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Carl Reiner’s Archives Will Go to the National Comedy Center
by Eliana Willis 19 March 2021, 11:41
The collection of papers, artifacts and memorabilia spans Reiner’s career and work on “Your Show of Shows,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and beyond.When Carl Reiner died last June, he left a hole in the comedy firmament that no performer, writer or director will be able to fill.Reiner, who would have turned 99 on Saturday, also left behind a trove of documents, artifacts and personal memorabilia, working on TV programs like “Your Show of Shows” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and films like “Oh, God!” and “The Jerk.”Now this personal archive will live on: his family is donating it to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., so that current fans and future generations can appreciate the breadth of his accomplishments.“It’s a lot there,” said Rob Reiner, the actor and filmmaker who is Carl Reiner’s oldest child. “We’re talking about an 80-year career. He lived to 98 and he started when he was in his late teens. As I like to say, my father was on television before we owned a television.”Carl Reiner’s archives contain writing and versions of scripts from just about every project he worked on and every phase of his career. They include sketches he composed as a cast member on “Your Show of Shows,” where he worked with writers like Mel Brooks and Neil Simon, as well as early drafts of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which Reiner created and originally titled “Head of the Family,” intending it as a starring vehicle for himself.Reiner, right, with Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke on the set of their TV series.Carl Reiner Collection/National Comedy CenterOther materials include Reiner’s annotated screenplays for “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” “The Man With Two Brains” and “All of Me,” which he directed and which starred Steve Martin.“It’s hard to overstate Carl Reiner’s impact on comedy as an art form,” said Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center.“I can’t tell you how many writers and comedians have told me that they were inspired, in particular, by ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ because that was the first time they saw comedy represented as a craft,” Gunderson said. “Generations of comedy writers learned that was an occupation via that show.”Reiner had been a member of the National Comedy Center’s advisory board of directors. Gunderson said that after his death, the center approached his family about ways in which it could pay tribute to him. Among these plans, the center will rename its department of archives and preservation for Reiner.Reiner’s archives include unproduced projects and annotated screenplays.Carl Reiner Collection/National Comedy CenterGunderson said that this conversation led to further discussion with Reiner’s family about providing a home for his creative and professional possessions.“We just thought it was a natural thing to do,” Rob Reiner said. “We felt that he had a connection there and he was trying to help launch the place and give it some credibility. When he passed away, we thought this is the place where all of his artifacts, materials and awards should go.”Carl Reiner’s archives also include his Emmy Awards and his Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, many autobiographical writings and drafts of unproduced projects, and even the chairs and TV trays that he and Brooks used in recent years when they sat together in Reiner’s home and ate dinner in front of the television. Gunderson said that the National Comedy Center is planning an exhibition for next year, to mark what would have been Reiner’s 100th birthday.Rob Reiner said he was particularly fond of the archival photographs that chronicle his father’s development as an actor from very humble beginnings.“They used to perform Shakespeare plays at high schools and the kids would sit in with the scripts in their hands so they could follow along,” Rob Reiner said. “While he was up onstage, he’d hear, whoosh, the sound of the pages turning.”Rob Reiner continued, “He told me that one time, he forgot his lines and he started doing Shakespearean double-talk. And you heard this — whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh — people trying to find out where the heck he was in the script.” More
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Barbara Rickles, Comedian’s Wife and Target, Dies at 84
by Eliana Willis 17 March 2021, 17:32
Don Rickles made jokes about her for decades. But by many accounts, they had one of the happiest marriages in show business.Barbara Rickles, the widow of the comedian Don Rickles and a fictionalized target of his comic insults, died on Sunday, which would have been their 56th wedding anniversary, at her home in Los Angeles. She was 84.A spokesman, Paul Shefrin, said the cause was non-Hodgkins lymphoma.“They were incredibly devoted to each other,” Mr. Shefrin wrote on his Facebook page. “She was the perfect woman for Don and vice versa.”A native of Philadelphia, Barbara Sklar met her future husband through his film agent, for whom she worked briefly. They married on March 14, 1965.By many accounts, the Rickleses had one of the happiest marriages in show business. They socialized often with another enduring Hollywood couple, Bob and Ginny Newhart. Don Rickles died at 90 in 2017.Barbara Rickles helped produce the Emmy-winning documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project” (2007) and the 2020 release “Don Rickles Live in Concert.” Don Rickles, in serious moments, would note that he was nearly 40 on his wedding day and had struggled for years to find someone.“I advise any young person that gets married, really, work at it. If you work at it, it’s delightful,” he said in 1986, during one of his many appearances on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, whom he would tease endlessly about his multiple marriages.Mr. Rickles told a different story when he was in his better known “Mr. Warmth” persona. For decades he cracked jokes about his wife’s looks, about their sex life, about her supposed love of jewelry. When he appeared with Frank Sinatra on “Tonight” in 1976, he begged Sinatra to set him up with someone.“I need a girl so bad,” he said in mock despair. “I love my wife, but she’s ill.”The Rickleses had two children: Mindy Rickles, an actor and comedian, and Larry Rickles, a screenwriter and producer who died in 2011 at 41. Ms. Rickles is survived by her daughter and grandchildren.Near the end of his life, Mr. Rickles was filmed reminiscing with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, with whom he worked on the 1995 film “Casino.” The conversation turned to marriage.“You’re married again, right? You’re happy?” Mr. Rickles said to Mr. Scorsese.“Yeah, been married 20 years,” Mr. Scorsese said.“I’m married to Barbara — which is a mistake,” Mr. Rickles responded. “Nah, that’s a joke. She’ll hear it and say, ‘That’s not funny.’” More
