Well, dear readers, I’m sad to report that Rita McKenzie has passed away. I first met her when she called me and asked if I’d be interested in recording her show, Ethel Merman’s Broadway. I met with her, liked her, saw some footage of the show, and agreed to do the album – with a full orchestra. A month later, we were at Rumbo Recorders (The Captain and Tennile’s studio – we did quite a few albums there), great band, and Rita was just superb. Easy as pie to work with, she trusted me completely, and we made a wonderful album. Oh wait, bad BK, getting the chronology wrong here. I’d already recorded Ruthless! and she was a blast in the show and a blast in the recording studio. Then, because of that, she called me about Ethel Merman’s Broadway. Whew. We stayed in touch over the years, and her husband, Scott Stander, and I were also close. Rita was one of the first people to call me after Cindy Williams passed. At one of the Kritzerland anniversary shows at The Federal, I got Rita, Joan Ryan, and Lindsay Ridgeway, all of Ruthless!, to come back and perform from the show. She was one of the good ones. And you know what? Enough already. We’re only in February and I say enough already. It’s too much, really, if you get my meaning and I know you do. I did get ten and a half hours of good sleep, got up, answered e-mails, made Wacky Noodles for food, then wrote the second set of liner notes and sent those off. I watched some funny dog videos and then found a wonderful two-part interview with Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach. I was a huge fan of both and was lucky enough to see them onstage a few times – first in 1966 at the Huntington Hartford seeing Murray Schisgal’s two one-acts, The Typists and The Tiger. They were amazing together and the plays were fun. I went back twice to see it again. Then in the early 1970s at the same theater, they did Waltz of the Toreadors and were both wonderful. They really were the real deal, and as much as I loved seeing the national tour of Luv with Tom Bosley, Dorothy Loudon, and Herb Edelman, just hearing them on the Columbia recording of the Broadway play, along with Alan Arkin, was something wholly other. The last time I saw them onstage was 1999 in their off-Broadway show, In Persons, a selection of scenes they liked, directed by Martin Charnin. While both were thirty-something years older, they still had it, that magic. Anyway, the two-part interview, done in 1989, I believe, is on the Tube of You and is well worth your time. They don’t make theatrical couples like that anymore and it’s a shame, really. I think I forgot to mention that I got a second person to blurb the book and they have it now. I’d like one more, so we’ll see if anyone interesting that I can get to comes to me. That was about it for yesterday. Oh, no, I also watched The Typists – they taped it for TV in the very early 1970s. The play doesn’t really hold up, but boy are they good in it.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll get out of the house for a while, check the mail place, go to Ralph’s for food, and then I’ll get back to writing for the project with David Wechter. Then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same, some meetings and meals, getting the book to the designers, and trying to stay on top of things.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, get out of the house for a while, check the mail place, get food from Ralph’s, write, then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite stage and film comedies of the 1960s? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping that we take a breather from all the deaths of 2024 because – enough already.