Alan Young Interview, Part III

We continue with out interview with Alan Young, first conducted in 1995.

You're loved by millions of Baby Boomers for Mr. Ed. How did that come about?

Well, I had a variety show on the air in the 50s, and I wanted to go on film the way Jack Benny and George Burns and all the others were. And here I was, beating my brains out, doing it live. Unfortunately, they had me under contract to do it live, that's much cheaper, and the network just held me to that. Finally, I couldn't take it any more, and I wanted to go on film. So I approached director Arthur Lubin and he said, do my show! I asked him what it was about, and he said: "A talking horse!"

I was doing standup comedy then, and was a little flip, and said: "Well, I don't work with anybody who doesn't clean up after himself!" Thanks very much, and that was that.

Well, Westerns became very popular and quiz shows, and suddenly I was out of work for awhile, even though I worked for Howard Hughes and other things. I did Tom Thumb, it was cheap, but it was a job. When I got back from England, I met somebody at the airport who said Arthur Lubin was looking for me. At that point, I was ready to talk to a dog, a horse, a mongoose, anything! And that's how I got Mr. Ed.

They had done a pilot, George Burns produced a pilot of it, and it didn't sell. Some dear fan is going to send me a copy of it; I've only seen it once. So they ran the film for me, and though I saw the mistakes they made (they all knew what the problems were), I knew the fun I could have with it. They cut the film down to 15 minutes, and I went out with it to sell it with the agency to a Studebaker car dealership, to go into syndication. The networks wouldn't touch it, they had already seen it and turned it down, so it was going directly into syndication. George Burns staged the first three months of the show -- he wanted to get his money back so he made sure it was funny.

Who played your part in the pilot?

I've forgotten. I wouldn't want to say if I did know, he may be nurturing hurt feelings or something. (Laughs.) I don't think I had seen him before. In the pilot, they didn't concentrate on the horse, they focused on a bunch of silly people, doing funny things. It was like comedy shows today: jokes, jokes, jokes, and it just left the horse in limbo.

Arthur Lubin also did the Frances the Talking Mule films.

He did. Actually, Mr. Ed preceded that in Liberty Magazine stories. Walter Brooks wrote them. Arthur had them and he held them back for television, after he had sold the Frances series to Universal.

I had wondered why he just didn't adapt Frances for television.

That belonged to Universal.

Any anecdotes of Arthur Lubin, who recently passed away?

Yes, he did. (Sighs.) He was a character, that's all I can say about him. He was a very lovable character, but he was a character. He wanted to rush through and get things done quickly, and he didn't want to stay around the studio too long. I'll never forget one line he used. He didn't like people fooling around on the set, cracking jokes. He really didn't have a great sense of humor for a man who did so many comedies! I'll never forget when he said: "Stop that! Stop all this laughing! This is comedy, there's no time for laughter!"

Well, we just all broke up. He didn't realize what he said, he didn't care. The memories I have of him are very sweet memories.

He was well into his nineties when he passed away. Did you stay in touch?

We saw each other quite often. They wanted to revive Mr. Ed many times, like they did with other shows. But he and the producer, Al Simon, had money they hadn't folded yet, so they weren't interested in doing it and doing it wrong. 

They all owned a piece of the show, so do I, and I wasn't interested in seeing it screwed up in any way. We were looking for a good script; I think we found a few, but they weren't interested, so I just let it go.

I think Disney has taken an option on doing it, I don't know.

Mr. Ed has been a staple on syndication everywhere.

Oh yes!

Did you think the series would have this tremendous longevity?

Well, we didn't know then about reruns, and Nick At Night, and all those kinds of things. We just thought it would run for awhile. But then, when it began to play down a wee bit, along came Nick At Night and boom!, it's all over the world. It's not on in America any more, but they said it was the cutting edge for Nick At Night in the beginning.

The fellow who did the voice for Ed...?

Rocky Lee.

Was that recorded in advance, or looped over afterward?

No, they did it right then and there, as we did the show. He had a microphone offstage, and when the horse started moving his lips, he did his lines.

So he was there, feeding you your lines! I had no idea!

That's why I felt the horse talked to me. As far as I was concerned, we were two actors doing their jobs.

What actually happened to Ed, the horse?

He passed away quietly, in the trainer's barn, about 1975. I used to go up and ride and visit him every day. I went away for awhile and I came back, and Ed was gone.

