The Mysterious Mr Mute

This is my first audio post about a silent artist. 

 

Randomly flipping through the TV one day.  The cowboy channel was playing an episode of "Tales of Wells Fargo", a series featuring Dale Robertson, William Demarest, Chubby Johnson 

 

various other denizens of the old west, and in this one, a mime.

 

Kind of an interesting touch for old TV.  There were a lot of ensemble-style TV Westerns in the early 60s, where a dozen or so regulars would have a weekly one-off with some crazy miner or an out-of-control posse, and the demand for oddballs and eccentrics was high.  But I don't think I ever saw a mime before.

 

And this guy was a pretty good mime.  In 1960 Hollywood?  Probably not an American actor.  Who knew from mimes in 1960?  Would Marceau appear on le Western Americain?  It's probably someone I've never seen, in years of watching TV, and growing up recognizing all these guys.  Some theater actor.  Unless it's something crazy like Ken Berry or Tim Conway.  

 

So I stayed for the credits.  And you're not gonna believe it.  It was indeed someone very familiar.  

Here's his act, it's only about a minute, once the cursor calms down.  (If Starz has an issue, I'll reluctantly take it off.  Not a problem.  My intent is to inform, not defraud.  They can tell YouTube and it's gone.  I'm just a little gadfly.)

Classic mime.  He plays to the audience like Harpo Marx and Charlie Chaplin.  

 

 

 

 

 

Can you guess?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Vito Scotti.  

One of the most That Guy! of all those guys and gals.  About half a dozen appearances a year for 45 years, (241 total per IMDB).  And a formidable scene stealer.  

 

 

It makes sense because Vito was a lifelong adept at the business of The Stage.  But he was definitely not known for any physical comedy more developed than slapstick.  Finding out he could mime, and was very good at it, was a big surprise for this fan.  

 

 

 

Little Richard: Hey Hey Hey Hey

 

 

A shot of audio espresso.  

play

Mario Wienerroither: Speechless Speech / BARACK OBAMA

Definitely re-posting video cutups, now, too.  And still on Sundays.  

 Should get back to doing new audio, sometime...

There I Ruined It: Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

 This video posting stuff's not a bad deal.

 

Negativland: Our Favorite Things

It looks like my audio host has quit working.  I found out last night at midnight, when it wouldn't play the bit I picked out for today.  Sigh.  I dunno.  It really seems like things just glitch a lot more.  I need to look at this whole thing, anyway.  I want to keep doing weekly posts, but the current arrangement is just kind of creaking along.  Nothing new is being worked up.  It's times like this that I'm inspired by those greater than I.

Dan Travanty or Noam Pitlik?

Welcome again to the site that regularly considers Hollywood's enduring mysteries:  

 

Who IS that guy?

Our discussion this week covers a question that's been unresolved for over 60 years: who plays the police detective in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"?  

 

As Variety magazine might put it, "Classic Comic Cameos Clinch Chaos!"  Over 100 mostly comic actors dropped in to play bit parts, including a good helping of those who toiled in supporting roles in TV and movies at the time (1963).  

 

Artwork by Jack Davis

 

But for all the detail about the cast, one name is missing.  Who is the detective in the hat? 

 

Looking over the cast: there's a Dick Cherney as "Detective".  (And try to search for THIS guy.  You won't be able to get past the know-it-all computer insisting you want to know about "Dick Cheney".  They're actually getting dumber.  There is apparently no way to search the internet for "Dick Cherney", with only the name.  Try it yourself if you think I'm kidding.) 

 

I finally found a picture,  of "Dick Cherney, Mad Mad", from an appearance on "Star Trek":

 

Must have been another detective.  Although this actor has an interesting resume, with appearances on popular TV shows, playing even more obscure background characters.  Apparently in the same "silent bystander" category as Tony Regan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are no other unidentified "detective" actors.  Our man might be listed as a "spectator"- there's a couple dozen of them- but I think it's unlikely.  I'm going to say the actor isn't listed.

 

Let's consider whether it's one of these two men: 

I think I've seen an online post discussing one or the other in this role; can't find it now.  In fact, "Mad Mad Pitlik", "Mad Mad Travanti", even "Mad Mad Travanty" (his stage name in 1963) turn up zero info linking either one to this film.  Perhaps the question's never seriously been asked.  

