Around the 'net, you can find many sites which say that when Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard were casting the program that eventually came to be called The Dick Van Dyke Show, it came down to deciding between Johnny Carson and Dick…and of course, Dick won out. I can absolutely believe that in their hunt for just the right guy to play Rob Petrie, either Reiner or Leonard or someone else said, "Hey, how about Johnny Carson?" They probably at some point had a whole list of names.

But I have trouble believing it ever came down to a choice between Dick or Johnny, Johnny or Dick. In various places, Mr. Van Dyke, Mr. Reiner and Mr. Leonard may have said it did but I don't believe it was that close a contest. Why? Because in December of 1960 when they were casting the pilot and in January of '61 when they filmed it, Johnny Carson was not available. He was hosting the game show Who Do You Trust? on ABC's daytime schedule…and you don't film a pilot with a star who is not under contract to appear in your series if a network orders a batch of episodes.

No network would ever even consider a pilot for The Joe Blow Show if the producers didn't a contract that ensured they could deliver Joe Blow…and not just one season but for several should his show be a hit.

Now, I suppose it's theoretically possible that Carson's current contract to host the game show was coming to an end around that time and it's possible he was willing to take the gamble that the sitcom pilot would sell even though at no point in his career did he show the slightest interest in starring in a situation comedy…

…but I really doubt that. Most bios of Johnny say that after failing on any number of previous TV projects, he was delighted to have a hit with Who Do You Trust? He reportedly turned down several seemingly-better offers to leave it, including saying no to the first offers he got to host The Tonight Show.

And when he finally did decide to take the Tonight Show offer, the producer of the game show, Don Fedderson, refused to let Johnny out of his contract. That's why after Jack Paar left Tonight, they had six months of guest hosts until Carson's contract finally expired and he could take over. I just don't see any real possibility that he could have been a serious contender for the lead in Carl Reiner's situation comedy. Does anyone think that? No matter what anyone says?

I woke up this morning and almost my first thought was "I bet there will be fact-checks I can link to about Trump's speech yesterday on his tariffs." And sure enough, here's Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Daniel Dale of CNN covering a lot of the same ground.

Here's another video of those gents who go out and rescue seals who've become entangled in fishing lines or nets or other encumbrances. It makes me very happy to see that there are people who do this. Here again is the link to donate…

That's a photo that I took of Patty Maloney outside the studio where we were taping some TV show I wrote in the seventies…and if Patty was here, she'd say, "And it's actual size!"

Patty was 3 feet, 11 inches tall and weighed about the same as one of my shoes. I don't remember which TV program we were doing at the time but it was certainly for Sid and Marty Krofft's company. Patty was a regular Krofft cast member, appearing in many of their shows, though you often didn't know it. For them and for other producers, she was often inside some full-body costume.

For example, she once played portrayed a robot waitress named Tina on the series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. But one time when I was on the set of that show, she was in the costume of the regular male robot, Twiki, because the actor who usually did that role, Felix Silla, was out sick. Mr. Silla was the same height so when you see him credited for any job where you couldn't see who was in the suit, it was sometimes Patty — and vice-versa.

Patty also stunt-doubled for children and was often cast where you could see it was her and she acted with her voice instead of just her compact frame.  She also did voices for cartoons from time to time.

Often, including twice on shows I worked on, she was cast as Billy Barty's spouse or lady friend. There was an episode of the sitcom, Phyllis starring Cloris Leachman. Forgive the possible height-shaming but it was a very funny episode. Phyllis's daughter Bess was dating a boy of normal height and it made Phyllis uneasy that the boy's parents were…well, the heights of Mr. Barty and Ms. Maloney, who played them. In one scene, Phyllis poured out her worries to the character played by Richard Schaal, who wasn't the brightest character on TV and it went something like this…

LEACHMAN: I don't know what to do. Beth wants to date a boy whose parents are midgets.

SCHAAL: Well, I hope she finds one.

LEACHMAN: No, no. Beth is dating a boy whose parents are midgets.

SCHAAL: Well then, problem solved!

