By Chris Ryall
March 10, 2003
Looking Back to Look Ahead
I lost someone pretty close to me, at least professionally, last Sunday.
I intended to use this space to talk about the 1st Annual TV Land Classic Television Awards Show, hosted by John Ritter, and I will. Only there's no way I can talk about that show, which celebrated old-time TV actors and people in their 70s and 80s without also talking about Red.
Red was a guy I met ten years ago. I was an intern, in my first "real" office job. He was a vendor who worked in the graphic design and printing business, and even then he was in his mid-70s. He was no one a guy barely into his 20s would seem to have much in common with and yet, ten years later, he's had the biggest impact on my career and on my professional development than anyone else I've worked with.
This all might be entirely uninteresting to people who don't know who I'm talking about, which is, let's face it, all of you. And I won't go on too long or get maudlin, but he died on Sunday and he meant a helluva lot to me and seeing him in the hospital hours before attending that awards show had a big impact on my evening (and beyond), so I'd just like to mention what he meant in my life.
After I moved on from the job where he was my vendor, he really had no reason to stay in touch with me. He had hundreds of customers and friends and people in his life, he didn't need to maintain a relationship with a guy 50+ years his junior. And yet he did--when I had work questions, when I needed advice, he was there. He taught me a lot, and if I put a name to it, he'd be the closest thing to a mentor I ever had. And you know what I got from him, what lesson he most imparted on me? One he never even spoke out loud, just showed me by doing. He put relationships above everything. He didn't leave anyone for a quick sale, even though that was his business. He never chose the buck over a person. And, busy as he was, he made time for me when he had no good reason to do so. And here I work two jobs and think that, at times, I just don't have time to keep in touch with some people and I hear him in my head and I realize how he never would have stood for that. He would've set me straight and kept me from getting consumed by too much work and not enough of what really matters.
When Red was 64, he got put out to pasture by his company. They wanted a younger "go-getter" in his place, so he was just released. He wasn't ready to quit working. So he started up his own company and took most all of his clients with him--they loved working with him for him, not just for the company. Now, you can drive by the shuttered doors of his old company in LA while you head over to his thriving business in Burbank. He taught me a lot just by doing--people told him he was too old or unable to do the job? He didn't bother whining about how unfair it was or how wrong they were, he just went out and proved it. This is the kind of wisdom that only people with years of experience can really impart, and yet it seems that too often older folk are ignored or treated as if their advice is obsolete. Not here.
I used to work for Dick Clark's company, and let's just say that the experience was the worst one in my working life. He knew what this job was going to be like, did Red. He warned me how it would go. Bold and stupid and seeing dollar signs, I chose that one time to not take his advice. And it was everything he said, and worse. And after, he never said, "I told you so." He only said, "Well, you'll never do that again, right?" He kept me from having a lot more of those "I'll never do that again" mistakes. He was a friend, a wizened mentor, a fiesty veteran and a friendly, affable, caring guy all at once. And now he's no longer here to tell me these things, show me these things. But as much as I wish that were otherwise, he doesn't really have to be here. He did his job with me, got me to see things from the way they really should be seen. He was the first person I went to for advice on just about anything. And you know what? I think he still will be.
The 1st Annual TV Land Classic Television Awards
So Red was really on my mind as I went to this show (airing this Wednesday at 6 PM on TVLAND and at 9 PM on Nickelodeon) last Sunday evening. I had to fight back getting really teary-eyed the entire night, and that had to be for more than just the fact that I was sitting pretty close to the stage where Halle Berry was speaking.
The show is one of those kinda-contrived awards shows that there's no good reason for, and yet, of any show like that, this one seems to occupy a nice place. After all, its real purpose was to celebrate classic television and the actors who built the medium for its first 50 years.
It was held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, which is more notable the past few years for having little punk bands play there than these red-carpet affairs. But like The Shrine Auditorium, it seems to photograph much nicer than it looks in reality, so it worked just fine. And this was a dinner-type of event, so a typical theatre wouldn't have worked. We headed in past Mira Sorvino, doing some interview with Kathy Najimi (I was using a new digital camera and none-too-great at working my way in to get pictures of people, so bear with the scant selection here. Cameras had to be checked for the actual awards show, and by the time I got it back for the after-party, the list of "known" attendees had dwindled down to maybe Christopher "Peter Brady" Knight and...well, the one guy I did get a photo with, as you'll see below.
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John Ritter, one of the more quintissential TV actors of the past 30 years, was hosting this show, but before he came out, a cool way to intro the show: whatever surviving and attending members of old TV show casts and/or themesong singers, they came out one at a time, singing their show's theme. So you had Barry Williams and Maureen McCormack (Greg and Marcia) walking out singing THE BRADY BUNCH; there was also the theme from LOVE BOAT, THE JEFFERSONS and a lot of others I'd recall better if I'd written them down.
As Ritter did his goofy-host thing, chock full o' more corny jokes than any of these old sitcoms, the fun part of the show wasn't being able to groan through those jokes live; no, it was seeing Don Adams (sporting a pencil-thin moustache for some odd reason) and Barbara Feldon walk by our table; it was seeing Don Knotts, who has to be approaching 80, still chipper and mugging like "Mr. Furley" for the camera (Don won an award for "Best Second Banana."); it was Dick Van Dyke, looking as youthful and energetic as any rerun. And hell, yeah, part of it was for the dichotomy of seeing old clips of Rob Riener and Sally Struthers on ALL IN THE FAMILY next to today's versions.
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It was poignant in places, too -- after Mira Sorvino made herself a target for geek-lust by admitting that she was not only a huge STAR TREK fan but also that she owned an actual phaser, she brought up some of the existing cast to accept an award. Shatner, Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols made their way up, followed by James Doohan. "Scotty," decked out in full Scottish attire, looked...well, like he'd flown his last mission. And yes, I KNOW STAR TREK is this goofy old show and that these actors played goofy parts and yet...seeing them walk by was still a bit awe-inspiring, and I'm not even a TREK fanatic. Shatner and Nimoy looked fine around each other, too, if anyone's curious. Although George Takei was conspicuously absent.
Toward the end, when Carl Reiner got up and talked about possibly writing a new TV show for the Dick Van Dyke cast, you were amazed to see how vibrant and energetic he seemed. He announced he was 81, after all (only 3-4 years
younger than Red), and yet he looked no different than when he helped Steve Martin design the "Opti-Grab" in `79. He talked for a while about how he'd love to revisit these characters, see what they're up to now, and he'd love to get commitments from the actors that night to join him. To this, Mary Tyler Moore said, "I'm sorry, what did you say? I wasn't listening."
Other guests in attendance were the DIFF'RENT STROKES cast, uh, ALF (?), Bea Arthur, Ted Danson and Matthew Perry (feting Dick Van Dyke), Halle Berry (introducing Diahann Carroll, all kinds of people. And as soon as the show was over and the after-party dinner was to begin, they all cleared out as quickly as possible.
Still, all wasn't lost -- I did manage to get one picture to make it all worthwhile:
/chris
The TV LAND Awards, hosted by John Ritter, air this Wednesday at 9 PM on TVLAND.
TV Show of the Week: RETURN TO THE BATCAVE: THE MISADVENTURES OF ADAM AND BURT...man, was that a fun movie.
Comic of the Week: BASTARD SAMURAI: SAMURAI NOIR TPB by Mike Oeming, Miles Gunter and Kelsey Shannong, published by Image Comics
CD of the Week: THE WHITE STRIPES, Elephant (thanks to Jay Beane for the advance copy)
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