 

It's made a little easier due to the fact that Noam Pitlik once wore his hat the same way.

 

"The Fortune Cookie"

 

We also have Daniel J. Travanti in a hat- which doesn't add anything.

 

"Lost in Space: Collision of Planets"

 

Hmm...how about the ears?  

 

A                                                B                                        C

Do we have any samples of Travanti's ears from that period?  Well, actually yes, his second professional appearance (according to IMDB) was a "Route 66" episode from 1964:

 

Look at that.  No lobe.  Uh-huh!

Ok, first of all, we have to consider it may be neither of them.  Maybe people will write in like an old Dear Abby column- "That's my Uncle Spif!"  I dunno.

 

But in my opinion, there's enough there to think it's probably Noam Pitlik.  

- earlobes (Travanti hasn't got one).

- their hairlines match...do we have one of Travanti's hairline?  Take off that hat!  (Raise your right hand!...)

I can't believe how much these guys look alike.  This is a toughie.  But we have to go with the ear.  They just don't match.  Pitlik's is closer.  (Yes, I know he has two.)  And he's got a bony forehead.  

The closest we can get is that the detective in Mad Mad World is most likely played by Noam Pitlik, or his twin.  Especially when you consider his career, much more of an Old TV Guy than Mr Travanti (about 3 jobs/year in TV and movies for 37 years, plus directing).  In this film, laboring in the full anonymity that usually falls over the efforts of these hard-working folks, turning up who knows where.

 

Bonobo- Cirrus

Well, no podcast yet.  I tried it and broke my headphones.  The tyranny of circumstance.  I don't know what's going to happen on this site.  

The Goon Show

I'm going to change the way this blog is run, and start doing half-hour podcasts every Sunday morning.  It's going to be like a weekly radio program.  

 

Back when I had a radio show, it ran from the middle of the night to dawn.  I'd always give over the last 30 minutes to the Goon Show, a living comic strip that ran on the BBC, 70 or so years ago.  Peter Sellers was one of them, Spike Milligan wrote most of it, a Welsh heldentenor named Harry Seacombe was dragged in somehow-- there they are on the left, Spike, Peter, Mr Greenslade, and Harry.  This week's program is from Feb 15, 1955, "The Sinking of Westminster Pier".

 

I think we'll start readings next week. 

July 4 test post

 The Abe Lincoln Malfunction at the Hall of Presidents.

 Hey, it works!  Our first video file!  Yay!  Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

John Oswald: A Case of Death

This might be the best Spoken Word cutup ever.  It sounds like something from Finnegan's Wake.

Play (9:21)

Rush Limbaugh: I'm a Nazi

I wish I knew who really made this track.  It was some Radio Morning Show, and they had to listen to enough of his voice to put this together, and make it rhyme, and swing!  The other thing about this piece- all that was originally spewed by Limbaugh himself.  Insulting people he disagreed with was his whole concept.  It was kind of like Bizarro Muzak.

Play 

Thinking

 

(That sure is a big dictionary page.) Remember what I was saying last week?  "Old time radio mashup site."  

"Thinking" is a good title for this week.  It's from "The Dental Clinic of the Air", performed on a musical saw by Sam or Stan.  The program is in a collection of Old Time Radio one-shots, on the Internet Archive.  At least it used to be.  I found it just now on a new site called "Radio Echoes".

Thinking.  What do I really want to do, here?  Still want to put up something brand new and weird every week.  Not giving that up yet.  At least weird, if not new.  Perhaps more OTR.

Play (1:42)

D-Day, with the Kingsmen

(...Maybe I should just turn this into an Old-Time Radio Mashup site.)  

 

Oh, hey, folks.  I have to say, as an experiment, this site may be reaching the end of a phase.  My intent remains to have a kind of open audio lab, with new bits tossed out every week.  But I already know, the ratio is about 20-30 hours of fooling around to 5 minutes of completed bit.  Which I've been expecting to do, eventually. 

 

But we're not anywhere near that.  It'll be a couple of years in October, since I started posting again.  Let's see if I can set up a more resilient process for the whole thing over the next three months.  If not, I might try something else for art.