These days, some folks might be uncomfortable with that joke but it got a huge laugh. More importantly, both Billy (I worked with him, too) and Patty loved it. They both had great senses of humor and were happy to build their careers around such material.

Patty was just delightful — they both were — and I was sorry to hear a few years ago that she was ill and had lost most of her sight. She passed away on Monday at the age of 89.

Our friend Michael Schlesinger passed away this past January. I refer to Mike as one of the best friends movies ever had because he was an expert on just about all of them and a tireless advocate for treating them right — restoring them, preserving them, making them available, etc. He was often successful in all these goals, plus he made some interesting films himself.

This coming Sunday, April 6th, a couple hundred of his friends (he had a lot) will gather at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica to celebrate that we had him in our lives. I'm the host and there will be guest speakers and film clips and such. The doors open at Noon, we'll start the ceremony around 12:30 and when it's over, we'll take an intermission then present Mike's (and my) favorite movie the way it's supposed to be seen — on a big screen with a big audience.

I'm speaking of course of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, produced and directed by the great Stanley Kramer. That will start on or around 2:00 PM and I'll be introducing it but, even better, so will Stanley's great champion and life-partner, Karen Sharpe-Kramer.

The Aero's a big place so we still have some seats left for the Celebration of Life. Click the box below for more info or if you want to RSVP, write to celebrateschlesinger@gmail.com. and please (pretty please!) tell us how many seats you want and if you're staying for the film. There's no charge if you attend the Celebration and the movie.

And if you can't make it to the Celebration and you just want to see the movie, we're letting the Aero sell tickets for whatever seats we don't fill. You can buy those over on this page.

I think that's everything I need to cover except to remind you that the Aero is a terrific theater but parking in that area can take a little while…so allow extra time. You don't want to miss a moment of what's looking like a wonderful afternoon about a wonderful friend.

Trump is claiming that in two months, there have been more commitments to private investment in this country than there were in the four whole years of "the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration" — and whenever Trump applies that adjective to his predecessor, you just know he's lying. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post explains why this particular brag is (at best) way premature and (most likely) never going to be true.

Meanwhile, FactCheck.org has this article up on why Trump's claims about Canadian dairy tariffs are misleading…because of course they are.

Every day, ocean creatures become ensnared by nettings, fishing lines, plastic pollution and other seagoing debris that Man discards or forces upon them. Here's some amazing footage of the seal rescue team from Ocean Conservation Namibia going out and doing what they can do to help. If I were a lot younger and physically able to do what the folks in this video do, I might very well go do it. Since I'm not and I can't, I sent them a donation.

Watch this video and if you're similarly motivated, here's where to donate…

WonderCon 2025 is history so I deleted the little unpaid ad I had for it in the right margin of this page. I don't charge for anything you see there, though I get a commission from a few. I know some of you were there for the con. In fact, I greatly enjoyed talking to some readers of this site who I'd never met. I also spent a lot of time seeing chums, hosting panels and showing my friend Gabriella around her first comic-type convention. Three very busy fun days.

Seven was the number of panels I hosted and/or appeared on. Two that I especially enjoyed involved another writer and Yours Truly. On one, Danny Fingeroth (who among his other credits wrote a biography of Stan Lee) and I (biographer of Jack Kirby) discussed those two men. I think some audience members came expecting a knock-down wrestling match but it was a civilized and interesting — some in the audience told me — conversation. On the other, Mark Waid and I just took questions from the audience. Mark expects to be at Comic-Con this July and Danny might be. I'll probably be doing sequels to these panels there with one or both, depending on who's around.

The Cartoon Voices panel was one of the funniest we've done. It consisted of, as seen left to right in the photo above: me, then Candi Milo, Wally Wingert, Daniel Ross and Kimberly Woods.  There was also, at the end of the script reading we did, a surprise appearance by Cookie Monster, who devoured the script and attempted to feast on some Candi.

