Owen Marshall sucked. But I like it anyway.

Owen Marshall was an early 1970's drama of a lawyer and the cases he takes on. Much like Perry Mason, Owen Marshall found a way to win most cases. It was basic TV drama in those days. We were years away from Hill Street Blues and Family and others that didn't always go for the happy or predictable ending. But basically, like all shows, Owen Marshall: Counsellor At Law told stories. 
One of my favorite shows of all time is Law And Order. Most of us who like that show know the opening off by heart.

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attourney who prosecutes the offenders. These are their stories.

In the world of TV drama, there is no comparison between Owen Marshall and Law And Order. Law and Order was one of the best written, filmed and acted shows of all time with storylines and issues that gripped you every week. Owen Marshall wasn't any of those things. It was just an okay 70s TV show.
However,
Everybody has got a story. This is mine, and this is theirs. By theirs, I mean the people in the episode of Owen Marshall I just watched who have faded into the shadows, and those that shined brighter after this episode.
Owen Marshall sucked. But I like it anyway. I'm going to tell you why. So, first, my story. Then theirs.
The plot is predictable and somewhat boring.
The acting is bad, and when it isn't bad it is horrifically overacted by young actors looking to get noticed. In this episode (not the one I am using for this blog) James Brolin (pre Marcus Welby) plays an ex-boxer turned singer who gets in trouble. Oh, and he also has a horrible Louisiana accent and other traits which don't make any sense at all for the character he plays. So, he overacts the crap out of it.

The writing is terrible and the topics were weak and not explored in any detail. Not much to really recommend the show as time has passed. That is one of the reasons it is long forgotten and never mentioned with the great shows of that era. However, it did last for 4 years on TV, so it was popular enough. Popular enough in fact that I remember it well. Why?
Because it takes me back. Back to the early 70s, when I remember my parents watching an episode in their bedroom. It was one of the happy times when we were all in the room together before all the crazy shit in my life and our lives started to happen. I don't remember at all that specific episode or anybody that was on it, only that we all watched it together as a family.

Owen Marshall is a very 70s show. Back when you didn't have to wow them, and have great scripts, classic one liners and top shelf characters like you see these days. The minute you watch it, you are transported back to the 70s. Whether that is good or bad, take it for what it is.
Some 40 years later, Owen Marshall is back on my radar screen (You Tube screen actually) and it brings up all sorts of memories. Each time you watch one, you see all sorts of actors who went on to something very big, but were nobody when they were on the show. That still happens these days, but not as often.
I like to see young actors, who went on to much better things before they were anybody. And older actors at the end of their run, like Peggy Lee.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AntKUHdoR9E

Here is another I watched with Peggy Lee. Yes, that Peggy Lee. Fever..Peggy Lee. Not a great actress, but certainly she could sing.

In the Peggy Lee episode, her son was played by Mark Hamill. The same Mark Hamill that went on to star in Star Wars 5 years later.

Here are some of the players in this episode called Shadow Of A Name, both the famous and the ones that never were. Everyone of them has a story. Just like all of us.

Arthur Hill was the star of the show. He played Owen Marshall, and he was in most of the scenes. Unless you do your homework these days you would be hard pressed to find him linked to any role but this one. But, he was very prolific before Owen Marshall, and afterwards for a time, until he decided to retire from acting for personal reasons.
In 1963 he won the Tony Award for his portrayal of George in the original Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He also had many film and TV roles, including The Andromeda Strain (1971) and as the grandfather on Little House On The Prairie in 1976.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/obituaries/27hill.html?_r=1& 

Arthur Edward Spence Hill was born in Melfort, Saskatchewan, on the Canadian prairie. His boyhood ambition was to be a lawyer like his father, who knew each of the town’s 2,000 residents and was eager to help them with their problems. Writers have noted that in many ways Arthur Hill’s “Owen Marshall” character resembled the actor’s father.

Being that his father was the type of lawyer he played on Owen Marshall, it isn't any surprise that a fine actor like Arthur Hill played the role very well and his legacy is that role. Before Owen Marshall, Hill was a very successful Broadway and stage actor. He retired from acting to look after his very sick wife, who died slowly from Alzheimer's. The same fate that took his own life a few years later. 

"I can't hold it. She's breaking up. She's breaking up."

"Gentleman, we can rebuild him. We have the technology."

Lee Majors. Between The Big Valley (his first big role) and The Six Million Dollar Man (the role he is most known for), he was on this show. He didn't get to do much, but he was not a bit player. Majors played an ex-college and pro football player who had become a lawyer. Just like Arthur Hill, this somewhat resembled Lee Majors real life. 
Majors earned a scholarship to Indiana University to play football. After he transferred to Eastern Kentucky he played in one game the following year, but suffered a severe back injury that ended his college football career. Following his injury, he turned his attention to acting. After college, he received an offer to try out for the St. Louis Cardinals football team. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles and turned to acting. His first big role was on The Big Valley. Also on that show was a very young Linda Evans, who would go on to make her name on Dynasty. Among the more than 400 actors that Majors beat out for that role on The Big Valley was Burt Reynolds, another former football player turned actor. Owen Marshall came along shortly after The Big Valley, and of course Majors caught his big break when he was cast as Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man.

