Surley You Knew Leslie Nielsen Was Awesome

For a guy like me, who loves silly movies, Leslie Nielsen was a screen legend. He passed away Sunday at a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. He was 84.

Instead of just write a list of all the movies that he was in that I love, I thought we'd turn to the wonderful world of YouTube to illustrate some highlights from his career.

My favorite movie of his, is probably everybody's...and the film he is most famous for: Airplane! (1980). And here is one of the most famous comedic lines in all of motion picture history...


Another film, so near and dear to my heart is Spaceship (1983). It was actually originally titled The Creature Wasn't Nice, then later renamed Spaceship for VHS to cash in on Airplane. Then again later on, it was renamed Naked Space to ride the on the coattails of The Naked Gun series. By any title, it's one of my all time favorite flicks...


Another favorite of mine has got to be Repossessed (1990) - a spoof of The Exorcist.


Then we have Wrongfully Accused (1998) - a parody of The Fugitive.


Mr. Nielsen has appeared in alot of these parody/spoof films - some fantastic, others horrible. More of the great ones include:

Dracula Dead and Loving It (1995)
Spy Hard (1996)
Mr. Magoo (1997)
Scary Movie 3 (2003)
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Superhero Movie (2008)

and of course who can forget The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1989), The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991), and The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). They were all based on the super-short lived TV series Police Squad! from 1982.

Barb & Tom

Over the past few days we've lost two of TV's most beloved parents. Barbara Billingsley is best known to the world as the mom on Leave It To Beaver. When I first heard of her passing I immediately thought of her as the voice of Nanny on Muppet Babies, but then my Twitter buddy @VeraBlue reminded me that Mrs. Billingsley had an important role in one of the all-time greatest films: Airplane! from 1980.



I was never real big on Happy Days but when I heard of Tom Bosley's passing I instantly thought of a fantastic movie that I love which he is in, Million Dollar Mystery (1987). You may remember Mr. Bosley served as the Glad trash bag spokesperson for quite sometime. In 1987, Glad bankrolled a movie where $4 million dollars is hidden among four trash bags in different locations. A wild and wacky chase, a la It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World ensues, with various comedians and grade Z celebrities all trying to find the dough. Only $3 million is recovered in the movie, but there are clues to where the other million is stashed and they supposedly really hid a million bucks in a trash bag somewhere in the real world and there was a contest (sponsored by Glad) to find the loot. Easily one of the greatest movie promotion gimmicks of all time, it's also a fantastic movie!



Bye-Bye, June Cleaver from The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sad Day for Happy Days from CNN

Harold Gould Was Awesome

From Entertainment Weekly's webiste:

Harold Gould, the actor who played Rhoda’s father Martin Morgenstern on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, has passed away, the New York Times reports. The actor — who died of prostate cancer — was 86 years old.

Gould was well-known for his work in other sitcoms, like The Golden Girls, in which he played a widower who romanced Betty White’s Rose. The actor was also active on film, appearing in such movies as 1973′s The Sting, 1975′s Love and Death, and 1976′s Silent Movie. Among some of his other television credits: The Donna Reed Show, St. Elsewhere, Dallas, Perry Mason, The King of Queens, L.A. Law, Hawaii Five-0, Soap, The Love Boat, Mister Ed, That Girl, and Hogan’s Heroes.

Harold Gould was another one of those familiar faces of Hollywood who I've always enjoyed whenever he would pop up in something. To me, he's best known as Miles, Rose's boyfriend on The Golden Girls. But another role I associate him with instantly is of Grandfather Disguisey in the Dana Carvey vehicle The Master of Disguise (2002) which is pictured above. He's also in a bunch of favorites of mine: he plays the judge in the great Neil Simon ensemble comedy Seems Like Old Times and he's in one of Woody Allen's most underrated films Love and Death (1975). I also adore the movie Gus (1973) about a football playing mule which he was in as well as another great Disney comedy The Strongest Man in the World (1975). He wasn't the strongest man, Kurt Russell was. Gould is even in my favorite Mel Brooks' flick Silent Movie (1976). You'll also find Mr. Gould in a few of the earlier Kenny Rogers as The Gambler TV films.

