Goodbye to Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

The comically irritating rich kid on my all-time favorite sitcom "Dobie Gillis" was played by an actor named Steve Franken, who has died, at the age of 80. The original rich jerk on the show was Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty, but he left the show early and Chatsworth stepped in to be totally unlikeable and ridiculous.

I wish I could find a good clip of him as Chatsworth on YouTube. But here's Franken playing a drunken waiter in the 1968 movie "The Party" (with Peter Sellers). It's not a silent movie, but Franken's role is silent (and very funny).

"A panic surged through me as I realized there were only two weeks until taping — and over two hundred countries whose capitals and major geographical landmarks had to be committed to relatively long-term memory."

My colleague Shubha Ghosh writes about his experience on "Jeopardy":

I also had to start watching the show again. The program guide on the Jeopardy web site indicated that the show aired at the same time accident attorneys, payday loan makers, and diet doctors advertise on the airways, and I set the DVR accordingly. The show used to be on after dinner, a nice way to end the day and begin the evening.  Re-engaging with Jeopardy, I asked myself: What had I committed to by agreeing to be a contestant? Was I a part of a desperate franchise?  Such thoughts were put aside quickly as I worked through, among other lists, the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the names of people who would succeed President Obama.  VP, Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, and so forth....

That's from part 1. The series continues, but the show aired yesterday, so we already know what happened. I won't spoil it for you, but it set my thoughts flowing back to my junior high school guidance counselor, Mr. Hannan. He was on "Jeopardy" in the early 1960s, and it was horrifying when he lost because he confused cirrus and cumulus clouds — probably on a big "Double Jeopardy" bet. We'd all learned the different kinds of clouds, and Mr. Hannan had even taught science! How could it be! But he was good natured about it, and we accepted that you've got to understand what it's really like trying to think and remember things when you're caught in the bright camera lights. [CORRECTION: The teacher I'm remembering wasn't Mr. Hannan, but a science teacher whose name I've forgotten. The material that follows, however, about Mr. Hannan, is, as far as I know, correct.]

The coolest thing about Mr. Hannan — Joseph Hannan — was not that he went on "Jeopardy." It was that he wrote a novel about being a teacher — "Never Tease a Dinosaur" — and it was made into a TV pilot — "Hey, Teacher" — that starred Dwayne Hickman. Dwayne Hickman was Mr. Hannan. So, practically, Mr. Hannan was Dobie Gillis!

It's sad that there's so little trace on line of the things from that era. I wish I could find the full text of "Never Tease a Dinosaur." I wish I could find a video clip of "Hey, Teacher." (The pilot aired in1964 — back when the networks filled in the summer schedule with pilot episodes of shows that never got sold.) I did find a tiny obituary for my old guidance counselor. The obit spells his name 2 ways — Hannon and Hannan — and makes me wonder now if I got it right.

Author Joseph Hannon died at age 84. Mr. Hannan wrote the book 1961 "Never Tease a Dinosaur." The book dealt with his experiences as an elementary school teacher in the 1950s. His observation of a man working in what was then a mainly woman's job. The book was the basis for the 1964 "Vacation Playhouse" TV pilot "Hey, Teacher." Dwayne Hickman starred as Mr. Hannan. Mr. Hannan served his country in the US Coast Guard during WWII.

So I don't have a clip of Shubha missing his shot on "Jeopardy," and I sure don't have a clip of Mr. Hannan fluffing the cloud names on "Jeopardy," and I don't have a clip of Dwayne Hickman playing Mr. Hannan in "Hey, Teacher," but I do have a clip of Dwayne Hickman screwing up on "The Match Game":



Teachers and TV quiz shows. It's all good.

ADDED: A reader sends me the  January 13, 2008 obituary in The Record (nicely written by Jay Levin). This isn't otherwise available on line, so I can't give a link. Text after the jump:

A LIFE: JOSEPH F. HANNAN , 1923-2008 As 'male schoolmarms' go, he wrote the book "I am an elementary schoolteacher; a male elementary schoolteacher; a dedicated, hardworking, shave-twice-a-day male elementary schoolteacher," Joseph F. Hannan wrote early in his teaching career in Wayne.