And on this episode, briefly at the start, he interacts with his future wife,  Farrah Fawcett,  who had a very small role. They didn't meet on this show, they began dating 3 years earlier in 1968, but neither were the megastars they became about 5 years later. 

Farrah went on to be known for two things. A famous poster, and a TV show about 3 young women who work as private detectives. 

Nobody knew back in 1971 that she would become anything more than she was at that time; a very famous TV and magazine model.

Barry Sullivan played the hot shot lawyer hired to get one of the two young college kids off because of a fire they set while they were drunk that resulted in a death. As it turns out, Marshall is a family friend of one of the boys and he is hired to represent one while Sullivan's character (Grant Chase) represents the other. They have different motives, objectives and strategies on how to try the case and they clash, which forms the basis of the episode. Sullivan usually played the heavy or the not so nice guy with power. It was his niche.
Barry Sullivan was born Patrick Barry Sullivan on August 29, 1912 in New York City. He was the seventh son of a seventh son, a very rare oddity.
Sullivan was never a big time actor, but if you watch any of the popular TV shows from the 60s or 70s you will find that Sullivan guest starred on it. I have recently seen him on Barnaby Jones, Ironside, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix,  McMillan and Wife, The Streets of San Francisco, many times more than once, and of course in this episode. You would recognize him if you saw him, but likely not know his name. Like Majors, he was a football player until he fell into acting and earned a very good living doing it. Unlike Majors, he was never a leading man. He did have one major leading role in the 1947 movie The Gangster. 

Although he was a working broadway actor for many years before he got into television, he was mostly in flops and once he began to get steady work on TV he gave up broadway stage acting. He had found a very successful, if not famous way to make a very good living as an actor. He was always in demand (much like his character in this episode) when he wanted to work. 
Sullivan's youngest daughter, Jenny, was an actress and successful playwright. In addition to that, she married very successful singer/songwriter Jimmy Messina.

Sullivan also made a guest appearance on The Bionic Woman, the spinoff counterpart to The Six Million Dollar Man, which he never guest starred on. He also made guest spots on The Virginian and Bonanza, two of the other big Westerns' of the 1960s, but never on The Big Valley, which starred Lee Majors.

Joan Darling was a series regular who was never asked to do much either, but did have her moments. She played Marshall's secretary. In this episode, she had a much bigger part than normal, convincing Majors character to investigate and join the case when he didn't want to, which led to the evidence that helped Marshall's client avoid a possible death penalty.
But it was as a director that Darling made her mark. She was a very successful TV director, and her biggest claim to fame was directing the "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and received a 1976 Emmy nomination for that work. 
 

But it was as a film director that she will be most remembered. She was one of the first female film directors when that simply did not happen. She broke into that medium in 1976 with the Susan Dey starring film, First Love.

Jean Allison played the mother of Jerry Collier (played by Tim Matheson), the client of Owen Marshall who did do the crime, but only by accident. 
Allison was just a working actress, who never really worked much or gained any notice. Her first husband, Jerry Boyd,
wrote Million Dollar Baby.

In 1960 Allison met Phil Toorvald, a Stanford University senior studying electrical engineering. Allison decided that acting would take a backseat to her greater love, raising a family.  She was happy being a mother for many years and never returned to acting. 
Her first feature part had been in the 1958 film Edge of Fury On that set she met cameraman Jack Couffer. Fifty years later, after each had survived the loss of long time spouses they now share their lives together in retirement. 
Ed Begley Jr. went on to do some great things as an actor, and is now a devout environmentalist. In this episode, he played the basketball player in the first scene who is killed accidentally in the fire. He was only 22 at the time of this episode, one of his first roles. And not much of a role at that.
It wasn't until 1982 that he hit it big with St. Elsewhere. But he almost never made it to that show ten years later. In 1972, just a year after his character on Owen Marshall died in the fire, Begley was attacked in real life by a  gang of teenagers and nearly fatally knifed.

Two of his then little known co-stars on St. Elsewhere also went on to hit it big. Mark Harmon, also an ex football player went on to the mega hit NCIS, while Denzel Washington ended up doing okay in films. 

Tim Matheson played the Marshall's client. He had a significant role in this episode and clearly stood out as one of the better actors. His career really didn't take off until his starring role in Animal House (1978). He has been a steady working actor since then and has had many starring, if not spectacular roles.
He went on to act in over 100 film and television projects. Matheson had a recurring role as Vice President John Hoynes on The West Wing, a show that also starred Mark Harmon and also Ed Begley Jr., whom his character had killed 30 years previous in this episode.

