The most infamously cancelled comedy show, now on YouTube!

Chuck McCann and
Mel Stewart as cops 
doing an ad for mace.

[UPDATE: This piece has been updated to now link to the official, authorized postings of these episodes by producer George Schlatter. Unfortunately, these videos are "stretched" to a rectangular image when they were shot in classic TV (1:33) "square" ratio. So they induce a bit of wincing on that level, but now they're legal....]

Back when I wrote about the great Robert Staats, I mentioned the infamous comedy series “Turn-On,” which was the only show to be cancelled as it traveled across the country, from East Coast primetime to West Coast primetime on Feb. 5, 1969. 

The show wasn’t as awful as that bit of TV history implies — it was actually way ahead of its time. A far hipper version of “Laugh-In,” it was conceived of by the same production company, Schlatter-Friendly Productions, for ABC. It had no laugh track (which was very unusual for TV comedy in 1969), contained even more complicated edits than “Laugh-In,” and was willing to lose some laughs to get across certain points.

Since both existing episodes of the series are now on YouTube — watch them before they get pulled! – it’s worthwhile to contextualize the series. First, it’s important to note that “Turn-On” showed up several months before Norman Lear’s sitcoms (starting in January 1971) and National Lampoon (starting in April 1970) opened up the floodgates to what is now considered “incorrect” humor but was then considered liberated humor, since it cast a wide net and made fun of absolutely everyone.

Secondly, the show featured plenty of ridiculous jokes, but it didn’t talk down to viewers, and assumed they could take the jumps from situation to situation, gag to gag. It was conceived of as "the first computerized TV show."

It actually resembles a sci-fi series or a live-action cartoon in its approach: a solid white background is seen behind the performers (two years before THX-1138), the credits continue to appear throughout the length of the show, and an electronic score is used throughout the first episode.

It is truly wonderful that both existing episodes are now readily available (Staats noted to me that material was prepared for a half-season of shows), as the second show (with guest host Robert Culp) is far better than the first (with guest host Tim Conway), and it never aired at all, because the series was indeed canceled as the first ep was traveling West. It is "calmer" in its approach, since, presumably, Tim Conway signaled "kooky comedy" and Culp signaled "mellow sexuality," so the latter approach is taken in the second show (down to the soundtrack having a light jazz score instead of constant electronic bleeps and blops).

One of the quick onscreen
lines that jolts a modern-day
viewer.

The take-no-prisoners approach to humor on the show meant that it ran the gamut from flagrantly silly blackout material (a la “Laugh-In” and, later on, “Hee-Haw”) to smarter humor to very quick-and-dark jokes. Two of these occur in Episode 1 when you see a series of desks at which the Paris Peace talks (“as dictated by General Ky”) took place — the desks are arranged in a swastika pattern. Also, as we see a court sketch, the phrase “Israel Uber Alles” floats by on the bottom of the screen.

“Turn-On” thus mocked hot-button issues (and “tasteless” premises) in a way that “Laugh-In” never would have and which later became the norm for later shows like “Fernwood 2-Night” and, much later, for “Adult Swim” cartoons and live-action series. 

The last element that must be mentioned about “Turn-On” is its cast. A bunch of newcomers were featured, but some of the cast were old pros. Mel Stewart and Hamilton Camp were very familiar faces on TV, while Chuck McCann was the nearest to a star “name” the show had (thus the guest hosts). Robert Staats did his “E. Eddie Edwards” pitchman character on the program (plus a more bizarre drag character called “Modren [sic] Bride”). 

Robert Staats (credited here as "Bob")
as pitchman E. Eddie Edwards.

That character is best known from The Projectionist, but that film’s release was several months off when the series was shot; Schlatter would’ve seen Staats in a very popular industrial film called “Safety Shoes” (1965). The advertising firm that Staats worked for, Stars and Stripes Productions, is in the credits for “Turn-On” as having supplied segments, most likely animated ones.

Teresa Graves.

It will be noted that the women in the cast participate in all the sketches and some serve as “dancing girls,” a la “Laugh-In.” In fact, the only cast member both shows shared was Teresa Graves, who gets to both do jokes and dance here. 

 Another familiar name flies by in the list of scripters. Albert Brooks, who at this time was just beginning in show business as a standup, is listed alphabetically among the writers. Also on the second episode, a Ban deodorant ad features a young Ms. Madeline Kahn. (The ads are quite fascinating, since some of them look like the show — white backgrounds, silly behavior — but some are "documentary-style" as in one with Mary Quant promoting AT&T).

Here is the first episode, with guest host Tim Conway. [The embeds below are for the authorized versions posted by producer George Schlatter -- I wish they weren't "stretched" into a rectangular ratio! But now they are fully legal...]

 

Here is the second show, never aired, with guest host Robert Culp.

Note: Thanks to YouTube poster Andrewgtv05 for their posting of the shows, and friend Jon W. for his pointing them out to me.

The pitchman as scene-stealer: an interview with Robert Staats

The absolute joy of scene-stealing performers is that they redirect our attention even when we’re enjoying the film in question. It’s easy to be a scene-stealer in a bad movie (in that case there isn’t very much to be stolen), but in a great movie the character person has achieved something wonderful when we still remember their small turn after the movie is over.

