The first time I laid eyes on Bob Hope he was riding on the back of a convertible down the main street of Wapakoneta, Ohio in September 1969. An entertainment icon looking for a reporter with a dumb question. Luckily,…
Yearly Archives: 2014
Asking Bob Hope A (Dumb) Question
Tagged with: Bob Hope, Dolores Hope, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, NBC, Neil Armstrong, O'Keefe Centre, Ohio, Toronto, vaudville, Vietnam, Wapakoneta
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A New Novel, Marley Mourned, The Real Clinton Remembered…
This week we said farewell to the beloved chocolate lab of my sister-in-law, Alicia, and brother, Ric. Marley’s sad exit after fourteen years, coincided with the publication of the e-book version of my new Tree Callister novel, The Hound of…
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I Can’t Stop Watching: Sex and the TV Drama Revolution
We’ll get to the sex stuff in a moment, but before we do, a brief look back… The first time I visited Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time at Universal Studios. In those days, Universal was a television…
Tagged with: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Broadchurch, Bryan Cranston, Claire Danes, D.B. Weiss, David Chase, David R. Benioff, Dennis Weaver, Downton Abbey, Eddie Albert, Fargo, Game of Thrones, Homeland, House of Cards, Jenji Kohan, Justified, Kevin Spacey, Kojak, Mad Men, Martin Scorsese, Masters of Sex, McCloud, Nic Pizzolatto, Orange Is the New Black, Robert Wagner, Switch, Telly Savalas, The Americans, The Bridge, The Fall, The Sopranos, Top of the Lake, Toronto International Film Festival, True Detective, Universal Studios, Vince Gilligan, Wolf of Wall Street
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I Tripped Lauren Bacall
This is how I came to trip a Hollywood legend. First of all, let’s set the scene: It is opening night at Detroit’s grand old Fisher Theatre. A new musical based on the classic 1950 Bette Davis movie, All About…
Tagged with: Adolph Green, All About Eve, Applause, Bette Davis, Betty Comden, Broadway, Charles Strouse, Detroit, Fisher Theatre, Humphrey Bogart, Key Largo, Lauren Bacall, Lee Adams, Len Cariou, Margo Channing, Ray Bennett, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Toronto Telegram
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On Top of the World With Robin Williams
The world premiere of the musical Popeye, a live action movie based on the iconic spinach-eating comic strip character, written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Robert Altman, music by Harry Nilsson, was held on a warm December night at the legendary…
Lost on the Prairie With James Garner
We were somewhere in the middle of Alberta, James Garner and me. Actually, there were a few dozen crew members around as well, not to mention Stuart Margolin, Garner’s long-time friend and a frequent co-star on The Rockford Files. But…
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Lucky Man: Remembering Hartley Steward
When Hartley Steward was the London correspondent for the Toronto Sun, he got to be friends with Vic Chapman, the Canadian who at the time was the press secretary to Prince Charles. Vic and his wife were provided with the…
Tagged with: Doug Creighton, Hartley Steward, Prince Charles, The Sunday Sun, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun
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Misfits and Inglorious Bastards
I went back to my past a few weeks ago–and discovered they were tearing It down. The past had been safely housed for over forty years inside the old gray stone monolith that was the Windsor Star on the corner of…
Tagged with: Detroit, Ella Fitzgerald, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Hoffa, Lauren Bacall, Neil Armstrong, Ontario, Ray Charles, Teddy Kennedy, The Front Page, Windsor, Windsor Star
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How Barbara Walters Seduced Me
After she seduced me, Barbara Walters wrote me a letter. I thought of the letter this week as television’s best-known interviewer, turning eighty-five this year, officially retires from the business of asking famous people questions. Mind you, her final “gets” have been V.…
