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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
My friend Larry has a good tribute to Charles Nelson Reilly on his blog, and I can't add much to what's been said there and elsewhere. I would like to note that, not long ago (maybe a year or 2), I read an article about CNR that quoted him complaining about his abandonment by the medium to which he owed his greatest fame. He was ubiquitous to people of my generation, even overlooking his fabled Match Game tenure. Starring in sitcoms like Ghost and Mrs Muir, kiddy fare like Lidsville, constantly guesting on variety and talk shows, shilling on ads for the Bic Banana pen, the guy was all over the tube.
Carson kept him on deck as a "replacement guest" whenever someone pulled a no-show, since he always made himself available and proved a reliable and ever-popular guest. Come the Leno era, the phone stopped ringing (along with the Tonight Show's laughs and any residual trace of sophistication it had retained). Maybe it was a little unusual for a performer to complain publicly about this kind of cold-shoulder, but his predicament was anything but unusual. I give him credit for telling them what ingrate fucks they were. Then and now, Reilly's complaint struck a chord in me, signifying the fairly sudden end of a showbiz continuity maintained through the 50s, 60s, 70s and at least the better part of the 80s.
When I tell younger people nowadays about watching, say Sly Stone co-hosting the Mike Douglas show for entire weeks, they laugh "how did THAT happen?" But it was pretty common , onceuponna, to see these kind of kulture kollisions (or kollusions, really, 'cause Douglas visibly loved Sly and supported him even when Sly was unmistakably blasted on drugs; this was not the "clueless square vs. ironic hipster" shit you'd expect now ). No More: CNR's banishment to the entertainment remainder table typified the arrival of today's popular anticulture.
The songwriter Paul Williams once told me about his experiences guesting on Match Game, which he described as "the Algonquin Round Table of game shows." He was very fond of Charles and Brett, and though it seemed a little fulsome to hear him compare this goofball game to that legendary corroboree of caustic wits, he was right. Surely the booze flowed no less generously to hear Paul tell it, and if someone were to cherry pick the finer quips from Rayburn's celebrity panel over the 4 or 5 years Match Game really cooked, I think Charles would compare favorably to Parker and Benchley. And the Algonquin cynics never had to deliver EVERY FUCKING DAY, on coast to coast tv, as did Brett, Chuck, Dawson et al. I'll bet you a round of Tom Collinses that most Algonquin chatter consisted of low gossip, pretentious blather, silly arguments and fuck jokes, just like yours and mine.
So... thanks and a tip of the toupee to you, Chuck; you still make me laugh my blank off.
Carson kept him on deck as a "replacement guest" whenever someone pulled a no-show, since he always made himself available and proved a reliable and ever-popular guest. Come the Leno era, the phone stopped ringing (along with the Tonight Show's laughs and any residual trace of sophistication it had retained). Maybe it was a little unusual for a performer to complain publicly about this kind of cold-shoulder, but his predicament was anything but unusual. I give him credit for telling them what ingrate fucks they were. Then and now, Reilly's complaint struck a chord in me, signifying the fairly sudden end of a showbiz continuity maintained through the 50s, 60s, 70s and at least the better part of the 80s.
When I tell younger people nowadays about watching, say Sly Stone co-hosting the Mike Douglas show for entire weeks, they laugh "how did THAT happen?" But it was pretty common , onceuponna, to see these kind of kulture kollisions (or kollusions, really, 'cause Douglas visibly loved Sly and supported him even when Sly was unmistakably blasted on drugs; this was not the "clueless square vs. ironic hipster" shit you'd expect now ). No More: CNR's banishment to the entertainment remainder table typified the arrival of today's popular anticulture.
The songwriter Paul Williams once told me about his experiences guesting on Match Game, which he described as "the Algonquin Round Table of game shows." He was very fond of Charles and Brett, and though it seemed a little fulsome to hear him compare this goofball game to that legendary corroboree of caustic wits, he was right. Surely the booze flowed no less generously to hear Paul tell it, and if someone were to cherry pick the finer quips from Rayburn's celebrity panel over the 4 or 5 years Match Game really cooked, I think Charles would compare favorably to Parker and Benchley. And the Algonquin cynics never had to deliver EVERY FUCKING DAY, on coast to coast tv, as did Brett, Chuck, Dawson et al. I'll bet you a round of Tom Collinses that most Algonquin chatter consisted of low gossip, pretentious blather, silly arguments and fuck jokes, just like yours and mine.
So... thanks and a tip of the toupee to you, Chuck; you still make me laugh my blank off.
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