Golden Girls on the Silver Screen

First off, we neglected to mention the passing of Rue McClanahan a few weeks ago. The loss of a Golden Girl deserves recognition, and WWoB certainly dropped the ball on that one. And for that, we say "Sorry!" But we did have this post in the works for a while now so we shall salute Rue and all the Golden Girls with a brief look at their careers on the silver screen.


The Golden Girls debuted on NBC way back in 1985 and ran for seven seasons, almost always finishing in the top 20 shows of the year. Even though I was all of 12 years old when the show debuted I have always been a huge fan of the program. Even though it certainly wasn't aimed at my demographic, I always found the show to be hysterical and it's always made me laugh out loud. I had already been a fan of Betty White and Rue McClanahan from their work on Mama's Family (the original short lived NBC version, not the syndicated run that played on TBS for far too long) and I quickly became a fan of Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur for their perfect comic timing.


All four actresses mostly concentrated their careers on either television or the stage, but they have all made film appearances that I thought would be a unique subject to cover.

The only one of the four girls that tried to turn the success of The Golden Girls into a movie career was Estelle Getty, who in reality was not the eldest of the four on the show...but she played the oldest - Dorthy's mother Sophia Petrillo. During the run of The Golden Girls Getty had two high profile film roles. She played Andrew McCarthy's boss in Mannequin (1987) which also started future sitcom players Meshach Taylor and Kim Cattrall. Estelle Getty received second billing after Sylvester Stallone in the 1992 flop Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Most people couldn't get over the title of the film, but I found it to be a pretty funny movie with Getty playing Stallone's mom who just wants to fight the bad guys along side her son. After The Golden Girls ended, Estelle Getty made an appearance in the talking mouse epic Stuart Little (1999) while taking bit parts on TV here and there. You can also see some pre-Sophia roles in the films: Tootsie (1982), Deadly Force (1983) and Mask (1985). It was her work in the Tony winning broadway play "Torch Song Trilogy" that first brought Getty fame and recognition, but when it came time to cast the film version she was passed over and her role was given to Anne Bancroft. Estelle Getty passed away at age 85 in July 2008.


Bea Arthur played Dorthy Zbornak, she was apparently the most familiar face of the cast to 1985 audiences. She has appeared in a very popular 70's sitcom called Maude. I had never heard of the show for years, and therefor I had no idea who Bea Arthur was when The Golden Girls came on - but I knew she was darn funny!
Bea Arthur's big break came with a role in the Broadway production "Mame" which stared Angela Lansbury as the title character and Arthur as her sidekick. When Mame got the big screen Hollywood treatment in 1974 it was Arthur who kept her role in the movie version and Lansbury was replaced with Lucille Ball. Bea Arthur was always more interested in theatre and television than film. Her only other big screen credit of note is a hilarious cameo in Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I (1981). One of her few post-Golden credits is in a 1995 film called For Better of For Worse, which ran in this country on TNT and it was pretty enjoyable from what I saw. Her very last role was of Larry David's mother on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Bea Arthur died from lung cancer in April of last year.


Man-hungry Blanche Devereaux was played to perfection by Rue McClanahan. Long before this TV gig, Rue started making appearances in forgotten small films starting in the early 60's. She co-stared with Bea Arthur in her series Maude, which brought McClanahan more into the public eye. One of her earliest post-Maude roles is in a film mentioned at WWoB before; a 1980 TV-movie called The Great American Traffic Jam. In the telefilm, Rue sits in a car for two hours with her husband, played by Ed McMahon. (Fun film, I wish it were out on DVD!) During the Golden Girls years, Rue McClanahan was a popular fixture in made-for-TV movies, including a popular trilogy Children of the Bride (1990), Baby of the Bride (1991) and Mother of the Bride (1993). You can turn in Lifetime, Hallmark, Oxygen or any of those other woman channels just about any day and find one of those movies on. Big Screen roles started coming Rue's way in 1995 in the very funny Dear God, which was the first staring role for Greg Kinnear but also featured a great appearance from Tim Conway! Another great movie featuring Blanche is Out To Sea (1997), this is a sit-com of a movie staring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, good stuff! She also shows up in the 1997 big budget epic Starship Troopers. Rue McClanahan was still working up until her death just a few weeks ago. The last chapter of her career was filled with roles in many different TV shows as well as a number of made-for-TV movies. She was 76 when she passed away.