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The Night New York's Theaters, Museums and Concert Halls Shut Down
by Eliana Willis 11 March 2021, 09:00
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 12, 2020: The Night the City Sighed to SleepChocolate fountains, Debbie Harry and an artist’s swan song cut short. We gathered scenes from the New York City cultural landscape in the last moments before lockdown.The view from Sardi’s on March 12, 2020, as Broadway and much of New York locked down.Credit…Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesMichael Paulson, Julia Jacobs and March 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMarch began with an ominous drumbeat. A packed cruise ship with a coronavirus outbreak was left floating for days off the coast of California. South by Southwest was canceled. The N.B.A. suspended its season. And then, on March 12, Broadway shut down, and with it every large gathering in New York City.By the time the grates came down, it was not much of a surprise. The city that never sleeps was grinding to a halt.But it was impossible to imagine what was to come. The staggering death toll. The vast job losses. The isolation. The endlessness.That evening, a group of Broadway bigwigs — theater owners and producers, mostly — gathered to drown their sorrows at Sardi’s, the industry hangout famous for its celebrity caricatures. They noshed, they drank, they commiserated, and they hugged. Several of them wound up infected with the virus, although there were so many meetings, and so few masks at that point, who knows how they got it.They posted signs on their theaters saying they expected to be back four weeks later.Now it’s been 52.Do you remember your final nights out? We gathered scenes from around the city as the curtains closed. MICHAEL PAULSONFondue Fountains, Buckets of Bouquets and Fresh DolceThe dressing rooms at the Brooks Atkinson Theater were filled with flowers. The ruby chocolate fondue fountain was booked for the after-party. Brittney Mack’s mother and her brother and her best girlfriends had all flown into town, not about to miss the moment when the 30-something Chicagoan made her long-awaited Broadway debut as a 16th-century English queen.But it was not to be. Ninety minutes before the scheduled opening of “Six,” an eagerly anticipated new musical about the wives of King Henry VIII, Broadway shut down.“I got to the theater early, and there were gifts from all over — buckets and buckets of plants, and cookies, and so much love, and I was like, ‘Hell, yes,’” Mack recalled. “And then the assistant stage manager came in and said the show is canceled, and I just said, ‘How dare you!’”Credit…Lucas McMahon“It was very, very overwhelming, and all of a sudden I felt incredibly alone. And then I was like, ‘But my dress! And the earrings!’ So many perspectives hit me, and I realized this happened to our entire industry, and I thought, ‘What the hell are we all going to do?’”What most of the “Six” family did was to gather. Mack went out for drinks with her friends at Harlem Public, near her apartment. Meanwhile, the show’s producer, Kevin McCollum, fresh off canceling an 800-person opening night party at Tao Downtown, hosted about 100 members of the show’s inner circle at the Glass House Tavern, a few doors down from the theater.“Looking back, it was ridiculous that we did that, but we didn’t know what we didn’t know, so we had a buffet of crudités, and a host of droplets, I’m sure,” he said. “We were in shock. There were people crying. We were giving it our best stiff upper lip, for the British, but we were emotionally devastated.”The notice posted on the doors of the Brooks Atkinson Theater, home to the Broadway production of “Six.”Credit…Lucas McMahonBundled playbills that would have been distributed to the sold-out audience.Credit…Lucas McMahonGeorge Stiles, an English composer, was among many British friends of the show who had flown over for the opening. Stiles was once in a band with the father of Toby Marlow, who wrote “Six” with Lucy Moss, and had become a mentor and then a co-producer.“Never before has something that I’ve been involved with felt so poised to go off with a crack,” Stiles said of “Six” — quite a statement given that he wrote songs for the stage musical adaptation of “Mary Poppins.” “I was anticipating the euphoria of the crowd, and the fun of the red carpet-y nonsense, and the everyone wanting to be the last one to sit down.”Instead, he and his husband and Marlow’s father licked their wounds at Marseille. What was on the menu? “The sheer awfulness of being this close to a wonderful Broadway run.” Stiles has since put his “suitably regal” gold and black Dolce & Gabbana outfit “into very careful mothballs,” anticipating that there will yet be an opening night to celebrate. “We are very gung-ho,” he said, “and hopeful, fingers crossed, that it wont be too many months away.” PAULSON“We Love You, New York! Don’t Touch Your Face!”Only about half of the people who bought tickets to the March 12 show at Mercury Lounge had turned up, but there were still throngs of people drinking, talking and grooving to the band. Debbie Harry of the band Blondie was there, and so was the music producer Hal Willner. He would die less than a month later from Covid-19.Onstage, Michael C. Hall, the star of “Dexter” and lead singer of the glam rock band Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, belted and wailed into the microphone.The staff members at Mercury Lounge knew they were watching their last live concert for a while; what “a while” meant, they had no idea. Bands had been canceling their appearances at an increasing rate, and on a call earlier that day, the owners had asked the staff members if they were still comfortable working, said Maggie Wrigley, a club manager. The line was silent for a moment, before one employee spoke up to say that no, it was no longer comfortable.Michael C. Hall, the star of “Dexter,” and his glam rock band, Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, were the last act to perform at Mercury Lounge prior to shutdown.Credit…Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressOthers piped up to agree: They felt exposed and vulnerable to the virus at work. Because the late show had already canceled, the owners decided that the club would shut down that night after the early show.At about 9:30 p.m. — painfully early for a Thursday night on the city’s club scene — the audience was asked to leave. “We love you, New York! Don’t touch your face!” Hall yelled at the end of his set.Alex Beaulieu, the club’s production manager, sanitized the microphones and packed the drum kit, amps and cables for longer term storage.