It's The Dearly Departed podcast, featuring your host, historians Scott Michaels and filmmaker
Mike Dorsey. All Right, welcome. It is a episode thirty one of
The Dearly Departed Podcast, and I'm Mike Dorsey and I'm Scott Michaels, and
today we're going to talk about Christmas classic songs and the people who sang them,
and then at the end we're gonna go over some of the ones we
hate. Oh my god, I can't wait. You have an AX to
grind. Oh my god, I have a list like the size of my
arm. That amazing. Well, I'm I'm excited. I'm excited you gonna
do it. Before we get into that, though, I wanted to ask
you, did you watch The Being the Ricardos? I did? Yeah?
Did you? Yeah? I watched it to day. I mean I guess
it came out yesterday. We're recording this on the twenty seconds, So yeah,
I loved it. Yeah, I mean I only had a few reservations
about it. I can't wait to watch it again. How did you feel
about it? I liked it. I it took me a good well,
it took me a good half hour to be convinced of the act thing,
you know, because you have such such good you know, we know who
these people were very well. So it was difficult for me to get into
the portrayals. But I did ultimately, and it took me a good hour
to get in. Maybe it didn't really grip me until like the last hour.
The last hour really got me. I was hooked, and but the
rest of it I kind of would just you know, sat through and it
was just this, all right, this is interesting. I love seeing the
sets. That was really cool and uh and uh. And they did throw
a lot of information into that one week. You know. I loved how
they showed so much of the creative process, you know, the writer's rooms
and how involved uh you know Ball and DESI were in, Yeah, in
that process and her process. I liked how they would um, they would
kind of go into Lucio Ball's mind as she's being pitched scenes and she's imagining
how how she would play them. Yeah, it's real. I thought it
was really really fascinating. Yeah, I was nice. I'm glad that they
portrayed it in such a way that you know, she was she always said,
I'm not funny, I'm funny. On paper or I'm sorry, I'm
funny in person, I'm funny. You can do prap falls and uh and
you know someone else could be really funny naturally, I'm not. I'm funny
on paper and I like that and uh yeah yeah, and she you know
wouldn't. Yeah. No, I thought she was pretty good Nicole Kidman.
I still can't get over her face because you know, I can't, but
she's such a beautiful woman. I don't understand why people need to do that
to themselves. But but anyway, that's that's unost She nailed the voice really
well, she did. I guess I was reading today that she smoked a
lot during really production to get yeah, which makes sense. I know there
were a lot of people that were mad that that that Deborah Messing wasn't cast
as Lucio Ball because Deborah A. Messing did um. I think it was
an episode of Will and Grace. She did a really great like sind up
of I Love Lucy. They it was like black and white and she played
you know, Lucy in it, and she was great as it at it.
But I think maybe people weren't taking into account was this was not Lucy.
This was Lucille Ball and they're not looking for someone who can do a
cool impression of Lucy from the show. The character they want. It's a
you know, it's a serious, dramatic role. Um. And I'm not
saying that Debor Messing couldn't do that, but it wasn't about doing a Lucy
impression. So yeah, yeah, no, that's a that's a really good
point. I didn't think about it that way. But yeah, I remember
the hubbub when when it first came out who they were casting. And I
guess Aaron Sorkin had it in his mind that's who he wanted from the start,
I guess. And uh, but yeah, it wasn't It wasn't an
impersonation, You're right, And Deborah Messing probably would have been fine, but
Nicole Kimmin was fine, and she I thought she she's a good actress.
I like her as an actress. And I've never seen Debra Messing do anything
serious. So um. And it wasn't a funny movie, you know,
there was. There wasn't a comedy. It was a drama. So it's
good. Um. I thought it was interesting. It covered some of the
same ground that we covered in our episode about it when you know, obviously
their marriage issues, which we talked about, and a lot did a lot
dealt a lot with the rivalry between Ball and Vivian Vance, Yeah, and
how they kind of had a fall and ended up having a falling out over
the way Vivian, you know, was her over how the actress, you
know, had to wear these front bey outfits and you know, married to
a guy old enough to be your dad or grandfather even you know. Yeah,
and she makes the line about how you know, and the running gag
is that she's not attractive enough to be his wife. It's like, you
know, yeah, um, and I loved I loved J. K.
Simmons as Frawley, and I loved I think it's pronounced Nina arianda Um as
Vivian advanced. She's so. I was a big fan of hers from Goliath,
that show she did with Billy Bob Thorn. That just um. So,
I was super excited that she was cast. She's so good, She's
a Tony winner, she's a legit. Okay, well, you know that
was good. And I was surprised at the portrayal of William Frawley. You
know, I didn't expect them to be you know, as likable as they
made him in this in this so I like to think he was really that
way, you know, because they he yeah, you hate him in the
first scene. He's being a jerk in the table read scene, and then
they kind of he softens up a bit as it goes on. I thought
it was. Yeah, it was pretty sympathetic based. Only it was cool
when they walked over to Boardners, wasn't it when they you know, they
were shooting at the the Desilu studios, which was actually on m is that
Las Palmus or Sycamore and right at Hollywood Boulevard. So they left the studio
and walked across the street and they were drinking in Boardners. We shot are
Departed. I didn't even notice. Yeah, man, see, I'm already
planning on watching it again because I know I missed stuff like that. Yeah,
it was cool. Um and did you see where I think it was?
Um, I want to say it was vintage. La pointed out that
the the establishing shot of Ciro's nightclub appeared to have been the same one used
for I think the movie Bugsy. I think so too. I think yeah,
stock footage that they're selling now it uh Yeah, it's funny because they
recreated the inside great, I think, um, but I guess for the
exterior they were just like, let's save a few hundred grand. Yeah,
why not. It was a nondescript shot. Yeah, so uh but there's
so much of that, you know, after after Tarantino did Once upon a
Time in Hollywood, you know, they did that other movie called Liquorice Pizza
that's outright yeah yeah, and they're putting La back again. And there was
another show for Netflix. I forgot what is called to put the Viper Room
back as Philthy mcnasties. They just shot that and uh recently and then I
was I saw that movie recently last night in Soho, which I loved,
And they did the same thing that Tarantino did in Hollywood in London and Soho,
which is insane because it's always it's such a small place and it's never
it's never quiet there. I really enjoyed what they do when they put actual
physical places back. That's that's pretty that's pretty cool. So um, I
recommend everybody run out and see Being in the Ricardos. It's on Amazon Prime
if you're a subscriber, you can watch it now. Yeah, so what
so what do you got going on for Christmas? Mike? Um, well,
there was just a COVID diagnosis in my family, So I am going
to apply to a drive by Christmas. Just the presents out the window way
even just kind of toss them like a night in the newspaper and keep going.
Guys, how about you? I'm sorry, that sucks, that's yeah.
How about you? What are you doing well? Do you well?
Do you have any like personal trade? I see all those decorations around your
house, Um, just ducked out to the night. You have anything?
Yeah? I put up a mid century tencil tree in my living looks really
nice. And I have all vintage ornaments from by the forties, fifties,
sixties that I decorated with because I'm in the mid century modern design and furniture.
So um yeah, I put a tree up. That's the full effort.
Yeah, we put her. Well, we got everything up in and
and we have a Santa had on those altar I do. Oh yeah,
well actually he's not. It just looks that way, but that's his feather
um lights. Yeah, it's like it actually does. He's festive year round
round. My Christmas tree or Troy and Ice. Christmas tree has uh two
shipwrecks, the Titanic, the Evan Fitzgerald. We have a piece to Jane
Mansfield's car. We have a piece of Sharon Tade's house, we have all
in ornaments, we have what else do we do? Well? I put
up the murder. Yeah, that's here, Sharon Tade, thing Maywest's dental
work and it's all hanging on our tree. And Kentucky Fried chicken barrels and
buckets and yeah, and we have the del Ruvio triplets head heads. I
don't know if you saw that on my Facebook page, but we we have
the wigs that they wore in the Pewee's Christmas Special, along with the hats
that they wore when they say in Winter Wonderland. So there's a drag queen
in Vegas called James Mansfield who redes wigs, and I contacted him and I
said, you know, do you want to mess with these wigs? And
he took him and he reconstructed them and rejudged them to be the del Ribo
Triplets. And I printed out their heads their faces and put them on wig
forms. And it's really creepy because they do look like severed heads. And
it wasn't intentional. I thought it was gonna be you know, cute and
lighthearted, and it looks a bit sinister, but still so yeah, that's
we have we have done it up. And also my favorite tradition is I
thumbed through with my my nineteen sixty nine Sears Christmas wish book. When I
was a kid, I used to live for these Christmas catalogs from department stores
and just yeah, and you just flick through them and put make your list
up, and you make a new one the next day, and a new
one the next day. This one has guns in it and the real animal
pelts for sale. This is sixty nine. Oh my god. Yeah,
you could buy real real cheetah skin, leopard skin for seven hundred dollars,
which in sixty nine is a lot of money. Um Leopard. I mean
these are genuine albums, our genuine uh skins of animals that they saw through
the department store. All that stuff. It's so bad, but it's actually
I actually have my grandfather's Sears and Roebuck twenty two rifle. Oh nice,
from like probably the twenties or thirties. That's so cool. Do you ever.
Do you ever take it out shooting when I was when I was young.
I did when we lived in Colorado in the nineties. I we went
out and shot on our ranch a lot with it. I mean, it's
just like a little squirrel rifle. It doesn't it's not gonna do a whole
lot of damage. Um, but it was fun to shoot. I'd not
anymore. I wouldn't trust it now to shoot, but yeah, you definitely
need to have it looked at if you're gonna if you're gonna, don't like
your gun to blow up in your hand. That would be bad. Yeah,
So now it's just nice to look at, right, That's cool.
Um the um do you want? Well? I mean we're talking about holiday
songs. Did you? Um? Do you remember doing like the Christmas Concert
as a kid for school? Did you? Yeah? Yeah, it was
fun going through these songs again because I noticed a few that I remember singing
as a kid, and I'm like, oh, this must be why they
were on the program, like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Of course,
is when the secular songs, you know, we need a little Christmas and
up on the rooftop click click click, which is kind of a forgotten song.
I feel like, other than I think it's only in kids programming.
I don't even know if they still do Christmas they Steven do still holiday shows.
I don't even know. In elementary schools, I don't know. I
mean, I didn't even have a mind. People don't even go to school
anymore, so I don't. Let's do a Christmas zoom concert. But that
was a big deal. I was in band. I was an orchestra and
I was I was singing, so I was like all, you know,
running around during those concerts doing all that stuff. But what I love?
Did you play in band? It's clarinet. I still talked about this.
I feel like, yeah, I played out those sacks. Yeah. I
love being in band. It was a lot of fun. I was.
That's something I'm always grateful for my mom and dad let me do that,
and learning how to read music and being able to interpret it. I love
that being able to do that as cool? Right? Absolutely? Um,
so do you want to do do you have any hate mail? You know?