 

**

 

The King's Men  

 

 

(not the band that sang "Louie Louie") were an a cappella quartet of the last century, emerging from the rich ferment of Vaudeville.  They were possibly considered a more "hep" version of Barbershop Quartet music, but that entire genre was supposed to sound corny, so they could never quite escape being associated with the moldiest of figs.  And sometimes, they sounded downright eerie.

For example, as we remember D-Day this week, June 6, 1944, the beginning of the liberation of Europe-- that evening, America tried to carry on as normal, but everyone was too nervous about whether it would succeed.  Fibber McGee and Molly substituted their regular comedy program for half an hour of patriotic music broken by news bulletins-- one of which, unfortunately, ran into the beginning of The King's Men singing Fred Waring's Army Hymn: a rare song,  a rarer rendition, missing the beginning but with enough to make one realize how differently this country went to war, in those days.

 

Til next time

-Ye Olde Farte 

 

Electoral Collage 2024

 

It's been a couple years.  Are we used to it yet?  Maybe not.

Play (3:13)

FDR (& Fala), Antifa

We fought a war to defeat world fascism.  I guess you could call the president of that day an "anti-fascist".  He talked about it sometimes.  If he were to discuss it today, it might go something like this... 

 

play (4:10)

Smokin'

From the Bandcamp collections.

 

Smokin' (0:49) 

Elmer Davis on the News

 

 

This week's installment of Old Time Radio Ventriloquism captures the voice of Elmer Davis, attempting to craft a new understanding of The News.

play (2:23) 

 

What is "eye-watering" supposed to mean?

I have never heard this expression until recently, and now it's in the headines a couple times a week.  "Eye-Watering Budget Projections", "Eye-Watering Scale of Scandal".  Eyes water for a lot of things- sad, happy, onions.  Aren't there better words people are already using, like "shocking"?  

It sounds like AI made it up.  Some weird concatenation of "mouth-watering", and the same body-function reaction to shock that's in so many other expressions.  But AI doesn't appreciate (or even know about) the emotional context that would cause an eye to water.  Can it ever?   

The Bizarre Subcontext of "Wally's Haircomb"

I'll get right to the main topic: there's a Leave It To Beaver episode where Wally starts combing his hair like his mom.  

 

It's not explicit- in fact, they gloss over the whole thing with the idea that Wally's hair is done up like a dumb teenager, in the "jellyroll" style, swept up on the sides, and piled on top of the head in an inverted "U".

 

Coincidentally, his mom, June, also wears her hair swept up on the sides and kind of piled on top.  

 

Hmm.  Are they trying to make a point, here?  Well, we can certainly try.

The point of the episode (I think) is how embarrassed June and Ward are, for Wally, on his account, as he happily goes through life with hair like his mom a very strange haircut.  (The accompanying juke box jive whenever Wally's hair heaves into sight is a nice touch.  Maybe it's a fragrant pomade.)

 

 

 

It might be that they're concerned about how Wally's doing high-hair like an amateur; the "fallen cake" effect on top looks like June's 'do with clippers run through the middle.  

 

But even if it weren't soaked with 30-weight, the question remains:  why would their eldest son want hair like his mother?  Is it the smell of the pomade?

 

 

Ask Your Doctor

MAD Magazine, and don't you dare forget it!

From the late 90s.  But things haven't changed much.

 

Ask Your Doctor (5:09)

1941 in Review

Josephine Baker

This week's feature appears to be a fragment that fell out of the film can that contained last week's feature.  

 

1941 in Review (1:52) 

 

Not sure what to do about these short old-time-radio cutups.  Maybe I should just dump them on the Internet Archive like my hero, Mr. F. Le Mur. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Stupid

 

Wherein Dr Watson quacks like a duck.

 

Play (5:55) 

Ken Nordine

 

I've got this strange idea for a story.

It's about this guy, a regular guy, like everybody else.  Except his words were too big for his head.  And it made him nervous.  (It would make you nervous, wouldn't it?)  And he tried everything to make his words smaller, so they'd fit into his brain.

He tried whistling.  He tried selling picture-window ant colonies, and Bury-It-Yourself time capsules.  He tried writing poetry about jazz.  But nothing worked.