Robert Staats served just that purpose in a number of cult films that are great to begin with; he also walked away with some great moments in films that are not quite up to snuff. And the most intriguing thing about this is that Staats has never considered himself to be an actor, didn’t want to be an actor, and firmly maintains to this day that his parts in movies came about because he was fine with “doing a favor for a friend.” What goes unsaid here is the filmmakers in question — Harry Hurwitz, Jonathan Kaplan, Robert Downey Sr., and others — knew that Staats could give a memorable performance and they wanted him to brighten up their movie with his cinematic alter-ego: a carny pitchman who is both your best friend and a guy whose hand is reaching in your pocket.

I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Mr. Staats a few weeks ago and am very happy to share some of his history, his wonderful anecdotes, and his not-too-positive view of major-studio Hollywood (countered by his friendly devotion to Hurwitz and the filmmakers who knew how to use him as a “secret weapon” to keep their films moving along perfectly). He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy who, at 89, is happy that he has fans who enjoyed his movie work, but he’s far prouder of his military service and his work as a seaman over the years. 

“I have no interest in any aspect of show business,” he says now. “I was not interested in soliciting any acting work. I had no agent, although I got a lot of offers from agencies. I wanted no part of it. I would answer the phone and someone would introduce themselves, ‘Could you do this or that?’ ” That was the extent of his work in show business, although he clearly got a number of those phone calls from 1969 through the early Eighties. 

Winning over a rube in
Fairy Tales (1978).

He “backed into” work as a comic actor because of his experience as a “front-talker” at state fairs and other events. This began after his first stint in the Army (1952-55). Staats still speaks the language of the “carny,” discussing how important it is not to “blow the tip” (lose your audience). “You gotta work them and work them,” Staats says of the “tip.” “I was pretty good at layin’ it down.” 

One of his initial forays into show-biz was investing in a traveling show that would honor James Dean, who had recently died. The show contained a facsimile of Dean’s “death car” and was to feature a lifelike wax figure of the movie idol. When the figure arrived, however, it was a dummy of Elvis Presley — the man who made the figure thought that Presley was Dean and had no idea what the real Dean looked like. 

Despite that screw-up, the attraction did fairly well and Staats ended up selling it (and the giant semi-trailer the car was kept in). He was then asked by a producer of tent shows if he could step in as a front-talker. “I did very well — stayed there and made quite a bit of money.” He did spiels at large events. “Some of these state fairs had 100,000 people on the midway in one day. These were huge things, the Calgary Stampede, the Texas State Fair.” He would entice the public to see attractions like “the Alligator Boy.” He admits that being a front talker is certainly an art, but not a nice one — “painting is a nice art. I was screwing people out of their money.” 

“By the way, every game in the carnival is rigged. Every one. I know how they’re all rigged. I know so many ways...” 

In the off-season, he started pitching merchandise, but he felt that he “didn’t have a very good resume” at the age of 30, so he and his wife both re-enlisted in the service so he could get a commission. When his second stint (1959-62) in the Army was over, he made a crucial connection that propelled him into the advertising business and ultimately into a film career he never asked for, but that he excelled at.

A photographer named Ray Porter that Staats knew from the Army was then working for Seventeen magazine. He had gone to art school with an animator named Len Glasser. Porter introduced Glasser to Staats without knowing he was introducing future business partners who would change the face of advertising with their unconventional approach to industrial films and TV commercials. 

Animation from "Safety Shoes."

Glasser recruited Staats for his advertising firm, Stars and Stripes Forever. Staats, an independently minded guy no matter what the situation, agreed to work for him on commission, became a partner in the firm, and ultimately stayed with the company from 1962 to 1971. The first important thing the two made together is a short film that is considered a classic in advertising circles. “Safety Shoes” (1965) was made for the Lehigh Safety Shoe Company and plays like a spoof of TV commercials. It is only in the last three minutes (of 18) when you find that you’ve been pranked in an unusual way — the comedy film you’ve been watching is indeed an industrial film for a very real product. 

Staats “backed into” the film for an interesting reason — it simply wasn’t long enough. The sponsor wanted a 20-minute short and the film was running under. Glasser had hired doubletalk expert Al Kelly to provide a very funny and incomprehensible intro, and had created a cartoon about safety shoes (which features, among others, the [uncredited] voice of future Hurwitz star and Staats cohort Chuck McCann). 

He needed to fill out the spoof section of the film, and so Robert Staats became a film actor, playing his alter ego, later named “E. Eddie Edwards.” Staats says he chose that name for a specific reason: “It just struck me. There are a lot of shitty guys who always try to make themselves look good with a nice name. So E. Eddie is this shitty pitchman, this dishonest carny who wants to be something else. He was like a number of guys that I knew that were that way.” 

Staats wrote his own lines and both sold the product and made fun of hard-sell con men whom every consumer has come in contact with. The character blossomed later, especially in the films of Harry Hurwitz, but here he comes on strong and is a memorable creation. In other words, Staats stole his very first film. 

“Safety Shoes" was up online on Vimeo, posted by a noted advertising filmmaker. And it's now gone! All we have left is this screengrab of Bob as E. Eddie.

and this credit for Staats:

and this production credit for the Big RS:

Glasser’s company ended up having ancillary offices in Chicago and Toronto, and doing films for big clients like the Ford Motor company, General Mills, and Hostess. Staats appeared as a TV-friendly version of his E. Eddie character in a string of TV commercials for New England Telephone. (Staats notes his pitchman character was family-friendly in these spots — “I would clean it up.”)