“We locked the door and sat at the bar and had a drink,” Wrigley said of the club’s staff, “and we just kind of looked at each other, with no idea what was going to happen.”JULIA JACOBSA Swan Song, Cut ShortFor Sheena Wagstaff, chairman of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the spring of 2020 was destined to be bittersweet. The Met Breuer, the museum’s experimental satellite space, was going to close, three years ahead of schedule. But its final show was one she’d spent years preparing: “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,” a survey of the stern and skeptical German artist, filling two floors of the landmark building and including loans from 30 different collections.The exhibition, intended by the now 89-year-old artist to be his last major show, opened March 4. It had the makings of a blockbuster, and it ought to have introduced New York to four paintings called “Birkenau” (2014): streaked, abraded abstractions that obscure imagery of the titular death camp. On March 12, the show’s ninth day, Wagstaff realized it had to close.The Richter exhibition at the Met Breuer had all the makings of a blockbuster when it closed on its ninth day.Credit…Charlie Rubin for The New York TimesAt first the gravity of the crisis wasn’t fully clear. “I had every anticipation that it was going to reopen in May at the very latest,” Wagstaff said recently. But soon she realized that “Birkenau” — a culmination of Richter’s 60-year engagement with German history and the ethics of representation — would not find an audience. “Beyond a kind of personal huge disappointment, it was that the artist, so aware of his own mortality, was denied the possibility of actually making a mini-manifesto to the world. Alongside that was the curtailment of the Breuer. What we ended up with was this implosion.”Richter never saw the show. A few days before it came down, Wagstaff stood alone with “Birkenau”: paintings about the possibility of perceiving history that, now, no one could perceive at all. “It was a kind of haunting experience,” she said. “They became almost anthropomorphic. They’re sitting there on the walls, and there’s nothing, there’s no one to witness them. The paintings are witnessing something, and that witnessing cannot be conveyed any further.”By autumn, the Met had ceded occupancy of the Breuer to the Frick Collection. Most of Richter’s paintings had been crated up and shipped back to their lenders. Yet “Birkenau,” which belongs to the artist, stayed in New York. Wagstaff brought these most challenging works into the Met’s main building, introducing into the lavish Lehman Collection these four speechless acts of remembrance and horror. “It was a trace of the show. The viewing conditions weren’t perfect,” Wagstaff conceded. “We had really limited attendance; we still do. But people stayed in that room for a really long time. For those who came to see it, it was a revelation.” JASON FARAGOOne Final SetBy March 15, Broadway theaters and concert halls were empty, but in the dim light of the Comedy Cellar, audience members sat shoulder to shoulder sipping drinks and watching stand-up comedy. Masks were not required.The comedian Carmen Lynch was hesitant about showing up that night: Her boyfriend was heading out of the city to stay with his family in Connecticut, and she planned to join him — it seemed like it was time to hunker down. But, Lynch said, she knew that the days of doing multiple shows in a single night were ending, and she wanted to make as much money as possible before the inevitable shutdown. She exchanged texts with fellow comedians to feel out who was still performing.“I thought, ‘I’m not doing anything illegal. I’ll just do this one show and then leave,’” Lynch recalled.In the last stand-up shows at the Comedy Cellar before it closed on March 15, comedians joked about Corona beer and the newly clean state of the subway.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesSo her boyfriend took her suitcase to Connecticut while she stayed to perform — one set at 7:45 p.m. another at 8:30. Before each comedian would walk onstage to tell jokes in front of the club’s famous exposed brick wall and stained glass, they would reach into a bucket to take a microphone that had been recently cleaned.Just before Lynch went on, the comedian Lynne Koplitz took the stage, removed the sanitized microphone from the stand and theatrically wiped it down with a white cloth another time, saying, “I’ve wanted to do this for years!”When Lynch finished her second set, she didn’t linger. She called an Uber and felt relieved when the driver accepted her request for an hour-and-a-half drive to Connecticut, not knowing how long she’d be gone (until summer) or what the city would be like when she returned (eerily empty, store windows boarded up).She drove away, and in retrospect, she remembers it like a scene in a disaster movie. “It’s like you’re in the car,” she said, “and you turn around and there’s an explosion behind you.” JACOBSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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I Miss Being Part of an Audience
by Eliana Willis 10 March 2021, 15:21
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyI Miss Being Part of an AudienceCrowds can be mindless, even dangerous. But that feeling of losing yourself as you experience art together hasn’t been replicated since live entertainment went online.Credit…Antoine CosséPublished More
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Richie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75
by Eliana Willis 6 March 2021, 19:25
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRichie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75At the Comic Strip, which Mr. Tienken and two partners opened in 1976, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld and many others made a lot of people laugh.Richie Tienken onstage at the Comic Strip in Manhattan in an undated photo. He and two partners opened the club in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were advanced there.Credit…via Tienken familyMarch 6, 2021, 3:25 p.m. ETRichie Tienken, a founder of the influential Manhattan comedy club the Comic Strip, where Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and countless other leading comics did some of their earliest work, died on Feb. 27 in Ridgewood, N.J. He was 75.His wife, Jeannie Tienken, confirmed his death and said the cause had not been determined. In recent years, he had struggled with throat cancer.In the mid-1970s, Mr. Tienken, who owned several bars in the Bronx, went to see one of his bartenders, an aspiring comic, perform at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star, which was in Manhattan at the time. It was a Monday night — normally a slow one in the bar business — and Mr. Tienken was impressed by how packed Catch a Rising Star was, as told in his 2012 book, written with Jeffrey Gurian, “Make ‘Em Laugh: 35 Years of the Comic Strip, the Greatest Comedy Club of All Time!”In a telephone interview, Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said another business fact was not lost on Mr. Tienken: At the time, comics weren’t generally paid (though the Comic Strip did eventually start paying modest amounts).