As 'male schoolmarms' go, he wrote the book "I am an elementary schoolteacher; a male elementary schoolteacher; a dedicated, hardworking, shave-twice-a-day male elementary schoolteacher," Joseph F. Hannan wrote early in his teaching career in Wayne.

"Yet at least one-quarter of the notes I receive from parents are addressed to Mrs. Hannan."

So it went for the witty Mrs. ... er ... Mr. Hannan, a Pompton Lakes resident who chronicled his experiences as a "male schoolmarm" in his 1961 book "Never Tease a Dinosaur." He died Monday at 84.

Mr. Hannan wrote "Never Tease a Dinosaur" on a clipboard while soaking in the bathtub. His wife, Marge, said that was "a good place for him to think," what with four kids - the fifth would arrive a few years later - underfoot.

The book was turned into a TV pilot titled "Hey, Teacher." Dwayne Hickman, who a year earlier portrayed a teenager on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," was protagonist Joe Hannan, "a terrorized third-grade teacher who may not last out the term's first day," according to the blurb in the June 13-19, 1964, TV Guide.

Mr. Hannan liked the casting.

And why not? He was nothing if not agreeable and go-with-the-flow.

He had no problem being the one guy at the grade school. "The harem effect," he called it.

"He always said the staff was wonderful to him, and they treated him like a king," said Marge Hannan, who was a school librarian at Pompton Lakes High. "They even fetched him coffee."

There was a trade-off:

"The sultan has a duty to the harem," Mr. Hannan wrote. "You will be called upon countless times to perform duties only a man can carry out successfully. For example, you will: change flat tires, put on snow chains, unlock locked bumpers and carry in bulky packages."

Bill Ginter was hired by the Wayne schools the same year as Mr. Hannan. Eventually, they would work together at Anthony Wayne Junior High - Ginter as assistant principal and Mr. Hannan as guidance director.

Mr. Ginter! The man whose office I was sent to by teachers who didn't like my short skirts and long bangs! Ha. He tried to reason with me, hypothesizing what if a girl came to school in a bikini. What would happen to the poor boys? I reasoned back: I was not wearing a bikini, but a skirt — in the length that was fashionable. Let the girls wear pants then, but don't force me to wear a skirt that's the wrong length.

"I think Joe enjoyed being the only man, that's for sure," said Ginter, who lives in Sussex County.

"He just enjoyed life and was such an uplifting person."

Joseph Hannan grew up in Paterson on the banks of the Morris Canal, which helps to explain his membership in the Canal Society of New Jersey.

After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, he worked as a letter carrier in Paterson while getting his degree at Rutgers at night.

An aunt suggested he go into teaching. He picked up the necessary credits and started his career as a sixth-grade teacher at Wayne's Packanack Lake School.

A few years later, he was teaching at Mountain View School and mining the experience for material. His essay "Snakes in the Classroom" appeared in the April 1959 edition of the New Jersey Education Association Review.

"As a gesture of love from a small boy or as a harbinger of spring, be assured that some day you'll have to face a snake. ... The snake must be made to feel welcome. I need hardly say that a loud shriek followed by a fainting spell is not conducive to a good snake-people relationship."

"Snakes in the Classroom" caught the eye of the publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston, which asked Mr. Hannan to write a humorous book about being a teacher. The advance paid for the family's camping vacation at Yellowstone; subsequent checks helped put eldest son Joe through Syracuse University and a new Zenith television set in the living room.

It was around that Zenith that the Hannan family gathered on June 15, 1964, when "Hey, Teacher" aired on Channel 2 as part of CBS's "Vacation Playhouse" series. The Paterson Morning Call sent a reporter and photographer to capture the moment.

Celebrityhood was short-lived for Joseph Hannan. The network did not pick up the pilot. But Mr. Hannan soldiered on. He published another book, "Killing Time," about the challenges of leisure; taught for 20 more years; and enjoyed a retirement filled with canal-lecturing and banjo-playing and grandkids.

His lighthearted take on the perils of teaching in the "Leave It to Beaver" era - including three whole pages on gum-chewing! - lives on in "Never Tease a Dinosaur," thanks to Amazon.com.