And then we come to Betty White! Dear sweet Betty White, who has literally been working in television since before there was Network television and is currently one of the hottest properties in all of Hollywood. Betty White has always considered herself a television personality and has only been making appearances on the silver screen in the last 15 years. I was excited years ago when she popped up in the Morgan Freeman/Christian Slater action flick Hard Rain (1998). She also did the horror movie Lake Placid in 1999. Betty turns up in a funny scene in the Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfeiffer comedy The Story of Us (1999). In the 2003 Steve Martin comedy Bringing Down the House, White played against her Golden Girls persona of ditzy Rose Nylund, and played Martin's obnoxious, rude and slightly racist neighbor across the street. Every scene Betty's in is hilarious! Her role in last year's The Proposal is getting alot of attention now that Betty White is a huge star, and they'll also be banking on her superfame to anchor the new chick flick You Again, slated for release later this year! Currently, Betty White is 88 years old and working as a series regular on the hit TV Land sit-com Hot In Cleavland.

Thank you for reading...and Thank you for being a friend.

Johnny Carson Does Walter Cronkite

Yahoo News:
Legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite dies at 92

And here's a brief clip from the film Back to Neverland which played at the Animation Studio tour at Disney/MGM Studios Theme Park when it opened in 1989:

Michael Jackson Was As Awesome as Gremlins, Smurfs and Pac-Man

I realize that I'm a couple of days late to post a Michael Jackson tribute on my blog, but I wanted to do something more than just mention that I liked him. Here at WWoB, I can go on and on about things from my childhood like Gremlins cereal, or Smurf figures but I've never once mentioned how much Michael Jackson played in my life at that time. When I was in the 5th grade is when Thriller became huge and Michael Jackson became the superstar that he was. I can remember buying my Thriller tape at Bradlee's with the money I won for selling the most candy bars at school. I listened to that tape a million and a half times and as every other kid my age, I knew the words to each and every song on that album. Of course for me, I couldn't just have the album...I had to show my appreciation for things by buying everything under the sun I could get my hands on related to Michael Jackson! I chose the picture above because I remember having a yellow sweatshirt from Ocean City - with Ocean City, Maryland written on the front and this picture of MJ sunscreened on the back. That was style, my friends.

In the good ol' days, nothing was a "thing" unless it had trading cards. I don't recall the Michael Jackson trading cards in my neighborhood being as big as Gremlins cards or Dukes of Hazzard cards, but I know I had a stack of MJ cards that let me read up on all sorts of fun facts about him and his career. Each pack of the cards came with a sticker...some of them are seen here. My official collecting rule is that you save the sticker cards with the rest of your cards, but doubles were open for using as stickers on whatever you wanted. I can still picture a handful of these purple babies on various items of mine.


I read this book, and a few others like it, a dozen or so times. These hack biographies spread 7 or 8 pages of information over 200 pages. I know often on a reread I would skip all the stuff about The Jackson Five and Michael's first album and just get to the part where Thriller came into the play. I can remember sitting around with some of the kids from the neighborhood and reading this aloud to them. Wow! That's strange, isn't it!?


Now some of your more die-hard fans went the "jacket route" to profess their love for Michael. I knew a handful of kids at school that had the "Beat It" jacket, which was red and had zippers all over. I managed to get my hands on a Michael Jackson jacket, except I had the "Thriller" model (as seen here). I don't think mine was quite as elaborate as this one, but I do remember that you could see me coming a mile away in my big leather V, and I think the whole Thriller boat had sailed a few years ago before I got this jacket. I think I wore it once or twice and then couldn't take the teasing anymore and retired it.

But no one could take away my Thriller View-Master reels. To this day, View Master gives me a little chill. I think it's just a great toy! When they came out with reels of scenes from the music video for Thriller, I was so there! The video for that song is still the greatest video ever made, and since I didn't have a VCR at the time - reliving the thrill on my View Master was good enough. As yes, more than one time, I used my View Master projector and played the song while I scrolled through the pictures. That's View Master artistry at the highest level!