John Larch played George Patterson, the District Attorney who wanted revenge for losing so many cases to better lawyers. Much like Barry Sullivan (who was his rival in this episode) Larch was a long time TV character actor, mostly in Westerns. He was in just about every western that TV made-except The Big Valley. Unlike Sullivan, he didn't get the notice that others did although he was a series guest star regular. He did have significant guest starring roles of a few episodes each for both Dallas and Dynasty, two of the biggest prime time soaps of their day.
Dennis Rucker as Harold, the witness at the party that gives the clue that saves Marshall's client from a possible death sentence. He was so obscure as an actor that I could not find out much about him. One of those who probably had an interesting life story that will never be told.
Bryan Montgomery played Roger Carlyle, the son of a wealthy importer who had the hot shot attorney (Sullivan) hell bent on getting him off even though he thought he was guilty, when in fact he wasn't. 
Montgomery's acting career never amounted to much, even as a bit player on TV shows. In Los Angeles from the early 1970s he found work as an actor and model. But his popularity never amounted to enough to make a living at it.
Later he became a restaurateur and opened both Beecher's Cafe in Malibu and Razzle Dazzle in Santa Monica, dying at age 62 in 2008.
Some made it big after this episode. Some didn't. Some took many years to hit it big. Some never did. Others were steady actors who made a good living, while others gave up acting for other pursuits. One was to be a wife and mother, while another became a famous director. 
Still another pair became man and wife and big time 70s icons on TV shows that endure to this day. 
Everybody has got a story. Sometimes you never hear that story. Today, you heard some of them. 
Part of my story is tied up in their stories, and the memories that come along with them. I watched many of the shows that were mentioned in this blog, and each one of those has a story and memory attached. But those are stories for another blog. 
As for me, I will keep watching shows like Owen Marshall, even though I know they aren't very good. It is what you don't see on the screen that makes it worth watching them again. And again. And again. Its the stories they don't tell.

Whatever Happened To? Bobby McFerrin

 "One of the musical worlds great adventurers."

-Jian Gomeshi. 

Bobby McFerrin. In one phrase, that best describes him:
He is different.  

Sometimes you think you know someone, but you don't. We can't know-it-all and unless you are doing serious research or pay close attention it is very likely that you don't. I thought I knew all there was to really know about Bobby McFerrin, but I certainly did not. Now I do and so will you if you read the rest of this blog.
Today I ask the question: Whatever happened to Bobby McFerrin?  

"I wrote that song in an hour. Didn't do a single thing to promote it...the tune took off all by itself. I don't sing it in concert, and haven't in 25 years, for two reasons. First, people identify me with that song and think that's what I do and it is just a little fraction of what I do and also I was sick of singing it before anybody really heard it."

In 1988, McFerrin recorded the hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy", which brought him widespread recognition across the world. However, the song's success "ended McFerrin's musical life as he had known it," and he began to pursue other musical possibilities – on stage and in recording studios. Even before that mega hit, McFerrin had been doing many non mainstream things. Something he has continued to do to this day.

Don't worry. Be Happy. We have all heard that song. To death. I think even Bobby McFerrin would agree; We have heard it enough. He has sang it enough. But, for most of us, that is all we know or have heard from McFerrin. 
Bobby McFerrin Jr. was born in Manhattan, New York City on March 11, 1950. He is also ten-time Grammy Award winner. I certainly did not know that. I thought he was a one hit wonder and this would be a piece of cake blog to breeze through. One hit wonder, then fade away never to be heard from again. How about...not! 

What made you think to do that?

I didn't think. I just opened up my mouth and it came out.

In many ways, when Bobby McFerrin improvises, "does his thing" you can hear the genesis of a song like Don't Worry, Be Happy. It is just one long riff. Improvised. It is nothing special, but it caught on. Not that McFerrin hung his career around it. In fact, the opposite is true. He did everything he could not to do that.


"When I decided I was a singer, I spent six years exploring my voice before I actually did my first solo voice concert....I didn't listen to other singers, because I am very impressionable. I wanted to find out what my sound was."

The one thing that he did that everyone knows, and what started to become, is the one thing that Bobby McFerrin never wanted to be: Pigeon holed. 


"I believe that most singers have a pretty good idea of what they want to be. I want to be a pop singer. I want to be a Jazz singer or I want to be a country singer. They kind of have that idea generally. I didn't really have any models to follow....Well, for me, I can look back at my musical history and that I was a music student at a time when music students were really beginning to explore music genres."

His father was an operatic baritone and his mother the singer Sara Copper. He attended the California State University, Sacramento.


"The musical information I have in my head is just all these different (musical) languages I heard growing up."

Singing was in his blood, but he didn't start out wanting to be a singer. But at age 27, he had what he describes as a "light bulb moment."

"It was July 11, 1977...I was living in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful day.  I was employed by the University of Utah dance department as an accompanest. And in between classes I walked home to get some lunch....between the campus and my house, which is like a 25 minute walk, I realized that I was a singer....I think I resisted it for a long time because my mother and father and sister were singers and I wanted to differentiate myself from them."