It's a personal, portable radio!

1. "Dobie Gillis" is my all-time favorite TV show.

2. In 6th grade, I sneaked a transistor radio (with an earplug) into school to listen to during class had it confiscated by the teacher.

YouTube is adding a big page of full-length movies and TV shows.

Info about the new show.

To watch, go to Youtube dot com slash shows.

I check out the classic TV, hoping for my favorite show, "Dobie Gillis." It's not there (yet), but — check it out — here's the first episode of "I Spy." Not embeddable, but nice and sharp.

Very cool.

"I assume there are dragons and griffins and werewolves and homosexual Frankensteins throughout these novels..."

"...but I honestly don't give a shit if my assumption is true or false."

Chuck Klosterman is not reading the Harry Potter novels.

I find it astounding that the unifying cultural currency for modern teenagers are five-hundred-page literary works about a wizard. We are all collectively underestimating how unusual this is. Right now, there is no rock guitarist or film starlet as popular as J. K. Rowling. Over time, these novels (and whatever ideas lie within them) will come to represent the mainstream ethos of our future popular culture. Harry Potter will be the only triviality that most of that coming culture will unilaterally share.

And I have no interest in any of it.

And I wonder how much of a problem this is going to become.

If it's the only shared thing, that means, in the future you won't get any of the references.

... I will not grasp the fundamental lingua franca of the 2025 hipster. I will not only be old but old for my age. I will be the pterodactyl, and I will be slain. It is only a matter of time.

ADDED: The word "hipster" is vastly overused these days. Anyone with a tinge of youth and a shred of knowledge of fashion and pop culture trends seems to be a hipster — at least to people who notice they're aging and don't want to bother with the trends. Hipster — the category should be more elite. Or it seems completely absurd.

We could try to think deeply about the word "hip." For example, why aren't hipsters and hippies the same thing? What is the -ster relationship to "hip" that is different from the -ie relationship? To me, -ster seems to make you more of a knowledgeable proponent or an obsessive devotee, and -ie suggests you're having fun with it. Other -ster words that come to mind: mobster, roadster. Is a mobster's relationship to the mob and a roadster's relationship to the road the same as a hipster's relationship to hip?

Other -ie words I think of easily: foodie, groupie. See? More fun.

AND: A little musical accompaniment to this postscript: here. In the comments, Trooper York brought up The Orlons, but then he didn't quote "South Street." The first time I ever heard the word "hippie," it was in that great early 60s song. Let's check out the etymology:

During the jive era of the late 1930s and early 1940s, African-Americans began to use the term hip to mean "sophisticated, fashionable and fully up-to-date". The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940, and was used during the 1940s and 1950s to describe jazz performers. The word evolved to describe Bohemian counterculture. Like the word hipster, the word hippie is jazz slang from the 1940s, and one of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show on November 13, 1945, in which Stan Kenton called Harry Gibson "Hippie". This use was likely playing off Gibson's nickname, "Harry the Hipster."

In Greenwich Village, New York City, young counterculture advocates were named hips because they were considered "in the know" or "cool", as opposed to being square. Reminiscing about late 1940s Harlem in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term African Americans used to describe a specific type of white man who "acted more Negro than Negroes."

In a 1961 essay, Kenneth Rexroth used the term to refer to young people participating in African American or Beatnik nightlife.

In 1963, the Orlons, an African-American singing group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania released the soul dance song "South Street", which included the lyrics "Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street...The hippest street in town".[9][10]....

The more contemporary sense of the word "hippie" first appeared in print on September 5, 1965. In an article entitled "A New Haven for Beatniks," San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Fallon reportedly came up with the name by condensing Norman Mailer's use of the word hipster into hippie. Use of the term hippie did not catch on in the mass media until early 1967, after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen began referring to hippies in his daily columns.

Nothing there about the more recent transition to "hipster," though there is a section about the pejorative use of the word "hippie." Basically, "hippie" ended up meaning not hip at all. That's certainly the way I use it (almost always in self-deprecation).

