A known alcoholic, people tried to persuade Desi not to use Frawley. He talked to Frawley, who promised that he would not be a problem. Desi said he showed up on time and sober for every day of work and had his lines down pat.
One reason Vance hated him was that he didn’t participate in optional read throughs. His comic timing was perfect, and he didn’t need the practice.
Frawley is reputed to be part of an old meme, a drunk shouting “Play Melancholy Baby”. The story goes that a young Frawley sang this song in a Broadway show (actually My Melancholy Baby), and a drunk in the audience, Damon Runyon, began the shout outs.
Another Hollywood story that crosses over into TV land is about an old Borscht Belt comedian who went by the moniker Parkyercarcass. His real name was Harry Einstein. He was attempting to make a comeback, and appeared in a Friar’s Club Roast in Hollywood. Some called it his best night ever. After finishing his bit, he sat down, and minutes later slumped over dead. The headlines followed with ‘Parkyercarcass kills, dies, at Friar’s Club’. Harry left a legacy though, his sons Bob and Albert. Albert Einstein changed his name because it would obviously be a problem in the entertainment industry. He chose the name Albert Brooks, and won an academy award for his performance in Broadcast News. His brother Bob kept his name, but is better known for a character he plays, Super Dave Osbourne.
The actor playing Lamont [Grady Demond Wilson] went by his middle name, instead of his first “Grady.”
In a Season 1 ep, Lamont is about to get married, and the rev introduces him as 'Lamont Grady Sanford," picking Wilson’s first name as Lamont’s middle.
Later, they reused the Wilson name for Fred’s crony Grady Wilson. So, in a sense, Whitman Mayo was playing a character using Lamont’s real name.
Finally, in the last season, Lamont asks Fred about why he never had a middle name. Fred tells him that “Lamont” was his middle name, that he and Elizabeth were never able to decide on a first. (Continuity back then was even dicier than today.)
Other (somewhat) real names used:
Don Bexley played Bubba Bexley.
Melvin “Slappy” White played Melvin.
Ernest “Skillet” Mayhand played Skillet. [He and Leroy ‘Sloppy’ Daniels, who also appeared in a few eps, were a real-life comedy team.]
This public service advertisement from the Department of Labor has Batgirl showing up to rescue Batman and Robin from a bomb. Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig play Robin and Batgirl (along with Bill Dozier as the narrator), but the actor in the Batman costume is not Adam West, who declined to appear in the ad because he felt he was typecast and wanted to put some distance between him and the Batman character. A casting call went out for an actor who was approximately West’s size and would resemble him in the Bat-costume. Dick Gautier, who was well-known for playing Hymie the robot in “Get Smart,” showed up and was given the part. In addition, that’s Gautier imitating West’s voice.
I don’t considered Good Times to be a spin-off. The only thing that was the same was the character’s name. Florida, was married to Henry (played by the same actor), she lived in NYC and wasn’t poor. Suddenly her husband has a different name and she’s in the ghetto in Chicago. And why was Wilona their neighbor. A young SINGLE female wouldn’t be in public housing
Except nobody can find a Pravda article about this. And yes, the wig has been covered now.
I thought that scene happened while they were in the bar. Someone observes other flat head Klingons, and Worf gives his brush off.
You misunderstood. That is what he said. He was correcting Mad About You as the show where Lisa Kudrow got hired after getting rejected from Frasier.
Yes, that’s not a deliberate color correction, it’s the effect of how cameras pick up lighting differently from eyes.
A buddy of mine had a “bridge set” that included the captain’s chair and Navigator’s station/Helm console, that he used for a variety of events before finally selling it. It was painted in such a way to appear correctly colored on the screen, but in person the colors were off.
Yes. Worf, Odo, and O’Brien are drinking while looking for the Klingons. The waitress mentions that there are some in the bar - after Odo looks around, trying to find them, she points them out - O’Brien and Odo look at Worf for an explanation. He looks embarrassed, and says his line. (Then [del]Koloth[/del]Korax starts his fight with Scotty, resulting in O’Brien replacing one of the generic extras when Kirk is dressing down the crewmen involved.)
There’s a story that Carl Reiner appeared on the Tonight Show shortly after Johnny Carson had taken over as host. They were talking about comedians and Reiner supposedly told Carson that the two funniest people he ever met were Mel Brooks and a twelve year old kid named Albert Einstein.
The first time I saw Albert Brooks on the Tonight Show, I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, and I’ve never been able to find the routine again. It was a bit about a guy who did a great Ed Sullivan impression, and some producer saw it and hired him to do an important show. The problem was, Ed Sullivan was the only voice he could do, so everybody else he did — Cary Grant, Porky Pig, etc., sounded just like Ed Sullivan. I guess you had to be there, but it still makes me laugh just thinking about it, 40 or so years later.
Richard Moll later played Lincoln in a touring production of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and got great reviews. Another TV personality who got great reviews for his Lincoln was Fred Gwynne, who played him opposite Kate Mulgrew as Mary Todd.
As I’ve said before, I wish, after all these years, some Russian-speaking Trekker would actually go and look in the Pravda archives from 1966-69 to find the legendary editorial that supposedly led to the creation of the Chekov character. It’s either there or it’s not.
It seems odd, because Star Trek predated the movie Marooned. The Soviets were stunned that a Cosmonaut was the hero of that movie rather than a villain, and this was supposed to have opened the door to the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in the mid 70s.
Koenig started in season two. If the Pravda article is to have influenced anyone, it would have to have been written/read before then. (Season 1 was Sept '66 to sometime in '67.)
Second unit most often refers to the filming of stunts, precision driving; I would think that Star Trek didn’t have a second unit. Occasionally, when there’s no official second unit, a splinter unit will form to shoot something simultaneously - usually an insert, and one of the AD’s will act as director.
Simultaneous filming for a show that is produced on a sound stage is virtually impossible.