McFerrin had always been basically a piano player. He had played in bands growing up. There was always a piano in his house growing up and he played that, and he was making his living doing that. But he had this uneasy feeling in the back of his mind that he wasn't really a piano player. He was a singer. And, according to him, he realized that on that day. So, when he got him, he flipped through the yellow pages, found a hotel that played live music, asked to speak to the manager of the piano bar and asked if he could come in and audition for him. The manager said he was actually never there, but had just unusually been there at the exact moment that McFerrin called. He told him to "come in tomorrow."
McFerrin played 5 songs for him, the only 5 songs he knew, and he was hired and started in a month. And his singing career was born. He did piano bars for about a year and a half.
From there, he met a drummer at a Jazz festival in Colorado, asked if he could sit in with his band and sang the last song of the night with them. They asked him to sing another. Two weeks later, he was living in New Orleans and working with that band. 
Asked why he didn't do what most do in his position (which is aim to be and become a pop singer), McFerrin has this to say, 

"I thought about it...I wasn't too sure (what to do). The solo voice thing came to me on stage. It was very persistent. I kept coming back to that. But I resisted it for a while, because for me it was really frightening."

Now we get back to "Don't Worry Be Happy". It is the pivot point of his career which can't be avoided. But he did a lot before that and so much after it. I will summarize what he has done over his career, which is vast and diverse, to this day. 

McFerrin was often a voice you heard but didn't know the face or where they voice came from. And he seemed very happy with that.

 In 1984 McFerrin's approach to singing is clear in The Voice, the first solo vocal jazz album recorded with no accompaniment or overdubbing.

In 1986, McFerrin was the voice of Santa Bear in Santa Bear's First Christmas, and in 1987 he was the voice of Santa Bear/Bully Bear in the sequel Santa Bear's High Flying Adventure. 

 
Also, in 1987, Bobby performed the theme song for the opening credits of Season 4 of The Cosby Show.

 


In 1989, he composed and performed the music for the Pixar short film Knick Knack. McFerrin recorded his vocals "blah blah blah" in place of the end credits (meant to indicate that he should improvise). McFerrin spontaneously decided to sing "blah blah blah" as lyrics, and the final version of the short film includes these lyrics during the end credits. In typical McFerrin fashion, he just opened his mouth and the words came out. Something he still does to this day when he performs on stage.
McFerrin always opens his shows, which are just him on stage, no other singers or any musicians, with two complete improv pieces. For which he has no idea until he begins what he is going to sing.

"I want to do the riskiest thing first."

Also in 1989, McFerrin formed a ten-person "Voicestra" which he featured on both his 1990 album Medicine Music and in the score to the 1989 Oscar-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. The song "Common Threads" has frequently reappeared in some public service advertisements about AIDS.

 
In 1993, McFerrin sang Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme for the movie Son of the Pink Panther. Again, you can hear how he uses his voice as a tool, as an instrument. He is one of the few people alive who can do it the way he does.

For a few years in the late 1990s, he toured a concert version of Porgy and Bess, partly in honor of his father, who sang the role for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 film version, and partly "to preserve the score's jazziness" in the face of "largely white orchestras" who tend not "to play around the bar lines, to stretch and bend". McFerrin says that because of his father's work in the movie, "This music has been in my body for 40 years, probably longer than any other music." 


 McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumental performers, including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

He makes regular tours as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, including the San Francisco Symphony (on his 40th birthday), the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many others. In McFerrin's concert appearances, he combines serious conducting of classical pieces with his own unique vocal improvisations, often with participation from the audience and the orchestra.

McFerrin also participates in various music education programs and makes volunteer appearances as a guest music teacher and lecturer at public schools throughout the U.S. McFerrin has collaborated with his son, Taylor, on various musical ventures.

In 2009, McFerrin and musician-scientist Daniel Levitin served as co-hosts of The Music Instinct, a two-hour award-winning documentary produced by PBS and based on Levitin's best-selling book This Is Your Brain On Music. 

Bobby McFerrin is certainly more than a one hit wonder. He did have one big hit, but really, he never wanted that, or any more than that. He doesn't let it define him, although others try to define him that way. A look under the surface shows what he does and what he is really about. 
He is different, and he isn't worried about it. And in fact, he is happy about it. 

Whatever Happened To?,Katrina Leskanich.

She was born on April 10, 1960 in Topeka, Kansas, which makes her 53 today.
Katrina Leskanich is a name you probably would not know or recognize. But for the one thing she and her group did back in the early 80's she is someone you would have never heard of. She had a brief moment in the sun, or more to the point, in the sunshine.
For a year or two she was on top of the music world for the one super hit that her group Katrina and the Waves had. It is still a song you hear all the time on the radio. Today I ask the question: Whatever happened to Katrina and the Waves?

"It's the one constant in my life. It cheers me up. I love to see that it cheers up the audience."

Katrina's father was a Colonel in the United States Air Force, and Katrina and her four sisters and one brother moved frequently as children. After she was born, they moved from Kansas to New Mexico, and then California, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Stuttgart Germany and the Netherlands before arriving in Norfolk, England, in 1976. Katrina has lived in the England since 1976, moving to London in 1998 where she currently lives.

In 1978, Leskanich and her then-boyfriend, Vince de la Cruz, formed the cover band "Mama's Cooking". In 1981, after some lineup changes, the band titled themselves "The Waves" and began playing original music. In 1982, after more lineup changes, the band changed their name to Katrina and the Waves, with Leskanich as the lead singer. By then they were based in the city of Cambridge, England.