We had the annual Jack Kirby Tribute panel and our scheduled one-hour panels on Hanna-Barbera History and How to Write Animation kinda turned into one two-hour panel on how cartoons were made.  Participating along with me were Brynne Chandler, Paul Dini, John Semper and Greg Ehrbar.  I also guested on a panel that Gary Sassaman did on the history of the Fantastic Four and…well, I spent a lot of time talking about Jack Kirby.  As I always do at conventions…happily.

I enjoyed showing my friend Gabriella Muttone around her first-ever convention.  Gabriella is an accomplished model and photographer, and she felt right at home among all the creative types to be found in and around the WonderCon exhibit hall.  There were some remarkable arts 'n' crafts on display and you can't see it in the photo above but she bought a beautiful velvet blouse with a kind of medieval look to it.  You can see some of her photography on her Instagram page but be careful.  There's a video there of her dancing — in my bathroom, no less — to Frank Sinatra's version of the song I wrote about here back in this post. She also took the photo of me in the WonderCon program book…wearing the same hat as in the above photo.

Outside the hall as usual, one could find an amazing array of cosplayers, some of them in costumes that showed great craft and creativity. I like the way those folks seem to be getting away from merely trying to replicate existing characters from comics and movies and are more into original ideas. Then again, there was a Spider-Man there who looked more like the character than any photos I've seen from the movies. At least, he looked the part but when we rode up in the elevator together at the Anaheim Hilton, his spider-sense somehow did not alert him that he'd missed his floor.

My knees and left foot were acting up so I had to get around via wheelchair and Rollator. That's a Rollator in the above photo. In fact, it's the model that I have and it's been enormously handy since I fractured my ankle. I can walk but my balance is still a little off and I can't walk long distances. The advantage of the Rollator — and this is especially helpful wandering around a big convention — is that you always have that seat to sit on. No chairs around when you need to sit down for a sec? Sit on your Rollator.

If you're ever walking poorly or know someone who is, it's better than a walker for most purposes…and they're not as expensive as you might think. If you're still ordering from Amazon, they have 'em for a little over a hundred smackers. Other vendors have 'em for not much more. Caution: If you don't have the coordination to walk without one, you might not have the coordination to put one together. When I bought mine a year ago, I had my plumber do the assembly.

So…that was WonderCon and I can start looking forward to Comic-Con. I'd start packing but first, I have to unpack.

I don't really think Trump is going to run for a third term. I kinda doubt he'll even finish out his second. I just think he says things — and their veracity doesn't matter one bit for his purposes — because he knows they'll thrill members of his hardcore base. Also of course, he has this "I can do anything I damn well want and no one can stop me" attitude about the world. Cut the clip from The Howard Stern Show where Trump says that because he owns beauty pageants, as he did at the time, he can walk into the dressing room when the contestants are naked.

The folks at U.S. News & World Report did a not-too-deep dive into the possibility of a third term happening.

Yesterday, I mentioned the possibility of Trump running as Vice-President to a cutout candidate who'd vow to immediately after taking office, resign and turn the Oval Office over to Donald. Based on my e-mail, I didn't do a good job of indicating that while that could be what Trump means when he says "There are ways of doing it," I don't think it would work — not now, not then even if by the next election, the Supreme Court consists of seven Clarence Thomas clones.

A few of you mentioned another way he might now think he could do it: Congress names him Speaker of the House and then the Republican ticket is two people who'd vow to step down right after taking office. That would, of course, depend on the G.O.P. having control of the House but even then, I don't think that would fly. It just might be one those "ways" he'll pretend makes him eternal.

By the way: This fact check I've linked to today is a strange one from the folks at U.S. News & World Report. At one point in it, they say — and this is actually in there; I cut-and-pasted it…

According to The Associated Press, the 12th Amendment states that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

What kind of fact-checker fact-checks something like that by taking some other fact-checker's word for it? Did it ever occur to anyone at U.S. News & World Report to go to a better source? Like, say, looking at a copy of the United States Constitution?

Sorry to hear the other day of the passing of Richard Chamberlain, a classy actor who lived a long life and had a great career. Obits like this one will tell you the details of that long career. I just want to add in my (very) brief encounter with the man. It goes back to when I was eleven or twelve but already pretty certain that I was going to at least try to be a professional writer.