“He was paying bands $400 a night” at his bars, the younger Mr. Tienken said. He did the math, and he decided that opening a comedy club to compete with Catch a Rising Star and the Improv, the only other prominent comedy club in Manhattan at the time, could be profitable.He and his partners settled on a run-down bar on Second Avenue between 80th and 81st Streets.“The place was old — really old,” Mr. Tienken wrote in the book. “But the bathrooms were in place, which meant that the plumbing was all in.”The Comic Strip (now known as Comic Strip Live) opened in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were propelled along there.“Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld, who first performed there in 1976, said through a spokesman. “And he had a wonderful, fatherly way about him that gave us all a feeling of encouragement as we stumbled around his stage trying to figure out how to do it. We all loved seeing him every night, and he took good care of us.”Mr. Tienken, second from left, with, from left, the comedians Jimmy Brogan, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Schiff. “Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld said.Credit…via Tienken familyMr. Seinfeld returned to the club to perform a 2017 Netflix special, “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” in which he included the first jokes he told from the Comic Strip stage.Mr. Murphy, soon to achieve stardom on “Saturday Night Live,” was another comic who honed his stand-up at the club in its early days. Mr. Tienken and one of his co-founders, Robert Wachs, managed him for a time, and they both had producer credits on some of Mr. Murphy’s movies.A somewhat later group included Adam Sandler, Ray Romano and Mr. Rock, who wrote the introduction for “Make ‘Em Laugh” and compared comedy clubs like Catch a Rising Star and the Comic Strip to colleges for young stand-ups.“Catch was Yale, and the Strip was Illinois State University, Urbana,” he wrote. “Catch was stressful, like you were always on the verge of being expelled if you didn’t keep up your grades. The Strip was laid back. If you put in the work and studied, you would do well. But if you blew off a term smoking pot, it didn’t go on your permanent record.”And Mr. Tienken?“He had powerful shoulders and was genial,” Mr. Rock wrote, “like a bouncer who babysat on the side.”Richard John Tienken was born on June 11, 1945, in Manhattan. His father, John, was an electrician, and his mother, Helen, was a homemaker and also worked in a department store.He left home at 13, he said — he had stolen a car, and when reform school loomed, he hit the road to avoid it. His father was surprisingly supportive when he announced his plans.“He said, ‘After looking into them’” — that is, reform schools — “‘I understand; here’s 50 bucks,’” Mr. Tienken recalled last year in an episode of Mr. Gurian’s video series, “Comedy Matters.”He sold magazines and delivered groceries, and he eventually got into bar and bingo hall ownership. Then he moved into comedy.Mr. Gurian, a writer, comic and comedy historian who worked with Mr. Tienken again on a 2016 update of the 2012 book that they called “Laughing Legends: How the Comic Strip Club Changed the Face of Comedy,” said that among Mr. Tienken’s innovations was instituting a schedule so comics would know when they were going onstage; in other clubs, they might sit around for hours not knowing when or even whether they would get stage time on a given night.Some of the comics who came through his club were known for edgy material, but Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said his father was a fan of restraint.“He encouraged comics to tell stories about their own life over shock value and vulgarity,” he said.Mr. Tienken married Jeannie Nardi in 1991. In addition to her and his son Richie, Mr. Tienken, who lived in Hawthorne, N.J., is survived by another son, Jonathan; three daughters, Jacqueline, Dawn and Christina; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Tienken’s club had financial troubles at times (its post-pandemic future is unclear), and in recent years he had been embroiled in legal battles with the widow of Mr. Wachs, who died in 2013. But in the video interview last year, he said Mr. Seinfeld’s recent special had given the club a financial lift.So did a gesture by another alumnus, Mr. Sandler, who shot part of his 2018 Netflix special called “100% Fresh” there. But unlike the Seinfeld taping, that one was a surprise to Mr. Tienken; his wife kept it a secret from him.“She said to me, ‘When you come in tonight, dress nice,’” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Tony Hendra, a Multiplatform Humorist, Is Dead at 79
by Eliana Willis 5 March 2021, 18:48
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Hendra, a Multiplatform Humorist, Is Dead at 79He took his British brand of satire to nightclubs, TV, film (“This Is Spinal Tap”) and National Lampoon. But a memoir led to a sex-abuse accusation.Tony Hendra at his home in New York in 2004. He had a peripatetic career as a stand-up comedian, actor and writer.Credit…Tina Fineberg/Associated PressMarch 5, 2021Updated 2:48 p.m. ETTony Hendra, a humorist whose wide-ranging résumé included top editing jobs at National Lampoon and Spy magazines and a zesty role in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on Thursday in Yonkers, N.Y. He was 79.His wife, Carla Hendra, said the cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which was first diagnosed in 2019.Mr. Hendra, who was British but had long lived in the United States, began writing and performing comedy while a student at Cambridge University, traveling in the same circles as future members of the Monty Python troupe. In 1964 he and his performing partner, Nick Ullett, took their stage act to the United States, and from there he fashioned a steady if peripatetic career doing stand-up comedy, writing and editing for various publications, acting and publishing books.One of those, “Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul” (2004), was his account of his long relationship with a Benedictine monk named Joseph Warrilow, who, he wrote, had helped ground him through personal setbacks and instances of moral turpitude and led him back to an appreciation of the Roman Catholic faith of his childhood; as he put it late in the book, “The spiritual muscles I hadn’t used for decades began to acquire some tone.”“Father Joe” received glowing reviews. Andrew Sullivan wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it “belongs in the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written.”But it had at least one detractor: Jessica Hendra, Mr. Hendra’s daughter from his first marriage. She submitted an unsolicited Op-Ed essay to The Times stating that Mr. Hendra had sexually abused her on several occasions when she was a girl, something not mentioned in his book. The Times didn’t publish the essay, but instead assigned an investigative reporter to look into the accusation.Mr. Hendra’s memoir received glowing reviews but was denounced by his daughter, who said it failed to mention that he had sexually abused her. He denied the accusation.Credit…Penguin Random HouseA month after Mr. Sullivan’s review, the newspaper published an account of her allegations under the headline “Daughter Says Father’s Confessional Book Didn’t Confess His Molestation of Her.”