In addition to "Walking on Sunshine" the band had a few minor hits. "Sun Street" was one of those. The hits continued with "Do You Want Crying", "Que te Quiero", "Rock and Roll Girl" and "That's The Way". But none of those ever came close to Walkin On Sunshine, and they are long forgotten. Until I wrote this blog, I had never heard any of them, not even once. You likely haven't either.

 As the years went on and the band didn't reproduce anything close to Walkin On Sunshine they faded away. There were attempts to resurface and in 1997 the band won the Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom with "Love Shine a Light". 

"hey, all you need is another Walkin on Sunshine. Yeah, what a great idea. Why didn't we do that?"

Katrina and the Waves then broke up in 1999. Leskanich then launched a solo career, first as a DJ for BBC Radio 2 and then in 2001 she played the lead role in the musical Leader of the Pack. She released her first solo CD, Katrina Leskanich, through Universal Records in Britain in 2005.
In November 2010, Katrina was a guest coach on the Austrian TV show Helden von Morgen on ORF1. All her contestants went through to the next round including Lukas Plochl who sang a rap of Love Shine A Light.
In May of 2011, she released an EP 'Spiritualize' 

"In 1999 I wrote, collected and compiled some songs I thought would come together for an uplifting and spiritual type of album. I thought I'd try to make this a bit more personal," said Leskanich.

To do this blog, I listened to Katrina and The Waves whole catalog. When you do that, you realize why they faded off. They had one great song and 100 others that would only be good enough to be a bar band. She had her moment in the sun because that was all she deserved. She didn't blow it on drugs, or the rock and roll lifestyle. She hit with one great song and she got the most out of it.
For a brief time, Katrina Leskanich was walking on sunshine, and I am sure it felt very good. But like the rest of us, she had to come back down to earth and get on with life, as she has done. She will always have that hit song, which will be played for the rest of time.
She faded out of the spotlight because that light was only meant to shine for a short time. Some hang on to that and keep trying to relive it. It seems that Katrina Leskanich has avoided that pitfall and has seen it for what it was. A bright light for a brief time. You can't rekindle a fading flame. It flames out when it does because that is all it is meant to be. Good for her for making the most of it and getting the most she can out of the rest of her life.

"I'm a working girl and I love my work."


 

October 20th, 1962: The Monster Mash

As Halloween approaches, we are all going to hear a song that every one of us has had many times before. As the years have gone by, it has become synonymous with Halloween, just as Felice Navidad has with Christmas. But how many of us know the origins of how the song came to be?
Today marks 50 years since it became a number one hit. So, I will give you some of the history of the song, and the man behind it, who while he did other things, will always be remembered for that one song.

(Note that most of the text below I took direct from Wikipedia, mostly verbatim and made a few small changes.)

 "Monster Mash" is a 1962 novelty song and the best-known song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. The song was released as a single on Gary S. Paxton's Garpax Records label in August 1962 along with a full-length LP called The Original Monster Mash, which contained several other monster-themed tunes. The "Monster Mash" single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 20 of that year.
Pickett was an aspiring actor who sang with a band called The Cordials at night while going to auditions during the day. One night, while performing with his band, Pickett did a monologue in imitation of horror movie actor Boris Karloff while performing The Diamonds' "Little Darlin'". The audience loved it and fellow band member Lenny Capizzi encouraged Pickett to do more with the Karloff imitation.

Pickett and Capizzi composed "Monster Mash" and recorded it with Gary S. Paxton, Leon Russell, Johnny McCrae, Rickie Page, and Terry Berg, credited as "The Crypt-Kickers". The song was partially inspired by Paxton's earlier novelty hit "Alley Oop", as well as by the Mashed Potato dance craze of the era. A variation on the Mashed Potato was danced to "Monster Mash", in which the footwork was the same but Frankenstein-style monster gestures were made with the arms and hands.


 

"We very seldom had a musical accompaniment: we sang accapella. We did mostly cover versions and one of our big numbers was 'Summertime' because Billy Capizzi had a voice like Pavarotti he could hit three high C's. Anyway we did the tune 'Little Darlin'' that The Diamonds had recorded. I asked Lenny if I could do a Boris Karloff impression in that part where the bass baritone sings. The audience loved it and then Lenny said immediately that we should do a novelty record. These things sell and with Lenny's voice we could get Gary Paxton to produce it. Gary had previous success with 'Alley-Oop' and was the lead singer with 'The Hollywood Argyles' when he was 17. At this time he was one of the hottest young producers in Hollywood.
One Saturday in May 1962 we wrote the song and put it on a Wollensak tape recorder. We took it to Gary Paxton and he said, 'I want to produce this, it is a hit record.' That was the story, it was a fluke. When I recorded 'Monster Mash' it was just a lark and I thought a few Boris Karloff freaks might enjoy it. It was number one in eight weeks!"

  Gary Paxton at the time had success two years earlier with "Alley-Oop". He was the lead singer for The Hollywood Argyles when he was 17. But now, at this moment in time, he was one of the hottest young producers in Hollywood. So he was the only guy we knew in the music business. One Saturday in May 1962, we wrote the song and put it on a Wollensak tape-recorder and we took it to Gary Paxton and he said "I want to produce this. This is a hit record", so he knew from the start. That's the story. I'm an actor. I've done a lot of acting since then, but it was a fluke. When I went in to record "Monster Mash" I thought it was just a lark and a few Boris Karloff freaks will enjoy this. Gosh, it was number one in eight weeks. 
 