No, right, we'll see him the hate for the Christmas songs at
the end. Yeah, let's do Yeah? No, I actually you know
why because we decided to do this so quickly. I didn't. I've only
researched the subjects. I know that there's a little bit of a cluster somewhere
Troy saves him, but most of the stuff is pretty pointless. Um,
you know, it's the season for giving, so we won't. We'll hold
back on the hate mail and keep it mostly positive. Okay, the well,
except for the Christmas songs, we're gonna be bashing and we're gonna bass
the hell out of opinion. Um. All right, well, let's well,
we'll start with the ones that that we like, and we're gonna we're
gonna do the main feature. Wayne. Feature is what I'm trying to say
exactly. It's time for the main feature. So, uh, I guess
we we So you and I have kind of picked our favorite classic Chris Miss
singers. Yeah, um, ones with the big famous hits, and so
that's what we're gonna go. We're gonna talk about them and their songs and
uh and of course you know they're the ends of their lives. Um,
and I guess kick off with kind of the King of Christmas. I think
Bing Crosby. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's certainly I know for decades.
I don't know if it's still the same anymore. That his White Christmas
was the number one song in the world, like ever, Guinness Book of
World Records would always publish that. I looked it up again. It is
to this day. It is the biggest selling um UH single worldwide in history.
It's fifty million sold, fifty fifty billion, fifty million units. Really
that doesn't sing like very much. I mean it all out, of course,
but for like sixty years. The next highest one is Elton John's re
re recording of Kendall in a Win for when Princess Diana died in ninety seven.
That's sold like thirty three That single sould like thirty three million. That's
a pretty big gap between them. Yeah, but it's actually hard for them
to count because White Christmas came out, you know, in the forties,
and it was before there were really pop charts, and so the record keeping
isn't as thorough as you know when Billboard came around and and the other charts
showed up later. So they've kind of given it. I think Guinness is
kind of to please fans of everyone of kind of made it a tie between
Elton John and bing Crosby. But but they're basically saying it's still being well,
you know what, It's funny because I was just doing research recently on
it's related Michael Nesmith, who passed away very recently. The Monkeys, and
Michael Nesmith was quite interesting in these innovations. You know, he put he
basically started them TV and the music videos. But he was also an integral
part of getting upc labels put on records to keep track of stock because up
until that point, nobody was doing that. So the artists were getting these
checks saying you had this amount of this amount sold and there was no real
account that there have to accept it. Yeah. Yeah, So so he
was an interesting part of all that because he was like, now we have
to do so, you know, we have to figure out what's going on
exactly. And I thought that was interesting. So yeah, it's interesting to
think how many records may have sold ben sold that are just not accounted for
publicly. They just they have to research and kind of make estimated guesses.
Yeah, over how much. But I tell you, fifty million doesn't sound
like as many. I thought it would have been more than that for some
reason. Yeah, so being uh, he just a quick overview of him.
He had forty one number one hits at least up in addition to being
Um supposedly the third most popular actor in history as far as ticket sales go,
behind only Clark Gable and John Wayne interesting Um. But his White Christmas
was written by Irving Berlin for the musical holiday and not as some people may
think, for White Christmas, the musical that came a decade later holiday and
came out in nineteen forty two with Being and Fred Astaire, and it won
the Academy Award for Best Original Song. And it was first recorded before that,
before that film came out on Christmas Day in nineteen forty one, just
eighteen days after the Pearl Harbor Attack, being performed on the radio for the
first time. And I think for a while they sold copies of that radio
recording until he could do a proper studio recording of it a few months later,
and it was the number one song for eleven weeks. Wow, that's
really something. I didn't know that about Pearl Harbor, but that you know,
it's certainly well, it's much like the Diana song. You know,
it really tugged at people's heart strings. They needed it at that time,
a little bit different circumstances when you're talking about a war, you're talking about
a princess that got fired from our job basically, but beloved, but beloved
and uh and so yeah, it's interesting. It's like a not a knee
jerk reaction, but an emotional comfort. I think it was the right time
in place for the for that song. They hit right, and Irvan Berlin
said he reportedly called his secretary, you know, after he wrote the song
at a hotel. Um and he over the over a weekend, and he
reportedly called his secretary on like Monday and told her to write the song down
and said something along the lines of, um, not only is it you
know, it's the best song I've ever written, it's the best song ever
written, or something like that. Like he instantly knew when he wrote it,
like this is a huge hit. Um. And being kind of didn't
see it that way. Just when he recorded he saught out it's another song,
I think, and then it went on to me this smash um,
well, well he is he was an emotionally vacant individual, so right,
So what else is interesting is that when he being did that nineteen forty two
studio recording after doing the radio recording, and then but then in nineteen forty
seven he rerecorded it um and they tried to you know, match up the
orchestration everything as faithfully as possible. But the forty seven recording is actually the
one that most people have probably actually heard the most, not the not the
original forty two studio recording. And the way you can tell the difference,
the easiest well way is um in the intro with like the flutes playing before
you start singing, there is an instrument called a celeste, which looks like
a piano, but it plays like chimes, and you hear that tinkle a
few kind the kind of bell sounds right before you start singing. That's how
you know you're hearing the nineteen forty seven version and not the older forty two.
Plus I think the forty seven version just the quality of the recording,
it's a little bit better. M Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know
any of that stuff so um so when they when they made did they you
think they made the movie White Christmas, Um wrote it around the song that
was such a success at I guess that was That's what I was thinking,
yeah, it's such a massive hit. Almost a decade later, they're like,
we're making a whole movie out of this irving Berlin music. You know,
because yeah, because if you say, if you ask anyone, they
would say, oh, yeah, that was featured in you know, White
Christmas, of course, but it was actually, yeah, like almost ten
years earlier. Interesting, I remember that song. Well it's still I mean,
it struck a big churt. I remember my grandma, my granny who
was she was born in eighteen eighty nine. My god, to think,
you know, to know that you have a grandparents born in the eighteen hundreds,
both my yeah, eighteen eighty and nine and eighteen eighty eight were my
grandfather and my grandmother. Yeah, so and that makes me wish I would
have, you know, if I had a thought to talk to him more
about it, because they died in the seventies, you know what I mean.
I was around. I remember them very well. But but my granny
her, that was her song, and Troy's too. In fact, yeah,
Troy saw to it that White Christmas just played at his grandmother's funeral because
it's her favorite song. And it was like in the middle of June or
something that you know, but it was like, no, we're playing this,
you know, because that was her song. Uh so so as really
sweet. But yeah, I meant I meant a lot to a lot of
people. So being was a hugely successful businessman, probably one of the great
most successful businessmen in history of you know, Hollywood actors. Um, I
didn't know this. He was a principal stockholder and Minute made orange juice.
Yeah that will figure. Was many many huge business adventures that he was a
part of. He also had a numerous mob associations. Um unlike Sinatra,
wasn't very open about it, but he was. But he was a bit
of a gambling addict and there were several times I guess when he wrote thousands
and gambling debts to some bad people that wanted that would have killed him if
he didn't pay it back and had to borrow money in order to do it.
Um, so he really put his life in risk. But he was
he was just he was an avid gambler and an avid golfer. That was
kind. Those were like his two hobbies, I think, and a womanizer.
And you know, I mean he was a Yeah, he was a
piece of work. He was. But we want to talk. You want
to go into all that, well, I mean, yeah, but also
I found interesting I just did. I did a quick I looked at his
Wikipedia page. I didn't realize he was pro pot. You know, he
was. He was trying to legalize marijuana, which I think is really interesting.
Of all people, you know, he's probably you know, hippies,
and they hate hippies. Yeah, he was, you know, a pot
smoker. Really, as far as he was very anti alcohol. I think
he blamed alcohol for the death of his first wife and told his kids stay
away from it and was basically like, smoke pot instead. That was I
think that's why he was pro marijuana, because alcohol was so damaging. Interesting.
Wow. But his son Gary wrote an infamous book about being in nineteen
eighty three called Going My Own Way, which really I think set set in
stone the negative perception a lot of people have of being basically child abuse.
That it was alleged against all his kids. Yeah, well, how many
children? Two of four committed sue? Did you know two of his sons
used to perform with him. They shotgun wounds to the head self inflicted,
And uh, I don't know. I mean, I've never heard anything good
about him personally. He was a great performer, a great entertainer. He
was part of that Bob Hope brigade, who was another one who famously treated
people like hell uh, they used to swap girlfriends, they say, and
uh um, you know, treated women like garbage and well, like pieces
of meats basically, you know, ha ha ha and uh. And and
also you know, his his abuse, the stuff that they say he did,
I can't dismiss it, you know, I mean, because it's not
like the Christina Crawford thing, which a lot of people just thought was b
asked from the start. And but this there's a lot of information in there
that I don't know. I wasn't there, but I can see being I
can see that happening. I didn't know the people. So yeah, it
seems to depend on which sibling you talked to, because a daughter and one
of his other sons came out. Well, a daughter came out and said
that Gary, who wrote the book, had admitted to her that he had
exaggerated things because the publisher pushed him to do it because they would sell more
books if it was more salacious. And another one of his sons really didn't
like Gary, called him a whining, bitching, cry baby, But then
other ones seemed to be more like either wouldn't say one way or the other,
or we're kind of like, yeah, there were bad times, but
we choose to remember the good times. You know, it wasn't all bad
being around him, Yeah, but being even kind of blamed himself in an
interview for not being a good dad and for maybe being too strict with his
kids. I mean, it was a different time. My grandparents were very
strict. I mean they were very There wasn't a lot of joy, you
know, and around them. I mean it's not saying they weren't happy people,
but they were very strict, you know, Catholic people, and you
rule by the I don't want to say rule by the fist, it doesn't
make sense. But we weren't strangers to getting hit when we were kids,
getting punished, not not humiliated like like they say that, you know,
Bing did to his kids, whipping them with belts until they bled, calling
him bad ass and lard ass and introducing him that way to like his professional
associates. Yeah, yeah, yeah, humiliating. I mean they said that,
well, Gary, you think in his book said they used to um,
they said they leave a pair of underwear laying around being would make them
tied around her neck and wear it for the whole day shoes or something.
Yeah, humiliating, and so that that's more. That is certainly. I
mean there's something to be said about punishment and it's like, oh, I
won't do that again. But then there's humiliation, and that's that's a totally
different ball game. I think it's like teachers when they used to make you
sit in the corner, or stand in a waste basket or or do whatever,
sit there with chewing gum on your nose. I mean, it was
just like humiliating, and maybe that was the point, but that was the
point. It just it just was a borderline abusive and as I said,
well it was. It wasn't borderline, It was abusive. And you know,
as I said, two out of four of his kids committed suicide.
And also he when he when he died, he put in his will that
they can't inherit anything until he's they're sixty sixty five years old, Yeah,
they get no inheritance. Like at least two or three of his kids didn't
even live to be that age. Like three of his kids died before then,
you know, so it's like it's like a final fu. I don't
know, I don't know. I just have not heard very many nice things
about him. I would get the inheritance thing if it was not sixty five,
but like say forty or something like basically saying, look, you can't
just turn twenty one and coast the rest of your life on the family money.
You got to go do something with your life and not be a jurse,
you know. But sixty five, like, come on, man,
um, Yeah, it's a bit, especially when you grow up in the
lap of luxury and then you're just tossed out. Yeah, you know what
I mean. I think one of the sons killed himself. They said one
of the reasons was that his he discovered that his inheritance was gone or something
thing like that, you know, and that was it. He was already
distraught and whatever. Um but being died on a golf course in Spain on
October fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven, of a massive heart attack while walking back
to the clubhouse after playing eighteen holes. His last words were, supposedly,
that was a great game of golf, fellows, Let's go have a coca
Cola and then he dropped dead in front of him with the proverbial nineteenth hole
on the way to the clubhouse and he uh yeah, they shipped him back
here, and you know, his body was handled by that mortuary on on
Fountain and Western. It's now like a called Covenant Houses for kids, runaway
kids. But that's the same one they handled Divine and handled the Shalomar.