The first great independent filmmaker that Staats worked as an actor for (albeit briefly) was Robert Downey Sr. (My recent tribute to Downey Sr. can be found here.) Again, happenstance and blind luck took a hand — “Downey and I lived in the same building in Forest Hills. My son and Robert Downey Jr., and my wife and Downey’s wife, would meet all the time. [Downey Sr] wanted to be in the film business and I was in the film business. I told him about this crazy filmmaker in the same office building as Stars and Stripes, a millionaire who was pumping a lot of money to build up a commercial film business called Filmex.”

The man who ran Filmex was an heir to a very profitable business, American Home Products. His family was wealthy and he was “wiping them out financially” since nothing was coming of the film projects he invested in (which included commercials). He hired Robert Downey Sr, who wound up sitting around and writing his own films, including a spoof of advertising that was to become Putney Swope (1969). 

Downey’s ideas came to nothing at Filmex, but his experience working at the firm did inform part of Putney Swope, and so the man who connected him with the film biz, none other than Staats, was hired to play a small part in the film. (An executive, called “Mr. War Toys” in the credits, who is told he has bad breath by Arnold Johnson as Putney; the scene can be found here.) Staats remembers the shoot well, as it took place in an office building at night.

Staats in Putney Swope.

The film became a major hit for Downey Sr and propelled him out of the “underground,” but it did nothing for Staats. Around the same time, however, he made friends with filmmaker Jonathan Kaplan, who introduced him to the man that used Staats to best advantage as E. Eddie, Harry Hurwitz.

But before we get around to Staats’ awesome scene-stealing in Hurwitz’s best known (and best in general) film, let’s turn to a different medium. Staats’ work in Len Glassman’s advertising films attracted the attention TV producer George Schlatter, who was cresting in 1968-69 on the incredible success of “Laugh-In.” After a nice luncheon at the Russian Tea Room, Schlatter hired Staats to appear in and write for his new series, “Turn-on.”

"Turn-on"
Photo by S. Kaufman.

Over the years “Turn-on” has become famous as “the show that was cancelled while it was airing.” This is indeed true — the first episode of the series aired on Feb. 5, 1969, and was cancelled by the network after it played on the East Coast and was making its way to the West Coast. A station manager in Cleveland pulled the show as it was airing and went to a live presentation of organ music (!).

 

Staats is very frank about the experience of working on “Turn-on.” He was hired for 14 shows and claims that many of his segments for that season were shot. (One other complete episode, in addition to the infamous first show, is in the library of The Paley Center.) He says he performed as three characters: his pitchman alter-ego E. Eddie, a “Modren Bride” [spelling correct] who gave advice to the lovelorn, and “the Magic Housewife” who dispensed cooking tips. He wrote his own material and maintains that at no time was it said by anyone associated with the series (including reps from the network, ABC, or the sponsor, Colgate Palmolive, who were on the set) that the show was objectionable. 

"Turn-on"
Photo by S. Kaufman.

He admits to having had fun creating those characters and acting them out, but he is very honest about the experience, noting that he wasn’t quite aligned with Schlatter’s Liberal politics. He also notes that the producer (who still had a massive hit running at the time, with “Laugh-In” killing in the ratings) “came to me, crying poor mouth, ‘oh, woe is me,’ I’m takin’ some bath on this. Do you mind if I don’t pay you the rest of the contract?' I had a contract for quite a few thousand dollars, you know! I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, George, I’m paid in full.’ So I just waived it off. That’s Hollywood….” 

 

He admits his sketches were “slightly smutty” for 1969, but he was encouraged in that by Schlatter. He also looks back on it as a lessons of sorts, since he came out of the experience feeling that “Hollywood is a dishonest sewer” that he was happy to be away from. (And, aside from one very well-budgeted film he appeared in as a favor to director Jonathan Kaplan, Staats never worked in mainstream show biz again.)

Staats also notes that, after the first “Turn-on” episode aired, he was more than surprised to see the “Art Fern” character on Carson’s “Tonight Show.” The character had many aspects of the E. Eddie Edwards character and Carson worked with Carol Wayne, who had played Staats' sidekick on Schlatter’s show.

"Turn-on"
Photo by S. Kaufman.

When I asked Staats about writing his own dialogue in most of his film appearances, he replied with a saying he’s fond of — that he “was in it, but not of it.” He used the phrase in our interview more than once to describe both himself and the filmmakers he liked the most (Hurwitz, Kaplan). That carny phrase means that these people could work within the system but never were corrupted by it; they retained their personality in their work, made films according to certain rules set by producers, but never succumbed to the general greed and backstabbing that runs the movie industry. 

We move on to the point where Staats first worked with the filmmaker he is most identified with, the late and very great Harry Hurwitz. Staats has nothing but praise for Hurwitz, declaring that Harry “was a wonderful guy — there was no artifice about him.” As Staats remembers it, he was introduced to Hurwitz by Kaplan (who studied at NYU in the 1960s, with Scorsese as his tutor). Other directors might’ve used Staats to good advantage in bit parts, but Hurwitz constructed entire scenes around the E. Eddie Edwards character and cast Staats in his only starring role (in The Comeback Trail). 

McCann and Hurwitz.

One of the reasons that Hurwitz’s great film The Projectionist (1970) is so memorable is that he threw the kitchen sink into it. It has a central plot — in which projectionist Chuck McCann fantasizes about being a superhero — but it also veers off the rails wonderfully with scenes that find Chuck interacting with old movie clips (in a way that was later done in many features, including Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid), moments of the projectionist’s daily life (which show the Deuce off to good advantage), and random elements, like a late-night commercial the projectionist watches on his TV, featuring none other than E. Eddie Edwards. 