"Beatnik" is a cool word, but I think it's solidly anchored in the 1950s... or to refer to Maynard G. Krebs, the Bob Denver character in my all-time favorite TV show "Dobie Gillis." He also did his beatnik role in a cool movie called "Surf's Up," which came out the same year as "Hard Day's Night." What a contrast between those two movies. I must confess that I saw them in a double feature at the time... and much preferred "Surf's Up." I found this hilarious:



CORRECTION: The movie title is actually "For Those Who Think Young." I went through a long period of thinking it was pathetic of me to have liked this movie more than "Hard Day's Night," but now, much as I know "Hard Day's Night" is better, I think it's perfectly acceptable to enjoy an old surf movie. Look at the cast:

James Darren ... Gardner 'Ding' Pruitt III
Pamela Tiffin ... Sandy Palmer
Paul Lynde ... Uncle Sid
Tina Louise ... Topaz McQueen
Bob Denver ... Kelp
Robert Middleton ... Burford Sanford 'Nifty' Cronin
Nancy Sinatra ... Karen Cross

POSTSCRIPT: If we called monsters "monnies," would we be less afraid?

Catchphrases, caught and uncaught.

100 Greatest TV Quotes & Catchphrases -- via Throwing Things -- currently arranged in alphabetical order.... Well, so, have your fun: Put them in the right order. I'll just pick a few I like:

Here's Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
How sweet it is! (Jackie Gleason, The Jackie Gleason Show)
I want my MTV! (MTV)
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. (Vicks Formula 44)
Jane, you ignorant slut. (Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night
Live)
The tribe has spoken. (Jeff Probst, Survivor)
Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
You rang? (Lurch, The Addams Family)

Hey, wait a minute! Just a darn minute. Where is "Dobie Gillis"? "You rang" gets a Lurch credit?

TV on DVD.

Tomorrow the new "Seinfeld" DVD collection comes out and Entertainment Weekly is recommending it because you'll get to see the full-length original show (the syndicated version shaves off a minute or so), there are commentary tracks (with Julia Louis-Dreyfus partaking of episode one for the first time), there are deleted scenes, additional stand-up material, and there's a 60-minute documentary.



EW also has some recommendations about what other TV shows ought to come out in disc form. But they don't seem remember any shows before 1965, so they fail to mention the show I really want: "Dobie Gillis"! Oh, how I love that show! Warren Beatty was even in it--a minor character, but it's fun to see him as a high school student. There are all these people who love "Gilligan's Island," so there must be a fan base for Bob Denver: he was unforgettably great as the beatnik high schooler Maynard G. Krebs ("You rang?"). And no one has ever been more beautiful and funny at the same time than the brilliant Tuesday Weld (who played Thalia Menninger).



UPDATE: I picked up the first "Seinfeld" collection on Tuesday. Couldn't resist.

Are you going to watch the finale episode of Friends?

No, I don't care about Friends. I watched an early episode once and wondered about how they had such a nice apartment. Then once TiVo recorded one for me and it had Brad Pitt in it, so I watched it. Other than that, I'd have to be forced to watch a show like that. Lots of canned wisecracks. Pretty people with neat little sitcom-y problems. Let's just say I watched a lifetime's worth of sitcoms by the time I was 18. I'd watch reruns of my favorite old shows if they would only run them (especially Dobie Gillis), but, though I did have a Seinfeld phase and I watch some things on HBO, I'm just not interested in any post-1970 network sitcoms.

Video on Demand ... "The Dalton Girls" ... "Born Rich" ... The Apprentice. I caught the documentary "Born Rich," which is playing on HBO on Demand. And let me just pause to say I love the whole video on demand technology--except the way on my service if you leave it on pause too long a too-happy female voice booms "Welcome to video on demand!" Since I pause a lot, leave the room, enter into conversations and so forth, that "Welcome!" voice is the least welcome thing on TV. But a little video on demand and you can't help wanting the future of TV to arrive quickly. Right now some of HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime is available free and some other things are available for a price, but why isn't every movie and TV show ever made available? Why isn't TV more like the Internet? Why can't I just watch any old episode of, say, Dobie Gillis or I'm Dickens, He's Fenster whenever I want? Why can't I sit down any night and call up, say, "The Dalton Girls"? (Althouse trivia experts should know that was the first movie I ever saw in the theater. According to an IMDB user summary it's "Just another 'B' western, except the outlaws are babes." I see the plot was "After the Dalton boys are killed by the law, one of the Dalton girls is forced to kill a lecherous mortician who tries to rape her. Being branded a murderess, the sisters follow in their brothers tracks and take up a life of crime." Hey, this was some 1950s "Thelma and Louise"! Hmmm ... I wonder if that shaped my whole life. And how bad were my parents to let me see that when I was six? Ah, don't worry, she's not going to get the mortician rape part. She'll just see a bunch of cowgirls. Like Sally Starr! She loves Sally Starr!)

