Milburn Stone

There's an anchor on Today this morning--seems to be filling in for Matt Lauer--don't know his name--but he's the doppelgänger of SNL Weekend Update's Colin Jost! Could this be why Jost got the gig?

I'm a happy camper. (And I love that the move was so seamless that the topic still shows up in "My Shows" even though it lives in a new forum.)

David, with respect, the split seems artificial. We TCM fans love to talk about the movies on TCM, but we also love to talk about the hosts, the guest-hosts, the memoriams, the actor tributes, etc. To have to go to two different threads in order to do this seems unnecessarily cumbersome, and will be confusing, especially when the content of a post bestrides both areas. If TCM belongs in "Everything Else TV," it would be preferable to move this entire topic over to that section, rather than split the discussion in two. In fact, I agree that this whole topic belongs in that forum, rather than the "Off Topic" section it is now in.

I find the second reason (need to refresh the neighbor cast now that Phyllis and Rhoda were gone) a lot more plausible than the first (can't shoot the exterior of the house anymore). Mainly because I have to believe they had enough exterior shots of the house in their library to last them as long as the show could possibly last. Although another reason might have been the showrunners just wanting to be nice to the owner of the house in a way they didn't strictly have to be.

Yes! That's it. Based on your post, I will have to give my rewatch of Lou Grant another try.

About the Sonny Curtis theme song: Was that an existing "country"-type song by Curtis that the producers found and adapted with Curtis doing the vocal, or did they commission Curtis to write it? I've always wondered. I was once at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. Great place.

The character reasons for the move were clear, but I'm unfamiliar with the real-life behind-the-scenes mundane reasons. Please share!

To know exactly how Jack Cassidy would have played this, just watch him as Oscar North in any episode of the Richard Benjamin Paula Prentiss sitcom He and She. (If you can find one.)

I share your fondness, Rinaldo, for the Lou Grant hour-dramedy series. It seemed unique in its time. But we watched a couple of episodes on Hulu lately, and it didn't really hold up. I don't know why. Maybe because, even though it was unique in its time, its blend of humor and issue-oriented drama was soon imitated widely? So that it doesn't seem that special now? Whatever--I loved Lou and Rossi and Billie, and Animal, and the good-looking straight-man type whatever his name was, and Mrs. Pynchon, way back when.

Maybe "overreacting" was the wrong word, and if I came across as saying "you're wrong to feel the way you feel," I apologize, because that's not what I was trying to say. Nobody's wrong to feel the way they feel. But I hate to see people feel bad! And I suppose I was just trying to say there's also the very real possibility of a rainbow in this situation, in addition to the rain.

I loved your whole post, Lonesome, but was surprised to read this sentence, simply because I've never in my life encountered a film music aficionado who didn't think Hugo Friedhofer's score for Best Years of Our Lives was one of the best scores ever written. Understanding that someone-somewhere's mileage is always going to vary, I didn't think there was any serious controversy about that.

I "feel your pain," gilmel, but until we see what he does with the show, I think you might be overreacting. For one thing, we don't know that satire won't be a very important part of what he brings to the talk show. He found a way to shape the "comedy news show" in his own image, creating something unlike anything that had been seen before; he may well find a way to do the same with the network talk show. My own feeling is that anyone who could do what he's done is capable of doing just about anything. Now, I don't know that I'm right about that. But I do know I'm willing to wait and see before despairing.

On last night's show he handled the "bombshell" with his typical brilliance. Spent the time talking about Letterman's retirement, and then how "whoever takes his place is going to have some mighty big shoes to fill!!!" Heh.

The great thing about Colbert being the choice is that he is smart enough to realize he can't just "step in" to an existing show as if nothing has changed but the host. (Surprisingly, others, when given comparable opportunities, have not realized this.) I trust him to create a show in his own image, just as he has done with The Colbert Report. When The Colbert Report was first coming together, he could have conceived it thus: "It'll be like The Daily Show, only with me stepping forward from correspondent role to host role." But he didn't do that. He created something brand new. He'll do so again.

To focus attention on the terrible problem of military rape by turning it into razor-sharp satire was absolutely brilliant. The show is not only funny, it slays me with its awesomeness.

I take your point, Rinaldo. I think I'm just saying that this time, when I actually examined what Mickey Rooney was doing (instead of going to the knee-jerk reaction of "how dare he," which I have often defaulted to in the past), I didn't find anything egregious about it. No more so, certainly, than with Alan Reed's evocation of Italian-American stereotypes in his portrayal of Sally Tomato in the same movie. Mileage varies, of course, but my inclination now is to think that Rooney and Blake Edwards received a bum rap.

A month or two ago we had occasion to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's again, and you know, I gotta say, by this viewing I came around to thinking that his portrayal of the Japanese photographer wasn't that offensive! (After years of accepting the conventional wisdom that it was.) Now, mind you, I'm not Japanese, and I don't know how I'd feel if I were, but I don't know that anything about the portrayal was appreciably "worse" than Frank Sinatra playing a Jew (in Come Blow Your Horn) or Anthony Quinn playing a Greek (in Zorba the Greek). Both also relied on (a bit of necessary) stereotyping in order to bring their characters to life. Has the world decided that characters of a nationality/ethnicity must only be played by actors of the same nationality/ethnicity? If so, we're going to have to consign to the scrap heap a whole lot of performances over the years. What I appreciated this time was that there was nothing at all negative about Rooney's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi. He was a professional who needed his sleep! I'd be angry too.

Actually, Brian Posehn would be good! P.S. A Boston Gal, I love that your sentence actually makes sense.

And she did it without missing a beat. I marveled at it even more the second time I watched.

Also, it's deliciously ironic how hard a time both parents are giving her about "lying to us" when both parents are constantly lying to her! More than stuff not adding up, I think it's this sixth sense she has that she's constantly being lied to (because, after all, most sentient beings do develop a sense of when they're being lied to) that accounts for her discomfort.

A few years ago I saw (for the first time) a screening of the mid-fifties French suspense film Les Diaboliques. And I realized that the detective character in this movie was beyond the shadow of a doubt the model for Columbo. Faux-bumbling, genial manner disguising cleverness? Check. Rumpled raincoat? Check. And--most telling of all--the same "oh, just one more thing" every time he seemed to be walking out the door to leave the person-of-interest in peace. You could have knocked me over with a rumpled raincoat.

The Conan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been an excellent choice. But the Conan of today is damaged goods, I'm sad to say. Not just because his TBS show has failed to set the world on fire. More because, from Day 1 of his taking over The Tonight Show, some fire seemed to go out of him. The brilliant, edgy Conan of Late Night had been replaced by a safer version, apparently because he felt he needed to change in order to appeal to a "broader demographic." (Or because someone at NBC convinced him he needed to change, or forced him to change.) Ever since, he's not the same.

Like you, I thought the focus group sketch was quite funny. It managed not only to plumb the depths of Amy's low self-esteem, but to make the point that men are idiots. As a man, I appreciated that.

I'm partial to Send Me No Flowers, because, unlike the other Rock-Doris movies in which Rock's character pretended to be someone the character wasn't for the sake of a ruse (possibly gay mama's boy vs. straight playboy, absent-minded scientist vs. slick executive, etc.), in SMNF he plays a full-on 24-carat neurotic who really is just what he seems, a full-on 24-carat neurotic. And he plays it well. Anyone who thinks he was just a dumb actor should see how well he handles the comedy in this portrayal.

The promos are looking good.