It was Shalomar who was Eddie Murphy's prostitute that that committed suicide absolutely five story
building. Yeah yeah, and she they handled her. But the guy who
was playing there was a kid that was working at the mortuay at the time
snuck a photograph of Bing Crosby in his casket and sold it to the Inquirer.
And now you know, there's a picture of Bing Crosby and his casket
all over the world because of this kid who did nothing at that point except
lose his job. But nowadays, you know, they'd be raked over the
coals and sued and etcetera, etcetera. But but yeah, so there is
a picture of Bing Crosby in his casket floating around the internet because of this
kid. It seems to be there was a dispute over how old being was
when he died. Oh yeah, because the wikipedius is he's seventy four,
and that seems to be in the most commonly accepted age. But if you
go back and read the original news reports from seventy seven, they said he
was seventy three, and his grave marker says he was born in nineteen oh
four, which would make him seventy three in supposedly he was actually born in
nineteen oh three. Well, let me look at his um, let me
look at his death certificate and see what that says, because that would well
that's the most you know, quote unquote official document. But in a second,
the La Times and the New York Times said he was seventy three,
but they were probably both citing the same source, you know, so who
knows? Yeah, yeah, and since he was actually since he died in
Spain, I don't have his Spanish death certificate, so right, so unfortunately,
but um but yeah, so so it's interesting. I don't know,
it wouldn't be difficult to find out when he was born because that those records
are kept here and uh, but as far as his death goes, uh,
well that would that would be it I mean, we know when he
was born, so we could figure it out, right. It would be
interesting though, if his grave marker has the wrong birth year M and and
he's buried in Holy Cross over in Culver City, just a few steps from
Belle Lagosi, m and Sharon Tate and Rita Hayworth and the tin man Jack
Haley. In fact, he's I think he's like right next to Jack Haley.
Are very close to him anyway. But but yeah, Holy Cross Catholic
Cemetery, a lot of great people in that cemetery and bang, and then
there's being in him being. Apparently the last song he ever performed for an
audience was Strangers in the Night. He performed it for construction workers that were
doing construction near the golf course the day he died, and they recognized him
and asked for a song, and he sang Strangers in the Night, and
interesting died, you know, an hour later or whatever. Yeah, huh.
I also didn't realized this. I didn't know. His granddaughter is Denise
Crosby, who was Tasha Yar on Star Trek Next Generation. Okay, that
one sounded out my yard early early seasons of Star Trek. And then she
asked to be killed off. She do want to do? Killed her?
Kill me? Now? Wow? She does the she produces the Trecky's documentaries.
Okay, all right, yeah, you're a bit of a you're you're
a treky NERD aren't. Yeah, I'm not, I but I I I
don't know, I might know. I wouldn't exering myself like a treky.
No, okay, you watch I mean I watched the shows, but I'm
not like a hardcore I haven't seen all of them. Yeah, I went
back to Lucy, and I mean Lucy produced it. So that's if it
wasn't for Lucy, we probably wouldn't have star Trek, at least not in
the incarnation we know it so absolutely yep. So look he was he a
jerk? Wasn't he a jerk? Either way? Rest in peace? Spin
Crosbie, Well wait, wait, wait, wait, oh you've got to
bring up the most the most not I don't want to say it's being as
a human being is is you know, it's up to the gods, I
guess to figure that out or to deal with all of that. But bang,
as the man who sang Little Drummer Boy with David Bowie, do forgive
the one of the worst Christmas songs, in my opinion ever recorded. First
of all, A Little Drummer Boy, I think is one of the worst
songs ever because I can't as soon as I hear done and it's like done,
No, I can't, I can't. I despise every single version of
that song. But him and David Bowie's just agony, agony to sit through
it. It's such a bizarre pairing. Yeah, but really, I'm sure
bang he had no time for Bowie. It was just a grab for you
know, viewers or whatever the network. But it was just a It was
a bad a weird pairing and a weird recording. And I just despise that
song and I hate that version more than any there I said it fight me.
Do you know that's a tough song to sit through soon because it's agony.
It goes on forever or and ever and anyway, Oh, you got
your tab? Have you still have your supplies? I am just they're they're
precious to me. They're precious. I only got a few left. Um,
all right, I was gonna go into Andy Williams next. Um.
I like Andy Williams. You like Andy Williams. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, I feel like him being are kind of the voice of
Christmas there. I don't know, there's something about their voices that just instantly
and I guess probably because you know, they kind of That's how their career
kind of shook out. Two. Um, because Andy went on. Not
only did he record Um, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year of
course, which is kind of written for him and part of his Christmas album,
but then he did those TV specials in the seventies, eighties and nineties.
They were all Christmas Team, so I think they I saw his nickname
was mister Christmas. Yeah, he had a few connections to being He and
and his brothers sang with Being in nineteen forty four on Bing's record Swinging on
a Star. Um. I like that song. One of Andy's main homes,
at least later in his life was in Laquita, California, which is
largely believed where Irving Brilliant wrote White Christmas, although I think there's a resort
in Phoenix that also claims it happened there. Um. And then, of
course, then they were both avid golfers, which is like a running theme
for a lot of these guys. I like Andy Williams so much. I
didn't There's not much about him that I've ever heard that was that was negative,
you know, and I enjoyed his specials. He be more or less
responsible for the Osman Brothers being known because he featured them on his show all
the time. And of course moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany was a classic.
I mean, he has some great music, he really did, and
uh, I know, I like him very much with the music to Watch
the Girls Go By. I love that song very But you know when when
that song um most wonderful time of the year, I never really got it.
There's that verse when there'll be something something and scary ghost stories and you
know, lots of good cheer and it's like, well, wait, wait
what knack out back the truck up ghost stories? I guess maybe, well
that's what. Yeah, it took me years to figure it out, but
it was a Christmas carol, but it was yeah, it was yeah,
but it was like for you, I was like scary ghost stories. It
was just thrown in there, like what something else? There's a there's a
song that they consider a Christmas song that I don't. Is my favorite things
by Julie Andrews. You know, these are a few of my favorite They
say that's a Christmas song, and I can't when the dog bites, when
the Beast things, and you know, I've never I don't think i've They
do say it is. Yeah, it's like die Hard being a Christmas movie.
That'll be argued forever. But yeah, what's mine? I don't.
I saw one, so I can't say I embraced it as such. I
mean it's hard. It's hard because it takes place at Christmas, during Christmas,
you know, Christmas season, and there is I think Christmas music plays
at the end or whatever. I mean. But does this because the setting
is Christmas time, does that make it a Christmas movie? Open interpretation?
It's not like Home Alone? Home Alone is a Christmas movie. Yeah,
that's the whole point if it is to get home by Christmas or go yet.
Right, So I don't. Yeah, I don't know that I would.
I I don't know how I'm on the fence on the die Hard Christmas
movie debate. Yeah, I don't. Really, I don't have a I
don't have a any stake in that argument. I really don't. Oh,
I thought this was interesting So his Christmas album, the Andy Williams Christmas album
what it was called, the one that came out in the sixties. Um,
you know it's the most Wonderful Time of the Year, which was like
his track, his song, and he kind of originated it. I think,
Um, you would think that's the one and they would lead with,
But they actually led with his version of White Christmas. That's the first single
that they released to promote it. And I almost wondered, that's just that
kind of show. I mean, that's two decades after that song was first
came out. Um, that's I think it almost shows like how big White
Christmas was that that was that that's what they would lead with, not the
original song that Andy became known for. Yeah, you know, I guess
you know whoever, you know, whoever he worked for, whoever his studio
was, they were just like you know, I remember I was. I
was talking to Annie Lennox one time. We were talking, Yes, okay,
it was when they were before the euroth Mix. They were in a
group called the Tourists, and she and Dave Stewart and there were another two
people. And I love the Tourists. I mean, they're they're kind of
a psychedelic band, and the first time I ever saw them was in a
music video where Annie was saying they saying I Only want to be with you
that that dusty Springfield song. So when I had the opportunity to meet Annie
Lennox, I wanted to ask her some thing that wasn't like, I really
love your work. I wanted to talk about something in particular, So I
want to ask about the tourists. And I said, well, you know
I first heard you when when you did I only want to be with you.
She because when I heard that song, I cried because I didn't want
to do it. My record company insisted I do it. They made us
do a cover tune on the record, and they pushed that as our first
single. So that's probably what they did. The record company is just like,
we're going to use that single. We own it already, maybe it'll
be, you know, become something. Yeah. They were probably like,
look, it's a tried and true Christmas standard. Yeah, everybody knows,
well why Christmas is. Nobody knows what this new song is that you just
recorded, So let's lead with the standard. You know, your your cover
of a standard and not you know, yeah, yeah, it gets point
when a water from a turnip or whatever that expression is, you know,
get it, you know, use it, use it up right totally.
Um. He went on to record eight Christmas albums and did multiple TV Christmas
specials. I think he did every year through the seventies and then kind of
intermittently in the eighties and nineties. Um. I thought it was interesting,
you know he um seems like he was a pretty good guy, but he
had several weird tragedies around him. First, he was good friends with RFK
and was apparently there at the Ambassador when the assassination happened. Really yep,
and then went on to sing it at Kennedy's funeral Bobby Kennedy's funeral. I've
never heard that one. That's interesting, yep. And then it's crazy right
yeah. And then uh and then also weirdly, his ex wife after they
divorced, she killed her boyfriend that she was living with in nineteen seventy six,
the pro skier Spider Savage. Yeah, she killed him in Aspen,
shot him. I guess. Uh. Andy Williams was you know, was
still close with her and was a character witness at her trial and everything,
and she basically got thirty days, yeah, for killing this guy. She
claimed it was an accident. There was, I mean, it was a
big deal back then. I remember that really vividly when that was all going
on, and because they were you know, they're both like young and good
looking people, Spider Savage and uh and Claudine Lange and uh and yeah,
and Andy Williams certainly up the If it wasn't for his association, it probably
wouldn't have had the attention that it did. There was I remember this really
vividly. There was a on Saturday Night Live while the trial was going on,
there was a they would they were doing, you know, they showed
like like the slope skiing down the slopes, and and they would have people
they had the agony of defeat. When they had the Sunday Morning or the
Sunday Sports whatever was, they always showed the Olympic skier falling or you know,
spinning out of control and hitting some kind of snow bank. So on
Saturday Night Live they had somebody doing a blow by blow of somebody skiing down
a hill and then when as soon as they took off, you know,
they lost their their whatever path and flew into the woods. They'd say,
oh, another skier accidentally shot by Claudine Lange, and there'd be another one
coming down and you hear this, wow, oh another singer accidentally show ski
or sung that's hilarious. Well, she claimed that the um that he was
trying to show her how to use the gun, but he was shot in
the bathroom and was apparently like getting ready to take a shower. So yeah,
she just got something of reckless endangerment or some some lesser charge is what
they ended up convicting her of. It's entry. I mean you've handled weapons
before, yeah, and we like if you have a gun, I mean
sometimes you just touched the trigger and boom, it's gone, you know,
And I mean it happens. I meant, so if it was accidental,
I can kind of see it happening because they are so guns could be so
sensitive. Sometimes guns have very sensitive hair triggers. And yeah, um,
yeah it happened to me once. I was at a shooting range and it
was like a competitive shooting gun. We were shooting with and they you want
to talk about light triggers and luckily, I mean I always keep the barrel
pointed down range and it but it did go off when I wasn't ready to
um, and I was like, holy cod, I've never had that kind
of experience before, So it can happen, but I don't know, man.