Hurwitz realized that to get the best out of Staats he should give him an outline and let him create his own dialogue. But, Staats emphasizes, this was within “parameters” — “I made it a pitch, but I made it his pitch. Some of the key lines were Harry’s. You can’t write a pitch. I can write a pitch because I was a talker. There’s a singsong rhythm to it — if you don’t do that, it doesn’t come across. All that stuff I did [in movies], I had to be the writer completely or rewrite it, so that it fit E. Eddie’s pitch.” 

Demonstrating proper behavior in
The Projectionist.

“As a front talker, I was used to talking for prolonged amounts of time. The mob in front of you at the carnival, which could be a couple of hundred people, they’re called ‘the tip.’ You gotta work them and work them, until you get where you know you can turn it — until you get there you have to keep going. So I was pretty good at layin’ it down real fast, and getting it in one take or two at the most. Carnival talkers are good at that. You don’t have a script, you’re winging it.” 

The result in Projectionist is a sequence that is very well-remembered, not only for its un-p.c. jokes and spot-on spoof of late-night scam-product commercials but because it stands as a little mini-film within the larger film. In her review of the film, Judith Christ singled out Staats for praise. This short segment showcases the full-tilt version of E. Eddie, and while The Projectionist is a modern comedy classic (and nostalgia-fan’s wet dream), the film is indeed stolen by Staats for the mere three minutes that he’s onscreen:

 

Staats next appeared in Jonathan Kaplan’s Night Call Nurses (1972) at Kaplan’s request. Staats had no agent and, again, appeared in films simply because the filmmakers (Downey Sr, Hurwitz, Kaplan, Alan Abel) would call him up. Here again Staats ad-libs for a few minutes as E. Eddie, lending some verbal humor to a “soft” T&A drama-comedy (and stealing the film in the process). His bit in the film begins at 18:54; the film is here.

In Night Call Nurses.

I wrote about Harry Hurwitz’s The Comeback Trail back in 2017 — you can find that piece here. In that blog entry, I outlined how the film was remade and changed by Hurwitz. There was one complete initial version of the film, but he felt it needed more work, so he continued to work on it for several years, adding additional scenes shot in New York and L.A.

This means that there are two different versions floating around the “underside” of the Internet (there has never been a DVD or even a VHS release of the picture). The first one contains more of the main plotline, while the second ends up exploring the fictional film company that is at the center of the plot. 

I actually “found” Mr. Staats because of that piece. I had asked the public for any info regarding his status — who was he? Where had he come from? Was he still with us? This lead to the interview I’m writing about here. In the meantime, a remake of the Hurwitz film has been finished and awaits a major release — it stars Robert De Niro in the Chuck McCann role (I’m not making this up; check out the trailer), Tommy Lee Jones in the Buster Crabbe role, Morgan Freeman in newly created gangster role, and Zach Braff of TV’s “Scrubs” in the role played by Staats (this time as “E. Eddie Eastman”). 

McCann and Staats in
The Comeback Trail.

The Hurwitz film was shot from 1971 to 1979 (!) and got its first theatrical showings at the Thalia in Manhattan in 1982. Staats clarified that, again, he did the role at Hurwitz’s request and there was indeed an initial shoot in New Mexico for a few weeks in 1971 and then the shoots for the additional material took place in NYC and L.A. over the next eight years. 

He also noted about the film’s plot — about two low-rent producers trying to kill the senior-citizen star of their latest film (Crabbe) in order to get his life insurance — that “anybody who saw The Producers would recognize it in Harry’s outline.” He noted that McCann and he ad-libbed their own dialogue throughout the shoots. “Harry gave us a few minutes of direction,” he emphasizes, with “no time estimation” given for the scenes but with the caution “don’t run away with it. You could say we were script writers,” he clarifies. “We wrote dialogue — we were dialogue writers.”

He denies the story that was in my original blog entry (courtesy of an associate producer on the film) concerning Buster Crabbe getting drunk and beating someone up on the set. Staats does confirm that Buster was fond of “beverages.” (“I’m fond of beverages myself,” adds Staats.) But he didn’t beat anyone up on the set. 

Crabbe in
The Comeback Trail.

Staats remembers instead what they did do together. As for the ripe language, remember that Bob Staats considers himself first and foremost as a seaman. “We would have drinks — not excessively. Believe it or not, down the road from where we were shooting in New Mexico, there was a tent show. It was a striptease artist, a sex show, in a tent on the highway. The star, a stripper — you could imagine what the strippers would look like in this fuckin’ joint – had one leg. She had an artificial leg. So Buster and I went down here a couple of times. Of all the people I hung out with on that set, it was Buster I hung out with the most. 

“A couple of years later Buster was giving a talk to a bunch of film students at a college. He called me and asked me to come and help him out with the talk. He liked me and I liked him.” As for Crabbe beating people up, Staats declares it never happened on the Hurwitz film. He says, “I knew him well — not quite well – enough to judge his character. I mean one of the things carnies do is figure out people… so we can take their money. ” 

I was surprised to see that Hurwitz’s film is back “in public view.” This is the original edit of the material, with more of the plot than the later version:

 

A 1976 film that Staats appeared in has disappeared over the years. Alan Abel’s The Faking of the President is present only on the Net as a listing of a handful of cast members, including Staats as G. Gordon Liddy and the infamous “Richard M. Dixon” as Nixon. The info we can go on is Staats’ vague memory of the picture: His character name was “G. Gordon. He was a pitchman; he sold a line of weaponry.” 