One of the more unusual guest stars on the show was Mae West. Any memories of her, and how that all came about?

Well, she was a friend of Arthur Lubin, and she called him up and asked to be on it! She had never done television, and had never done any after that, but she said that I'd like to work with the strongest, most virile leading man in television, and that was Mr. Ed, of course. (Laughs.) That's how it happened.

She was very tiny, wasn't she?

Oh, she was a wee one. I remember that she was wearing this tight fitting dress, I guess it had stays and all of that, but I just know that when she turned, the dress stayed where it was and she moved around inside of it!

I'm sure she was well into her 60s at that point.

Oh, past it, I think.

We conclude our Alan Young Interview tomorrow!

W. C. Fields

I wish someone would explain to me why, at this late date, comedy is still considered a lesser art?  When asked to name a great work of art, most people would name a tragic play or serious novel, or point at the work of Renaissance masters – but it is rare indeed for one to name a great comedy. 

This astonishes your correspondent.  Comedy is infinitely more difficult than tragedy; one remembers the dying words of the great tragedian Edmund Kean who said on his deathbed, “dying is easy; comedy is hard.”  Why great comic inventions are not received with the same veneration as our great tragedies says something about our inherent misconception that “high minded” also means “serious.”

One of the most fascinating comic artists of the early sound era was William Claude Dukenfield (1880-1946), better known as W. C. Fields.  Fields was born in Darby, Pennsylvania, and was bitten by the stage bug early in life.  He started his career in vaudeville, as a comedic juggler.  His prowess at juggling is in evidence in several of his films, most notably 1934’s The Old Fashioned Way.  (You can see it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytgPGr6JhLo).  Though we think of Fields as heavy and ungainly, his training as a juggler left him with a remarkable physical grace -- a trait shared by many great comics.  Fields made several films during the silent era, but for all of his grace, sound was an essential part of what became the Fields persona.  

Or perhaps we should say personas, plural.  In the 1930, his most important film decade, Fields really only played two characters: a henpecked husband or a shifty conman.  The henpecked husband was a masterful creation: this Everyman was the perpetual victim of shrewish wives, vile children, pesky salesmen, and the very world around him.  Fields was besieged by stepped-in fly papers, sticky gloves, vanishing hats, stepped-upon rakes and falling objects.  The embattled Fields shares our common humanity and frustrations, helping us laugh at the constant assaults on our dignity and our persons. 

Fields the conman is, perhaps, a wish-fulfillment ideal of ourselves.  Fields the sharpster, unlike his henpecked persona, is the eternal talker and trickster, a man on the make.  (In My Little Chickadee Fields, holding a deck of cards, is asked: “is this a game of chance?”  He replies, “Not the way I play it.”)  Fields the crook is equal to nearly every occasion; his only real enemy is himself.

Though Fields the trickster has become part of our national folklore, I think Fields the Everyman is the more honest and accessible creation.  Watch Fields trying to get some sleep one morning on his front porch in It’s a Gift: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_xwqxz1Wio.  Or, better yet, a brilliant sequence from the same film where Fields, as a shopkeeper, deals with a blind and deaf man and a table of light bulbs:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y189-69cQPs&feature=related.  It’s a tribute to Fields’ genius that we can watch a blind and deaf man flailing around a store and still think it’s funny. 

Fields only really broke out of his established routines in 1935, when he played Mr. Micawber in MGM’s David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor.  It’s impossible to watch this film and not think of other possibilities for Fields inhabiting film versions of great novels, including everything from The Pickwick Papers to the title role in The Wizard of Oz (a part, incidentally, that he was offered).

The 40s were an unhappy decade for Fields.  Many of the great comedians of the 1930s found their more freewheeling style and easy surrealism inconsistent with a world embroiled in a global war, and Fields shared his decline with the Marx Brothers, Mae West and Laurel and Hardy.  Some of his later films, however such as The Bank Dick (1940) and 1941’s Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (certainly one of the strangest movies ever committed to celluloid) have great sequences and considerable charm.

Fields, a chronic alcoholic, died on Christmas day in 1946.  He had been hospitalized for various ailments for 22 months before winking at his nurse and passing from this life.  He is greatly missed by legions of people who believe that any man who hates dogs and small children can’t be all bad.