-Bobby Pickett

The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from a slab to perform a new dance. The dance becomes "the hit of the land" when the scientist throws a party for other monsters. The producers came up with several low-budget but effective sound effects for the recording. For example, the sound of a coffin opening was imitated by a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. The sound of a cauldron bubbling was actually water being bubbled through a straw, and the chains rattling were simply chains being dropped on a tile floor. Pickett also impersonated horror film actor Bela Lugosi as Dracula with the lyric "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?"

Below is a profile of Bobby Pickett, in more detail than this song gives. It shows his early fascination with the genre that led to the song that made him famous.

 http://mark-deutschart.blogspot.ca/2012/10/bobby-pickett-double-edged-sword-of-fame.html

Whatever Happened To Daniel J. Travanti?

 "I'm loud. Opinionated. Enthusiastic. Passionate"

Today I am starting a new feature for my blog. I wont do one a week, but I will do them periodically,  possibly once a month. Instead of a pure artist profile start to finish as I am accustomed to doing, I will do a profile, but focus on someone who was thrust into the limelight and then seemed to disappear once that vehicle finished. Then, try to see how they got there and why they vanished once it concluded.

 Most of us had never heard of Daniel J. Travanti before he rocketed to fame on Hill Street Blues. We also have not seen much of him since. How did a relative unknown land the lead role, at age 40,  on one of the most revered television shows of all time? Why did it take him so long to attain such a role? Where did he come from and whatever happened to him? And why has he basically disappeared from the limelight after Hill Street Blues ended?

 "I was born an actor.  It's just there and irresistible. It seemed absolutely correct to me. There's just no question."

Travanti, the youngest of five children, was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Italian immigrant parents on March 7, 1940.
During his teen years, he was an athlete and good student, earning scholarships to Harvard University, Princeton University, and Dartmouth College, though he eventually attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
 Known as The Kenosha Kid, he was a genuine football hero from the heart of Wisconsin and a High School All American Honorable Mention. He completed his undergraduate work in college in only three years, which was very rare in those days. He starred in every play at the University of Wisconsin over five semesters, also something that had never been done before

 "I discovered I'm here to entertain the folks. That's what I am, an entertainer. It's a gift, Gods gift to me. I didn't have anything to do with it in the first place."

 Despite earning full scholarships to Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth he didn't attend any of those. Because his father was so "tightfisted, convinced he'd still have to spend a lot of money," Travanti says, "I ended up at the University of Wisconsin in Madison," to which he earned a General Motors Scholarship. In addition to graduating in three years with several majors he also found time to act in theatres around town, attending open auditions and repeatedly landing the leads. Experience, not classrooms, shaped Travanti's acting.

"I don't believe in acting or playwriting majors," he says. "I say go to college to furnish your hungry and thirsty mind. Learn and explore, above all. Study language, language, and language; if you're going to be an actor, that's your tool and your toy."

 From the beginning Travanti had large ambitions.

"When I was growing up, I wanted three things: to make Phi Beta Kappa, to be an all-American athlete, and win an Academy Award. Well, I've done two of those, but I haven't won an Academy Award. Two Emmys don't count. I've always wanted to be a sought-after actor. I get sterling reviews; still nothing. It's easy to implode."

 Immediately after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Travanti attended the Yale School of Drama, but dropped out after one year. "It was moribund," he says. "Later, when Robert Brustein took over, it changed. But when I was there, if you finished Yale School of Drama, you were finished as an actor."

By the early '60s, Travanti had relocated to New York and was pounding the pavement looking to carve out a living and build his resume. Not satisfied with what he was finding there, in short order he relocated to Los Angeles "for personal reasons," he says without elaborating. "I got guest shots here and there. But I resisted being in L.A. I resisted accepting shallow material. I always felt I was destined for other things. I watched the actors around me. Some resisted and left. Others became very comfortable and very sad. I was there for 29 years." 

 "I didn't want to appear on tv. I was going to be a serious theater actor"


 Hist first television appearance was on Route 66 in 1963.
 In 1965, by the time he was 25, he was co-starring with Colleen Dewhurst in a road company version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Moving to Los Angeles in 1966, Travanti appeared on scores of TV shows, playing misfit high schoolers and braying bad guys (he billed himself under his actual last name of Travanty until the early '70s).

 "I was the cause of my own discomfort...often"

For many years he was a guest actor, who found small, one time roles on many of the popular dramas and sitcoms of the day.
Of the many he appeared in, some of those included The Patty Duke Show, Flipper, The Defenders, Gunsmoke, East Side West Side, Love On A Rooftop (the above clip posted), Mission Impossible and Cannon. He has commented that he wanted a series, but he really didn't want a series.

"I was always disgruntled."