The next filmic adventure for Staats was a bit part in Jonathan Kapan’s first mainstream production, Mr. Billion (1977), made as an American vehicle for Italian star Terence Hill. Staats appears in the film as railway train conductor who is (of course) running a side hustle in cheap watches.

In Mr. Billion.

Staats remembers the shoot well, because he wound up hanging out with the film’s American “name,” Jackie Gleason. The Great One liked his “beverages,” and since Staats was by no means an abstainer when it came to said beverages, he joined him for a few. Among other things they talked about their youth — Gleason was raised in Bushwick, while Staats grew up in the adjoining Queens nabe of Ridgewood.

Staats’ memory of the film extends to the fact that it was the only film he was in that had a big premiere — the film played as the Easter show at the Radio City Music Hall. “Jesus, that stunk!” Staats reflects on his friend Kaplan’s first big-budgeted film. (Kaplan did better with later items like Heart Like a Wheel and The Accused.) His scene in Mr. Billion can be found here at 18:45. 

In Fairy Tales.

Harry Hurwitz gave Staats a lovely supporting part in the softcore feature Fairy Tales (1978), which he made under the nom du erotica “Harry Tampa.” There’s no question that Staats is the best thing in the film (and this in a feature that gave Linnea Quigley her debut role). He steals the show as “Tommy Tucker,” who is given the job of persuading rubes to go into the (not so) Old Lady Who Lives in a Shoe’s house of ill repute. 

He got the part in the usual way — Hurwitz called him up and offered it to him. Staats was once again “doing whatever Harry wanted me to” and he made the role his own by ad-libbing carny pitches to rubes who wander by the shoe. His tagline from his previous E. Eddie appearances comes in early on. (“Isn’t that wonderful? Say yes, it makes me feel good. I couldn’t help but notice... ”) 

He returns throughout the film to instigate the vignettes, with wonderfully worded enticements. (“20 dollars for sex, 30 if you want to touch the sides.”) At the end, he closes things out with an exhortation to see the film again, with your family: “It’s a family picture, friends. Mom and the kids can come for the music and dancing, and Dad will enjoy the meat.” 

In Fairy Tales.

“I winged that whole thing,” says Staats. “Harry didn’t have any input in that…. I would tell the different guy to ask me this or say that, to give me a feed line…. That was all my smut. Harry wasn’t smutty at all.” 

One can only be grateful to the YouTube poster who boiled down Staats’ scenes in the film to one glorious 10-minute edit. The man himself notes that he doesn’t keep copies of his acting work around, but he was amused when a relative stumbled onto Fairy Tales and was surprised that he had been in a “porn” movie. (It's actually a softcore picture.) Staats’ take on the movie? “I thought it was funny — I love that kinda crap!” 

 

Hurwitz’s second softcore film as “Harry Tampa” was Auditions (1978). The premise for this one is tissue-thin: We watch people audition for the sequel to Fairy Tales. The participants are mostly porn stars who perform for the camera solo or in groups. There is comic relief every so often — Staats wanders through, of course, and gets two really good scenes (and a bit toward the end). This time his E. Eddie Edwards character is a sleazy agent (for “ASU — the Agency for the Strange and Unusual”), but that’s sort of like being a pitchman anyway, isn’t it? 

In Auditions.

This incarnation of E. Eddie is not as high-energy as before, but he’s still a master bullshit artist. Staats scenes in the film can be found at 14:30, 20:20, 102:00, and 114:00. The film is viewable here with the proviso that this is, most certainly, an NSFW video. 

The last sequence that Staats appeared in for Hurwitz that was released appears in That’s Adequate (1989). The first 45 minutes or so of this pic is an absolute joy, as Tony Randall hosts a journey through the productions of “Adequate Pictures,” the same firm that was responsible for the ridiculous films in Comeback Trail. The cast of this part of the movie is a rogues’ gallery of great NYC talent: James Coco, Stiller and Meara, Professor Irwin Corey, Lenny Schultz, Brother Theodore, and Joe Franklin. 

The second part of the film was shot in L.A. and it’s very different in tone. (And much less funny.) The latter-day productions of Adequate Pictures includes a “where did this come from?” charity-single music video sketch that is clearly a riff on “We Are the World.” In this part of the film the cast includes a young Bruce Willis, Robert Downey Jr, Richard Lewis, and many other L.A. standup comics. 

Staats’ turn as E. Eddie finds him as the MC of a movie premiere where he sings the praises of the studio’s output, including “Singin’ in the Synagogue.” His bit is at 10:29.

 

One of Staats oddest credits was a very mainstream cartoon assignment — doing a voice for the syndicated show “Drawing Power” in 1980, which was half-live and half-animation, and was a spinoff of the popular “Schoolhouse Rock” series. “George Newall and Tom Yohe worked for executives at an ad agency called McCaffrey & McCall (which I wrote two live trade shows for, and I appeared in the shows). They were potential clients I called on. So I got to know George very well, and they had this very successful show they owned called ‘Schoolhouse Rock.’ Periodically they would call me up to do voiceovers.”

I must, again, bless the fans on YouTube who upload everything they love. A VHS video of “Drawing Power” has been uploaded and looks to be shot off a TV set. Staats does the voice of “Professor Rutabaga” who is, you guessed it, a carny pitchman! The character appears at 10:49 and 39:01, as the Professor lectures us on the joys of vegetables and our imagination. He even says “Say yes — it makes me feel good...”

