Celebrities who have Died 

Celebrities who have Died

I just saw on the Corner that Jerry Orbach died. Many of us only really know him from TV and a few movies. But he really became a star on Broadway, singing and dancing. Before his big Broadway career, he was "off off Broadway" in the Fantastics for many years, as "The Narrator." Does that mean he sang "Try to Remember" about a million times?

I saw him interviewed by Bob Costas once. I thought it was an amazing case of a guy who had probably had a pretty interesting life, giving very cryptic, mono-syllabic and non-helpful answers to an interviewer. Costas struggled to keep the interview going. Of course, we've all seen the old-fashioned stage actor being interviewed who tells the polished anecdote about Larry Olivier or someone famousl--a story they've told a million times.

Other deaths in 2004. Jack Lemmon: in Johnny Carson's last weeks on the Tonight Show, he had Lemmon on and they were reminiscing about how they met in New York. They were both young, not working much yet, auditioning all the time, and they would go for coffee or something stronger and share their dreams. Then Lemmon got very dramatic, looked at Carson and said: even in those days I said to myself: Someday this guy is going to be a big star." Carson couldn't resist: "That's funny, I didn't think you were going anywhere." He immediately apologized, said he couldn't resist, etc., but there was a shocked look on Lemmon's face.

Rodney Dangerfield. I love the classic jokes. Tony Pierce was gathering them in his comments for a while. Do the Catskills comics hold up better than others? Jackie Mason has recently had one-man shows that sold out. As he loves to point out, no other comic will do such a long show, that runs so long. They don't even try. Billy Crystal tried to immortalize a Catskills comic in his movie, "Mr. Saturday Night," which fell flat. Yet he is getting tributes not only for the Oscar work, but for being a kind of public mourner--knowing how to show respect, but also when to knock it off, or go back to kidding around. Is Seinfeld really a Catskills comic who aimed at TV and Vegas (thus no blue language) from the beginning?

One of my rants is that Wayne and Shuster have been overrated (not that anyone outside Canada cares). Ed Sullivan booked them many times, and said they were a relief from the comics talking about their mothers-in-law. But I don't think their stuff holds up very well.