Heaven Just Got Funnier

With the passing of Dick Martin the other day and now Harvey Korman, I feel compelled to acknowledge these two great funny men.

"Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" was a huge show back in my youth. I was probably too young at the time to get some of the wink,wink, nudge, nudge humour, but there was still plenty of things I enjoyed, including Arte Johnson's "Verry Interestink" nazi peeking out from behind the fern, the poems "By Henry Gibson", and of course, the introduction of soon-to-be-famous Goldie Hawn, go-go dancing with mod graffiti painted all over her bikini clad body. And then there were the hosts: straight man Dan Rowan with his ever present pipe, and the sly comic playboy, Dick Martin. The show was often topical, with Dan and Dick commenting satirically on recent news events in their monologue, but mostly there was a real scattergun, non sequitur approach to the comedy, with lots of verbal puns and crazy visuals. Definitely a product of the swinging sixties!

Harvey Korman was part of one of the funniest comedy ensembles on TV, as a cast member on "The Carol Burnett Show". I think many would agree that the show hit its stride when Tim Conway joined the cast several years later, acting as a great comic foil for the suave Korman. It was always great fun to see how the poker faced Conway would, through brilliant comic timing and physical comedy, cause Korman to have to stifle the urge to break out laughing. With Harvey Korman being so tall and sophisticated, next to short, dumpy little Tim Conway, the two comedians made for a great study in contrasts. This is something that I try to stress in my teaching of character design to the Sheridan animation students too, as physical contrast can immediately help to communicate personality types to your audience, as well as add visual variety. By the way, speaking of animation, Harvey Korman also had a second career as a cartoon voiceover actor, supplying many voices on such shows as "The Flintstones", including the little green alien with the big head, The Great Gazoo.

Anyway, rather than mourn their loss this week, I would like to celebrate the legacy they left us. Here's to two of TV's great funny men:

Remembering Frank

This Wednesday, May 14th 2008 will mark the 10th anniversary of the passing of Frank Sinatra. It's hard to believe that it's already been ten years, as I remember well the morning I heard it on the radio news. Though I knew it was coming due to Frank having been quite ill for some time, there was still a shock in hearing it and it filled me with great sadness to know that Frank was now gone.

Just a couple weeks prior, I'd gotten a call from a local showplace where I'd had tickets to see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in concert. I'd been looking forward to seeing them on their scheduled play date of May 15th, but now the theatre was calling to say that they'd had to cancel their appearance. Hearing the news of Frank's passing, I realized then why they'd cancelled - they knew it was coming and wanted to be close to Frank and his family for when the inevitable tragic day arrived. Sure enough, in the days that followed, there were Steve and Eydie seen arriving for the funeral. Having opened for Sinatra in concert for a few years and being close friends of his, I imagine they were devastated.

For all of my lifetime, there had always been Sinatra, and his music had appealed to me even as a young kid. To this day, I have a singular memory of being at the drive-in in the late 60's and hearing Frank Sinatra singing "That's Life" on the car speaker before the movie commenced. I was probably only about 7 or 8 at the time, yet his music was already an influence on me. By the time I was in my teens, I would look forward more to Frank singing "New York, New York" on the radio than anything my peers were into at the time. I reckon I was a strange kid, but I'd always enjoyed the music that my Dad played around the house more than what was popular with kids of the day. Dad was big fan of Bing, though, and never had any of Frank's records, so I guess I sought them out on my own.

In my mid-twenties I got into Sinatra's music big time, especially since I had started taking ballroom dancing lessons and found myself dancing the foxtrot to a lot of Frank's big hits. To this day I'm still an avid social ballroom dancer and there is nobody I like dancing to better than the swinging sounds of Sinatra. "Fly Me to the Moon" with its Quincy Jones arrangements and with Frank backed up by The Count Basie Orchestra, just can't be beat!

This month in honour of the 10th anniversary of Frank Sinatra's passing, Turner Classic Movies is running many of his films every Sunday and Wednesday nights, as well as several of his TV music specials from the 60's. I've got my DVD recorder working overtime to get as many of these films as I can, some of which I've never seen before. Of course I already have many of his films on DVD that have been available thus far, but it's great to see some titles that Turner is running are also going to start being released on DVD in the next little while. Just like Frank's music, I also tend to prefer his movies from the early 50's onward, especially as he was hitting his stride in both media during the late 50's/ 60's era. My favourite films are not necessarily all out musicals, but still those with a musical bent, like "Pal Joey", "The Joker is Wild", and a guilty pleasure, "Robin and the 7 Hoods", despite what the critics said about it!

Anyway, I hope some of you fellow Sinatra fans are also enjoying the films on TCM, as well as continuing to listen to the great legacy of popular music that he has left us. Yes, Frank Sinatra will be a subject often discussed in The Cartoon Cave...