And then we come to Captain EO. Michael Jackson was so cool he got his own Disney Theme Park attraction! Captain EO was a 3-D film that played in EPCOT and Disneyland. It was kind of a Michael Jackson version of Star Wars, with little creatures and odd aliens and a couple of musical numbers thrown in for good fun. The movie was even produced by George Lucas, for Darth's sake! None of it really made any sence but I always loved the music that was in the finale of the film! Captain EO opened in September 1986 and ran in EPCOT's Journey Into Imagination pavilion until 1994. Michael kept on dancing at Disneyland for another 3 years and closed up there in April of `97. (It also ran in Tokyo and Paris.) For some odd reason, MTV showed the film once after it had been removed from the parks...I taped it, and it's a treasured piece of my Walt Disney World memorabilia collection.

It's sad that in recent years, Michael Jackson's legal problems and odd tabloid stories became more popular than the music and entertainment that he provided. With this passing, it seems people everywhere are starting to remember what a special place he once held in our hearts.

Ed McMahon was Awesome

I guess we'd be remiss if WWoB didn't acknowledge the passing of broadcasting legend Ed McMahon yesterday. I never really considered myself a fan McMahon's...I didn't necessarily get excited when I saw him on TV nor did I ever seek out his appearances. Yet he was always around in one role or another as a very likable - always welcome - TV friend.

McMahon, of course, is best known as the sidekick to Johnny Carson on 30 seasons of The Tonight Show. I never saw too many actual episodes of The Tonight Show but as a child I religiously watched Carson's Comedy Classics which was a syndicated half-hour package of clips from early episodes of The Tonight Show. I was also a loyal viewer of TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes which Ed co-hosted with Dick Clark. (I thought that show had been on for many, many of my childhood years, but it turns out it was only on for three seasons.)

Ed also appeared as himself on an episode of ALF, where Alf ends up hosting The Tonight Show. Then many years later Ed and Alf teamed up again when Ed sat in the co-host chair again for the short lived (and not too great) ALF's Hit Talk Show which ran on TV Land.

My other stand-out Ed McMahon memory is a fantastic 1980 made-for-TV movie that I saw one afternoon 20 years ago called The Great American Traffic Jam, where he sits in a car with Rue McClanahan for two hours. I wonder if the casting decision to have McMahon and McClanahan play husband and wife was based on the fact that both their last names start with the "Mc" prefix!?!

He's guest stared on everything from C.H.i.P.'s and Newhart to Sabrina The Teenage Witch and even Higglytown Heroes (that's a Playhouse Disney show for those out of the loop!) Here's a great piece from The Tonight Show when Ed was able to steal the show from Johnny....

Cannonball Memories

There's no love for a Cannonball Run fan such as myself. We don't get collectible action figures to buy, or books or even bed sheets for our kids. Nope, as far as movie franchises go The Cannonball Run is a done deal.
Which is why I thought this decent sized write up in Entertainment Weekly was kind of cool. Often when a celebrity passes away, EW asks another celebrity to write something in their honor. Last week's loss of Dom DeLuise brought Marilu Henner out from the rock she's been living under to pen this memory of her experience with Dom on the 1984 film Cannonball Run II. Joy! You should be able to click the article on the left to enlarge it for easier reading!

Dom Deluise Was Awesome

I'm not sure when the news broke wide, but I heard in on the radio yesterday afternoon driving home from out of town for a few days...comic legend Dom Deluise has passed away. Anybody who knows me knows that Dom Deluise was an actor who was near and dear to my heart. He was in scores of movies that I watched as a kid and stared in some of my all-time favorite movies including my very favorite movie of all time: The Cannonball Run (1981). Dom made alot of appearances over the years with his good buddy Burt Reynolds, but the two of them were never better than in the star-studded cross country race that was The Cannonball Run. They teamed up for another Cannonball race in The Cannonball Run II (1984) and they appeared together in the sequel to another one of my favorite movies in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980).