It just in recent Maneves there was that other shooting on set, and
you know, I can kind of ultimately it's you have the weapon in your
hands and you had your finger in the trigger. So ultimately, yeah,
it's it's down to you. But then again, those people aren't aren't marksman.
They don't you know, they probably don't spend much time at a shooting
range. They don't realize that, you know, you know, we're pointed
at somebody. I know on the movie set is different, but it's just
yeah, I mean the rule of thumb is don't ever point your gun at
someone you don't want to shoot, and don't shoot someone you don't want to
kill. Yeah, so it goes down to don't even They call it flagging.
You know, when your barrel points at a person, you just you
flag. You just flag them with your gun. It's bad. You never
want to even accidentally, just in passing, if you're moving the gun from
one place another, accidentally point in any one's direction. But yeah, with
movies. Obviously, if you're pointing the gun of the camera, there's gonna
be a person there holding the camp. Yeah, so you can't get around
it. But yeah, I don't know. You know, she got off
with a license. And I think she only had to do the thirty days,
like on weekends, um, because they were sensitive to her like being
able to spend time with her kids. So isn't it nice? Yeah?
There you are? Um. So. Andy Williams died on September twenty fifth,
twenty twelve, from bladder cancer. He was eighty four. Um and
I think is he the one that owned the place in um or is it
someone else that's a place in? Right? Theater? Yeah, he owned
the Moon River Theater in Branston and uh and that's what they say. That's
where they say. He's scattered in the river aton in the actual Moon River
in front of his theater. Right. So yeah, that's nice if they
ever tear it down. There's there's that. You know, all those people
they'd like get their ashes, you know, put in fountains and things like
that. It's like, well, something's gonna happen too. It's just gonna
have been some drains somewhere but symbolically, it's just it's symbol Yeah, yeah,
yeah, But but I liked Dandy Williams and I love his Christmas album.
I just alwas album. I think he did the best version of Windy.
I shouldn't say that I love that song. I love everyone who's done
that. But uh, but yeah, I do like I do like him.
So rest in peace, Andy Williams, Rest in peace, Andy Williams.
Um Perry Como, were you a fan? I mean, I like
his I like his have yourself a merry little Christmas m Outside of that,
I don't know, you know, let's skip it then, Oh, I
don't want to talk about it. No, it's the one I hoped you
had something on because all I have is I just really liked yourself a merry
little Christmas. Yeah, I like like, I like Perry. Perry Como
is one of those people to me that I could skip, you know.
I mean, I'm not saying right now, I'm just saying. He sounds
like a whole lot of other singers. There's nothing about his voice that was
distinctive to me. Every time I hear him on the radio, I'm like,
who is that? I would never say Perry Como because I don't know
who's sound that well, this is turning into a Perry Como bashing episode.
No, not at all. I like what I hear. I just don't.
It's just not juster Eric. Yeah, I guess yeah. He Um.
I just thought it was interesting that much like Andy Williams, he hosted
Christmas TV specials regularly. He did it for forty years, going back to
nineteen forty eight, like the early early days of television. He was doing
the Christmas specials. Um, and I'll just say quickly. He died on
May twelve, two thousand and one, in his sleep, possibly from Alzheimer's.
He was eighty eight, eighty eighty. Yeah, his career was like
like fifty years. He's been working in radio and television and recording. I
mean he's yeah, he's certainly got like five Emmies I think is what he
had in his career. So we certainly a significant performer. He just never
never spoke to me personally. And that's not nothing against the dude. Um,
all right, you let's talk about um. Let's let's get a girl
into the into the show here. Um. Ella Fitzgerald Ella, who recorded
two Christmas albums nineteen sixties Ella Wishes You're a Swinging Christmas and sixty seven's Ella
Fitzgerald's Christmas, the Swinging one. The first one was more secular songs,
and then in sixth the second album was more religious themes and carols and stuff.
Yeah, I wasn't too I wasn't too familiar with her Christmas stuff until
until you mentioned it the other day, and I listened to her albums and
they were really I mean, she can't. She doesn't record poorly at all,
you know, I mean, she's she's she's amazing, and I thought
she did. I liked her Christmas music a lot. Um, Yeah,
I like her a lot though. She's she was, She's a fascinating lady.
Her have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas recording from the nineteen sixty album UM
is really popular. You hear that all the time. In fact, I
was just watching them conclusion of the Hawkeye series, the Marble series on Disney
Plus UM and that at the end of the Find of the Season finale,
Uh like, toward the end, that's the song they play as elphitz geralds
have Yourself Mary La Christy. It's just one of those standards that's that says
what time of year it is? You know what I mean? Yeah,
yeah, I thought that, Yeah, that's I love that. It's a
there's a weird part of that song that really kind of gets me choked up.
It was something she said, uh uh, if the fates allow,
and I was like, oh huh, that was you know, and sometimes
if you're down, you're really you know, or something happened, you know,
in your life, and and during that it just sort of it strikes
an emotional chord. I always thought that that was kind of a little,
you know, a little emotional moment in that song. It's a sweet song.
So she did this really famous ad and I think it was in the
late seventies or early eighties for Memorex cassette tapes, and it was is it
real or is it Memorex? And she would do you know scatch, which
was means means something to some people, but scott is a form of jazz
where you just kind of off the cup and off the cuff, you just
you know, scooby doo bop bop, that kind of stuff up. Yeah,
yeah, scat singer. Yes, Yes, and so and Ella did
this and she did this and she in this commercial, she's singing into a
microphone and then she hits a note at the end of a dubie like that,
and then the glass in front of her breaks and then then they play
the recording on a Memorex tape with next to the glass and it breaks during
the tape too. It pops apart. Yeah, so the ad campaign was
is it real or is it Memorex? And that's yeah, it was a
cool ad. It's probably on YouTube, but it's a cool ad. There's
somebody that had health issues, isn't she. I mean she, you know,
she lived next to Jackie Still Loan. Really her last home. She
lived next door to Jackie Stallone. I mean, there's a bananas. Jackie
Stallone is another piece of work. But but yeah, so she she had
diabetes and she had been Her last recording was in nineteen ninety one. Her
last performance was in nineteen ninety three Slow Decline. She ultimately had to have
both of her legs amputated below the knee. I remember because she was this
was on I was passing her house every day back back then on tours,
and I would see her get, you know, loaded into a van every
once in a while at in front of her house, and ultimately she died
in that house. Now, there was a guy that I used to work
with at Starline Tours and he was a musician, and he told me the
story and it was like one of the greatest stories I've ever heard. And
I can't imagine this guy made it up because it's such a good story.
And this guy was not a grandstander, you know, he wasn't somebody that
needed a bread about stuff. But he was a part of a band,
like a quartet, a jazz quartet that would that would play. And they
were hired to play at a private home in Beverly Hills and they were told
to sit up in a living room, sat up their equipment in a living
room and they sat and they played for an hour. Nobody was there.
They were just playing for nobody and UH. And after their hour was finished,
they were leaving and they asked him to come back the next day.
And they said, this is actually Elvis Gerald's house and she's upstairs and she's
not expected to last long. So they had her come back. They had
them come back the next day. And according to this guy who I worked
with, UH, he said, while they were playing. He says,
when they found out who they were playing, they found Ellaphitzgerald's songs, you
know, they they were They rehearsed them during the day and they went back
and they performed that night, and they say, you know, there's a
there's a storybook ending that she passed away during that hour that they were playing
that night. But it's a it's just an awesome story that that, you
know, they didn't even know. They were just playing to an empty room
and the first night, so that was kind of a sweet story. Yeah,
she passed away on June fifteenth, nineteen ninety six, and technically it
was a stroke, but it was you know, I think, I'm sure
related to the diabetes issues. And she was seventy nine. And she is
buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery, which is where my grandparents are buried. Oh
really, I didn't know. Yeah, they're buried. I'm they're actually buried,
veried. They're buried at like the south, very south end of the
cemetery. I'm right across street from the forum. Basically. Okay. Yeah,
so whenever I go to RAMS games, I drive by my grandparents and
it's nice. Yeah, it's nice. Well, well, piece Yeah,
I think that's Ella Rest in peace, Ella Fitzgerald. Um. Okay,
so we have one of your favorite subjects ever to talk about, The Carpenters.
Yeah, Karen and Mary. Christmas Darling was their nineteen seventy single and
then Christmas Portrait was their Christmas album from nineteen seventy eight. Hmm, I
love that album. That was. That was such a great album. Man.
I liked the Carpenters yet so so I'm not gonna hate the album at
all. But uh, but yeah, I did. It was it was.
It was just one of those comforts. They were a comfort group.
You know, there were seventy easy, easy listening and that was an era
that I that I that I enjoyed being in very much. And uh and
they did my one of my favorite songs, Happy Holiday, that another Irving
Berlin song. They start off their album with that, and uh, and
I liked that song a lot. They're They're just awesome there. They were
such a great interesting people. And and Richards was really another one is quite
innovative, innovative with the recording process and they got the overdubbing, et cetera.
And the Carpenters had they I think they were only in operation until Karen's
death in eighty three. And but yeah, they've released several albums since then
of Carpenter's music that have been remastered and done by an orchestra, et cetera,
et ce. So, so Richard is um, you know, still
doing quite well with new Carpenter's recordings. But they did. Now one of
the one of the songs I don't like from Christmas at all was called Little
Altar Boy that Karen did and that became I hear it occasionally on the radio
on the Christmas stations too. The song was actually recorded in seventy eight for
that Christmas album, but they didn't release it until like a year after Karen
died, so just kind of it's a promotion for it. It didn't make
the cut. No, I think they were re releasing the Christmas album remastered
after Karen's death, and uh, and they used it to promote that.
But they released a lot of Karen stuff after she died. It's um,
you know, even her album, her own solo album that she did when
when Richard was in the hospital, she decided to cut an album without him,
and that was a really bad thing. And Richard listened to it and
said it was a piece of garbage, and she shelved it and and because
she was too humiliated by what he had to say about it. That's my
interpretation, but the facts are she recorded the solo album and she shelved it.
So it wasn't until after she was dead that Richard finally released the solo
album, which isn't bad at all, and said in the liner notes basically,
oh, well, I didn't like it done, I didn't like it
now, but here for what it's worth, this is what she wanted you
to hear. And uh and released the album. So it's kind of kind
of a kind of a you know, crappy thing to do. But anyway,
we have it and it's out there and poor Karen, so m we
love Karen. Yeah, yeah, I just said, you know, we
I missed doing that tour. We every year on the anniversary or the weekend
closest to the anniversary, we did the Karen Carpent Tour and uh, and
we would visit all. Yeah, and we will have the house because the
house is still there and the apartments that they owned the apartments of their house
where they moved afterwards. The people that handled uh, you know the band
where the school they were in band uh. You know the Carpenter Center down
in Long Beach as her drums set on display. You know, they have
the Richard and Karen Carpenter Enter Entertainment. But it's it's it's in Long Beach.
It's you know, they do proper concerts and stuff. But if you
walk in, they have like the Karen's drums and her lead sister shirt and
uh and and a lot of their you know, Richard's piano and the sheet
music to only Just Begun, and a lot of their Grammys and stuff like.
