' Lear.
While making the film convinced Lear it was time to quit cold turkey, the only impression the film seems to have had on Bob was a horse. He told this hilarious story about how he wanted to buy a horse from one of the many farms in the area and bring it back to his wife. I think he wanted to surprise her. Bob, by the way, had just married his gal Ginny four years earlier. And they're still married today, bless 'em. Anyway, he found a horse in no time, but he wasn't sure how to transport it back to L.A. He tried a few ways: Plane, rail. He tried getting his own truck, but that didn't pan out. Finally he met this truck driver on his way to L.A. Bob paid him to take the horse and deliver it to Ginny.
I wish Ginny had been there tonight. She's had quite the impact on Bob's life and career. One example is his friendship with the inimitable Don Rickles. Bob and Don have been close pals for a long time now. Their families have gatherings, go on vacations together, the whole bit. When someone asked Bob how he met Don, he said it was thanks to Ginny. She was longtime pals with a secretary at a talent agency named Barbara. Eventually Barbara married one of the agency's clients. Yep, Don Rickles. Now fast forward a few years. Ginny hears that Barbara and Don are in Vegas because Don's doing a show. She's kind of bummed out that she hasn't seen Barb in years and, well, since they've got nothing else to do, why not head to Vegas and hang out with them? So they go. Ginny had never seen Don do standup before. And of course Bob knew nothing about him. The hilarious thing was that Ginny was sure Don's humor was clean. So they get there and take their seats in the audience. Don knew they were there. Ginny and Barbara had set everything up ahead of time. When Don comes out on stage, he doesn't waste a minute: He says sitting in the audience are an asshole accountant from Chicago and a hooker from New Jersey. Yes, Barb's from Jersey. But no, she's not a hooker. Bob cracked up when Don said this. Ginny's mouth fell to the floor. After the show they had dinner together. Don treated them to a meal "in the cafeteria," Bob joked. They hit it off right away.
Another huge impact Ginny had was on the series finale of
Newhart. If you don't remember or didn't exist in the eighties,
Newhart was hands down one of the hottest sitcoms of the decade. For most of its run it sat comfortably in the Monday 9pm slot, a time slot most show runners salivate for. But then during the fifth season, for no discernible reason, CBS started dicking around with the show's time. Perhaps it wasn't burning up the ratings as much as it had during the first four seasons, but it was still going strong. That's TV for ya. So insecure. Halfway through the fifth season, Bob was pretty disgusted. He and Ginny were at this big holiday gala. Let's see, if this was during the fifth season, it would have to be the holidays of 1986. While standing in line to meet the host, he vents about what a bunch of jerks they are at CBS, and that since he was already committed to doing a sixth season, h
e'd go through with it, but then that would be it. According to Bob tonight, Ginny didn't miss a beat. She was like, "You know what you should do for the final episode? Have your character from the seventies show, Dr. Bob Hartley, wake up in the middle of the night. They'll get Suzanne Pleshette back to play the wife Emily. And he'll tell her he just had a nightmare about being a hotel owner in Vermont." CBS shaped up during season six, enough so that when they asked Bob if he wanted to do two more seasons, he said oh why not. But Ginny's idea stuck. When they finally started work on season eight and the show runners were wondering how to end it, Bob brought his wife's idea to them and they thought it was brilliant. They asked Suzanne Pleshette if she'd come back to play Emily one last time, and she said sure. As it came time to shoot the episode in the spring of 1990, they kept the script under wraps. Bob couldn't emphasize enough how they told practically no one. Even the crew was in the dark. They whipped up some dummy script and pretended that was what they were going to shoot. And then the dummy script was leaked to the press by some sucker in the crew. Bob said it would make sense that
Newhart was a dream. It would explain all the weird stuff that happens. And all the weird people. For starters, you've got Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, who are "right out of
Deliverance," Bob said. Speaking of that, one of the Darryls was in the audience tonight. How cool is that? He and his wife were sitting just a few rows in front of me. Awesome. Bob's obviously proud of
Newhart. He talked more about that sitcom than he did the seventies one. And he didn't say a word about
Bob, the one-season flop from 1992-93, perhaps his attempt to rule the nineties like he did the seventies and eighties. Seriously, he became downright giddy talking about
Newhart and how the finale has set a benchmark for other sitcoms. That might be pushing it, but okay. He's proud of it, so that's cool.
