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Dig A Hole: Dody Goodman

June 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Dody Goodman as Martha Shumway in MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN

Dody Goodman, the pixyish Southern belle comedienne/character actress know for her appearances on Jack Paar’s couch as well as the mother on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Blanche Hodell in both Grease movies died Sunday at the age of 93.

Born Dolores Goodman in Columbus, Ohio on October 28, 1914 where her father ran a cigar store. For years Goodman successfully shaved 14 years off her age by listing her birth year as 1929. This minor discrepancy was upheld for decades before the past eventually caught up with her and shattered the myth.

She arrived in New York to study dance in the late 1930s. She studied at the School of American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and later graduated to Broadway musicals.

According to the Associated Press, Goodman gained a measure of success for her dancing solos in such ’40s Broadway musicals as High Button Shoes and Wonderful Town. In 1955, she stopped the show in the off Broadway production Shoestring Revue with the novelty song Someone’s Been Sending Me Flowers. She returned to Broadway in 1974 to appear in Lorelei with Carol Channing.

Jack Paar & Dody Goodman

Goodman first appeared on television in the recurring role of a waitress on The Phil Silvers Show. Adopting a scatterbrain persona, Goodman eventually caught the attention of talk show pioneer Jack Paar. Her ditzy aura and seemingly spontaneous malaprops delighted Paar and gaine national attention for Goodman who was soon invited to become a semi-regular on The Tonight Show.

“I was just thrown into the talking,” Goodman said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press. “I had no idea how to do that. In fact, they just called me up and asked me if I wanted to be on ‘The Jack Paar Show.’ I didn’t know who Jack Paar was. They said, ‘We just want you to sit and talk.”‘

Jack Paar did not take well to being upstaged and Dody’s impeccable ad-libs eventually resulted in a permanent falling out. In 1958 she was dropped from The Tonight Show’s roster, but invitations from other talk shows soon began pouring in.

She began making regular appearances on Virginia Graham’s Girl Talk, Merv, and The Mike Douglas Show. In 1970, with Paar safely out of the picture, she once again began appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

She hit her stride plating Louise Lasser’s mother on the dotty serial Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Her high-pitched voice could be heard announcing the show’s title at the beginning of each episode.

Following Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Goodman’s career gained momentum. She picked up where Marion Lorne left off playing addled neighbor ladies or eccentric housekeepers on TV’s Diff’rent Strokes and Punky Brewster, as well as movie roles in both Grease films and cartoon voiceovers on a slew of Chipmunk Adventures.

Goodman, who never married, is survived by seven nieces and nephews, 11 great nieces and nephews and 15 great-great nieces and nephews.

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Dig A Hole: Mr. George Carlin

June 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

$h[+! The last thing that I wanted to do tonight was bid farewell to the paladin of stand-up.

George Carlin, one of the most influential stand-up comic of this or any other generation, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.

George Denis Patrick Carlin was born in New York City on May 12, 1937. He was educated mostly in Catholic schools and he attended (but was expelled from) Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, the same alma mater as Regis Philbin and (Timpani!) Martin Scorsese!

A stint as a radar technician in the Air Force brought him to Bossier City, Louisiana. Labeled an “unproductive airman” by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957. He began working as a disc jockey on KJOE, a radio station based in the nearby city of Shreveport.

Late in 1959, Carlin partnered with Jack Burns as a short-lived comedy team. When the act broke up in 1962, Burns signed on with Chicago’s Second City while Carlin pursued a solo career in (and ultimately redefining) stand-up comedy.

His first television appearance was on The Mike Douglas Show in 1965. Soon Carlin began guesting on television variety shows, and I saw them all. He broke into television as a writer and performer on The Kraft Summer Music Hall (1966). The summer replacement series reunited George with Jack Burns who was making a name for himself as half of the comedy team Burns and (Avery) Schreiber.

This was around the time when I began channeling the art of “actor spotting.” I have forgotten the faces of countless former students that I spent weeks in a classroom with, but if you appeared in a 3 Stooges short and later pop up in the background of a Blondie comedy, I’ll spot you! It gives off an odd, triumphant feeling of personal satisfaction and after watching the Music Hall, I was delighted to see Carling pop up in a cameo on That Girl. Ditto for his brief appearance as a carhop in With Six You Get Eggroll.

After his many appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, I broke down and bought a couple of his albums. I wore out the grooves, and learned so much about comedic timing, after countless playings of Al Sleet, the “hippie-dippie weatherman” on Wonderful WINO.

In the late 1960s, Carlin did a complete career overhaul. Gone was the slick-backed hair and clean shaven face. Carlin changed from a Newhart-esque monologist to America’s supreme hippie satirist. His often imitated observational approach to humor remains unrivaled. And unlike Sienfeld, his humor was about something:

“If someone loves you and they leave and don’t come back, it was never meant to be. If someone loves you and they leave and come back, set them on fire.”

“When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.”

“The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, ‘You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.’”

Creased pants and Arrow collars rapidly gave way to faded jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts. (His then unconventional attire cost him several TV bookings.) On July 21, 1972, Carlin made history after uttering the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” at Milwaukee’s Summerfest. He was arrested for violating obscenity laws. The case, which Carlin referred to as “The Milwaukee Seven,” was dismissed after the judge cited some arcane clause written on a dated piece of paper concerning our constitutional rights to free speech.

Long before Howard Stern, Carlin was the first to wage war against the FCC. In 1973, some schmuck dropped a dime on Carlin after his son heard the same “filthy words” routine played on a New York radio station. it resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language.

The controversy certainly didn’t hurt his career. On the contrary - It transformed him into a legend! He was the first-ever host of Saturday Night Live”(1975) on October 11, 1975, and coincidentally, the first-ever host of “Fridays” (1980), an ABC rip-off of SNL. In 1976, while at the top of his game, Carlin took a five year vacation from stand-up. He began his popular and very funny HBO specials in 1977, but for all intent and purpose disappeared from live performance venues. It was later revealed that the mysterious absence was due to a series of heart attacks he suffered during his layoff.

I have to admit that it’s right about here that I lost track of George Carlin. His HBO specials were a bonus for this late night Cablevision dispatcher, but with the exception of a few movie roles, I am embarrassed to say that I know little of his post 1985 output.

At the movies, it was pretty much uphill after Eggroll. After a twenty year absence from the big screen (give or take a Car Wash), Carlin returned to claim a modest late period crop of cinematic oddities.

He was wasted (in every way) in Outrageous Fortune and very funny in both Bill and Ted pictures. Streisand gave him work on Prince of Tides while towards the end Kevin Smith cast him in three movies. His last major appearance was as the voice of Filmore in Pixar’s Cars.

In December 2004, Carlin announced that he would be voluntarily entering a drug rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for his dependency on alcohol and painkillers. On Christmas Day 2005, after celebrating one year of sobriety, he experienced significant shortage of breath and other heart-related symptoms. During an eight-day stay at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills, he was treated for a lung infection and narrowed arteries.

Four days ago, it was announced that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC would honor Carlin with its 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Considering how brutally honest Carlin was, in his own way, he helped to humanize the hippies for middle America. How fitting that George Carlin be the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. If Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the great American novel, surely George Carlin was the great American stand-up.

THE SEVEN WORDS YOU CAN NEVER SAY ON TELEVISION

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