Brownian Motion

Arnette Cobb David Corn Ethan Allen

Ladybug Ladybug Antz Them

Nicephore Niepce Louis Daguerre William Fox-Talbot William Price Fox Peter Beagle The Unspeakable Chasing The Inedible

Squidgy Diana Artemis John Themis Richard Clayderman Yanni Jimmy Yancey Meade Lux Lewis Albert Ammons Buddy Emmons Tut Taylor Little Egypt

The New York Times May 26, 2008 Dick Martin, Who Rode ‘Laugh-In’ to Fame, Dies at 86 By NEIL GENZLINGER Dick Martin, a veteran nightclub comic who with his partner, Dan Rowan, turned a midseason replacement slot at NBC in 1968 into a hit that redefined what could be done on television, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., according to The Associated Press. He was 86. “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” the hyperactive, joke-packed show that Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan rode to fame, made conventional television variety programs seem instantly passé and the sitcom brand of humor seem too meek for the times. The show was a collage of one-liners, non sequiturs, sight gags and double entendres the likes of which prime time had rarely seen, and it proved that viewers were eager for more than sleepily paced plots and polite song-and-dance. “Laugh-In” quickly vaulted to the top of the television ratings, and it spawned an array of catchphrases: “Sock it to me,” “Here come da judge” and Mr. Martin’s signature line, “You bet your sweet bippy.” “People are basically irreverent,” Mr. Martin said in 1968, explaining the appeal of the show. “They want to see sacred cows kicked over. You can’t have Harry Belafonte on your show and not have him sing a song, but we did; we had him climbing out of a bathtub, just because it looked irreverent and silly. If a show hires Robert Goulet, pays him $7,500 or $10,000, they’re going to want three songs out of him; we hire Robert Goulet, pay him $210 and drop him through a trap door.” Though Mr. Martin had a respectable career in nightclubs before “Laugh-In” and enjoyed success as a television director after the show went off the air, his five years on “Laugh-In” elevated him to a different level of fame. The show won the Emmy Award for outstanding variety or musical series in both 1968 and 1969, and the special guests who dropped by over the years to deliver one-liners included Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Cher, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Johnny Carson and, memorably with “Sock it to me?,” Richard M. Nixon. Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan, who died in 1987, became international stars; in 1972 they were hosts of a variety show staged before Queen Elizabeth II at the London Palladium. Thomas Richard Martin was born Jan. 30, 1922, in Battle Creek, Mich. His father, William, was a salesman; his mother, Ethel, a homemaker. In the early 1930s the family moved to Detroit, where Dick’s teenage years included a bout with tuberculosis that would keep him out of the military. At 20 Mr. Martin, with his older brother, Bob, headed for Los Angeles with hopes of breaking into show business. He worked fitfully as an actor, a comic, and as a writer for radio shows like “Duffy’s Tavern,” but he was plying another trade, bartending, one day in 1952 when the comic Tommy Noonan brought in Dan Rowan, a former car salesman with showbiz aspirations of his own. Mr. Noonan introduced the two, and they quickly found their shtick — Rowan the sophisticate, Martin the laid-back lunk. They took their act on the road, inching up the club-circuit pecking order. “It had no real highs or lows, it was just straight-ahead work,” Mr. Martin recalled of those early nightclub years in a 2007 interview. “I don’t think we ever failed. We didn’t zoom to stardom, but we always worked.” Some of that work was on the small-time television programs that had sprung up in local markets — “Every city had a show like that: ‘Coffee With Phil,’ whatever,” Mr. Martin recalled — and the duo achieved