Someone in the audience asked him about playing Major Major Major Major in Catch-22. Made in 1970, this was just after he'd done Hot Millions and Cold Turkey. As I said above, he actually shot Cold Turkey in '69 even though it took two years to release it. Catch-22 was the last film he did before signing onto The Bob Newhart Show. Bob didn't have a bad time on Catch-22, but it was kind of weird. They filmed most of it down in Mexico. Bob told us the name of the town, but I forget. I do remember him saying it was in the middle of nowhere. Stacy Keach was originally supposed to play Yossarian. They filmed a few scenes before director Mike Nichols, no doubt feeling cocky after having just done The Graduate, fired him. When that happened, Bob said the atmosphere on the set became kind of awkward and tense. His most vivid memory of the shoot involves the cemetery scene. The night before the shoot, Bob and some of the others went out drinking. While the others merely got drunk, Bob got positively tanked. Somehow, someway, he was able to drag himself to the set on time the next day. He felt awful and no doubt looked the part, but he didn't say anything to Mike Nichols. He just privately hoped everyone would get their lines right so he could haul ass back to his trailer and puke his guts out. No, Bob didn't puke during the shoot. I have to say I don't know how he made it. I've been hungover to the bejesus before, puking and so on. We all have our moments, don't we? And film sets are such time suckers, especially because of the lights. You learn this right away when you make a film, even if it's just, ya know, a ten-minute short or something, which is all I've ever done. It takes. Forever! To get the lighting just right. Now if it's already such a time sucker for a short film, can you imagine a feature? Of course they have crew, folks who specialize in lighting. On my stuff I had no one. I was the crew. Bob was a trooper and made it through the day. Everyone, including him, got their lines right. Now here's the punch line. A couple weeks later, Mike Nichols called Bob into his trailer to show him the footage from the cemetery scene. Bob goes in thinking, "Oh shit, I must've gotten everything wrong, we'll have to reshoot the scene, etc." But nope. You know what happened? Mike Nichols loved it. He was like, "This is the kind of acting I'm looking for." He had no idea Bob had been hungover. And Bob had no intention of bursting his bubble either. He was just like, "Gee, thanks." To this day he's not sure if Mike's ever figured it out. Sometime in the past year he ran into Mike in the lobby of a hotel and was like, "You do know I was hungover that day, don't you?"
Another bit of drama from the Catch-22 shoot was that Robert Altman was filming MASH at the exact same time, and it was felt that whoever finished first would better capitalize on the anti-Vietnam/anti-war sentiment permeating the country at the time. It was a close race. MASH won by a hair. It was released in March of 1970. Catch-22 came out three months later. I wasn't alive then so I'm not sure who won in terms of box office receipts. They certainly each had a decent cast and director. If you want to compare them by critical acclaim, I suppose MASH is the winner. It won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adaptation and was nominated for Director and Picture. Catch-22 didn't get a single nomination. Ouch. But whatever. A moot point now obviously. It's just funny to hear about studios racing each other like that. They still do that today. And I'm sure they'd done it long before Vietnam. The movie industry's like everything else: The more things change...
One thing I didn't know during Newhart's run in the eighties was that it inspired a college drinking game. I wasn't even in high school yet, but I've heard of similar kinds of drinking games that involve a show or a movie. In Newhart's case, it was all about "Hi, Bob." Tonight during the Q&A someone raised their hand for a question. When they were called on, all they said was, "Hi, Bob." Bob said hi back, not getting it yet. Pause. Then he cracked up and was like, "Oh! Hi, Bob. I get it." I didn't get it at all, but then Bob told us about the drinking game. The way it would work was, you and your friends would gather around the tube Monday nights at 9pm to watch Newhart. Every time a character said, "Hi, Bob," you'd throw down a shot. If Bob said something back with a stammer, you'd have to take another drink right away. A beer chaser. Something like that. Point being that thirty minutes later it was not only possible but very likely you'd be trashed. Binge drinking, but with structure. Bob had no idea about this for years, not until well into the show's run. Only then did he realize how many hangovers he'd been responsible for.
Another funny story from his
Newhart years had to do with his trademark stammer. If you watch Bob for just five minutes, it becomes pretty obvious that his humor comes in large part from the way he stammers when he talks. Well, the folks behind
Newhart were not the same folks from
The Bob Newhart Show. They weren't familiar with the stammer. Soon into the first season, one o
f the complications they had was that the episodes were running over the time limit. Half-hour sitcoms aren't really a half-hour. They're twenty-some minutes. You have to make room for commercials, right? But when they started shooting
Newhart, the episodes were hitting the thirty-minute mark, which meant a lot of editing. The problem was Bob's stammer. It made him take longer to get through the dialogue. When they asked him to get rid of the stammer, he was like, "Are you kidding me? This stammer bought me a house in Beverly Hills. You want shorter episodes? Trim the dialogue." Which, of course, they did. Hilarious.