 

The last time we were lucky enough to see Staats steal a picture was in Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice’s mockumentary Pitch (1997). As Staats tells it, “Two young guys up in Toronto wanted me to do the film. I didn’t know them. I agreed to do it, if they had refreshing beverages on the set… and some sandwiches.” (Mr. Staats never specified which beverages he was looking for, but one can sure it wasn’t a seltzer or a Coke.)

Staats appears at 11:06, 28:30, and 51:34:

For those who are Hurwitz completists (tell me, where is his own Nixon film, Richard?), Staats brought up another collaboration he had with Harry and Chuck McCann, which evidently was never edited together (or sits in a vault somewhere). “Chuck was in the film; he had the lead. He plays a homeless guy who gets a credit card and uses it to buy food or something. He’s a very simple guy. He then gets a second credit card — you know, how they mail them out to people? So when he gets the bill for the first one, he pays it off with the second one, and back and forth. It was shot on Long Island; Harry was a hired hand directing it.” 

Another Hurwitz fragment with Staats sounds like it would’ve possibly been woven into another Hurwitz “omnibus” pic like That’s Adequate: “Harry asked me to do a pitch in an amusement park in Long Beach, California. And it had to do, I think, with politics. I don’t know what became of it. It was dark — it was like an evil pitchman luring you into a tunnel ride. This was near the end of Harry’s life.” 

Making a point in Auditions.

One of the most touching moments in my talk with Mr. Staats was the moment where he talked about how he thinks of himself. “The American merchant navy is known as ‘the hooligan navy’ — hard-drinking guys, terrific guys. I identify with them forever. To this day, many people know me only as a merchant seaman. I’ve had neighbors in this building for years — they only know me as a merchant seaman. I tell people I’m a seaman. I don’t talk about anything else. At heart I’m a seaman. Those were the happiest days of my life. 

“Merchant seamen are roughnecks, hard-drinking guys. But they’re also very intellectual, believe it or not. They’re readers. I knew two millionaires who went to sea — they had a million dollars and they’re shipping out as seamen, not just once, that was their life. It has its appeal… 

“It isn’t romantic — they love the life! The sea wants to kill you, every fucking day. And it does, frequently. Seamen have a very high rate of dying or getting injured. That goes with the territory. Ships blow up, collide, shoal up, burn out at a rapid rate. It’s the nature of the thing. Nature is a powerhouse.” 

At different points in our interview, Staats pointed out that he was only an actor because “people called me up.” He did note, more than once, that he had the best working relationship with Hurwitz: “Harry was very gentle, but also very strong. He knew what he wanted, and he got it out of us.” 

Hurwitz and Staats, working on
The Comeback Trail.
(Photo by S. Kaufman.)

Toward the end of or interview I asked Mr. Staats if Hurwitz paid his airfare to come out to L.A. and do small scenes for him. He replied that sometimes that was the case, but there was a time or two that Bob paid for his own air fare and charged it to whatever agency he was working for at the time. 

“I really liked Harry,” he reflects. “All of the directors I met through Harry, they were genuinely nice people — they weren’t the Hollywood types. They were like Harry, that’s why they liked Harry. They were followers of Harry because they were like him. *I* was a follower of Harry, in a sense. He was with it, but not of it.”

'Lost' films found 2: Harry Hurwitz's 'The Comeback Trail'

In the world of cinephiles Harry Hurwitz’s The Projectionist (1971) is regarded as a treasure, a beautifully rendered tribute to the joy of movie-loving, made at a time when Golden Age Hollywood icons were still widely known and revered. It’s an unmitigated delight and silly fun to boot.

The Projectionist was the first of three “nostalgia trip” comedies that Hurwitz made. The second and third of these films are nowhere near the first in terms of laughs and sentiment for a “lost era” of moviemaking, but both have their bright spots. The third and last was the very funny That’s Adequate (1989), a mock-doc about a fictional “poverty row” film studio hosted by the great Tony Randall; the second film, The Comeback Trail (shot 1971-’79; released ‘82) is the focus of this article.

But first, a word or two about Hurwitz himself. A NYC native who died at the young age of 57, he was a painter and filmmaker who made a series of low-budget genre flicks (for theaters and later “straight to video”) to pay the bills and to finance his nostalgia comedies. His art was acquired by Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the NYU art collection. He taught film and drawing at NYU, Cooper Union, and the Parsons School of Design, among others.

The nostalgia comedies were “personal” pictures for Hurwitz, the type he was only able to make every decade or so. He talks about this in an interview in the Film Director’s Guide by Michael Singer:

“I made my first five features without even being in the industry. I worked out of New York. I was making my living as a college professor, so I didn’t even look to my art for financial sustenance…. And as a filmmaker, I began with the same spirit that I did as a painter. Then, I got to see that I could make more money by joining the industry rather than teaching. In other words, I realized that I’d rather make bad movies than do good teaching. The movies that I do for myself I manage to do once every five years. I write it, I direct it, I cut it, I produce it. And it’s not an ego thing. It’s just that I wouldn’t have anybody come in and paint the red in my painting. It’s a complete work, and good or bad, I stand behind it. Whereas to make a living, I am now a writer and director for hire, in which I’m perfectly prepared to compromise. I feel very comfortable joining a system which, by the way, I revere….” [p. 4]

Harry Hurwitz. Photo by B. Fentington.