"Born Rich" was a nice documentary, made by a born-rich guy who had access to other born-rich kids, because (as I learned in the documentary), born-rich people are an inbred subculture. They hang out with each other and interact with each other, in part because only another rich kid can understand the sorrows of inherited wealth. The rest of us can look on with horror, amusement, sympathy, or whatever we like, now that we have this film to watch.

There's a nice variety of rich kids to react in different ways to. And I must say one of the nicest ones was Ivanka Trump, which has to remove a layer of loathsomeness from Donald Trump. And here's a good article in today's NYT on the aftermath of The Apprentice, for those who are still wondering if Bill Rancic is actually going to be trusted to run that billion dollar Chicago construction project. ("This is a large and sophisticated project, and the job is like being the conductor of an orchestra ... I don't know how somebody can conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra if they've never gone to a concert before, and if they've never played any of the instruments.") Read about the complexity of the project, and consider how absurd it would be to only make $250,000 (Bill's new salary) for running it. So why didn't Trump pick a more practical project to put Bill in charge of? Are you kidding?

"I felt that this was a great opportunity to promote a great project," Mr. Trump said.

Well, isn't the whole TV show an infomercial for Trump's projects? He features one project or another not because it makes for a good prize or competition, but because he needs to advertise it, as the end of the finale show on Thursday made crashingly obvious.

Unrelated observations to get the blog started this morning:

1. The NYT Book Review leads off with a nice review of the book I've been reading this week, Sam Kashner's "When I Was Cool." The review includes some funny stuff (about Sam and the Beatniks).

2. My favorite old, old TV show, which I wish they'd release on DVD, especially since they haven't run it on cable in years as far as I can tell, is "Dobie Gillis." (Wait, that is related. Ignore this post ... unless you're in the DVD business.)

3. As you can see from the last post from yesterday, I've decided to start capitalizing the V in TiVo. It was hypocritical of me not to, because I love TiVo and because I've complained about people who are lazy about using the shift key. Also, it really does look better capitalized that way, because the V reaches over, above the i and nearly touches the T, making TV quite visible.

4. Even though I took a swipe at The White Stripes the other day, I've got nothing against them. They remind me of some things in the 70s that I liked a lot, and my favorite TV fictional character, Joan Girardi, seems to like them as well, judging from this week's episode, which I finally got around to watching yesterday.

5. Speaking of Joan of Arcadia, and going un-random again, I note that Friday's episode would be of interest to those who are following the Tennessee v. Lane case in the Supreme Court: a character who uses a wheelchair is faced with a broken elevator just as he has his first date with his beautiful co-worker who lives on the second floor. She's with him at the time and the two of them work out a way to get up the stairs. The actress is Sidney Poitier's daughter (Sydney Tamia Poitier), by the way, and the actor is John Ritter's son (Jason Ritter).

6. When I was making my link for White Stripes above, I typo'd "white strips." I wonder if The White Stripes are annoyed about Whitestrips, though I note that if you Google "white strips"--with the space in the middle--you actually do get The White Stripes, so actually it should be Crest annoyed with The White Stripes, not the other way around.

7. Why do people say "I was thinking to myself"? Is there some way of thinking to someone other than yourself?

8. Now, I've got to finish reading the Sunday NYT, which I left on the dining room table half an hour ago to go online to find out when Border's opens. I want to get to Border's early, because I want to get a table in the cafe. I've got to isolate myself from household temptations so I can get through checking the edit on my law review article. I'm quite happy with the job they did on it though so I'm no longer in the dread phase described here.