Some much-treasured inspiration came from a man who, with his family, lived across the street from the Evaniers for several years. His name was Dr. William Swanson and along with all his doctor duties at U.C.L.A., he was the Technical Advisor to the popular TV series, Dr. Kildare starring Richard Chamberlain. Dr. Swanson got the job — and some of Kildare's backstory was based on the good doctor's own past — because he was friends with Mr. Chamberlain.

Here's what I wrote in this post here back in 2013…

I actually learned something one day when Richard Chamberlain was visiting them and I was invited to come over and meet him. He was very nice and very soft-spoken and very encouraging. But when he was told I'd been considering different kinds of writing and had settled on television, he said, "You don't have to pick one. I don't consider myself a television actor. I'm an actor who is currently on television. I don't neglect the other things I can do and you shouldn't, either. It'll make you a better writer of anything you do if you broaden your horizons. It also means there will be more places where you can work."

That's advice I've been giving to others for about the last thirty years but I only recently realized where I got it in the first place. I got it from Richard Chamberlain.

Outtakes (aka bloopers) from The Dick Van Dyke Show. I may have linked you to this before but I can't find where I did and even if I did, this is a much better copy…

By the way: A lot of you seem pretty certain that the dancer in yesterday's video link who might have been Mary Tyler Moore was Mary Tyler Moore. I have decided not to have an opinion on this vital issue.

I'm reading pieces online now by usually-sane leftists that say maybe we should start taking that threat seriously because, you know, there are things this man has done or achieved that we thought he could never do. If Trump were to announce he was going to flap his arms and fly to Saturn, they'd say, "I know it sounds crazy but that's what we all thought when he announced he was going to run for president." Me, I think he's saying it because he's always said he can do anything — you know, like his perfect health care plan or getting Mexico to pay for The Wall — and it gives his followers a thrill to think their kind will rule America forever.

In the same breaths, he's saying he's The Most Popular President Ever with a 70% approval rating — and we know that ain't true. Here's a review of what the various pollsters are actually saying.

He's saying "there's a way" he could do an end run around The Constitution and get a third term. The only thing I can think of is that he'd run as the Vice-Presidential candidate to some placeholder candidate who would promise to resign the day after Inauguration Day. I have no idea if that would work and I don't think we'll ever know because I don't even believe he's going to finish out this term…or that if he does, even his most fanatic supporter today will be chanting "Four more years" by then. I can think of a whole lotta things I'd worry about before I'd worry about Trump Term III…and he'd be responsible for most of them.

Trump has been saying a lot of things about the auto industry that the Detroit Free Press says are just not so.

As the dearth of postings here would suggest, I've been Insanely Busy here at WonderCon but it's been a good Insanely Busy. Five panels down, two more to go today. Last night, I made it back to my room about 9:30 PM. I decided to lie down for a few minutes, then get up and write something for this here blog. The next thing I knew, it was 5:30 in the A.M. — so that should give you some idea of the sleep deficits I was racking up here the previous nights.

This has been a great con so far for me and it would be an even greater con if the Hilton could manage to have both banks of elevators operating at the same time and if there weren't workers pounding away on something — no Hilton employees to whom I spoke seemed certain — in the lobby throughout all daylight hours. But those are teensy things in light of what a good time everyone seems to be having — and by "everyone," I mean (of course) me and maybe others. Lotsa great cosplayers. A great diversity of things for sale in the exhibit hall. Many interesting people to talk to.

I always have a great time at WonderCon. Once I'm home, I'll try and write more about what's been so great about it.

I'm not sure I like appending "gate" to some noun to denote a scandal but it does seem to be the easiest way to denote something folks are concerned about. This whole mess with the group chat is discussed here on Factcheck.org and one does get the idea that a lot of lies are being told by those who want to make it go away and that the combined forces of Congressional Republicans and the Trump Justice Department are going to make it go away. Me, I'm waiting for Dogegate. And/or maybe Measlesgate.