It's really it's really cool that they that they have that stuff that you
can see. So we used to hit that on the tour too, and
then ultimately end up at her grave site which had you know, she was
moved. She was in forests on Cyprus, originally in a beautiful grave at
the end of a hallway and it was a wonderful looking, you know,
beautiful grave at the end of the hall and her parents were buried there too,
and then Richard left Downy and moved two thousand oaks i think it is,
and had Karen exhoomed and her parents and took him up that way.
So now she's in the valley at another cemetery, and Richard has space for
himself and his family. So that was kind of a weird, a weird,
a weird thing. But her gravestone does say a star on Earth and
a star in Heaven, which I think is quite sweet. Yeah. So,
yeah, she died on February fourth, nineteen eighty three. She was
thirty two. She apparently basically died in her bedroom closet at her at her
childhood home was where she was found collapsed. Anyways, I think cause of
death was ruled as being related to her anorexia. Yeah, it was hard
failure due to her her eating disorder. It's very um And that movie they
did, the Karen Carpenter Story, did we talk about did we ever talk
about I don't know if we've talked about that, And we talked about it
on them because their first Dearly Departed documentary, we did a whole Carpenter's section.
Oh that's right, we did. Yeah, we went down there and
showed all those places. Yeah, but I don't know that we I don't
know that we've talked about it on this show. Well, they you know,
they did the Karen Carpenter's story that was addressing anorexia nervosa for the very
first time, and it was a TV movie and it was really Richard is
the one who produced it, and it was it was quite raw in that
regard where he showed his parents being, you know, kind of emotionally vacant
and uh and him being you know, he went into a reab for a
drug addiction for quailudes and Karen's insecurities with her weight. And it was odd
because they actually filmed it in the Carpenter's home. They the woman who played
Cynthia Gibson, I think it was her name, who played Karen, wore
all of Karen's real clothes. When the ambulance came to the house, they
used the real ambulance and the real ambulance drivers to go to the house.
And you know, it was just and they filmed her body being taken down
the stairs and taken out into the ambulance in the house that it actually took
place in its bizarre Louise Fletcher plays the mother in the movie. And they
filmed on the A and M Records lot in the in the sound in the
studio where they actually recorded on LaBrea where you used to work, and because
it's pretty, it's pretty, it was pretty good, pretty wild historically movie.
So I believe the one the recording studio that they recorded in there on
LaBrea. I believe that studio is still there and it's kind of known as
the Carpenter's Studio. Obviously, thousands of acts have recorded in their sinse um,
but I believe that's the one that is said to be haunted. It
was somebody that you knew that told that story, wasn't it. Yeah,
because I worked I worked on the Jim Henson lot for about a year and
a half cashed by fifteen years ago. It was originally probably one second,
I just want to interrupt you. We're just second to set. The stage
that was A and M Records is now the Jim Henson Studio originally built by
Charlie Chaplin. So it's just been around since, you know, like the
twenties when when there was nothing but orange groves around there. So it's still
the original studio there, and Chaplain built it for his own film productions.
Yeah, and if you've were seeing the Chaplain film, you know with the
biography with Robert Downey Jr. Towards the end, when he's an old man
and he's coming back for the oscars uh and he's in the limo or whatever,
or the Rolls Royce or whatever he's in. They pull up in front
of his old studio for seconds so he can see it one more time.
That is the actual Chaplain studio lot, but now it has a kermit the
frog dressed as the tramp on the roof, which is nice. It's a
good hipping his hat to the Crazy Girl's Strip club across the street. It
was a Chaplain's footprints or in the cement in there. They're still in the
concrete. If you know where to look, they're near there between the restrooms.
It's kind of an old out there's like a building in the middle of
the courtyard which is where the restrooms are, and there's um if you know
where to look from the sidewalk leading from there toward the entrance to the recording
studio. It was very very faint. This is fifteen years ago, so
who even knows. Now you could still see the footprints that he worrieded the
tramp walk down the sidewalk, and that's what inspired supposedly inspired send sid Graman
to do the Um Gramin's Chinese theater handprint and footprints because he saw that cool
one had done that. Yeah, that's really cool. So what about the
ghost story? So suppose I believe that it was in the carpenter's studio,
but someone who worked there I remember, was telling me this one time that
you know, it's a twenty four hour a day operation. There's bands there
and all the time. Basically they'll be recording at three o'clock in the morning.
And I think it was the carpenters when they said like two to two
thirty in the morning, the whatever local you know employee was working with them
said, okay, um, take a lunch break. We got to shut
down for like thirty minutes. And the producer whoever with the band was like,
whoa you know, I say, when that happens kind of deal.
And they said, we can't record, you know, between like two thirty
and three am or something because the recording is always getting messed up. And
they're like, yeah, yeah, nonsense, and they said everybody says that.
So we've kept one of the recordings that got messed up, and they
played the recording back and they said it sounds like a room full of people,
just voices on top of voices on top of voices, and even though
you know, it wasn't like there's a party going on, but nobody was
in there. Um. And so that that is what was told to me
while I worked there, was that that studio was haunted. So did you
I think you told me that before anyone does a recording session there, they
play I believe that that is the other thing that that's all to kind of
appease the ghosts. Yes, they play a Carpenter song before every recording in
that studio. Yep, that's cool. I love that. And if anything
else to acknowledge probably the most famous artist from A and M, aside from
her Melbert, but you know, the the the Carpenters were, you know,
a huge star for A and M. So it's nice that they get
acknowledgement there. And Chaplain gets the shout out with the muppet with the Kerman,
you know Kerman with the Kermit the frog at the at the front with
the with the with the hat and the cane. So it's it's nice that
the history is being acknowledged there. I hope that's still the case. Um.
Also, I believe that George Harrison founded his dark Horse Records on that
same lot. Oh interest seventies. Cool. Um, that's that's also something
I heard while I worked there. We saw Paul McCartney there one time,
Wow, said see every we saw Chris Cornell, we saw Rod Stewart.
Uh, Ashley Simpson. Really you had me. I wasn't interested until you
said, Ashley Simpson. M Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney was totally cool.
A couple of people I worked with went over and talked to him and had
like a nice conversation with them, and yeah, yeah, that was a
wild place to work for sure. They were always doing weird and then plus
the Muppets were there. Um. I think the main Muppet factory like where
they make where they the workshop is in New York. Um, but they
also have what they call them up at barn at the Hanson lot there where
they are working on other stuff. Um, because they'll do They use that
sound stage there to film Muppet related things too. So have you I saw
that show they're called Muppet Up Have you ever seen that? No? Sorry,
I met it was Rare. I met Jim Henson Junior there and he
and he talks like Kermit. It's the most bizarre thing. But yeah,
when I worked at the lot he was still he's still on in office there.
It's a really nice guy. But this muppet up is improv and it's
all you know. They have like a cast of six people and it's in
a slew of props and puppets, and somebody throws out an idea and they
do the Muppets, but not the famous Muppets because it's filthy. I mean
it's really filthy. It's really edgy and very very funny, but it is.
It is a proper Muppet production without any of their big names. And
say Jim Junior was there, so um but it's fascinating. I don't know
if they've ever done in a documentary on that. Probably wouldn't let them,
but because we could be upset, it's good. It's good stuff. Yeah,
So rest in peace, Karen Carpenter. Next up Nat King Cole,
who recorded an album in nineteen sixty, same as Ella Fitzgerald's first album.
His album was called The Magic of Christmas uh and it is the only Christmas
album that that Cole ever released. What's interesting is his most famous Christmas song
which is now like one of the most famous song Christmas songs ever called the
Christmas Song, was not on that album. Uh. They did not record
it until a year later, and ended up being such a huge hit that
when they reissued The Magic of Christmas album in sixty three a few years later,
UM, they renamed it the Christmas Song and added that track to it.
UM because it becomes such a huge smash hit by that point. It
is. Yeah, it's a definitive version most certainly, and a lot of
people don't even know it's called the Christmas Song, but they would say,
you know, the chestnuts roasting on up and fire that one, right,
and it's just it's it's funny. But yeah, that certainly had has the
most recognized version of that song, which is also interesting because is written by
Meltor May, not even written by you know, I didn't know that.
Yeah, Meltor May wrote it, made a fortune on it. But but
the definitive recording was Nat King Cole's recording UM and if being owned the forties
and fifties. When it came to Christmas music, Nat King Cole owned the
sixties. It was the biggest selling Christmas album of the decade. I believe
it was his and its nice they feature him on that big mural on the
side of Capitol Records. Right. I love that. I think house the
NAT built, you know, yeah, right, yeah, so it's neat.
And he was he was born in Alabama and always into music, came
to Los Angeles and of course, we know, became very successful, very
successful in a very short period of time because he died really young. But
he had he had very famously purchased at home on June Street in Hancock Park,
and uh, Hancock Park had you know for the old people, the
old family people in Hancock Park, you know, people that had old money,
people that have inherited them, houses that have been in the same families
for eighty years. Um still have the documentation that when you bought a house
in Hancock Park there were you know, no Jews and no blacks. Was
literally in the paperwork for the Homework Association or whatever. Yeah. Yeah,
and that you know, was the first first black person to move in.
And there's the story about you know, somebody burning across on his lawn.
I don't know if that's true, but he certainly had am an issue with
Yeah, they wanted him out and were very vocal about it. Yeah.
Yeah, there's that famous there's that famous story about them. They came and
knocked on his door and said, we don't want any undesirables in this neighborhood,
and he said I don't either, and you know I see anything.
Yeah, yeah, I love that story. So um so yeah. He
certainly anyone that you know of of color, anyone you know, back in
that period of time, had you know, a lot of other issues aside
from just trying to break into the industry, which is hard enough to do.
To make that, you know, that kind of successful where everyone was
buying their records and having him in their record collection was a bigger accomplishment than
a lot of other people would could claim. You know. Yeah, my
grandfather, who grew up in Glendale, he he told me that. He
told me when I shot my Oilerhouse documentary, which was about him and the
architect Richard Neutra. He told me when we were filming that that he growing
up in Glendale, being in la He and my grandma when they were kind
of first together, they would go see Nat King Cole play at a club.
He said it was on Normandy and I believe he specifically said in the
Hollywood area, So I haven't done the research to find out where that would
have been, but yeah, my grandpa was really proud of the fact that
he saw Nat King Cole play before he was super famous. Probably would have
been the forties, would be my guess. Yeah, yeah, Normandy,
that would be probably around will Shirk because I don't think there were any clubs
around Norman Dean Hollywood at that point, but there were because it was so
close to the Ambassador Hotel. Uh, and that's there were a lot of
nightclubs around that area, I think. So that's that's fascinating. Uh.
That would have been a real that would have been a real accomplishment. That
would have been something to see. Yeah, for sure, a memorable.
Yeah. I mean, I love before they were famous type of stories,
you know, and what a great one to have, ye. Yeah.
My grandmother when she the last few years of her life, she had really
bad dementia. She had Alzheimer's and sundowners I think, um, which is
it's the horrible combination and so you know, at the end she didn't really
remember much obviously, but she was such a big jazz music fan when she
was younger, she still knew all the jazz songs. And I remember she
sang Stardust for us one time, which was a huge Snack King Cole hit.