“It’s being seen as completely confessional, totally honest, the whole story,” Ms. Hendra, who was then 39, told the paper. “It’s not the whole story. By not saying anything, I felt I was being complicit in it. This book is an erasing of what happened to me.”In 2005 Ms. Hendra published a memoir of her own, “How to Cook Your Daughter,” in which she recounted what she said had been done to her. Mr. Hendra denied her accusations.Anthony Christopher Hendra was born on July 10, 1941, in Willesden, England, northwest of London. His mother, he wrote in “Father Joe,” was a “good Catholic” but “didn’t allow the precepts of the Gospels and their chief spokesman to interfere much with her daily round of gossip, bitching, kid-slapping, neighbor-bashing, petty vengeance, and other middle-class peccadilloes.” His father was not Catholic but because of his job — he was a stained-glass artist — “spent far more time inside churches and knew far more about Catholic iconography than his nominally Catholic brood.”Mr. Hendra attended St. Albans School, in southeast England, and was intent on becoming a monk when, he wrote in his memoir, Father Joe advised him instead to accept the scholarship he had been offered at Cambridge. There he became less preoccupied with religion and more interested in satire. By 1961 he was performing with the Cambridge Footlights theatrical group, doing comic routines in its annual revue as part of a cast that included John Cleese and Graham Chapman, who later in the decade would be among the founders of the groundbreaking Monty Python.Mr. Hendra formed a comedic partnership with Mr. Ullett, the two “purveying a nightclub-accessible form of the then fashionable political satire launched by ‘Beyond the Fringe’ and ‘That Was the Week That Was,’” as Mr. Hendra put it in a 1998 article in Harper’s Magazine, name-checking two pillars of late-’50s and early-’60s British comedy. In London they shared a bill with the American comic Jackie Mason, who offered to help them give New York a try.In 1964 they did. One of their first appearances was at the Greenwich Village club Café Au Go Go, opening for Lenny Bruce.“And a delightful introduction to America it was,” Mr. Hendra wrote in the introduction to “Last Words” (2009), his friend George Carlin’s memoir, which he finished after Mr. Carlin died in 2008. “The third night of the gig, undercover N.Y.P.D. cops arrested Lenny as he came off stage — allegedly for obscenity but as likely for being too funny about Catholics.”Mr. Hendra, right, performing on television with Nick Ullett. The two maintained a comedy partnership throughout the 1960s.Credit…Donaldson Collection/Getty ImagesMr. Hendra and Mr. Ullett worked the comedy circuit for the rest of the 1960s, often bombing in clubs outside New York, their droll British sense of humor not meshing with sensibilities in places like Dallas and the Catskills. They also turned up on television, including on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”“It’s a legendary show, but for comedians it was like playing a mausoleum,” Mr. Hendra said in a 2009 interview on Don Imus’s radio program. The audience was full of “Long Island car dealers and their wives” who were too uptight to laugh, he said, as was the host.“We used to call it the night of the living Ed,” he said.Hendra & Ullett never made it into comedy’s top tier, but the two worked regularly. They even appeared in a musical version of “Twelfth Night” at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in Manhattan in 1968, Mr. Hendra as Sir Toby Belch and Mr. Ullett as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. “Mr. Hendra’s bluffness and the wraithlike woebegone simpering of Mr. Ullett had quality,” Clive Barnes wrote in The Times.Seeking a steadier income, Mr. Hendra abandoned the comedy act in 1969 to try his hand at television writing on the West Coast. He had two moderately successful years, writing for “Playboy After Dark” and “Music Scene,” but when his manager got him a high-profile job writing for a coming special sponsored by Chevrolet, he torpedoed his own career. He was “deeply into the burgeoning environmental movement,” Mr. Hendra wrote in Harper’s in 2002, and decided to take out advertisements in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in the form of an open letter to James Roche, chairman of General Motors, scolding him for the company’s record on pollution.“I was flooded with supportive calls from Hollywood’s nascent left,” he wrote, “and I was finished in network television.”He headed back East and into his stint at National Lampoon.The magazine was founded in 1970 by alumni of The Harvard Lampoon, and Mr. Hendra wrote for it from the beginning. In 1971, he was made managing editor, and he remained at the magazine for much of the decade. It was the Lampoon’s most fruitful period, and Mr. Hendra helped turn it into a franchise, with books, record albums and more.John Belushi, left, and Alice Playten performing in “National Lampoon’s Lemmings” at the Village Gate in Manhattan in 1971. Mr. Hendra produced, directed and helped write the show, a revue full of rock parodies.Credit…National LampoonIn 1972 he produced, directed and helped write “National Lampoon’s Lemmings,” a revue full of rock parodies that ran at the Village Gate in Manhattan. The idea, Mr. Hendra wrote in Harper’s, was to stage the show just long enough to record a live album, since the first National Lampoon album, “Radio Dinner,” had met with some success earlier that year.Instead, “Lemmings” became an Off Broadway hit. Among the cast were Chevy Chase and John Belushi, still three years away from becoming household names as part of the original “Saturday Night Live” troupe. Another cast member was Christopher Guest, who 12 years later would take rock parody to new heights as a writer and star of “This Is Spinal Tap,” Rob Reiner’s deadpan fake rock documentary.In that film, Mr. Hendra played Ian Faith, the not-terribly-competent manager of a heavy metal band that was struggling to draw crowds on a tour. (He tells the band the cancellation of a Boston concert isn’t a big deal because “it’s not a big college town.”)Mr. Hendra was the last editor in chief of the initial incarnation of the satirical magazine Spy, holding the position for about a year before the publication folded in early 1994. He was not involved in the magazine’s revival later that year.Mr. Hendra at the New York premiere of a film about National Lampoon in 2015. He wrote for the magazine from its inception in 1970 and was its managing editor for many years. Credit…Laura Cavanaugh/Getty ImagesMr. Hendra and Ron Shelton wrote the screenplay for a 1996 boxing comedy, “The Great White Hype,” which starred Samuel L. Jackson, Damon Wayans and Jeff Goldblum.