'Bye, Guys
Pat McCormick, an idol of my childhood, has punched his last line.
The Nyok Times reports him as a gag-writer, and so he was, but etched into the mental retina is a vision of him (on, I believe, a commercial-TV incarnation of The Dick Cavett Show) sitting across a cardtable from Buck Henry. They are playing a game: a sort of middle-aged, indoor Calvinball. Every move is improvised, using whatever object they draw from the box between them and whatever words pop into their heads, and every move is hilarious. It all seems the most outrageous nonsense. Suddenly, McCormick leaps from his chair, faces the audience, and announces with the utmost solemnity that he has won the first round. Pandemonium ensues.
I met with Jack Benny's mugging and Ed Ames's tomahawk lesson only in rerun. So, to me, McCormick's Round One will always be the funniest broadcast moment of all time.
In other news, Robert Wright, partner of George Forrest on such shows as Kismet, has bought it. I saw that show performed at a dinner theatre in the Amboys a many years ago. Speaking of which, I wonder whatever became of Lynn Cafiero?
And farewell to Hildegarde, with whom I shared a sort of a stage (at the 7th Regiment Mess on Park Avenue) in a music hall show commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. The pianist called her up out of the audience, and she sang I'll Be Seeing You (of course) and fluffed her lines. I'm surprised she managed to survive to 99; she was pretty fragile at 88.
All in all, a bad day at Black Rock.
The Nyok Times reports him as a gag-writer, and so he was, but etched into the mental retina is a vision of him (on, I believe, a commercial-TV incarnation of The Dick Cavett Show) sitting across a cardtable from Buck Henry. They are playing a game: a sort of middle-aged, indoor Calvinball. Every move is improvised, using whatever object they draw from the box between them and whatever words pop into their heads, and every move is hilarious. It all seems the most outrageous nonsense. Suddenly, McCormick leaps from his chair, faces the audience, and announces with the utmost solemnity that he has won the first round. Pandemonium ensues.
I met with Jack Benny's mugging and Ed Ames's tomahawk lesson only in rerun. So, to me, McCormick's Round One will always be the funniest broadcast moment of all time.
In other news, Robert Wright, partner of George Forrest on such shows as Kismet, has bought it. I saw that show performed at a dinner theatre in the Amboys a many years ago. Speaking of which, I wonder whatever became of Lynn Cafiero?
And farewell to Hildegarde, with whom I shared a sort of a stage (at the 7th Regiment Mess on Park Avenue) in a music hall show commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. The pianist called her up out of the audience, and she sang I'll Be Seeing You (of course) and fluffed her lines. I'm surprised she managed to survive to 99; she was pretty fragile at 88.
All in all, a bad day at Black Rock.
posted by npetrikov at 7:29 AM
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