In later years, we came to know Travanti as Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues. He played the Captain of a hectic,  pressure cooker police station who could keep his cool under the pressure. The character was also a recovering alcoholic. Most do not know that Travanti was also a severe alcoholic who almost let that affliction consume him years earlier. What most also don't know is that unlike his character, Travanti could not keep it together and broke down on stage long before that.

"its easier to play someone else, I don't want to be me"

In 1973, Travanti says,  "I was a chronic malcontent. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. By every standard, I was a success, but it wasn't enough. None of my achievements ever seemed to be enough. They didn't make me happy."

 "I wanted to die. This does not happen to Travanti. He does not fail like this. I mean, you don't go from Mr. Completely Successful to a dishrag just like that."

 Yes, you do. You do if you're Daniel J. Travanti on stage in Indianapolis in January 1973, doing a play called Twigs with Sada Thompson, , and you are an alcoholic and it's catching up with you. Mr. Completely Successful fell apart on stage in front of the audience. The show had to be stopped. He didn't understand it, thought it was a crazy fluke, thought it would never happen again. But it did happen again the next night. 

"All the years of agony, crazy relationships, demons inside of me, terrible fears I couldn't face  and this fine mind of mine wasn't helping. I was petrified. I was hit in an area that really terrified me. Everyone can be reached in a particular way, and the best way to reach me was to threaten my career, my work. That got my attention fast."

 He went on to do 15 more performances before he had to stop performing that play. He had finally bottomed out and had to admit what a lot of others knew. He was an alcoholic and it was destroying him.

 His agent urged him to get help.

 "My agent knew I was an alcoholic when I was 25. He knew an alcoholic, knew the behavior  he just didn't label it `alcoholism. And of course, when he told me, I thought he was exaggerating. I kept saying to myself, I'm not that bad."

 Was Travanti that bad?

 "Of course I was. Every bit that bad. Why else would he say such a thing? He had no axe to grind. He wasn't out to get me."

 How bad actually was he?

 Travanti drank after everyone else had gone home. Every night he drank himself to sleep. 

"It's hard for me to believe this now, but I actually believed in my soul, every fiber of my being  that I could not live my life not drinking, and that I would never sleep again."

Once he went over the edge one day in Indianapolis the process of healing began. It was a long process,  many years, with many close calls and relapses, but he has never turned back.

 He describes himself as:

 "an egomaniac with an inferiority complex".

 It was total alcoholic behavior, addictive behavior, something Travanti readily admits now. 

"I overdid everything. I was in four major productions at Yale  which had never been done before that time. Then I got to New York. All of a sudden the buildings didn't care anything about an egomaniac from Kenosha, Wisconsin, by way of Yale, and I felt I was fizzling out. And I was, because I had pushed it so far, so fast and accomplished every young mans dream. I had won literally every single academic honor there is to win in higher education, including Iron Cross at Wisconsin. But nothing was ever enough. I was never satisfied, like a demon, warring all the time."

 Travanti believes his recovery  began on August 14, 1973. That was the night he finally admitted to himself that he was an alcoholic and wasn't the super human he always claimed or thought he could be.

"I had been reduced. It was ego deflation in depth, which is exactly what I needed, exactly what had to happen to me because God was not getting my attention."

 Once he had recovered, he went back to school and earned his masters degree in English literature at Loyola of Merrymount in Los Angeles. As well, since he wasn't an in demand actor, he had to resort to appearing in commercials to earn a living,  something he was loathe to do. But he did it, and he got by earning a decent living that way. He would appear in 15 commercials a year for 4 or 5 years and that allowed him to retool his career.

"I did it for survival. It seemed the correct thing to do (going back to school). It had been in the back of my mind for a long time. And also I went back because I now had all of this spare time. Suddenly every day was a sober day. It was a shock. What will I do, now that I'm actually awake all these hours I'm awake and my brains fertile and fervent? What will I do with it? It's running wild in there and it needs to be fed something. Listen: After I finished off all my course work, I even audited a course in medieval lit. If you had told me a few years ago that I would be choosing to audit a course in medieval literature, I would have said you're out of your mind. Never happen. Never."

In addition, he started to take steady roles that he would never have accepted when he was high and mighty back in the day. One of those was a soap opera, General Hospital, in 1978. He had a six month run on that show, which was the #1 rated soap at the time.

 At that point, he was very disillusioned with the industry and the types of shows they were putting out.  He was almost ready to give up tv and film acting and go back strictly to the theater.

"All of those influences from my teens, 40's and 50's, , radio, tv, theater, movies have faded considerably for me. Very disappointing"

When he went in to read for Hill Street Blues, the secretary at the office recognized him from General Hospital,  something he was not pleased or proud about. He didn't want to be known as a soap opera actor nor was he happy all those years playing the bad boy, the bad guy or the tough from the street. In fact,  he was actually leary of taking any series that would typecast him,  which is what actually happened anyway. He almost refused Hill Street Blues in its original form because it was a cop show.

 "I'm not going to be labelled or stamped, this nationality or that nationality. I can play anything. I can play the king of England or a mafia boss. And I have."

