In Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little rides past the Count Basie band in the desert, why doesn't Basie say, "One more time... One more once!"?

A Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of Marcia Davenport's My Brother's Keeper could have been a great film; the option to Davenport's novel floated about among different individuals for decades.

At the end of Into the Wild, an aerial shot and a map could have shown how the real-life Christopher McCandless would still be alive if he had simply walked a few miles in the other direction toward cabins and a road, as explained by Jon Krakauer in his book Into the Wild (1996).

Since all of the actors in The Magnificent Ambersons were alive during the 1960s, there was industry talk of reshooting the film's lost ending. Further, the actors had aged appropriately, so no makeup would have been necessary. However, no one stepped forward and gave Orson Welles the financing to begin the project. Control click "Missed Opportunities" heading to hear Orson Welles' October 29, 1939 radio production of ''The Magnificent Ambersons" with Walter Huston.

Dave Wallis' dystopian novel Only Lovers Left Alive (1964) tells of a bleak future in which people over 45 commit suicide. Teen gangs run wild, but eventually they have to learn survival skills. In May 1966 the Rolling Stones announced that they would appear in a film adaptation to be directed by Nicholas Ray. Since Ray made films about young people in the 1940s (They Live By Night), the 1950s (Rebel Without a Cause) and the 1970s (We Can't Go Home Again), there's an unfortunate gap.

Promoting The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Anthony Minghella said, "More than anything else, it's Chet Baker that makes you feel the late '50s." So why didn't he direct Matt Damon in a Chet Baker biographical film?

Driving Miss Daisy has some interesting shots of the countryside during the road trip but no location shots when they arrive in Mobile. According to Google Maps, a drive from Atlanta to Mobile should take about five hours, so why is it night when they get to Mobile? To disguise the lack of location scenes? Perhaps a recreation of old Mobile will reach the screen if someone makes a biographical film drama based on Mobile native Eugene Walter's book with Katherine Clark, Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet (2001).

Why didn't Bert Stern make a documentary film about Lambert, Hendricks and Ross?

George Stevens, after the death of James Dean, had Nick Adams dub some of Dean's lines in the banquet speech near the end of Giant to make the dialogue more clear. Watching the scene, one can easily spot where Adams' voice begins. Thus, Dean's true intention for that scene was obliterated.

Ken Burns said he owned "maybe two" jazz CDs, so why Ken Burns Jazz? In fact, his disinterest in music is evident in his other films, mixed so words take precedent and the music is a minor element or not authentic. "Ashokan Farewell" is not a song from the Civil War as many believe. Why not Anthony Minghella's Jazz? Terry Zwigoff's Jazz? Bert Stern's Jazz?

Who allowed Little Iodine (1946) to become a lost film?

Control click heading above to hear audio of Howard Chace's "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut."

As far as I know, only three magazines have made their entire back issue archives available on discs. These are Mad, National Geographic and The New Yorker. Now here comes a whole new ball game.

Lessen, poisoned gulls, ditcher wander hair annulled furry tell a boarder Slipping Booty? Hoecake? Wail, heresy starry. Wants dare worsted putty ladle prances hoe hat ban putter slip furry hunter cheers buyer wicket an shellfish furry gourd murder. Dish putty gull, pimple set, worse line honor bet, sounder slip, inner bet rum off annulled gloaming casserole, saturated inner lodge, dock florist.

"Slipping Booty" is copyright ©2008 by the Howard Chace Estate

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The NYC Paley Center has an upcoming (3/31) Bob and Ray panel discussion with Bob Elliott (now 85), Chris Elliott and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The connection is that Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" segment is based on an old Bob and Ray routine.

The other cast members on the Bob and Ray television series (1951-53) were Cloris Leachman and Audrey Meadows. Above: Meadows plays a game of Duplication with Bob and Ray. The game required Peppermint Patties, cards, checkers and cribbage boards. The series was also known as Club Embassy.

NPR interview with Bob Elliott.

Thanks to collector Ira Gallen, here's a 1952 clip from the series involving a pitch for the Bob and Ray Burglar Kit.
When you click to enlarge Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular (RCA LSP 1773), you can see that on this 1958 Living Stereo record jacket Jack Davis managed to squeeze in almost every performer and group heard on the album. (The only one I don't see is the Percussion Ensemble.)

Listen above for episodes of Bob and Ray's Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. When I was last at the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center), I saw they had a huge amount of uncataloged Bob and Ray shows. In 1954 I stayed up until 11pm to listen each night to their late night series, a bit more informal than their daytime shows, yet I never see that series mentioned in print and never run across any CDs or MP3s specifically noting the late night series. Odd. Does anyone know if this is around somewhere? Another item I recall: the Bob and Ray newsletter, available if one wrote in and requested to be placed on the mailing list. Has anyone ever seen this?

