November 3, 2021 – davidbruceblog #2

Practical Jokes

• After Richard Diamond, Private Eye, Mary Tyler Moore went on to The Dick Van Dyke Show. In real life Ms. Moore never made a secret of her dislike for housework, although she was playing Laura Petrie, a near-perfect homemaker. At a party Ms. Moore and her husband gave for her co-workers, Mr. Van Dyke wrote in the dust on top of her refrigerator, “Needs Soap.”

Prejudice

• Sheldon Leonard was the producer of I Spy in the days when few African-Americans were on TV. He wanted to hire the young black comic Bill Cosby to co-star with Robert Culp, but he worried about whether the NBC network brass would approve the deal. So Mr. Leonard armed himself with arguments why signing Mr. Cosby would not alienate the TV audience, then he went to see NBC President Robert Kintner. He told Mr. Kintner that he had in mind a young comic to co-star with Mr. Culp, but that he hadn’t signed him yet. When Mr. Kintner asked why not, Mr. Leonard replied, “Because he’s black.” Mr. Kintner then asked, “What difference does that make?” Relieved, Mr. Leonard said, “As of this moment, Mr. Kintner, it makes no difference whatsoever.”

• Gay deejay John McMullen of Sirius OutQ Radio occasionally visited the late famous homophobe Fred Phelps in Mr. Phelps’ native Topeka, Kansas. One day, while traveling from San Francisco to New York, Mr. McMullen even turned a half-hour, live-radio visit with Mr. Phelps into a fundraiser, telling his audience that he was taking a Sodom to Gomorrah via Topeka Tour and raising several thousand dollars for a charity that Mr. Phelps did NOT support: the Matthew Shepard Foundation

• George Takei, who played Mr. Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek TV series, grew up in American internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. He had a teacher who referred to him as “that little Jap boy,” and each morning, he was able to look out the school window and see barbed-wire fences and guard towers as he ended the Pledge of Allegiance by reciting “with justice and liberty for all.”

Problem-Solving

• The opening credits and the exterior shots of early episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show feature a beautiful Victorian house where the characters Mary Richards, Rhoda Morgenstern, and Phyllis Lindstrom are supposed to live. The house really belonged to a humanities professor at the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately, after the series became popular, tourists began to ring her doorbell, then ask to meet Mary. When the MTM production crew arrived to take more exterior shots of the house, the professor declined to give them permission, but they started to take the shots anyway. The professor stopped them by hanging a banner outside Mary Richards’ window. The banner made a demand about a then-current political situation: “IMPEACH NIXON.” In later episodes, Mary Richards moved to a high-rise apartment house.

• This is a story that the late central Ohio sportscaster Jimmy Crum liked to tell: Paul Robinson played for the Cleveland Browns under coach Paul Brown. Once he scored a 55-yard touchdown, but instead of heading straight for the goal line, he ran to the other side of the field, then headed for the goal line. When Mr. Brown asked him later why he had run to the other side of the field, Mr. Robinson explained, “Coach, this game is being televised nationally and my folks are watching. The cameras are over on that side of the field, and I knew they’d see me better if I ran over there.” By the way, according to weatherman Jym Ganahl of Channel 4 News in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Crum used to eat a dozen White Castle hamburgers for breakfast each morning.

• As a young actress newly arrived in New York City, Carol Burnett ran into a problem. She couldn’t get an acting job because she had no experience, and she couldn’t get experience because no one would give her an acting job. She solved the problem by putting on a show with the other young entertainers in her rooming house, which was known as the Rehearsal Club. It worked. Carol and some of the other entertainers got jobs as a result of the Rehearsal Club Revue.

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