And you know, even if she didn't know who was in the room
with her, even though they were you know, lifelong family members, she
still remembered every single word of Stardust. Isn't that funny? Music is so
powerful, the power of music. What is sundowners? I've never heard of
that. Sundowners is I believe a form of dementia that impacts you more late
in the day, which is why it's called sundowners. So people's sundowners might
be great in the morning, in the middle of the day, and then
you know, getting toward the end of the day, they start to get
foggy. That's how I understand it. And I think Alzheimer's kind of affects
you all the time, so to have both at the same time, it
was a bad combination. So well, yeah, of course it was a
big time smoker, big time smoker, cigarette smoker and h and ultimately they
claimed him and he died in February fifteenth, nineteen sixty five. He was
only forty five years old. In sixty five, it says so sad.
And you know, very famously had a daughter, Natal Natalie Cole, who
actually passed away a couple of years ago. And he had a son who
passed away of HIV, etc. They're buried and NAT's buried in Forest Lawn,
Hollywood Hills, down the same hallway as um Clara Bow and George Burns
and Gracie Allen and Alan Ladd. And he's got one of those cool UH
signature markers. It's his signature on this big on the big wall in the
mausoleum. That's his autograph. I've since looked at it and it is his
autographs, so that I like when people do that, when they put their
autographs on their graves. That's kind of neat. But yeah, yeah,
that's so he's at UH and the Freedom Ausoleum at Forest Lawn, Glendale.
UM. So rest in peace, Nat King Cole and um, we wanted
to next talk about burrel lives. Interesting guy, I think, yes,
I mean an Academy Academy Award winning actor and singer um who just kind of
did a little bit of everything. It seems like them was very successful at
it too. Yeah he um, yeah, of course I mean, he's
been in those classic movies. He was in Eased to Be In with m
with James Dean, he was in katadahat tim Roof, he was in um
Well, he won the Oscar for a movie called The Big Country. I've
not I've never seen that, so I don't one supporting actor. I haven't
seen it either. Yeah. Yeah, but but to baby boomers it would
be the the narrator of the Rank and Bass Show, Rudolph the Red Nose
Reindeer. Uh, it was ums, it's a I mean it was classic
growing up. It was just a literal classic. And yeah, I mean
it's it's his classic. I mean I think it's as classic as It's a
Wonderful Life or or you know, or or The Christmas Story or whatever what.
You'd wait a year to see that twenty five minute little piece of film,
you know, that stop action animation and which was really fascinatingly kind of
I don't want to say ripped off. But the the the Elf movie,
you know, they they I was watching. I think we talked about us
in another episode. Yeah, I think we talked about this. Yeah,
how they Yeah, the movies that made us on Netflix, I mean they
almost fascinated. They almost didn't get to finish the movie because they didn't without
permission, right, I think they thought they had the okay and they didn't.
And then it was and Buddy's outfit was basically like a replica of you
know, the same color and everything. They're they're trying to figure out if
there was a way that they could like digitally change the color of his outfit
that make it less. I mean, yeah, it's pretty wild. I
don't think they actually did get permission, but they made it different enough.
But I don't know if Frank and Bash ever signed on. I can't remember.
I think they worked something out because I don't think the studio would have
let them finish. And that was horrible because John, that was John Favros,
I think, first directing film and he um. I mean, it
would have looked at the career he's had since then. It would have just
stalled him out so bad. If and they look at what a huge hit
that became, and ye Will Farrell wasn't really seen as much of a movie
star at that point either, and that it launched him as a movie star,
like it launched these crazy careers that would have never happened if if they
had had the production canceled halfway in because they didn't get the rights. It's
I mean, it's it's wild to see a movie that's come out in you
know, in the last fifteen twenty years, it's considered a Christmas classic,
you know, like that one is. Yeah, like that's Elf is one
where the minute I saw it was like, this is a classic. You
knew, you knew right away. Yeah, so so and so um Verlive's
narrated Rudolph the Redno's Ranger as the as the Snowman that uh and um and
and that was made in sixty four, that that special. And now Troy
was just telling me they redid it recently digitally, like frame by frame.
And I don't know where he saw that, but they actually redid it again.
I don't know why. Why would you they redid it. I don't
know. They had something to do with the process. I have to ask
Troy about that later. In fact, we should probably, you know,
I don't know the point of it, but it was to add another scene
that wasn't there or that they originally into. I don't know. I just
leave it, just leave it, you know. The Island of Misfit Toys
was awesome. I loved I loved it, loved it. It is a
going to the Elf thing. It is always a question of when does an
homage become just ripping off? Yeah, you know, and like Community did
a whole episode that was in that style, that stop motion Rudolph the Red
Nosed Reindeer style. They did a whole episode like that. But that was
a comedy show, so it could have it was parody. Yeah, I
guess elf, you couldn't say it's parody. It was just straight up taking
taking the look. I see. Someone seeing Elf for the first time that
wasn't around at sixty four would think that Elf came up with it and they
watched the special and going wow, you know that's really you know, that's
really something. But what a coincidence. So burlives his recordings of Holly Jolly
Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer came out of that special and those recordings
now have become on their own crap classic Christmas song recordings. And he passed
away on April fourteenth, nineteen ninety five, from oral cancer. Um he
was I guess he smoked a lot of smoked pipes a lot throughout his life.
And he was eighty five. He was eighty five. I go,
there's a couple of things I wanted to point out about him. He towards
the end of his life, he did a movie called The Man Who Wanted
to Live Forever, And this is about a man who literally wanted to live
forever and he was buying he was harvesting organs from people who weren't dead yet,
like like arranging for their deaths so he could have their organs so he
could live together, which is really fascinating idea. But he was the voice
of something there was. There was an attraction at Disneyland called America Sings and
it was narrated by an eagle called Sam and it was narrated by burl Ives
and it was called the Theater where it was in You probably you grew up
here, So you remember like the Carousel of Progress that round theater that was
by Autopia. Yeah, yeah, So America Sings was this was this production
within that that theater which spun which literally turns around is the Carousel of Progress.
And two weeks after it opened, um there was a woman named Deborah
Stone. She was a Disneyland employee. She was crushed to death. She
was the first Disneyland employee to ever be killed on the job in that theater
a week or two weeks after that show opened in Disneyland. Her name was
Carousel. Yeah, she got she got stuck between a wall and the moving
wall that was coming up to it. So so she's standing here and this
thing is moving and boom she you know, right when it's supposed to pass
by. So she was. There had been people killed at Disneyland before that,
but never an employee. That was the first time an employee was killed
in Disneyland. And they shut down the ride for two days. I think,
well, I would hope. And it wasn't no Disney It was not
a tribute. I mean, they were just trying to scramble iron and how
to get that thing opened up again, you know. But the way it
was described, there was somebody that was in the audience and he said he
said he looked to the right and saw what he thought was a child being
pulled between the platform and the wall and heard a scream, which is fascinating.
That was in the newspaper reporting that death. But but yeah, there's
a weird burl ives trivia question for you. So he was alive too when
that happened. He lived for another twenty five years after that, So burl
ives, go figure burl ives. Um all right, So I wanted to
throw a little herball in here for our last one, and that is uh,
that is Alvin and the Chipmunks, Um and the Chipmunks song Christmas Don't
Be Late. Um. So the Chipmunks, you know that that song was
recorded of this same era that we're talking about. It was actually recorded in
nineteen fifty eight. I thought I was gonna say mid sixties. Wow,
you would think, but no, it was recorded before there was any cartoon
Chipmunks or anything like that. So it basically launched Alvin and the Chipmunks,
which I didn't realize. I thought they were already established by the time the
song got made. But um uh ross Bagdasarian who was the guy that created
the Chipmunks, And his stage name was Dave Saville, who is you know
They're they're like Dad or whatever on the show, David Saville. And so
he was a singer, songwriter and an actor. Um he um had done
previously done. He'd like to do novelty songs, and so he had figured
out he'd done a novelty song I think earlier that year, the year before,
called I Think the Witch Doctor, about a guy who a guy who
can't about a guy who can't find love, and so he goes to see
a witch doctor. And that was the first time that ross Um figured out
a way his technique of speeding up the recording to make the voice sound higher
pitched, which is of course how the chipmunks how they do those voices.
I didn't know that a witch doctor. That was a big tang tang,
wattle bing bang that was that was a big song. Yeah, so I
didn't know that was Dave Seville as well. It's wild And so he figured
out that recording technique. He did that song. It was a big hit.
They wanted more, you know, the the record label wanted more of
him. And supposedly he was driving through Sequoia National Forest and he almost hit
a chipmunk with his car and that gave him the idea of the chipmunks,
and he was like that. I guess he thought, oh, that sped
up voice could sound like a chipmunk talking, So let's do something U.
So he released the song in nineteen fifty eight, and I mean there was
no Chipmunk animated idea of this happening. That didn't come around for a few
more years. I think sixty or sixty one is when the Chipmunk animated series,
like the first attempt at it came out. But it sold four million
copies in the first two months. It was number one on Billboard. It
knocked off the Phil Spector song to Know Him Is to Love Him by the
Teddy Bears, And yeah, it was. It wasn't a couple of years.
I think it was the sixty one that they started doing the thing.
But here's what's interesting. So Bagdasarian was Armenian American. His earliest one of
his earliest songwriting credits was come On to My House, which Rosemary Clooney made
famous. He wrote that from White Christmas. Interesting he also had he had
been an actor and had bit parts. He had a small part in Stalock
seventeen, for example. And this is my favorite one, my favorite film
of all time is Rear Window by Hitchcock. Bagdasarian is the piano player neighbor
struggling to write his next hit song, and he writes the song Lisa and
there's a bunch of scenes with him. He's one where he comes home drunk
and collapses and he has a party next door and eventually ends up with miss
Lonely hearts at the end. Well, yeah, that is that is basically
Dave Seville. Wow, that's so cool. I had no idea. Does
he get screen credit for that? I mean he had lines. I would
think he did. And that's. Um, you know how Hitchcock would always
put himself into his movies. That's yeah, that that's where Hitchcock put himself.
In the rear window. Hitchcock is in his apartment with Ross Bagdasarian,
and Hitchcock is winding a clock on the mantel. I've got to see that
again. I was just looking at like a Hitchcock collection to h to watch
over. I haven't seen that movie in probably twenty years. I have to,
really, I have to check that out. And I think I think
I have it. I think they just came out with the four K discussion
too. Um, yeah, that's great. So unfortunately, uh, he
Bagdasarian. Bagdasarian died from a heart attack in nineteen seventy two. He was
only fifty two years old. Wow, so he didn't. I mean,
we're still talking about it, you know, fifty years later. Fifty years
later. Now, what happened was his son, Ross Baghdasarian Junior I think
is his name. His son took over the franchise. Basically, his son
got a law degree and kind of took over the family business and ended up
buying the rights off from his siblings in the nineties. So all the Chipmunk
stuff that happened in the eighties nineties up till today, the more recent movies
they've done that's all been the Sun has kept that business going basically. M
Yeah, that was a big TV show. I remember watching that cartoon when
I was a kid too. That was so popular. Yeah, yep,
it's great. How then and then this is like a funny little piece of
film trivia. I love it. In Rocky four, when they get to
that cabin in Russia to do his like final training before the big fight with
the Rush, Polly is listening to that song the Chipmunks Songpones while they're hanging
out and chilling in this like living room area this cabin. Yeah. I
always thought that was funny that Paully's listening to that song. Um, so
yeah, there you go, the chipmunks and Dave Seville. That's interesting.
I didn't know that about Seville. That's do you know where he's buried?
I wonder where he's buried? Do you know? Oh wait, I do?