The opening line below about hot sauce refers to a WWI incident in which Bodenheim attempted to drink lye in order to get out of the military. Most of his taste buds were burned away, so when Bodenheim got a dinner invitation, he usually arrived with a small bottle of Tabasco sauce in his pocket. 

From Ben Hecht's Letters from Bohemia (Doubleday, 1964):

Bodenheim came to dinner in my house, having promised to forego sauce bottles and salt and pepper shakers. It was a party of welcome to a new writer for The Chicago Literary Times. Its staff to date had remained only Bodenheim and I. I thought it time to add another worker.

His name was John Armstrong. He had sent me the manuscript of a novel written while in detention at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station at Lake Forest. It was a fascinating manuscript, detailing the miseries and frustrations of life in the Navy. Sailor Armstrong was under detention in the lunacy ward of the U. S. Naval Hospital.

After some discussion, the Navy doctors admitted that Armstrong was not seriously insane, but only too oddly behaved to serve in the U. S. Navy. His chief oddity was that he was inclined to go off into fits of laughter that lasted for hours. He could be quieted only by powerful drugs. The officer in charge of the Naval base agreed to release him into my custody with three provisos. I was to give him employment on my weekly paper; to provide sleeping quarters for him in my house; and to do all I could to keep his novel from being published.

At the dinner table welcoming the new literary find were Margaret Anderson, Sherwood Anderson, Burton Rascoe (the critic), and several opera singers whose names I have forgotten. And Bodenheim. A discussion of music circled the table despite Bodenheim's insistence that the art of music had no relation to the art of conversation. His further efforts to swing the talk around to a discussion of himself, or at least, of poetry in general, were ignored. But literary find John Armstrong suddenly sided with the poet.

"Mr. Bodenheim is right," said Armstrong, "one doesn't talk about music. One listens to it."

Armstrong left the table and headed for the phonograph in the living room. The music he selected for listening was Chaliapin's record "The Song of the Flea" from Boito's opera Mefistofele.

In the middle of the record Chaliapin unlooses a burst of Satanic laughter, for a half minute that seems like an hour. Sailor Armstrong kept putting the needle back and playing the passage over and over. Finally, rolling his pants up to his knees (why, I don't know) Armstrong joined Chaliapin in his laughter. Putting the needle back to replay the passage, Armstrong finally outlaughed the great baritone in range and volume.

We all listened and watched from the dining table. "A fascinating sort of dementia," someone said.

"It is rarely you see an American writer," said Margaret Anderson, "who is not hopelessly sane."

There were other comments about the laughing genius with the rolled-up pants whom I had been clever enough to add to my paper's staff. Please, we were very young that night.

It was all too much for Bodenehim. At least our lonesome poet made a canny bid for our attention. Having emptied his tenth wineglass, he proceeded to eat it. He bit of chunks of his fragile goblet, chewed and swallowed the bits of glass as if they were the finest of desserts.

The diners turned one by one to watch the poet's amateur and gory performance as a glass eater.

"Good God," someone said, "you'll kill yourself swallowing that glass. You're a poet, not a circus freak." "Every poet is both," Bodenheim answered aloofly.

Hulu launches today with with 250 TV series and 100 feature-length films. Here's a short (5:54) sample. Don't worry. The ad at the bottom of the screen will go away after 30 seconds. Click on side of image to go to the site and expand to full screen. Click on center of image to watch here on Potrzebie. Any comments?

©WMG

With the recent press release announcement about a forthcoming film biography of Bill Gaines, Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines, one can speculate on the casting of EC staffers and how they will be depicted. In this Wally Wood drawing from  "EC Confidential!" (Weird Science 21, September-October 1953), we see (l to r) most of the EC crew: Jack Kamen, Joe Orlando, Johnny Craig, Harvey Kurtzman, Graham Ingels, Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines, Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Jack Davis, Bill Elder, John Severin and George Evans. Missing from the line-up here are Bernard Krigstein, Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta and Roy Krenkel. EC colorist Marie Severin (sister of John Severin) is seen at far left. The other women who worked in the EC offices were Gloria Orlando (married to Joe Orlando in 1951), Nancy Siegel (married to Gaines in 1955) and receptionist Shirley Norris. Tatjana Weintraub (married to Wally Wood in 1950) was an uncredited artist on some EC pages. Here's the 2/14 press release about the movie:

The clip below shows Bill Gaines  and Mad writer Dick DeBartolo on To Tell the Truth in 1973. DeBartolo was a writer for Match Game and other game shows. During the early 1960s he invited Match Game guests to go on the roof where they performed in DeBartolo's  8mm films. He once had a showing of these films in a Manhattan hotel ballroom.