Where Did the Months Go?

I have been meaning to post, and even have some items set aside. But somehow other obligations have gotten in the way and time has passed far more than I thought. Quite a chill when I stopped in and saw the date on the previous post. I promise to post some new things before Thanksgiving. Sorry, and thank you to everyone who has been stopping by. Read more!

The Professor: Scientist, Educator, Clevelander

Roy Hinkley, the Professor on "Gilligan's Island," was born in Cleveland, according to many Web sites, including that of Russell Johnson, who played the Professor. Still haven't pinned down the episode where that is mentioned, but thought it was an interesting nugget.
By the way, Jim Backus, who played Thurston Howell III on "Gilligan's Island," was born in Cleveland.
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"My Fellow Americans"

Jack Lemmon and James Garner play former presidents, and rivals, who join forces when the current president tries to have them killed. A key piece of information is in Lemmon's presidential library in Cuyahoga Falls. ...


Lemmon's character was born in Cleveland but says Cleveland wouldn't give him a good deal on property taxes. He got a better deal from Cuyahoga Falls for locating his library there.
After their helicopter is blown up, Lemmon and Garner catch a ride on an "NCAA Finals Express" train to Cleveland, posing as impersonators of themselves. They learn that the train will stop in Akron but have to get off in the town of Jefferson, apparently in Virginia, when they see their pursuers waiting at the station. They steal a car, planning to drive to Akron (Lemmon says they can get on I-77 near Galax, Va.), but there's a baby in the back seat so they return the car; fortunately, the family owning it is headed to Cleveland, and gives the two presidents a ride. As they enter West Virginia, the driver says they are eight to 10 hours from Cleveland.
They finally get to the library, which is a tacky little joint. (And, by the way, none of this was shot in Ohio.) But the evidence they have sought is not there, and they hit the road again.

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"Funny People"

George Simmons, the actor-comedian character played by Adam Sandler, sports a lot of different teams' wear, including T-shirts for the old New York Titans and the University of Kentucky. But of special note here is a Cleveland Cavaliers jacket he sports during one scene. And, in another moment, his character becomes frustrated while trying to get a Cavs game on TV. Read more!

"The Great Buck Howard": Very Big in Akron

The movie, now on DVD and Blu-ray, stars Colin Hanks as a would-be writer who takes a job as road manager for Buck Howard, a Kreskin-like mentalist who was big at one time.(He made many appearances on "The Tonight Show" during the Johnny Carson era.) But not now. Now, he's playing places like, well, Akron.

"For some reason, the people of Akron, Ohio, went nuts for him," Hanks says as we see Buck exiting an auditorium and greeted by a screaming crowd of fans. One fan holds up a sign saying "Akron (Heart) Buck." (Another major segment in the movie is set in Cincinnati.)

By the way, Tom Hanks, Colin's father in real life and in this movie, did some of his earliest stage acting in Cleveland. And in a small role is Ravenna native Nate Hartley (later seen more prominently in "Drillbit Taylor" and "Role Models"). Read more!

Tim Conway, "Hollywood Palace," Parma

The Tim Conway DVD pictured left has been available for several years, and will be part of a "Comic Legends" DVD box being released on Tuesday. The Conway disc, at least, consists of his appearances on "The Hollywood Palace," a star-laden variety show which aired on ABC from 1964 to 1970.

The sketches on the disc are so-so for the most part, although they do feature Conway's Cleveland-originated bumbler Dag Herford, you do get another look at Conway's taking comic wing and cracking up people on the air; "Fugitive" star David Janssen almost collapses, he is laughing so hard at Conway. (One classic, later example of Conway's gift is of this:)



But while Tim is a local guy, this blog is more about mentions of NE Ohio onscreen. So we'll get to Parma -- after the jump.

A couple of the sketches on the DVD have Tim working with his old friend Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson, who was also in Hollywood by this time, and doing some announcing work on "HP." Tim and Ernie had also worked as a comedy duo, releasing a couple of records of their work. And being in Hollywood didn't make them forget their old homestead. One "Palace" sketch from around 1968 has Tim as Dag, in this case the coach of the Olympic team from the "small European country" of Parma. Conway wears a blue sweatshirt with "Parma" on the front in white letters.

Among other things, the sketch has Parma's national colors as "off cream." It has been placing last in every event it has entered, but the team had been plagued by accidents. The high jumper blew up after carrying the Olympic torch -- and cutting through a gas station. The team has only one uniform, which it passes from one teammate to the other; the system worked pretty well -- except in the relay.