“With a gleeful script by Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review in The Times, “not to mention a gamely funny cast, this raucous film comes close to what it’s after: delivering a race-conscious ‘Spinal Tap’ for the world of sports.”After the fallout over “Father Joe,” Mr. Hendra kept a low profile, although in 2006 he did publish his first novel, “The Messiah of Morris Avenue,” about a not-too-distant future in which the religious right is running America.He married Judith Hilary Christmas in 1964; they divorced in the 1980s. In 1986 he married Carla Meisner. In addition to her, he is survived by his daughter Jessica and another daughter from his first marriage, Katherine; three children from his second marriage, Lucy, Sebastian and Nicholas; a brother, Martin; two sisters, Angela Hendra and Celia Radice; and four grandchildren.Mr. Hendra lived in Manhattan. Carla Hendra said he loved his adopted country and even during his illness, which causes loss of muscle control, remained engaged in politics. One of his last smiles, she said, came when he learned the results of the presidential election in November.“He was an immigrant who sailed from London into N.Y. Harbor on the SS United States after being given free passage in exchange for performing stand-up,” she said by email. “What was to be a two-week visit became 57 years, because he believed in the promise of America.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Clown Princes: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall on ‘Coming 2 America’
by Eliana Willis 24 February 2021, 09:00
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyClown Princes: Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall on ‘Coming 2 America’The comic stars and longtime friends talk about their history together and their many, many roles in the original film and the new sequel.Eddie Murphy, left, at home in the Hollywood Hills and Arsenio Hall in Los Angeles. “There’s never been a period where we haven’t been friends,” Murphy said.Credit…Photographs by Brad Ogbonna for The New York TimesFeb. 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThere was a time when Eddie Murphy ruled the multiplex like a king — or at least a prince.In the 1980s, he capped off a series of comedy blockbusters (“48 Hrs.,” “Trading Places,” “Beverly Hills Cop”) and stand-up sets (“Raw”) with “Coming to America.” That 1988 film cast Murphy as Prince Akeem, the wealthy potentate of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, who travels incognito to New York with his faithful attendant, Semmi (Arsenio Hall), in search of a woman who will love him for himself.“Coming to America,” directed by John Landis, was propelled by his chemistry with Hall and their aptitude for playing countless other characters, including an unctuous reverend (Hall), a mediocre soul singer (Murphy) and the squabbling denizens of a local barber shop (Murphy, Hall and Murphy).Murphy has had many career highs and lows since, though he has lately been on an upswing that includes his hit 2019 biopic, “Dolemite Is My Name.” And now he’s returning to Zamunda in a long-awaited sequel, “Coming 2 America,” which Amazon will release on March 5.The follow-up, directed by Craig Brewer, finds an older Akeem reckoning with a grown daughter (KiKi Layne) who wants her own opportunity to rule the kingdom. He rushes back to New York with Semmi after learning that he fathered a son (Jermaine Fowler) there on his original visit. Murphy and Hall reprise several of their supporting characters, joined by “Coming to America” alumni James Earl Jones, Shari Headley and John Amos, as well as franchise newcomers like Wesley Snipes, Tracy Morgan and Leslie Jones.Hall and Murphy in “Coming 2 America.” Initially there were no plans for a follow-up. When Ryan Coogler proposed one, Murphy rejected it, but “that made me start thinking, maybe we should do a sequel.”Credit…Amazon StudiosThe making of “Coming to America” and its sequel is a story that spans the real-life friendship of Murphy and Hall, from their first encounter as stand-up comics to the present day. Murphy and Hall got together recently for a video interview to talk about the creation of “Coming 2 America” and their camaraderie, and to needle each other as only good friends can.These are edited excerpts from that conversation.How did you first meet?EDDIE MURPHY When we started doing comedy, there may have been, like, 10 Black comics in all of the country, so everybody knew each other. Comics are very cliquish, so you get in a clique with the people you think are funny. Of the 10 Black comics, there were four or five that I never became friends with. [Laughter] When I came out here [to Los Angeles], I met Arsenio through Keenen [Ivory Wayans].ARSENIO HALL We’re standing in front of the Improv, Keenen introduces me, I shake Eddie’s hand and we talk for a while and then coming down the street is Damon Wayans. But I had never met him. Keenen introduces us to Damon and he’s doing that character that Eddie let him do eventually in “Beverly Hills Cop,” the hotel guy. It was so convincing, I didn’t laugh because I didn’t know whether it was real. But that’s how he got the role in “Cop” 1.Eddie, what got you interested in the idea of seeing America and New York through the eyes of this African prince, Akeem?MURPHY This was at the height of when I first got in the business. I was on tour and had just broke up with a girlfriend, and a conversation started on the tour bus about wanting to meet a girl that didn’t know I was this dude and just liked me for me.The two in the original hit comedy, from 1988.Credit…Paramount PicturesArsenio, at that point I think your only movie credit was a comedy sketch in “Amazon Women on the Moon.” How did you get involved in the original film?HALL It’s funny, I was not a movie star, I was a stand-up comic —MURPHY Oh, no, no — he also did an episode of [the revived] “Love, American Style.” He’s with a “Soul Train” dancer named Damita Jo Freeman and they play a couple. I’ve looked all over. I looked on YouTube, but I can’t find it. [The segment can be found here.] We were friends, and I always like to be with some other comedian, to make it as funny as it can be. There’s me and Richard [Pryor in “Harlem Nights”], there’s me and Arsenio, me and Martin [Lawrence in “Life”]. I’m not going to be shouldering this [expletive] by myself.HALL But it’s funny you mention “Amazon Women” — Eddie and I are riding through Manhattan in a new white Corvette he had bought and Eddie says we’ve got to find somebody to direct this movie. And I remember saying, well, I’m not going to be much help, because I’ve only done one movie and it was with John Landis, called “Amazon Women on the Moon.” And I saw something go off.MURPHY You know what’s funny? John Landis says to me, “You know who’s really funny? Arsenio Brown.” I was like, “Arsenio Brown? Arsenio Hall.” “Oh, yes, Arsenio Hall.” To this day, he’ll still call himself Brown.HALL I think Reverend Brown came from that joke.MURPHY Arsenio Brown! It actually has a ring to it. Arsenio Hall sounds kind of stagy, like he made it up. Arsenio Brown sounds like a real person.Whose idea was it to have you play multiple characters in the movie?MURPHY The original idea didn’t have multiple characters. Once John Landis got involved, he knew I was able to do the Yiddish accent, so he was like, that would be hysterical. He had worked with [the special makeup-effects designer] Rick Baker before, so he was like, Rick could make you look like an old Jewish man — that would be hysterical. And that’s how that stuff started.Your careers went in very different directions after “Coming to America.” Did that make it difficult to remain in each other’s lives?MURPHY There’s never been a period where we haven’t been friends.HALL We can share different experiences. Part of it is being comfortable with who you are and knowing who you are. I’m a stand-up comic and a guy who does TV. Eddie is a movie star. But we share with each other because the bottom line is we’re both comfortable in our own skin.