I looked at up pulled on according to find a grave, he is
buried at Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. So he was I
mean Chapel the Pines is mostly storage. Uh. They it's right on Wilshire
by by Angelus Rosedale, and they do tons of cremations and they have storage
rooms beneath just stack from floor to ceiling with people's creamines. But they have
a really small cemetery itself for actually you know display quote unquote, but there's
a ton of people underneath underneath that. We actually got in there once and
the door was open, and uh, and we took some pictures down there,
and I wish I would have had more nerve because I would have gone
up and down with the names and show, you know, trying to figure
out who was down there, because that's sort of the final disposition on their
desk ertif they could say Chapel of the Pines. But like Stephen Stucker,
the guy from Airplane had played Johnny is was Chapel of the Pines. But
you to get somebody out of there and buried somewhere else, you have to
go through this whole legal process. And it wasn't that where the isn't that
where the Frankenstein actor was we talked about them? Oh yeah, yeah,
we sure did. Yeah, it was that the same place because it was
a similar situation. He laid unclaimed for like twenty years or something. Yeah.
Yeah, so so that you know, chapel Inglewood has one of those
too, though Inglewood has But when you first drive into Inglewood in the main
entrance on the left, there's there's the chapel and then but underneath that chapel
is another slew of storage rooms and people that aren't even buried, just just
there because I know the paying the storage fee, but but they're not they're
not out in the world. Like seeing on display. Um, it's kind
of interesting but fascinating, fascinating. So Davesonville is there, but we don't
know if he's on display, he might be just being stored there in Yeah,
it would be weird though that if his family is still around and they
still have obviously still making it, you know, quite a bit of money
off of the franchise. Why wouldn't they have taken care of his remains?
He would think, I don't think there was any I don't think there was
any bad blood or anything like that. Some people just don't give a care
that. Some people just don't care. That's true. It's it's not high
on there. And also some people just have them like like well Larry Tate,
you know, the guy that played David White. You know, he
died and it wasn't it's only twenty five years later. He ended up at
Hollywood Cemetery in a in a you know, in a niche that's you know,
visible with with that's decorated with all of his artifacts. So, you
know, sometimes people keep them at home until they die and then they want
to be with doing that app that I do, that Death of Day app.
Every day I'm finding somebody and it's always like cremated to residents? What
happened? You know? I want to know where they are, and it
just says it's always says cremated to residents or so it's sitting on someone's mantle
somewhere. Yeah, yeah, right, All right, do you want to
get into worst Christmas songs? Oh? You know you've been waiting, you've
aired up. I'll go into some good ones first, though, I'll go
into some of my favorite ones. I just wanted to say upfront that I
think the problem I have a most Christmas songs, especially ones recorded posts like
nineteen seventy, is that they're done so cynically. It's the it's in cash.
It feel always feels like a cash grab a lot of these pop groups
to put albums. It's kind of like the it's almost like the record label
made them do it kind of a deal because it makes money, you know.
Um, it's kind of like what Bill Nye's character makes fun of and
I love. Actually he's playing like a rock star that's put out this same
thing. He's reworked one of his classic hits to be a Christmas song,
and he's telling people it sucks, it's terrible, but they did it because
it's you know, they need because they'll make money. So that's how I
feel about a lot of these songs, and I'll probably how I'm gonna feel
about a lot of ones you're gonna talk about, Well, they I mean,
they did to that album in the eighties called A Very Special Christmas where
those people covered you know, the Arithmetics for Springsteen, the Pointer Sisters,
I mean they I think it was done for a cause. Is that where
Springstein came up with the Santa Clauses coming to Town? Was that which is
up there and one of the ones I hate the most because it sounds like
he's taken a dump the whole time. You know. But Annie Lennox or
the Arithmetics did uh Winter wonder Land, which is one of my favorite songs
Christmas songs. I think, Uh so he did Marry Christmas Baby, That's
what it is. Bruce Springsteen did, Whitney Houston did do you Do you
Hear What I Hear? Which I think is a really good version of it.
I like that a lot. So there are some good songs in it,
I really some of them. Really. There were some pretty There's a
lot of clinkers in there too. Yeah, but uh but yeah, I
know what you're saying. We got to create a christmash one in there,
um and then they become accidental. I think super hits like Troy when he
when he hears that Mariah Carey song, he wants to murder. I mean,
he just wants to murder. Yes, that is near at the top
of my list. And that's in speaking of love. Actually, that's in
love. Actually that was it. Really. They perform it as the um
as the the kids perform it as part of the school show at the end.
Yeah, it's like kind of the finale. Basically, is that song.
I don't see. I don't mind it. I think it's a cute
song, but it's just it's but it sets people off. It's been it's
been so overplayed, I think is the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
well this isn't. A couple of years ago, she was on the
Macy's parade and that's so I don't and that's the I don't want a lot
for Christmas song. All I wanted to do that song. Yeah. All
I want for Christmas is you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they
had her singing on the Macy's Thanksgiving a parade a pull of years ago,
on a float on that on a loop and she was lip sick and she
just gave up during it. She's just like stopped. It's on YouTube.
It's kind of funny, but she just like screw. She's hilarious. She
really is. She was on a show once and I knew somebody that worked
on the show, and she was a guest on this talk show and she
would just sit there in her chair and she would go like this, and
the assistant would come running up with a tray with like three different drinks on
it, and she hadn't even lift her eyes. She would just you know,
like like drink out of one of these drinks that she wanted. She
would just tilt her hat and you know, does the assistant come running at
the drink. It's kind of I love that story, but uh yeah.
So that's one of those ones that people really like or don't like big time.
I like personally, I love h I love the Rynet when they the
Phil Spector Christmas album I think is a fantastic album, and they did a
Winter Wonderland I think and sleigh Ride. I think sleigh Ride is my number
one Christmas favorite song. There's never a version. I don't like that with
you know, let's hear the sleigh bells ringling jing jing. I love that
song. I'm a sucker for like instrumentals and big orchestrations, so I do.
I do love the sleigh Ride. Song, and I think the Ronetts
do a really fun version of that. I think it's up there too.
And speaking of Phil Spector that one of my favorite songs kind of of that
era in that genre is the Darling Love Christmas Baby Please Come Home recording.
Oh yeah, yeah, if you ever. One of my favorite documentaries ever
is Twenty Feet from Stardom when they do an excellent job of covering that whole
story and how Letterman you know, I started bringing her on the show every
year as a as a tradition. I think that's so cool. Um,
okay, so stuff you don't like, let's hear it, unload Scott.
I like Santa Baby kind of by Eartha Kit. I think that's a fun
song, fun novelty song really, and I don't like Madonna's version of it.
I think she I think that she did a substandard version of Santa Baby.
Personally, I really really do not like Blue Christmas Blue Christmas Feeling.
Elvis never really liked it. I found a few other people that feel that
way too. It's just not one that not one that I enjoy. Because
Dean Martin did a cover of it also that but it was very it was
very similar style though, I mean, yeah, basically just Dino singing,
you know, yeah, yeah, you know why I talked to you,
And he said, Rudolph the redne he goes Rudy Lrodino's ringer. I talked
to Angie Dickinson the other day, as it were, she was doing a
one woman night with Angie and there was a little meet and greed afterwards,
and I got an opportunity to talk to her for a minute about Dean Martin.
And something it always bugged me about her about Dean Martin is that the
drunk thing is really good. You know, it's really difficult to act drunk
usually because when you're when you're drunk, you're the whole thing is you're trying
to act sober. So it's really difficult to act drunk. And I never
believe for a second because he also died of like liver and kidney failure.
I mean he's been he also died in Christmas Day, so it's relevant yea.
And but I asked her, I said, you know, the Dean
Martin thing, because she was friends with him. I said, was it?
You know, wasn't How can you act that drunk? It had to
be real? She goes, No, it wasn't. And I'll tell you
that when I first met him the first time, he said, I had
stomach ulster. The whole thing is an act. I'm not. This is
not verbatim, but she said that he was that. He told her straight
off that he acts drunk and the whole thing is an act. I don't.
I'm not on board because ulster is a temporary and I think that during
those Dean Martin celebrity roasts, you couldn't even move well. And speaking of
those, you know, the fame by the most famous drunk act was Foster
Brooks, who is great drunk act. But you could see him turn it
on and off. Yeah, he kind of when he was done doing it,
and you can see him turn it off. It was kind of like
an un scene moment and he would be and then he would walk. He
would He was con kinded to say that was an act. I just my
performances ended, you know what I mean. I don't think Dean did no.
And if you watch what occasion point is the Jerry Lewis telethon where they
had the big reunion between Martin and Lewis, and Snatra kind of maneuvered it
in surprise. If you go back, I remember when it first happened.
I was like, oh, it was really sentimental, emotional thing. If
you go back and watch it again, it's on YouTube. It's like Demartin
can barely stand. He is slurring so poorly that Jerry Lewis just walks away
and stands on the podium and watches because de Martin is just cannot even.
He has to be led away by Sinatra, literally standing couldn't see the stand
he I think he had a cigarette his hand and he burned his coat with
it. This is all, like, you know, I'm not It's not
as all lovely and wonderful as everyone remembers it to be, because some things
are not supposed to be memorialized every second of now we can analyze them and
can't leave it. It's just a nice memory, but it is very interesting.
I don't believe she told me point playing her mouth to my ears,
that that it was an act, but I'm not sure it was so um
anyway. Another song that I will flip the switch as soon as it comes
on is The Little Saint Nick by the Beach Boys Cannot Cannot. I'm not
a big fan of of falsetto anyway. But but the Beach Boys, I
can forgive a lot of because I think they're brilliant. But but Little Saint
Nick was like, yeah, I don't I don't like that song. Um
last Christmas, you know that was George Michael step into Christmas, Elton John
Wonderful Christmas Time Paul McCartney again, Yeah, that's the top of my hate
Listy, I hate it. So which one Wonderful Time Paul McCartney. Yes,
number one on my list. It's one. It's for to me,
it's the epitome of the cynical we're doing a Christmas song to make money type
of songs. Yeah, you know what I mean. And it's Paul McCartney,
like his worst instincts, I think as it's kind of a cynical songwriter.
It's just it's great bow. Yeah. It's interesting because they have a
in Britain, like a tradition, whatever's the Christmas number one single? That's
like every year, that's what the people look forward to, the Christmas number
one. So these are like, that's what I think Bill Nie is trying
to go for his characters. Love actually is making number one. Yeah.
Yeah, so every Christmas. It's got to be a tradition that they have
a Christmas number one song. So I think people were just kicking them out.
Yeah. I think it was contrived and and they're pretty, they're pretty.
Yeah, it's pretty chewy, bubble gummy kind of kind of stuff,
throwaway stuff that didn't expect the last forty years. Yeah, it's not the
great compositions from the forties, fifties and sixties that we've been talking about.
Yeah, you know, yeah, so not a fan. The second worst
song for me is the Charlie Brown Christmas Everest Scream. When that comes on,
I hate that Christmas time which that is? That is, Um,
that is a polarizing song. I've come to like it more. It is
kind of a sad, almost kind of warped sounding song, and when it
starts, it's like, this is gonna last twenty minutes, you know what
I mean. It's so slow and it's just no, I don't, I
don't, no, no, I don't. I don't think that should be
a Christmas classic. I don't think so personally. Um, So that was
you know. Vince Garralti. Garralty was the great jazz musician who did all
the Peanuts music. Um, and he was speaking of people who died young
unexpectedly. He had a massive heart attack when he was forty seven in nineteen
seventy six and almost died on the stage. He had just played a set
at a nightclub in California, and um, he went back to his hotel
room and basically collapsed, started feeling sick to his stomach and went to the
restroom and collapsed in the bathroom and had died from a massive heart attack.