a comfort level in the medium that proved useful once they became nightclub headliners. National television shows came calling, including Ed Sullivan’s, where Rowan & Martin made at least 16 appearances. Mr. Martin also had a recurring role on “The Lucy Show” in the early 1960s, playing Lucille Ball’s neighbor, Harry Conners. But it was his work with Mr. Rowan that held the big payoff: the two had appeared on Dean Martin’s variety show on NBC, and — this being the era when stars took the summer off but their shows didn’t — in 1966 they were asked to be the hosts of “The Dean Martin Summer Show” for all 12 episodes. “They were so high-rated that NBC said, ‘We want you to do a show for us,’ ” Mr. Martin recalled in 2007, and that led to a pilot for “Laugh-In,” which was broadcast Sept. 9, 1967. The show was well regarded — it won an Emmy as the outstanding musical or variety program — and when “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” began to falter in midseason, Rowan & Martin got their shot at a series. Replacing that spy drama, “Laugh-In” made its debut on Jan. 22, 1968. The show, partly the brainchild of the producer George Schlatter (who would later get into a court battle with Mr. Rowan and Mr. Martin over the rights to it), pushed the envelope of topical humor, something “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” had begun doing the year before. “Laugh-In,” though, was more interested in creating a frenetic pace than in creating controversy. To do so it relied on a cast of young, largely unknown comics like Judy Carne, Henry Gibson and Jo Anne Worley — a risky approach that one writer who logged time on the series, Lorne Michaels, would use when he shook up television anew in 1975 with “Saturday Night Live.” And, just as with the “S.N.L.” cast, a few “Laugh-In” alumni went on to impressive careers, most notably Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. “Laugh-In” stayed No. 1 through its first two seasons, garnering 11 Emmy nominations in 1969 for Season 2. The novelty, though, began to wear off, and by 1973 it was off the air. A string of specials in later years revisited the format but without the jolt that the show’s first two seasons caused, and a 1969 film featuring Mr. Rowan and Mr. Martin, “The Maltese Bippy,” was panned. Vincent Canby, in The New York Times, called it “a movie that cheapens everything it touches.” Mr. Martin’s friend Bob Newhart helped him transition to the director’s chair. He directed a number of episodes of the long-running “Bob Newhart Show,” as well as spot episodes of shows like “Archie Bunker’s Place” and “Family Ties” and Mr. Newhart’s later series. Mr. Martin also continued to act, playing roles on shows like “The Love Boat” and “Diagnosis Murder,” and turned up frequently on game shows and celebrity roasts in the 1970s and 80s. Among his occasional film roles was an appearance in “Air Bud 2: Golden Receiver,” a 1998 comedy directed by his son, Richard Martin. In the early “Laugh-In” years Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan were as opposite offstage as they seemed to be onstage. Mr. Martin, whose 1957 marriage to Peggy Connelly had ended in divorce in the early 1960s, was the swinging bachelor, Mr. Rowan the quiet family man. But in 1971 Mr. Martin married Dolly Read, a former Playmate of the Month who had appeared in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” After divorcing four years later, they remarried in 1978. She survives him, as do Richard Martin and another son, Cary, from his marriage to Ms. Connelly. Despite the fame and wealth that “Laugh-In” brought, Mr. Martin always retained a fondness for the earlier part of his career. “My life has been divided into three parts in the show-business world: nightclubs, television, and then I was a director for 30 years of television shows,” he said in a 2006 interview on “The O’Reilly Factor.” “And I think the most fun I ever had was nightclubs. I loved nightclubs.” Home

