Gene Shalit - A Burl Ives for the Rest of Us!

My brother Steve wrote the existentialist stage play Taung Children, in which the characters are Man, Woman, Store-owner, Jimmy, and Burl Ives.  I've always liked that Burl Ives* was in there, among the mortals.

Opening this week on stage at Western Washington Center for the Arts in Port Orchard, WA is Drop Dead, featuring a Cast of Characters that includes "Ex-porn star," who has become involved with a mysterious actor identified among the Players as "Gene Shalit's Brother."

     INTERIOR. Saturday Afternoon, Late Summer 2005.

     Stockbridge, MA. Sun, breeze filter into the Red Lion Inn's comfy lobby lounge.

     Close-up

ME

(in sotto voce)

Isn't that Gene Shalit?  The old NBC movie reviewer?!?

WIFE

Son of a gun - what's he doing here?

Heads turn. A hairy, whimsical-looking gentleman scowls.  Dream Sequence Alert: A cloud passes before the face of the sun.

ME

He's Bozo - or a Koren character!

WIFE
(grits teeth, removes pin from grenade) 
Let's get out of here before he recognizes you!

* btw, my Dad had a Celebrity Romp experience of his own in the late 1940's, riding the train back to college from the muckland outside of Buffalo, NY.  On return to campus, he reported with excitement to his fraternity brothers that he had "actually seen Burl Ives on the train!" - and was roundly rebuked & ridiculed as a rube by his high-born citified classmates.