Travanti was cast as Captain Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues, a job he held down from 1981 through 1987. It is what most know him for and the work he is most proud of to this day.
 When Travanti read the pilot for Hill Street Blues, he turned it down precisely because "it was brilliant and complex": He wanted it too much. Those emotional contradictions had put him in a bind on more than one occasion, resulting in his striding into auditions with the attitude that "I don't have to prove anything or even get the part," he says. "I'm there to entertain the people who are auditioning me and make them wonder who that masked man is."

He read for Hill Street creator and producer Stephen Bochco and Bochco commented to Travanti that he was terrific.Travanti had so gotten used to being disappointed and not getting great roles that his first thought was:

"So!....why aren't you going to hire me?"

Travanti was cast on Hill Street Blues on March 7th, 1980 on his 40th birthday.

 He received five Emmy nominations for his work on the show.

He admits he's a smart aleck and difficult, maybe even self-sabotaging. Personal actions play their role in a career and a life, he says, though he argues that the concept of free will is overrated. "I'm a man of strong opinions and intellect, and I scare people," he says. "And I'm not going to pretend I want to be in a project if it doesn't showcase my abilities." The script must also meet certain standards: "It has to have resonance, celebrate life, and be highly entertaining." 

While on Hill Street Blues, he also appeared in two television movies. One of those was Adam (1983), the story of the disappearance of Adam Walsh, the son of America's Most Wanted star John Walsh.

 Travanti received an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special  Emmy nomination for this role.

In 1986, Travanti starred in the  HBO broadcast biographical film Murrow, portraying Edward R. Murrow. He received a Cable Ace nomination for this role.

He considers Hill Street Blues, Adam and Murrow to be his best work. By the conclusion of Hill Street Blues in 1987 he felt he had established himself and was hoping for the better quality roles in tv, film and broadway to come his way. They never did.

"Every good project I have ever done has had the same set of characteristics. Determined men and women, fighting against the odds..against the current and the naysayers"

Travanti's stint on Hill Street Blues was clearly a career high point.

He seemed to have conquered his demons and achieved the professional success, on his own terms,  that he always wanted, and waited 20 years for.  So, what happened? Why did it all go away?

Like most actors, Daniel J. Travanti is riveting when he is acting, but boring and hard to take when he is just being himself.
Once he gave up his dependence on alcohol, and could not lean on that anymore, when the work dried up,  he became a malcontent again.

 "What do i want?. simple I want to give my abilities to a cause..namely the script"

While he was on Hill Street Blues he got many offers to do other projects which he turned down.. He felt the quality was not up to his standard. Once his run ended on Hill Street, the offers stopped coming. His star was fading and his reputation for being difficult and very hard to work with followed him.

"I had clout, but that was very brief"

He was the hot actor on the great show, so he got offered a lot of great things. Once he was off that show, he was the difficult actor who was not hot anymore and went back to being hard to work with. He has never recovered from that, although his talent was still there. It was always there.

"I thought, this is what I should always be doing and then it went away"

To listen to him being interviewed, he is obviously very difficult to deal with. That is something he admits. It is what makes him so commanding on the screen, but what also makes it hard for him to get work..to this day.

He doesn't like to take any direction and wishes the director would just get out of the way and let the actors act. That is not the type of attitude that inspires people to hire him.

"no more dumb bad guys, no matter how much they offer"

Like most actors, Daniel J. Travanti is riveting when he is acting, but boring and hard to take when he is just being himself. He likes acting but he hates the business of acting and that soured him then..and now.

"we are not that interesting. It is all an illusion. It's a lovely illusion. If it works"

 In 1993, he starred in another series, Missing Persons, which he actually didn't enjoy and mocked as a poor quality show. He actually told all that to the producer, who tried to have him fired. After that, he never got offered anything substantial in television or film.

"You can't be going beyond the limits of your character. That's bad acting"

He mocks the poor quality of almost everything he is offered then complains that he never gets offered anything anymore.

 Not that he's eager to do another series. "It really depends," he says. "I don't need the money, and I'm no longer willing to audition for a series." Over the years, Travanti has become less obsessed with stardom. Acting will always be his top priority, but he has other interests now. Today he is a committed environmentalist and vegetarian -- "I call myself a planetarian" -- and lives far from  Hollywood in Lake Forest, Ill., with three cats and two dogs.

The years have taken their toll. The smooth delivery and charm that were once Daniel J. Travanti are now unease and hesitation. The talent just wore away to the point that he is hard to watch. He can still act, because he is a great actor, but he is hard to look at..or watch. When that happens, an actor finds it very tough to get work, especially when he is inherently difficult as Travanti is...self admittedly.

On acting:

 "Its tough. It is a very tough life. You only do it because you can't not do it"

He used to be quick and energetic. Now he is slow and lethargic. The bloom came off the rose long before his prime because he wasted his best years being difficult and an alcoholic. He peaked before he was ready to deal with it.

He is a great actor because he is troubled personally in real life. He understands how to play real emotion because he has experienced real emotional strife in his life. His art is his salvation.

"My regret is that I have much more to offer and that I have never lived up to my abilities"

He mostly now does local theater when he works at all. In 2010 he resurfaced on Criminal Minds in this striking role.