Kojak Stavros Loadsamoney Miss Moneypenny 007 Citizen 13660

Eunice Shriver Ahnold 98 Pound Weakling

John Major Michael Foot Gordon Brown Big Brown Baby Brown Brown Baby

Kissimmee Kid Kid Thomas Captain Kidd

Captain Blood Barry Bluestone Sapphire

Did someone say something?

Shoe Bobby Shew Eddie Shu

Chuck Yeager Bunny Yeager Hugh Hefner

Judy Carne Meatloaf Pork Pie Hat

Was Not Was War Eric Burden Animals Minerals Vegetables

I remember viewing the collection at his "Gallery of Modern Art" before it closed. The standout painting for me was a 19th Century oil of a trio of cows wallowing in a narrow river. It was a sweet painting. That, not incidentally, was about the level of modernity demonstrated by the entire collection.

No offense taken, Allen. But NH is seriously, MUCH worse than Maine. Maine at least has folks like Ken Eisen, and the whole thing happening up in Blue Hill. NH is so parochial and corrupt within it's arts community, I think their idea of cultural film would be an Ozzie & Harriet marathon. I've heard Guam is even worse than New Hampshire.

Professor Irwin Corey Edward Arlington Robinson Beatrix Potter

Milton Fletcher Fletcher Allen Allen Lowe

The New York Times Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By May 18, 2008 Will Elder, Cartoonist of Satiric Gifts and Overpopulated Scenes, Dies at 86 By WILLIAM GRIMES Will Elder, whose frantic, gag-filled illustrations helped to define the comic identity of Mad magazine and who was a creator of the Playboy cartoon serial “Little Annie Fanny,” died Wednesday in Rockleigh, N.J. He was 86. The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said Gary VandenBergh, his son-in-law. A dead-on caricaturist with an anarchic sense of humor, Mr. Elder stuffed the backgrounds of his Madison Avenue parodies and comic-strip spoofs with inane puns, silly signs and weird characters doing strange things. “That approach to humor seeped into the rest of the magazine and the DNA of its contributors,” said John Ficarra, the editor of Mad. “It set the tone for the entire magazine and created a look that endures to this day.” Mr. Elder called these background fillers “chicken fat,” explaining that they were “the part of the strip that gave it some flavor but did little to advance the story line.” This layered, free-for-all approach influenced the cartoons of R. Crumb and films like “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” series. Born Wolf William Eisenberg in the Bronx, Mr. Elder attended public schools and, an unimposing physical specimen, sat on the sidelines when teams were chosen for neighborhood sports. Chalk in hand, he kept score and drew caricatures, a valuable defense against bullies. “My chalk was mightier than their sticks,” Mr. VandenBergh recalled him saying. He attended the High School of Music and Art, where his fellow students included Harvey Kurtzman, the eventual founder of Mad, and Al Jaffee, who later became a cartoonist for the magazine. After studying for a year at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan, he was drafted into the Army, where he served with the 668th Topographical Engineers. His duties included drawing maps for the Normandy landing on D-Day. On returning to the United States, he changed his last name to Elder and began looking for work as an illustrator. His first assignment was to create a comic book based on a character called Rufus DeBree the Garbage Man, a trash collector with a fantasy life as a Knight of the Round Table. Mr. Elder married Jean Strashun in 1948; she died in 2005. He is survived by a brother, Irving Eisenberg, of Delray Beach, Fla.; a daughter, Nancy Elder VandenBergh, of Cresskill, N.J.; a son, Martin Elder, of Riverdale; and two grandchildren. With Mr. Kurtzman and Charles Stern, another artist, Mr. Elder created the Charles William Harvey Studio. “It became a hangout for the lost and unemployed,” he would recall. The hangers-on included Jules Feiffer and René Goscinny, who later wrote the stories for the Asterix comics. Largely through Mr. Kurtzman’s connections with William M. Gaines’s E.C. Comics, Mr. Elder did work for Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. In 1952, Mr. Kurtzman, encouraged by Mr. Gaines, assembled a team of artists and writers, including Mr. Elder, for a new satiric magazine, Mad. From 1952 to 1956, Mr. Elder was a mainstay there, usually working in collaboration with Mr. Kurtzman, although “Ganefs!” — the madcap adventures of a gang of creepy crooks that appeared in Mad’s first issue — was a solo production. Together, the two generated memorable comic mayhem in cartoon spoofs like “Starchie” and “Mickey Rodent” and in the adventures of Melvin Mole, a determined but hapless criminal who tries to dig his way out of prison with a spoon, then a toothpick and finally a nostril hair. After Mr. Kurtzman left Mad in a huff, he and Mr. Elder worked together on Trump, a slick satirical magazine financed by Hugh Hefner. It ran for only two issues, whereupon Mr. Kurtzman, Mr. Elder and other colleagues from Mad pooled their resources to create Humbug. It quickly failed, although its successor, Help!, ran from 1962 to 1966. At Help!, Mr. Elder created Goodman Beaver, a Candide figure adrift in a corrupt world. In one episode, “Goodman Goes Playboy,” Archie, Jughead and other characters from Archie Comics headed to the Playboy mansion for a night of drinking, smoking and sex, lured by a satanic figure with a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Hefner. The executives at Archie Comics did not laugh. They sued and won, but Mr. Hefner loved the cartoon. The partners soon created a new property for Mr. Hefner, “Little Annie Fanny,” a comic strip chronicling the sexual adventures of a character who was essentially Little Orphan Annie grown up and outfitted with enormous breasts. Mr. Elder created a separate watercolor illustration for each panel of the cartoon, which ran from 1962 to 1988. Fantagraphics Books has published two collections of Mr. Elder’s work: “Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art” (2003) and “Chicken Fat” (2006). It is scheduled to publish the full run of Humbug in August.

Percy Faith Hope Lange Charity Bono

Little Big Man Thomas Berger Birger Sandzen

Erskine Hawkins Dud Bascomb Pud Brown

Mr. Softee Leonard Baskin Robinson Crusoe