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Morty Gunty – 2

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After starting his stint as a TV kid’s show host in New York, Morty Gunty got his big break. The one that every entertainer once dreamed of getting. The Ed Sullivan Show!

Morty seemed a little nervous at the start, and he probably should have cut his notorious mother-in-law chair joke to have extra time to slow down his delivery, but nothing Morty Gunty did or didn’t do that night mattered, because in the entire history of show business the circumstances couldn’t possibly have been worse. As you will see, Morty was the lead-in to an act that nobody would ever want to appear before, or after.

And then I went and got Morty fired from his day job.

Morty Gunty – 1

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Morty Gunty was a New York Jewish comedian in the grand, old tradition. Like so many others, he learned his craft by working the clubs in the Catskills.

Morty Gunty was in the original TV pilot for what later became “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” playing a nebbish. The part was reworked into Morey Amsterdam’s character. It was called “Head of the Family,” and the video has a little bit of it with Carl Reiner in the role that he would give to Van Dyke.

Morty Gunty. A name that shall haunt me forever. Why? I’ll get to that later, but first take note of the passage I’ve highlighted below in his obituary from The New York Times.

Published: July 17, 1984

Morty Gunty, the Brooklyn-born nightclub comic who played himself in the recent Woody Allen film, ”Broadway Danny Rose,” died of cancer yesterday in the Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn. He was 55 years old and lived in New City.

Mr. Gunty made his Broadway debut in 1967 in ”Love in E Flat.” He had his own local television show for children, ”The Funny Company,” and appeared in numerous benefits.

He is survived by his wife, Marilyn; two daughters, Sheryl Seiferas of Fort Lee, N.J., and Lori Gunty; a brother, Elliott Gunty of Spring Valley, and his parents, Belle and Abraham Gunty of Lauderhill, Fla.

Funeral services are scheduled for 11:30 A.M. today at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street, in Manhattan.

Vince Beck

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Vincent Beck was a character actor who appeared on many TV shows in the 60’s. He also appeared live in our living room when I was a kid. Beck was a friend of my mother’s from her time at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Click the thumbnail pictures to see scans from her yearbook. Look for the name Joanne Waffle.

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I’ve placed thick double borders around the pictures of my mother and Vince Beck. A third picture I’ve highlighted has a thin outside border. That’s David Andrews, or “Tige” Andrews. He was on an episode of “Star Trek” and he was one of the principal actors on the unforgettable “The Mod Squad.” I remember my mother once making light of Tige’s toupee.

Vince Beck’s resume of 60’s TV shows includes:

  • Bonanza
  • Get Smart
  • Gilligan’s Island
  • Gunsmoke
  • Lost in Space
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
  • The Monkees
  • The Time Tunnel

Vince excelled at playing broad comic villains, particularly Russians. He was cast in no fewer than three episodes of The Monkees, which is one of my all-time favorite childhood shows. A clip from the Monkees episode “Royal Flush” is at the top of this post. Beck played the chauffeur.

Vince Beck’s worst movie credit is undoubtedly “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” His best is perhaps “… And Justice for All,” despite the profanity the part called for, which you won’t hear in this clip.

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You can imagine what a kick it was for us kids, having Beck visit! He stopped by our house in Norwalk, CT on his way to spend the summer at a theatre in Boothbay, Maine. I think he had a financial interest in the place.

I don’t know if Beck was just a friend of my mother’s, or if he was a former boyfriend. Vince Beck was a character actor and not a star, yet in person he was decidedly larger than life, and his presence added to the aura that my mother’s past retains to this day.

Obit: Donald Murray

DonaldMurray.jpgNewspaperman Donald M. Murray has died at 82. I shy away from saying “writer” as that’s too generic a term. I feel that writers should be classified as being a poet, or screenwriter, or novelist. Donald Murray was a newspaperman.

I became familiar with Murray from his weekly “Over 60” columns in The Boston Globe. A WW2 combat vet, Murray didn’t appreciate anything florid or fancy in the presentation of an idea. Public relations work wouldn’t have suited him. Murray didn’t accept Tom Brokaw’s label of “The Greatest Generation.” In his 2001 book, My Twice-Lived Life, Murray told some war stories. Here is one of them:

Then a jeep with stretchers lashed to it raced in, and two medics started fighting over the pair of jump boots with the feet still in. I thought it funny but when I got near, one of the bodies on the stretchers spoke. “Hey, Murray. I’m going back to Chicago. I got the lucky wound. You poor bastard, going back to the front.”

He kept taunting me, and I saw his legs had no feet. It was his boots they were fighting over, but he kept taunting me, and when I leaned over I saw it was my friend, high on morphine. He wouldn’t let up, and I felt the hate and envy rise up in me, and I started to move to choke him to death, just holding myself back until I could turn and head back to the front, full of sulfa and rage and fear, and not so much of the enemy but of myself. Are you surprised we are so often silent?

Welcome 2007!

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s the countdown, with Dick Clark.

For decades Clark was the butt of jokes about being a perpetual teenager. No longer.

Two years ago Clark had a stroke, and I was one of the many who were surprised to see him make a New Year’s Eve appearance last year. This year his speech is still slurred, and once again he lost track of the countdown.

Clark’s clean-cut image belied the fact that in the late 50’s he was paid to promote records on “American Bandstand.” I assume he survived the payola scandal by having ABC-TV, and not just a local radio station, behind him.

Pratt Attack – 7

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I had mentioned my late mother was a fan of Phyllis Diller. Another comedienne she enjoyed watching was Carol Burnett. Before Burnett’s long-running variety show, she did a series of TV specials with Julie Andrews.

One of shows included a musical sketch with Andrews making fun of her role of Maria in The Sound of Music. The only catch was, the movie wasn’t yet in production and she hadn’t even been cast for the part!

A little wordplay turned the large Trapp family into the Pratt family. We had only six kids in our Pratt family!

The video quality is shaky, but the sound is very good. Burnett looks concerned at the end after hitting Andrews because Julie was pregnant.