And I think he was another one that just had kind of had an unhealthy
lifestyle with you know, the smoking and eating and everything else, and just
and didn't take didn't kind of take it seriously enough from his doctors about what
was you know, how serious the situation was. But yeah, now band
Aid did they know it's Christmas? That was That's kind of an interesting one.
I'm out on board either way with it big time. But I remember
when it came out and it was a big deal because it was live Aid
was you know, came from that basically that concept with a it was like
it was like the weird of the world of Christmas songs, the people stay
alive. That one's near the top of my list also because it's just that
pretentious rock star. Yes, you know, now let's have st have the
line where bitter Sting comes out. It'll be great, you know. But
but it's not as bad as feed the world that the when they filmed that,
they did A and M. That is to me so contrived. I
mean that's the point. It is contrived. But but it's so it's just
agony. It's just like, you know, all those people together, could
could you know, get donate half their fortunes. Why should I have to
pay five bucks? You know, you know, it's self world, hunger
yourself the money. I love all the footage, though. Have you seen
the footage from the We Are the World recording sessions where they show like Michael
Jackson is especially hilarious on that because his facial expressions reacting now some of the
people are singing. He's just like that was the height of Michael Jackson dumb
to I mean, that was like right at the Thriller album time, and
I think they shot it right after the Grammy, so everyone was already exhausted
anyway, and they ended up starting this session at like midnight or something.
Yeah, see Bob Dylan in there, you know, singing b though,
and he's um uh and Quincy Jones trying to you know, probably the only
person who could have brought all those huge egos together and made that work,
right. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's a legendary gathering of
people, that's for sure. The fact that all those people were in one
room together, it's pretty pretty amazing spectacular. So the last song on my
list, the number one song I despise the most, the one that makes
me dive for the volume button or the off button on the radio, is
called The Christmas Shoes. Uh huh do you know it? I've heard of
it. I can't think of that. I can't think of how it goes
right now that it is the most agonizing. It's just so awful. It's
about a little boy that goes through the department store to buy his shoe,
buy a pair of shoes, um and and it's just oh, Mike,
I can't even tell you how bad this song is because it's I don't want
to spoil it for people because it'll be a spoiler because if anyone hasn't heard
it before, they're gonna listen to the song and they're gonna see exactly,
but I think it's been out long enough. You can nobody can. Well.
He basically is buying his pair of shoes for his dead mother, and
and you go through the whole song not knowing that this mother is dead,
and it is. It is just it is so hard to sit through.
It is slow, it is awful, it's contrived, it is so it
just makes me insane, and people like, really, my sister first show
played it for me and she goes, oh, you're gonna love this song.
As Peter was like, no, it is so. It is to
see the expression on your face the first time you heard it with your sister,
I couldn't know it was really waiting for you to hear it. It
was it was something that I gave it. I gave it a moment and
I just thought, this is contrived piece. It's somebody a group called New
Shoes. I didn't even know who sang it because I never even cared enough.
But they named they basically named their group for the song I'm sorry.
It's a Christian vocal group called New Song and it was released in two thousand
and it is about this little boy who it's it's it's well goodness. The
song has appeared on various Worst Christmas Song list and song was named the worst
Christmas song ever by jezebel dot com. And uh and it's just it is
so so awful. Little boy wants to buy a pair of shoes for his
terminally ill mother, and the boy tells the cashier he wants to appear beautiful.
It wants her to appear beautiful when she meets Jesus. It is so
I can't even tell you you got, but he wants you to appear beautiful,
like in the casket when she meets Jesus. Since he is short o
money, he ends up. The narrator ends up paying for the shoes,
which reminds him of the true meaning of Christmas. It is just hate,
which is meaning of Christmas is buying things at a department store. By it
for buying shoes for a little boy who wants his mother to look beautiful,
who when she meets Jesus because she's terminally ill. When yeah, right,
it's gonna have the sassy ass shoes Jesus. Click click click click click,
Oh man, that's where up on the rooftop click click click. How embarrassed
would you be if he if he didn't mention him, he didn't even notice
my shoes. I challenge anyone to do that whole song, and there's probably
people just gonna go in, oh, how can you? How dare you
say that it's the most beautiful song ever and ever there's always people that do
say that, obviously, people that disagree with with with with things, but
absolute agony. I can't even believe it. Somebody okayed that to record it,
and I can't believe it. People are even talking about it, like
me, but it is so awful that I just that's this my number one
I despise a song ever is in life, I think, and now in
life, not just a Christmas song. I think it is like one of
the worst songs ever in my life. That's funny because you know, white
Christmas is the biggest selling song in history, not even just Christmas songs,
just you have any song, and according to you, the Christmas Shoes is
the worst song in history. So we've run the full spectrum, contrived,
sappy pulling, you know, so pulling at the heart strings. My little
mom my mother is going to die and she needs shoes and I can't afford
to pay for them. I mean, it's like the Hallmark Christmas movies of
Christmas songs and that is the last thing that you know, buy morphine,
you know, with your money, don't go over the will one more time.
Like I know, I'm just saying, plan just saying, but that's
it for my my Well, they couldn't do a song called the Christmas Morphine.
That would be weird, so they made it about it, But a
lot of people would really enjoy that. I think Christmas the Christmas clonic pin.
Well, I'm sure there are people who agree and disagree with our list,
but I will say that one of the ways that we are manipulated by
you know, TV channels and UH and media outlets was with the lists.
Whenever they put out a top ten list, whether it's what they call list
shows on TV, you know, top ten vacation destinations, top ten beaches,
whatever, or you know, any article comes up with a top ten
or whatever, they put that out and knowing people will disagree and debate it
and then talk about it and it will get traffic. Well, I'm not
doing it for traffic. I'm just doing it to get it out there that
I hate it so much. You have pure intentions. So I would sit
in a room by myself and just say it to myself, I hate that
song. Oh my god. Um all right, oh you know, before
we go, I just want to say, by your recommendation, I finally
watched for the first time The Bishops Plight Bishops, Yes, with Carrie Grants
and David Niven. Yes, yeah, I really, I really enjoyed it.
Was another one that was quite sappy and you know, but that was
the time. It was very capra esque. Yes, I was surprised that
it was known, like right off the bat that Carry Grant was an angel,
so it's not a spoiler at all. And uh, and it was.
It was. It was a cute. It was a nice Christmas movie.
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much. Yeah. That was
my mom's favorite, so I always watched it every year in her honor.
And apparently it was somewhat controversial because Carrie Grant playing an angel was like kind
of against type. He tended to play a kind of darker or gray area
characters. Um, and I think that that was somewhat controversial to have him
play an angel. Um in that era. This is what I think it
was like nineteen forty nine or something like that. They shot that movie on
the lot, the lot over by Formosa Cafe. Oh really that's where they
filmed it. Yeah, you should look up. The trailer for it is
really wild because you know, trailer's back then were so weird. They're not
like they are now. It was so about star power that it was literally
the trailer for it is there. They're honest, they're on the back lot
or they're on the lot together, like outside the sound stages, and it's
Carrie Grant and Loretta Young and David Niven. And they've realized they forgot to
shoot the trailer. So the trailer is then remembering, oh, we forgot
to shoot the trailer. So then they run over to get on one of
the sound stages and there's a security guard there that stops them, as if
that would ever happen, and they have to explain to the security guard what
the movie is about, and that's basically the trailer, and then at the
end they just show a quick clip reel with music of some of the big
moments from the film with titles over it, and that's the whole trailer.
It's really wild. It's very, very strange, but I wanted to mention
that one also because it ties into our our Universal Monsters um because the maid,
the housekeeper in their home is Elsa Lanchester, bride of Frankenstein. Yes,
yes, who played a servant as usual rights yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah. But there's also another one too, and I correct me if I'm
wrong, but Carolyn Grimes plays Zoo Zoo in It's a Wonderful Life, and
she plays a daughter in this show in this movie. Really think connection,
dude, Let's look that up because I'm pretty sure. Um, let me
look Bishop's Wife that's her. Yeah, wow, that is really wild.
So yeah, that's it's it's another that that is the one of our podcasts
is It's a Wonderful Life that we did and uh and so there's an association
with that and the Universal Monsters with Alsa Lanchester. So it's interesting that she
that little girl played you know those uh two iconic Christmas movies. Right.
Yeah. If you go to the IMDb page for The Bishop's Wife, the
trailer is at the top, so anybody watching this can watch this wild trailer
with Kerry Grant and David Niven and Laurett A. Young. I thought another
interesting bit about this was there were two screenwriters credited on it, and it
plus it was I think it was based on a novel. But this one
screenwriter's name was Leonardo Berkovici and he ended up getting blacklisted in the fifties.
Just a few years later, he was blacklisted by the House on American Activities
Committee because he was called in to testify. He'd been named by Edward Demitric
and another person, and so in nineteen fifty one he had to go and
testify and he swore he was not a member of the Communist Party, but
then invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when they asked if he had ever been in
the past, and he got blacklist As the result, he had to move
to Europe for years and try to make a living there. I think he
was there for like six or seven years before he finally came back to work
with on a Tyrone Power film that it ended up not getting made because Power
died. Um. But yeah, And it's interesting when you watch the movie
from it's every time there's like layers. It's it's a little bit more complex
than you realize at first. Because I've seen it probably thirty times now and
I watched it again a couple weeks ago, and I still catch little things
that I've never caught before, like little lines of dialogue that tie into There's
some interesting layers there. But the when he does the line about the you
know, and he's looking at the painting of the cathedral and Carry Grant says,
you know that big roof could make so many little roofs. That is,
you know, And then you realize the guy that wrote that got blacklisted
for you know, being a communistic It is there's an interest. It's just
interesting the whole sure, you know what I mean. It's very uh because
the the I don't want to give away the movie anybody hasn't seen it yet,
but the setup is that Niven plays a bishop and he's trying to build
this huge cathedral and he's trying to woo this rich woman who widow, who's
going to give him the money to make the cathedral, but she want to
make it all about her dead husband and he wants to basically being a monument.
So David Niven asked for help. He prays for help, and Carry
Grant comes down as an angel to help him, but of course not in
the way that he expects and that's what the movie is all about. So
yeah, yeah, that's cute. I enjoyed the movie. I did very
much, so well, good did we do it? Did we do Christmas?
I'm gonna go watch Peewee's Christmas special now a Palate Cleanser, another one
of our podcasts. Yes, I love it like our Christmas, don't we?
So thanks again. We always have to do a shout out to our
Patreon supporters. We keep adding new ones and we're going to do another exclusive
show for them, probably next week, so look out for that. But
we wanted to get this out in time for Christmas. So again, thanks
to all our Patreon supporters, and thanks to everyone else. Thanks to all
of you for listening to our show every week or every month. Yeah,
thank you very much, and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas or whatever
you're happy Hollows every New Year, everything else like that. Put on those
those Christmas shoes and on that. We'll see you on the next one.
Thanks for watching you guys. Thanks. This has been an episode of the
Dearly Departed podcast. Dig up more episodes at Dearly Departed pod dot com and
on iTunes and Google Play. See you next time,