It’s odd to consider The Comeback Trail a personal film. The Projectionist, on the other hand, has various moments at which one feels great sympathy for its lead character, a projectionist played by the much-loved comic actor Chuck McCann. This reaches its peak in a series of moments in which we see McCann wander Times Square as he gets off work. He eats dinner at a greasy spoon, buys some porn mags (possibly the most low-key, true-to-life depiction of the place that adult materials have in the life of the average male ever found in cinema), and then goes to home to watch movies on the late show.

Comeback is a much broader comedy, but it still is a valentine (albeit a pretty crazy one) to Golden Age Hollywod. The plot is quite similar to that of The Producers. It concerns two low-end movie producers, Enrico Kodac (McCann) and E. Eddie Eestman (Robert Staats), who need a quick influx of cash or their “studio,” such as it is, will be shut down. (By the way, the misspellings of the last names were intentional — Staats played “E. Eddie Eastman” in other Hurwitz films.)

They hit upon the idea to make a comeback film for a retired action star, whom they assume is out of shape. They plan to insure the old man to the hilt and tax his heart by having him do his own stunts, and then collect on the million-dollar insurance policy when he dies. What they don’t count on is that the star they picked, Duke Montana (Buster Crabbe), is in terrific shape, and so their attempts to kill him backfire in one way or another.

Buster Crabbe

The film’s three stars all deserve discussion. Firstly, Crabbe, who was indeed in great shape at 63 (not that surprising, considering he was a two-time Olympic swimmer when he was younger). He plays along quite well with the broadly comic humor, serving as a straight man to both producer characters. His character narrates the proceedings, recounting to close friend Hugh Hefner (playing himself) the story of the producers' ridiculous plan.

Buster is quite the gentleman in the film, but Hurwitz confederate and sometime scripter Roy Frumkes decided to tell the world Crabbe's little secret, in a piece published in Films in Review. He recounted in an article about Buster that, while making Comeback, he had asked the film's stunt coordinator how the legendary star was on-set. “… he replied matter-of-factly: 'His style was always the same. He was a perfect gentleman on the set until the last day of shooting. Then he'd get drunk and beat everyone up.'” Frumkes proceeds to recount how Crabbe was indeed a complete gentleman on the set, but did get drunk and beat a guy up toward the end.

Another piece from Films in Review about Crabbe finds him reflecting on the film as near-pornographic. This is ridiculous, since breasts are only seen in one musical number that appears in one of the early films-within-the-film; topless dancers back up Monti Rock III as he sings a tune called “These Raging Loins.” No sex is ever seen in the film, but the producers discuss the softcore films they made in the past.

Buster, in younger days.

Said Buster: “Few people saw it in theaters. Some scenes were pretty strong – too sexy for family viewing…. All the producer had to do was take out three scenes and it would have been a good B Western. But he was adamant about not cutting anything. Still is. They ran it in Atlanta and the thing only lasted two days. The families would go and then protest some of the scenes. Without that family viewing audience you're dead. But, honestly, I think that picture was the best thing I ever did. And it's the vault right now, just sitting there. I worried about it for a few years, but I don't worry about it any more. It'll never get out.”

The least-known of the movie’s stars is Robert Staats, who is something of a mystery man. He appeared in five of Hurwitz’s films, and had small roles in films directed by Hurwitz’s contemporaries Robert Downey Sr., Jonathan Kaplan (a former Hurwitz student), and Alan Abel, and then basically disappeared. He is wonderfully funny in the other Hurwitz pictures, especially as a late-night TV pitchman in The Projectionist:

He played a pitchman again, albeit in a much more bizarre context, in Hurwitz’s softcore pic Fairy Tales (1978).

While he makes a great partner for McCann in Comeback, he’s generally an odd presence in the film. When not engaging in comic cross-talk or doing his pitchman shtick, he purses his lips, skulks around in a long coat, and generally takes on the appearance of a cartoon villain. His schnook-ish posture here is a far cry from his confident pitchman persona.

There is no information as to when or where Staats might have left this mortal coil, so I’m not certain if he’s still with us or not. Anyone who knows what happened to him, drop a line.

Despite the presence of the heroic-at-any-age Buster, McCann is the actual star of the film. He is tremendously endearing in The Projectionist, but here he assumes the cartoonish persona of an Italian con man. The character is broadly drawn and odd-looking: wearing a white suit, Chuck has a fake putty nose and a clearly fake mustache (he donned this look formerly on his TV show for an escape artist character named “Bombo Dump,” who can be seen here). His Italian accent is half-Chico Marx, half-J. Carroll Naish on Life with Luigi.

Chuck does have some very funny moments bantering with Staats, but the broadly farcical nature of his character is one of the reasons that Comeback doesn’t work in the long run.

Oddly enough, Chuck reappeared in this persona in the R-rated slapstick comedy Linda Lovelace for President (1975), where he plays two roles, a racist mayor and a hitman who is indeed the same “Kodac”/”Bombo” character. He worked in the film under two pseudonyms: the film’s credits say that the Mayor character is played by “Alfredo Fettuchini” and the guy with the crazy mustache and Italian accent (no putty nose this time) was a certain “Fettuchini Alfredo.” 

One assumes Chuck chose a pseudonym for the Lovelace picture because he was appearing at that time on the Saturday morning kiddie show “Far Out Space Nuts” and didn’t want to be identified with the most famous porn star of the era (although the movie is incredibly tame and Chuck does nothing “adult” except curse).