Not that all the jokes are at Parma's expense. With the Olympics set for Mexico City, the team simulated competitive conditions; the team "played guitars and drank bad water."





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"3rd Rock From the Sun": Kind of Kent

After the jump, 1995 interviews with "3rd Rock" creator Bonnie Turner and star John Lithgow, with much about the series' NE Ohio connections.

NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield thinks the comedy 3rd Rock from the Sun is sensational and says, "We love all the elements, we love what it is."
It appears to be the most likely series to get on the NBC schedule once one of the network's fall offerings falters. It may make Northeast Ohio residents stand proud. But it also could make you stare suspiciously at your neighbors, wondering where they're really from.
3rd Rock from the Sun involves a band of extraterrestrials who take on human form and set up as family in a university town 52 miles from Cleveland.
Toledo native Bonnie Turner, who with husband Terry has written Wayne's World, The Brady Bunch Movie and other comedies, is a 1973 graduate of Kent State. And she said, "I picked Ohio (for the series) because that's where I went to school."
As for whether any of the professors were as odd as the alien played by John Lithgow in the series, she said, "When I was at Kent, I remember a political science professor who confused the living daylights out of me. He was nuts. ...
"When I was 18 years old and not aware of the world, he would talk about the bigger picture -- a world view. Which was what a universe-ity is about. He would stride around the room and make big gestures and speak in a big voice. He was almost a performance artist. So in writing about this character, I did think about that. ...
"A university is a place (extra-terrestrials) would pick out to go. Where else would you have access to diverse opinions, good minds, you know? ... And my natural mind was to set it in Ohio because I love the state, I love where I was born. And I love it because it was a regular place.
"If you're going to meet human beings, you're not going to meet them in Los Angeles," she said with a smile. "New York, Los Angeles, the South, their environment overtakes who they are, and they become what the city dictates they be. In the Midwest, they are family people, they're consumers, they're church people, they're moral -- they are human in the strictest sense."
Turner wanted to buttress the Ohio connection by calling the college Warren G. Harding University, only to find there was a real school by that name.
"We settled on Pendleton," she said, "because my mother always wore Pendleton wool and she went to the Pendleton store in Toledo. My earliest recollection of the fall, and being cold, and school time, was of Pendleton wool. So I said, let's call it Pendleton State University, and that sounded very Ohio to me."
As if that weren't enough Ohio-ness for one series, Lithgow spent part of a peripatetic youth -- "I went to 10 different schools," he said -- in Akron.
"I was there between '59 and '61 and I lived on the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall because my dad was the (theater) director there," he said. "And I went to ninth grade at Simon Perkins Junior High, 10th grade at Buchtel High and lived right up there on Portage Path in the carriage house. I loved Akron."
Although he was an acting veteran by then -- having made his debut at age 6 in a production of Henry VI, Part III -- Lithgow did give an Akron audience a taste of what was to come. "I played Lt. Rooney in Arsenic and Old Lace at Buchtel," he said.
But the Turners "had no idea that he had even lived there when we wrote the script," Bonnie Turner said.
"We had been writers for Saturday Night Live and he had hosted a couple of times, and we hit it off well and became friends. Then when he read the script and we talked to him three days later, he said, 'Oh, my God, how did you know? Did you know I lived in Ohio?' It was all a happy coincidence."
And far happier than Lithgow's initial reaction to the idea of playing one of four aliens: "Oh, no, not me."
"But about five seconds later I immediately got the comic premise of it," he said. He calls the aliens "marvelous fools, brilliant in their own way, but equally foolish."
They have no special powers but are afflicted both with curiosity and an unvarnished honesty that creates problems in their dealings with humans -- especially in the pilot, where the aliens are adjusting to human form and its accompanying emotions, urges and, um, parts.
The pilot stirred strong emotions among critics here, some finding it funny, others offended by what one writer called "the fixation on breasts, phallic symbols and the uncontrollable hormonal surges."
Turner said, "We are not a politically correct show. We are farcical. I'm always surprised that someone would think I, as a woman, would write anything to offend other women."
And the characters' preoccupation underscores their honesty, Terry Turner said. "I think our aliens have no power except for the truth," he said. "They always tell the truth. Which can be about the scariest power anyone can have."
And, in a way, Bonnie Turner sees that as an Ohio thing -- "an honest existence," she said. The aliens "are honest people, too, and they're going to walk among honest human beings."
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