“If I’m thinking about my legacy — and I rarely do — my career never even comes into it,” Murphy said. “My legacy is my children.”Credit…Brad Ogbonna for The New York TimesWhat’s something that’s different about the two of you?HALL I’m here ’cause I’m broke — he’s here ’cause he’s good. [Laughter]MURPHY I don’t see myself as a movie star or a comedian or any of those things. I see myself as an artist. And I feel like there’s a bunch of different ways I can express myself.HALL You can pop by Eddie’s, and he’ll play a song for you. And you can’t even believe, wait, that’s you on guitar? That’s you singing? You wrote and produced this track? And that’s what he does for fun. For him it’s like crocheting a hat.MURPHY I have so many tracks and collaborations with people — Michael [Jackson], El DeBarge — all these people I’ve been in the studio with over the years and never finished it or never released it.HALL He does so many things. He does them as well as anybody else. He’s a beast. It’s hard to deal with.What took you so long to make a sequel to “Coming to America”?MURPHY We never thought about doing a sequel. The way the story ended was kind of like, “And they lived happily ever after.” Then all this time passed and the movie became this cult thing. Catchphrases from the movie start working their way into the culture. Stores turning themselves into McDowell’s. I see Beyoncé and Jay-Z dressed up like the Zamunda characters for Halloween.Then Ryan Coogler, before he directed “Black Panther,” I meet with him and he says, I want to do a “Coming to America” sequel. He had an idea for Michael B. Jordan to play my son and he would be looking for a wife. I was like, then the movie would be about the son, it’s not our characters, we already did that. It didn’t come together.But all that made me start thinking, maybe we should do a sequel. I saw the “Terminator” movie where they made Arnold Schwarzenegger young — his face looked like Arnold, but young — and that’s where I got it. [Snaps fingers] If we use that to make us young and create a new scene in the club [from the original “Coming to America”] where we’re out looking for the girls, so it’s part of that night. I go home with a girl and I’m high — that was the piece we needed to start the flow.HALL I never thought about it because we had always said we’re going to leave “Coming to America” where it is. But I text him sometimes when I do my coffee run in the morning, and he says, What are you doing? I think you should read this script now. And I read half of it sitting in his yard. It was so exciting and so good.“I’m a stand-up comic and a guy who does TV,” Hall said. “Eddie is a movie star. But we share with each other because the bottom line is we’re both comfortable in our own skin.Credit…Brad Ogbonna for The New York TimesDid the lawsuit won by Art Buchwald, who said “Coming to America” was based on a treatment he wrote, affect your ability to make a sequel?MURPHY Oh, not at all. I’m not even sure how all that stuff was resolved, what the exact wording was. But at the end of the day, I think it’s all good. In the credits, they give a thank you to the Art Buchwald estate.In both “Coming to America” films, we see Zamunda as this nation where Black people are able to fulfill their potential and achieve greatness without white people interfering or oppressing them. Was that a point you were trying to make explicitly?MURPHY We never say that. We never show you the history of the country. We just are. We’re like Wakanda.HALL And how perfect to do “Coming to America” 2 in Atlanta, where it’s very hot and the palace actually is owned by Rick Ross.MURPHY Yeah, his house is so big, we literally were able to dress it and make it look like a palace. That stuff you see where I’m walking on the African plain and there’s antelopes running — that’s Rick Ross’s backyard. He has like 300 acres or something.HALL And a lake! Do you have a lake? You’ve got to start rapping. Let me hear you say [Rick Ross voice], “Hunh.”Were there any character bits that were written for the sequel but didn’t make the cut?MURPHY There was a draft where the barbers had on MAGA hats and it turned out that they were Republicans. But it wasn’t because they were for Trump — they were Herman Cain supporters. We thought it was funny but it kind of dates the movie if we do this. We had these two old goat herders that had a dispute over a goat, and it was very funny but it culminated in, one of these guys [had sex with] this goat. It was like, uhhhh, we’ve got James Earl Jones in this movie — let’s keep it all classy. [Laughter] In the early drafts, Tracy Morgan was my son.HALL I’m like, I love Tracy and he’s the funniest guy in the world. But yo, Ed, y’all about the same age. [Murphy voice] “We’ll work it out, man, we’ll figure it out. He’s funny.”Murphy and Hall have been friends since early in their careers. “Comics are very cliquish, so you get in a clique with the people you think are funny,” Murphy said.Credit…The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty ImagesDid the barbershop guys remain eternally the same age?MURPHY You look at the makeup — we aged them up nice and good. They’re supposed to be in their late 80s, early 90s now. Looking at the first one, I was amazed at how young we looked — the skin is tight, Saul [the barbershop patron], there are no age spots on his face, his face is all even-toned.What do you do to pass the time when you’re in the makeup chair?HALL It’s funny because we go to different places. We can’t be in the same trailer. He watches certain things and I watch certain other things. We tried it, the first day, together, and there were times when I didn’t want to see Prince videos.MURPHY Oh, you didn’t want to see MonoNeon?HALL Oh God!MURPHY MonoNeon — what’s the best way to describe him?HALL Something that makes Arsenio need his own trailer.MURPHY MonoNeon is a musician who plays bass and he’s unbelievable. He’s Jimi Hendrix and Basquiat and Skittles, all combined. I could watch it for hours and hours and hours and hours. [Hall begins to grimace and Murphy does Hall’s voice] “You’re