Bob said you can't force comedy. You need to create situations whereby a person could say something "normal" and still make people laugh. One example he cited was Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther. At one point he's on trial for stealing the Pink Panther diamond. The lawyer's grilling him on the stand about how someone like him could possibly afford a diamond like that. And Clouseau's like, "Well, my wife's a good saver." Or something like that. The jury cracks up. He looks around, confused. "What? She really is a good saver." If you watch Newhart or almost anything else Bob's done, it's so true. He's never raunchy or loud or anything. Comedy's like a lot of things. Less is more. Bob's always sworn by that.
It was inevitable people would ask Norman Lear about his TV history, which is practically synonymous with the history of TV, at least in the second half of the twentieth century. Some of the folks in Cold Turkey worked with him later in the seventies, such as Jean Stapleton, who would go on to play Edith Bunker in All in the Family. Paul Benedict, who had a small role in Cold Turkey as that Zen Buddhist, eventually played Englishman Harry Bentley for The Jeffersons' entire run, '75 to '85. Lear said he first noticed Paul Benedict on stage in New York. He was working pretty steadily in theater. Cold Turkey was the third movie he appeared in. He was only thirty or so at the time. Here's what threw me, though. Tonight during the Q&A, Lear said Paul Benedict was "English. Obviously." But in fact he wasn't. Harry Bentley was English, and yes, it's a role Paul's closely identified with, but he was actually a Yank, mate. Originally from New Mexico. He himself said in an interview that the one downside to having made a fortune from The Jeffersons was that when people met him on the street, they assumed he was English and he would have to explain where his accent went. While I can understand why fans of The Jeffersons would assume he's English, since he was so awesome in that role, surely Norman Lear knew who he really was. I wish someone had called Lear on that. He wrote over half the episodes for The Jeffersons and was otherwise with it for the whole run. Did he really think Paul Benedict was a true Brit the whole time? That can't be.
Another thing he didn't realize until tonight was that Bob and Ray never shared the screen during Cold Turkey. Grant asked him if that was intentional. Lear thought about it before saying, "I'm trying to make you wrong." It was a complete accident. He's amazed he managed to keep them separate. Tonight was the first time Lear watched Cold Turkey with an audience. He was struck by how the stuff he was concerned about then (selling out for fame, the military industrial complex) is still on his mind today. I have to say the final image in the film is quite striking. The missile plant's been built in Eagle Rock. The hemorrhaging of citizens has stopped because of the new jobs. And then we get a wide shot of the town with the plant dominating what was once a pretty vista. Smoke stacks belch black guck into the sky. The end.
Lear knew Jean Stapleton before Cold Turkey. They'd never worked on the same project, but they'd both been cutting their teeth in TV land for over ten years at that point. Their paths would cross once in a blue moon. She was his first choice to play Edith Bunker on All in the Family. Want to know who his first choice was for Archie? No, it wasn't Carroll O'Connor. You ready for this? It was Mickey Rooney. After finishing the pilot script, Lear got on the horn with Mickey Rooney's agent in New York. By sheer coincidence, Mickey just happened to be sitting in his agent's office. The agent passed the phone to him so Lear could pitch him the show. At this point Mickey had a recurring role on The Red Skelton Show and had just done a couple movies but otherwise had no big commitments. Now was the time to strike. Right away the conversation turned weird because Mickey referred to himself in the third person as "Big Mick." Well, he was pushing fifty at this point and had already done quite a bit in his career. He'd been acting since he was tiny. I reckon it's not too terribly shocking he'd have an ego the size of the Valley. But seriously, Big Mick? He said the kind of character Big Mick would like to play on series TV would be a Vietnam vet. A hero kind of guy. When Lear told him Archie Bunker was a racist and a bigot and used all of the epithets and politically incorrect jargon, Big Mick said not only was Big Mick not interested, but he warned Lear that he'd be attacked in the streets if he produced a show like that.
Bob had a great time working on Cold Turkey and Hot Millions. One of the cool things about working with Peter Ustinov was that Ustinov was also the writer of the film. If Bob or anyone else wasn't happy with a particular piece of dialogue, Peter had no qualms about going back to the typewriter and redoing it. Everyone in the cast was amazed at his work ethic. They filmed Monday through Friday. On the weekends Ustinov would go to Vienna to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. Yes, if you haven't heard of Peter Ustinov, you should know he was the kind of guy who dabbled across the artistic spectrum.
Bob Newhart still works. It wasn't all that long ago that he played Papa Elf in
Elf, another perfect example of his subtle humor. And he had a recurring role on
Desperate Housewives. And, believe it or not, the man still does standup. In Vegas, L.A., all over, about twenty gigs a year, which is almost one every two weeks. Wow, for a man in his eighties, that's something. But ya know? What else is he going to do? So long as he's still healthy and hilarious, he should keep himself out there.
