Wonderful, thanks for the video clip, and godspeed to these two great talents.
May you get to heaven a half and hour before the devil knows you're dead.
"Say Goodnight, Dick."
"Goodnight, Dick."
Have fun at The Party. (Give the girls a pinch for me.)
yeah, it's always tough when we lose the masters of an art. martin was huge. i was working out of vegas at the time when post laugh-in rowan and martin were doing the casinos. they were both true gentlemen and pleasures to work around and for.
i too love pollack's films. his acting was spot on too. he could turn minor roles into pivotal moments. that hurt/wise/maybe touched with evil face had miles and hard lessons written all over it.
in music, we just lost utah phillips. he wasn't huge or anything, but he, with big bill, and debs, and burl ives, and the other political singers used to hop frieght trains to sing at IWW rallies. he was the real thing. i'm not as eloquent as you LM, all i could muster was to say "I rode with you. I got no complaints."
out west, that's saying a mouthfull.
We lost Cornell Capa in the last week too. What a career.
http://www.npr.org/templates/
sto...toryId=90805099
"Cornell Capa was born in Hungary in 1918, five years after his brother Robert, a war photographer known for his images during the Spanish Civil War.
... focused his camera on scenes of politics and social justice. He chronicled the plight of mentally ill children in Russia and the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.
Capa told Lyden about a philosophy he called "The Concerned Photographer"; he rejected the idea of being detached and objective.
"To really be a passioned person, you can't really be objective. And if you're objective, your pictures will not be very passionate,"
Two real professionals and craftsmen in an industry infested with phonies and incompetents. You bet your bippy they'll both be missed.
I had the privilege of a very slight personal acquaintance with Mr. Pollack years ago through his family, and he struck me as a competent man who balanced an acknowledgement of the world as it was with a basic decency (characteristics he likely built on to develop the less pleasant stock character he created for his acting work).
"Three Days Of The Condor" remains my favorite of his films, for exactly the reasons you mention. Prescient about the nature of the neoconservative authoritarian mindset ...
Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em.
... and how it CAN happen here when men like "Higgins" gain complete power ...
Joe Turner: I'd like to go back to New York.
Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.
RIP.
Utah Phillips, too?
Ouch.
The doors between the worlds are wide open, and full of light.
I watched a 80s rerun of Laugh In about 20 years ago as someone close to his 10th birthday. It was an influence on my rapid and twisted humour.
I watched a pile of clips over the last few days. Here's a others from Laugh In
Dick being a playboy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U...h?
v=UWQcviCi3eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z...h?
v=z0NMZnVa81c
Dick with Tiny Tim (watch Dick's mannerisms)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s...h?v=skU-
jBFzXl0
A party scene with Danny Kaye:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a...h?
v=aH2yqLXhMkQ
And an uncensored gag and blooper reel (watch till the end where Sammy Davis Jr has a hilarious rant)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A...h?
v=A5vRPPIWzhQ
I have to re-find the portion of the YouTube clip (saw it yesterday) with Arte Johnson dressed up as the German Soldier when he states, "Winners get trees, losers get bushes". 
Found Arte Johnson (complete with Ringo Starr) with the line "Winners get trees, losers get bushes...think about it" The skit starts at about 3:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S...h?
v=SfBBU8WSYvU
Thanks for the links, Thor. I was a major Laugh-In junkie back when it was first broadcast.
I'm of an age where a lot of people who inspired and taught me are of an age themselves where they're passing on at an increasing frequency.
Ain't it the truth, LM. (Commiserates another old fogey.)
I first saw The Swimmer as a teenager, back in the early 70s, on the local CBS affiliate's late night movie. Of course, at that time midlife crisis was a completely alien concept to me. So I didn't appreciate it in quite the same way as when I finally got a chance to see it again a couple of years ago. It is indeed a wonderful film, not least for its cameos: I mean, c'mon, Marge Champion as a backyard nudist? How could you possibly top that?
Definitely one of Lancaster's best performances (and certainly his least expensive wardrobe 
).
I can't say I'm that enamored of all Pollack's films -- though his worst was far, far, better than many directors' best. Much as I admire Three Days, The Yakuza (which he directed just prior to TDotC) still counts as my favorite by just a hair, with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? a very close third.
It really was a remarkable period in American film-making, wasn't it?
Goodnight Dick...
Glad to see you address both of these. 'Condor' has long been one of my favorite films - a lifelong crush on Redford notwithstanding, it is also one of the creepiest I have ever seen, all without much in the way of actual violence (though the guy getting shot in the throat in the alley always makes me gasp); rather, it was that inexorable ratcheting up of the paranoia that seems so hard for suspense films to achieve. I think about the end of that movie alot now...the fact that he was willing to place all of his eggs in the NY Times basket, because they were unassailably ethical. Sigh. A lot has changes since then.
I am, unfortunately, old enough to remember "Laugh In" on it's FIRST go round. Goldie Hawn and Judy Carne go-go dancing in their cages, Artie Shaw sharing Ruth Buzzi's bench (and dodging her pocketbook), and falling off his bike with the German helmet. Henry Gibson with his silly flower power poems. Jo Ann Whorley and that voice... And the hosts, of course, hurling their barbs at the Vietnam War, and Nixon. There would never have been a Saturday Night Live without Laugh In.
And if you can make it all the way through "The Way We Were" without bawling, well, hell, you're made of stone.
Punkster: I never knew Artie Shaw was on Laugh In...or perhaps I missed all the covert clarinet playing skits
Johnson. Artie Johnson, you smarty pants!
And now we can add Earle Hagen to the list 
Oh my God—you're kidding about Earle Hagen! I'm in the process of writing a post about the great Hollywood TV and film music guys (dovetailing off Hubris' running the “Ironside” theme—written by Quincy Jones) disappearing and he was in my focus list of the last of the great ones still alive (He and Lalo Schifrin)
Hagen and Schifrin were the Batman and Robin of 60's TV music, and Hagen's themes may be the most hummed-along-to in TV history.
The Mod Squad
I-Spy
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Andy Griffith Show
That Girl (My personal favorite)
Gomer Pyle USMC
Make Room For Daddy
and too many more too mention.
Damn. He'd been on my mind for weeks as I've been assembling the parts for the post, and Hubris' YouTube sparked me further.
A real unsung GIANT in the business.
Wow.
What a bad week.
And now, ladies and gentlemen ...
Harvey Korman.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
tv...bit_korman.html
Damn, Heaven is one happy place right now. They will have one helluva Friday night party. Oh wait -- Carol B's show was on Thursdays!
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