Deluise was also often found in Mel Brooks' films. These were some of my earliest exposures to comedy and are also still some of the funniest films ever made. His earlier collaborations with Brooks gave us Blazing Saddles (1974) where he has a bit part all the way at the end of the movie but it's still one of the most memorable scenes in the film; Silent Movie (1976) which is a hilarious and often over looked gem from Brooks' earlier years; and the classic History of the World Part 1 (1981) where Dom plays Emperor Nero. All, good stuff! Dom even turns up in some of Mel Brooks' later works: Spaceballs (1987) which, sorry, I'm not a fan off...and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

Dom also had a habit of turning up in cameo roles in lots of movies that I loved. He was the first of a slew of cameos in the brilliant The Muppet Movie (1979). He turns up once....once, in a fantastic Michael Keaton movie called Johnny Dangerously (1984) which I've seen a million times. And he even shows up in the comic biblical epic Wholly Moses! (1980) which I used to watch all the time as a kid, but watching it now is actually kind of painful.

One of Dom Deluise's most famous roles was in Fatso (1980). I've actually never seen that movie but in my opinion, his tour-de-force performance was in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) where he played Melvin P. Thorpe - he sang, he danced, he turned in one heck of a performance and poured his heart and soul into that role. He steals the show!

Career wise, his star started to dim with the one-two punch of Haunted Honeymoon (1986) a dreadful black-and-white comedy where he played "Aunt Kate" opposite real life couple Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner (a low-point in all their careers) and Going Bananas (1987) where Dom teamed up with Jimmy "J.J." Walker and some dude in a cheap monkey costume. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds!

Deluise also kept busy with voice work in cartoons. He was known for his vocal appearances in almost all of Don Bluth's animated films: The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986), All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989) and all of their various sequels, direct to video movies and Saturday morning cartoons. He even did voice work for Disney in the wonderful Oliver & Company (1988).

Even though he hadn't appeared on screen much in the last decade or so, It was always a treat when I found Dom Deluise on TV for one reason or another. He's always been in my movies and TV shows and it will be sad knowing he won't pop up and surprise me again.

Here's a short film that I've seen many times that kind of showcases Dom Deluise's style and sense of humor....

We've Lost a Golden Girl

Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' dies at 84
By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer


Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 84.

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and McClanahan in "Mama's Family." The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play "Torch Song Trilogy." In her early 60s, she flunked her "Golden Girls" test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.

"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

"The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us," White said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"The Golden Girls" culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

"I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I'd say, 'Don't promote me, please,'" she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including "Tootsie," "Deadly Force" and "Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story."

After her success in "The Golden Girls," other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in "Mask," Sylvester Stallone's in "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" and Barry Manilow's in the TV film "Copacabana." Other credits included "Mannequin" and "Stuart Little" (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

"The Golden Girls," which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

"I always told her she should be a standup comic. She was so funny in person," McClanahan recalled. "She would always say, 'Why couldn't we make these characters Jewish? Why am I Sicilian?'"

Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.

Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.

She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in "The Golden Girls."

Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was "under 5 feet and under 100 pounds."

McClanahan said her nickname for Getty was "Slats."

"Because she was so short, itty-bitty," she said.

In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

___

Associated Press Writers Robert Jablon and Solvej Schou contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Tom Poston Was Awesome

Veteran comic actor Tom Poston passed away at his home Monday night after a brief undisclosed illness. He was 85. Poston had a staring role on two of the greatest sitcoms of all time. Most notably he played George Utley, the goofy handyman at the Startford Inn on NEWHART for 8 seasons. He was also featured as the grumpy downstairs neighbor Mr. Bickley on MORK & MINDY.

Tom Poston's television career started to take off when he was a featured actor on THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW (1956-1960). From there he made appearances in many classic shows like CHiPs, GET SMART, and THE LOVE BOAT. His numerous television roles included guest spots and reoccurring characters on shows literally from the beginning days of television up to modern day pieces of crap like 8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER and THAT 70'S SHOW.

Most recently he could be seen on the big screen in THE PRINCESS DIARIES 2 and CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS. Sadly, his last job was on the Disney Channel train-wreck THE SUITE LIFE OF ZACK & CODY.

But to me, he'll always be Mr. Bickley and George Utley.