Tomorrow:  Mae West

Laurel and Hardy

It’s perhaps reasonable to say that American cinema’s Golden Age of Comedy occurred in the 1920s and 30s.  Silent clowns, such a Buster Keaton (1895-1966), Harold Lloyd (1893-1971) and Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), changed the very language of comedy during the silent era, and such diverse talents as W.C. Fields (1880-1946), Mae West (1893-1980) and the Marx Brothers gave voice to that language.

But few comedic talents have a more devoted following than Stan Laurel (1890 – 1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892 –1957).  To this day there are organizations nationwide operating under the umbrella group The Sons of the Desert (named after one of the team’s most famous films), with ‘tents’ in most major cities.  For sheer mania, Laurel and Hardy buffs give devotees of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who and Star Wars/Trek a run for their money.

This fanaticism is understandable.  There is a certain alchemy to Laurel and Hardy; at their best, the team could bond with viewers in a deep and emotional manner impossible to their equally famous colleagues.

I was thinking a great deal about Laurel and Hardy while reading Stan and Ollie; The Roots of Comedy; The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy -- an excellent book on the duo saddled with two unpunctuated subtitles.  Once I was finished, I could honestly say that I wish I knew them.

The author, Simon Louvish (born 1947), does a fine job of detailing the story of their lives.  He promises upfront not to gloss over the very human failings of the two, and present a warts-and-all biography.  That he does, but the warts are not very disfiguring and both Laurel and Hardy emerge as fallible human beings who remain lovable.  And while Louvish may not be the most limpid stylist, he gets the job done.

Stan was a jobbing vaudevillian born in the UK to a theatrical family.  Ollie was born in Harlem, Georgia, to a near-do-well father and working mother.  As a boy, Ollie became fascinated by the possibilities of moving pictures, starting as a projectionist.  Stan traveled to the US as part of a comedy troupe (which included Chaplin!), and made several solo comedies that did not register much with audiences.

The pairing came about almost by accident, but after the first handful of their 107 co-starring films, the bare essentials were cemented and their screen personas set.

At this point, it’s essential for you to have had a taste of Laurel and Hardy (if you haven’t!) before proceeding.  Jump to YouTube and look for any of the following: Laughing Gravy, Beau Hunks (both 1931), Helpmates, The Music Box (both 1932) or watch the boys dance in Way Out West (1937).  If it were possible to crystalize joy, it’s this graceful and lovely dance!

Now, with that behind your belt, let’s see if we can analyze this magical combination.  I have a few ideas of my own:

Laurel and Hardy are not just a team or a duo, they are a couple.  It’s amazing how often they end up sharing the same bed, consoling one-another, protecting each-other, jointly raising surrogate children or caring for pets.  It is almost silly how all close male relationship are now read for how they are ‘coded’ either hetero-or-homosexual, but I read the onscreen Stan and Ollie as homosexual in the purest, nonsexual sense.  They loved one-another.

At heart, both Stan and Ollie are children.  Yes, Ollie is often more intelligent and given to greater attempts to master the situation; he is the senior child of the two, but that does not make him less of a child.  It is this engaging innocence (even when they’re being brats!) that so many people respond to.

This eternal childhood often makes them more (or less) than human.  As such, they don’t change and seem subject to different physical, social and intellectual laws than we.  It would seem as if the two great clowns were denizens of some alternate reality rather than our own prosaic surroundings.  They are, first and last, their own unique selves.   They are impervious within the protective cocoons of their own strangeness. 

Yet, for all of the strangeness of Laurel and Hardy, the recurring note is one of sweetness.  The couple had a core of sweetness – the kind of sweetness that comes from an innocent, inner benevolence.  Even at their worst behavior (which often results in massive destruction of property), there is that core of kindliness.

As film historian Randy Skretvedt has written: The world is not their oyster; they are the pearl trapped in the oyster.  Their jobs hang by a rapidly unraveling thread.  Their possessions crumble to dust.  Their dreams die just at the point of fruition.  Their dignity is assaulted constantly.  At times they can’t live with each other, but they’ll never be able to live without each other.  Each other is all they will ever have.  That, and the hope of a better day.

Though I enjoyed Stan and Ollie a great deal, I can’t help but feel that reading about great comedians is never as satisfying as watching them.  Fortunately, Laurel and Hardy are readily available online and in a new DVD collection gathering their best films.  Many of their later films, such as Air Raid Wardens (1943) and Nothing but Trouble (1944) are despised by purists, but I find them watchable still for the inescapable benevolence of the duo.  Make yourself happy – watch Laurel and Hardy.

Tomorrow:  W. C. Fields