watching MonoNeon again?!”HALL I’m a news junkie and I’ll watch the left, the right and the center, all day long.MURPHY I’m the exact opposite. Before the pandemic, I never, never watched the news. I never know what’s going on. I’ll be like, “What happened?” “Trump is the president!” I totally don’t follow any of that stuff.Murphy and Hall reprise their many, many characters in the sequel.Credit…Amazon StudiosIn the new movie, we see Akeem adjusting to changing times and reckoning with the desires of his grown children. Eddie, is this at all a metaphor for your life? Are you starting to think of the legacy you’ll someday leave behind?MURPHY If I’m thinking about my legacy — and I rarely do — my career never even comes into it. My legacy is my children. When I’m dead, and they’re doing my eulogy, ain’t nobody going to be standing over the coffin talking about, [preacher voice] “And then, he did ‘48 Hrs.,’ which was a wonderful film. Burst on the scene with Nick Nolte and shook up the world. Moved onto ‘Trading Places’ and then the great ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ And then the classic ‘Raw’ — let’s show a clip.” [laughter]HALL [indicating the array of trophies that Murphy is seated in front of] I know you think those awards behind him are for show business, but those are Daddy of the Year Awards.MURPHY One for each child.Do you have any plans for another collaboration?HALL I think it’s back to the comedy clubs for me. I’ll be at the Milk Through Your Nose in Canada next Friday.MURPHY The plan was for all of us to be doing standup. When I got up off the couch and did this little patch of work, it was, let’s do “Dolemite.” Let’s do “Saturday Night Live.” Let’s do “Coming 2 America.” Because I want to go do standup again, but I don’t want to just pop up out there when people hadn’t seen me be really funny in a while. I didn’t want to do standup after the last movie you’ve seen me do is “Meet Dave.” [Laughter] Let me remind them that I’m funny. And then the pandemic hit and we had to pull everything back. But when the pandemic is over and it’s safe to be around people, I’m going to go do standup again. There’s so many comics in “Coming 2 America.” I’d love to do a tour with all the comedians, me, Arsenio, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Trevor Noah, Jermaine Fowler, Louie Anderson, Michael Blackson.Is it perilous for the two of you to hang out in public? If people see you together, do they just start quoting “Coming to America”?MURPHY We haven’t been out in a year because the bottom fell out of the world. But when the world gets back to normal, I don’t have a problem going anywhere. When I was young I used to have bodyguards. Then one day it was like, hey, wait a second — I don’t need all these bodyguards! [Laughs] And I haven’t had them since. I don’t restrict my movements or not go to places. When you go somewhere, you just say, “What’s up?,” take a picture and keep it rolling.HALL I can’t wait for those times to come back. The only problem with Starbucks is, Eddie’s a big tipper. When I go back alone, there’s always this look, like [mimes someone looking behind him to see if Murphy is also coming]. I leave $5. Eddie will leave them a Rolls-Royce tire.Bella Murphy contributed additional camera operating for the photographs of Eddie Murphy.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Second City Is Sold to Private Equity Group
by Eliana Willis 18 February 2021, 20:02
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySecond City Is Sold to Private Equity GroupThe comedy company has faced intense criticism over race and had committed to restructuring. The new owner, ZMC, said it would not abandon this plan.Second City, in Chicago, also has outposts in Hollywood and Toronto. “We are very excited to partner with management and the incredible talent at The Second City to grow the brand and build a diverse organization,” ZMC said in a statement.Credit…Danielle Scruggs for The New York TimesFeb. 18, 2021Updated 4:02 p.m. ETSecond City, the storied comedy theater, which for more than half a century has helped define American humor, was sold to a private equity group on Thursday, the company said in a statement. The group, ZMC, run by Strauss Zelnick, invests in media entities; Zelnick is also the chief executive of Take-Two Interactive Software, the video game conglomerate behind Grand Theft Auto.It is the first time Second City, which is based in Chicago and has outposts in Hollywood and Toronto, has changed ownership since the 1980s, when Andrew Alexander, a producer and former head of the Toronto location, took over as co-owner and chief executive. Since it opened in 1959, Second City has helped ignite the careers of Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Keegan Michael-Key. Pre-pandemic, it was almost certainly the largest live comedy business in the nation, with more than 700 full- and part-time employees, and an Actors Equity stage contract. The sale price was not disclosed but was estimated at around $50 million, according to The Financial Times.In the statement, Steve Johnston, the president of Second City (also known as The Second City), said, “We are thrilled to work with ZMC as we continue to transform the company into an equitable and thriving environment while delivering world-class comedy to our audiences.”The move comes as Second City is grappling with a business drop-off caused by pandemic shutdowns. It curtailed its in-person shows, tours, classes and corporate workshops — a big part of its business — though the theater aimed to rebound with online comedy and digital content. When Alexander announced that he was looking for buyers last October, he said it was “time for a new generation with fresh ideas to take the company to the next level.”Second City also has been trying to restructure itself after intense criticism over its handling of race. Alexander, who had been involved with the theater for nearly 50 years, stepped down abruptly last summer after Black performers publicly detailed their experiences of being stereotyped and demeaned. A series of open letters from artists and staff members of color then outlined complicated and expensive steps for the theater to combat institutional racism, and Second City leadership agreed to make wholesale changes.“We are prepared to tear it all down and begin again,” the theater’s leaders wrote in an open letter. They appointed a new interim executive director, Anthony LeBlanc, the first Black leader in the company’s history, and took many other measures, even as its performance spaces remained closed.The announcement of the sale suggested that ZMC would not abandon this plan. “We are very excited to partner with management and the incredible talent at The Second City to grow the brand and build a diverse organization that elevates all voices,” Jordan Turkewitz, co-chief investment officer and managing partner at ZMC, said in the statement.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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