Until one day, when he heard about this strange way of doing radio.   It seems that if you take the heebie-jeebie of Radio and mix it with the fribble-frabble of Jazz, you end up with something that takes on a life of its own.  And words tossed into this mix of dreams and electricity become huge electromagnetic waves rolling across the landscape.  Even the words which, up to that moment, had no other place to go.

So the man tried it- this "special radio".  He took the words out of his head and sent them off on their own.  And they did grow.  They started wearing double-breasted suits, and appearing in small clubs across the country, complete with a 3-piece combo (featuring cello).  There they'd take control of the stage and go on scatting wild ideas into the early dawn, with all the kool Katz and kittens caught up in the eternal now, simply snapping their fingers and saying, "Yes!...Yes!...Yes!"

Ken's birthday is April 13, 1920. And ya know what?  The Internet Archive has him covered!

I'm stunned.  "An Introduction to Stereophonic Sound"?  Thought I'd never see this outside a thrift store.  And here's the "Colors" album.  And, it looks like, all the Word Jazz albums.  More poetry, with Ringo Starr singing?  Wait a minute-

Wow.   I don't even know where some of this stuff comes from!  Here's a Taster's Choice ad...reading "The Conqueror Worm" by Poe (hope I remember to post that, next Halloween)..."Sounds in Space" ...a 1966 ad for "Top Eliminator Dragstrip Set"; I already knew Ken narrated those "ding" filmstrips we saw in grade school.  But ads, too, and for cool toys!  No wonder he sounded so familiar when I first heard Word Jazz in the 70's.  (Ok, they don't have the ads, or the filmstrip soundtrack, which we posted last year.)

This is amazing.  Thank you once again, mighty Internet Archive.  You are the mother of 10,000 things. 

 

Fun with Dental Mannequins

 

The Previous War

Apparently, I never posted these.  Do you think 24 years is long enough to wait?  

 

Iraqitanic (12:15)

 

Bring Em On (4:39)

 

(It seems like I've been on a War Binge recently.  Actually, I'm just cleaning out my archive, until, if and when the new things are done.)

War Concerto, first movement, by Wilhelm Zinc

 

 

Ah yes, Zinc's Magnum Opus.  Notice how carefully he weaves the musical threads of uncertainty and purpose, a mighty nation pulled up out of its own satiated ennui to embrace the task before it, and...oh, never mind.  It's actually from old "Victory at Sea" episodes.  

 

 Play (2:16)

 

 

 

 

 

Ike Pressed the Button

 

I didn't set out to make a current events bit this week.  If you're hearing any resonances with that, maybe it's just picking up what's in the air.  

Play (1:58) 

 

Random Rerun: MacArthur vs the Flying Saucers

Hello folks.  No new audio this week.  Things are still pretty disrupted around here, and the creative sunshine didn't make it to the petri dish.  So here's a plug for Bandcamp- three(?) volumes of Cutupsound, listening is free.  This week's offering:

Play (4:44)

Perhaps a fitting finale, for our efforts here.  Hope not.

Rommel Uber Dubbing

 Hooray, weekly posts again!  We were caught off-guard by the recent disaster. so I moved our monthly non-audio post to the first Sunday (because it's quicker to write).  

This week we look at the phenomenon of double-translation: the 2012 film Rommel, translated from German into Spanish, then re-translated by a computer into English.  Join us, won't you?

(Double-translations seem to be a promising source of Dada cutups.  Definitely want to keep exploring this...)

Still kicking

Three weeks without a post.  The internet router blew out and no one besides myself was interested in fixing it (including the ISP).  My apologies to everyone who thought they could reliably find strange and original audio here.  I'm not stopping until they pry the keyboard from my stiff, dead fingers.  But I can't guarantee it will happen.  Just like I can't guarantee I'll wake up alive every morning.  

So, with that jolly thought, let's get back to it.  Come by next Sunday and I'll post something, if I can.  

William S Burroughs birthday

 

This year's piece is a setting for excerpts from Roosevelt After Inauguration, (a reading which is considerably excerpted by the author) with other pieces collected from Ubuweb.  

 

WSB 2026 (4:26)