*****

The Projectionist remains endlessly entertaining because Hurwitz inserted a number of tangents in between the plotted sequences. Hurwitz is quoted in the Film Directors Guide about the fragmenting of the film:

“And the nature of the film is really about the daily bombardment of ideas and ideologies and feelings and thoughts that we go through, so the whole picture is about fragmentation. Our lives are made up of little serials. You drop one thing, you go to another, you’re juggling 40 different parts of your life: the emotional part, the political part, the moral part. We’re constantly being tempted, we’re constantly being bombarded, so that’s why The Projectionist is full of commercials, superhero serials. It’s this fragmenting of time, which is what our days are like.” [p. 7]

Comeback has a few such diversions at the beginning to show us the movies that the characters made before their “great idea” came along. Later on we see a sequence from the film they’re making with Duke Montana, which is pure Western action, reminiscent of the “oaters” Crabbe made many years before (clearly a labor of love for movie buff Hurwitz). The rest of the movie sticks to the plotline, with Hurwitz seemingly allowing ample space in which to ad-lib. The result is a rather informal picture that viewers will either enjoy or tune out early on.

Thanks to uploader Kenny Hotz (star of the CBC/Comedy Central show “Kenny Vs. Spenny”), Comeback is now readily accessible to the public for the first time in decades, on the Vimeo website. Coincidentally, Hotz and his writing partner Spencer Rice codirected Robert Staats in his last film role to date, in the 1997 comedy Pitch, which is also currently online for free, on YT. Staats plays — can you guess? — a pitchman!

A later pic of Harry shot
by his wife, Joy Hurwitz.

There is much confusion as to when the film was officially finished — so now let’s try and “carbon-date” what has shown up in public view. Firstly, a friend and colleague, Donica O’Bradovich, has told me stories of being on the set in Santa Fe, New Mexico (the film-within-the-film was shot there) in 1971 with her father, award-winning makeup artist Bob O’Bradovich, who did a great job “aging” Crabbe in the early scenes, before he shows the producers he’s in kick-ass shape.

So Hurwitz began Comeback in ’71. The title credit on the version on Vimeo has a 1973 copyright, but another friend, Ben Fentington (a friend of Hurwitz’s), has told me about shoots in ’74-75 he was at, where Hurwitz shot material to “flesh out” the film. In this case, the scenes shot were things put at the film’s beginning, as examples of the films the producer characters made before they hit on their “great idea.”

Henny Youngman is seen as a comedy character named “Dumpo” who told one-liners in various gene-movie situations. This is followed by one of the film’s funniest scenes, a weirdo spoof of monster movies featuring standup comedian Lenny Schultz as a human chicken, and none other than Funhouse fave Professor Irwin Corey as a mad scientist (!).

Hurwitz and the Professor. Photo by B. Fentington.

The Comeback Trail wasn’t shown publicly until it premiered at the long-gone, much-missed Thalia in NYC in 1982 (here is the review that appeared in The New York Times). A Funhouse friend who has very pleasant memories of that engagement, actor Allen Lewis Rickman, can (much to my amazement) recite some of the film’s dialogue by heart, strictly from having seen the film that one time back in ’82. Suffice it to say that the film has never been released on VHS or DVD.

Here’s where things get even cloudier: I first saw the film on a VHS copy made by a fellow nostalgia buff who recorded it on Beta (!) when it aired on the famed Z Channel in Los Angeles. I broke out that version of the film — which is hard to watch because of constant video “rolls” — before writing this piece and discovered it’s a vastly different edit of the material. (Both cuts of the film include one of the odder ad-libbed scenes, an interview of the two producers and Duke Montana by the late, great Joe Franklin!)

Firstly, the title credit has a copyright date of 1979 and the narration by Buster Crabbe (told to Hugh Hefner) was replaced with Chuck McCann doing a sort of Lowell Thomas newsreel voice. The new narration emphasizes that the two producers run “Adequate Pictures” (the studio that is the focus of the later comedy That’s Adequate); Henny Youngman’s character is given a different name – he is now “Pimples” (a comic character reused in the later picture).

The approximately 15 minutes of newly shot footage includes other films produced by “Kodac” and “Eestman,” including another monster picture (a pizza-faced menace) and an action movie that takes place in Africa (but is shot by an L.A. swimming pool). We also see an Adequate Pictures awards ceremony (one winner is named “Tom Revolta,” thus dating the sequence), and the attempts on Duke Montana’s life are followed by a series of scenes in which McCann is in a hospital bed being visited by his incompetent partner.

And, in a scene that attempts to cover for a plot that Hurwitz had minimized to the point of near non-existence in the first version of the film, Crabbe goes back to his motel room with the producers’ loyal secretary, Julie (played by the leading lady of The Projectionist, Ina Balin). All this diligent re-editing clearly indicates that Hurwitz did indeed work on the film for close to a decade — and it *still* ran only 75 minutes!

For those who have waited decades to see Comeback, it may not be the “revelation” they’d hoped — then again, few comedies can measure up to The Projectionist. It contains some wonderfully funny moments and some bits where one wishes that Hurwitz had cut the routines a little sooner.

In an era when Lorne Michaels-produced crap-comedy is the norm at the movies, though, even a lopsided live-action cartoon like The Comeback Trail can be warmly welcomed for the broad farce and crazy movie buff daydream that it is.