"Goodnight, Dick!" - My Malibu Sunset with Dick Martin

Dan Rowan (L.) and Dick Martin (R.)

Sock It To Me: My first visit to sunny California was pure magic.

Bound for the 1983 Western Cable Show conference in San Diego, I flew out a few days early and was met at LAX by my friend Chris, then an aspiring actor working as a P.A. to Steven J. Cannell Productions.

Don't get me started, but Chris' enviable job was to look after Connie Sellecca's needs on the set of Hotel.  We drove to Malibu, spotted "Old Reliable," the birds-of-paradise-carrying stalker camped at the bottom of ON-J's driveway, and continued until....

Billy & Connie

...with the sun dropping toward the sea, we stopped for a drink at the Trancas Grill, an 80's hot-spot of "The Colony," before proceeding to the Malibu bungalow on Broad Beach Road that Chris was house-sitting for William Katt (Sissy Spacek's co-star in Carrie, more recently in the Cannell-produced Greatest American Hero).  Billy was then on location in Africa to shoot Baby, a Disney dinosaur pic, and we had the run of his beachfront home.

Dropped bag on futon, grabbed a couple of cold beers, and walked right out the sliding glass doors to cross 50 yards of sand toward the waves and setting sun.

Halfway there, I became aware of a figure moving in parallel, 20 feet to my left.  "It's Dick Martin," whispered Chris.  Sure enough, carrying a large, clinking tumbler was Goodnight Dick, of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.  He looked over at me with a big smile, cocked an eyebrow, gestured to the pinkening horizon and said "Not bad, eh?"

"It's beautiful! I've never seen the sun set into the Pacific before!" I gushed like the first-timer tourist I truly was.

"Ah-hmmm!" he intoned, with a leer. Stage pause. "Ah-hmmm! Happens here every night like this!" was Dick's giddy response.  You bet your sweet bippy....

The Carrie Nations - Dolly Read (center)

April, '68

I love the Dick Martin love story, first because of its Liz & Dick quality - he married ('71), divorced ('75), and later ('78) re-married the same woman for life - and second because this wife was the incomparable, supremely beautiful Dolly Read, British actress and Playboy Playmate unknown to me on that day but whose crowning achievement I'd later see in the 1990's and love to this day: she's Kelly MacNamara in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

All For Love: native Michigander Dick Martin loved the ocean, and when he died in May, 2008 Dolly scattered his ashes in the Pacific.

Addendum: About this time (People, 1983) Dick and Laugh-In co-star Goldie Hawn used to run into each other on Malibu Beach

Charles Nelson Reilly, the Belle of Amherst

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday; she would be turning 180 years old.

How I love each morning as I drive to work to see the stately Dickinson Homestead, and the window behind which Emily privately wrote her poems.

Thanks to Emily, the late Charles Nelson Reilly lit his pipe in my parents' living room one autumn evening in 1980.  Reilly and Julie Harris were in town for the Emily Dickinson Sesquicentennial - her 150th birthday.

"Hoodoo" on S&M Krofft's Lidsville

Somers' foil, Rayburn's bain on Match Game

CNR and Emily Dickinson?  The campy character had clowned around on TV sit-coms, kids' shows, game shows & commercials, in film and on stage, yet he emerged as a serious stage director whose crowning achievement I think - among many - was to direct Ms. Harris in The Belle Of Amherst.

Enchanting actress, dapper director: Julie Harris & Charles Nelson Reilly convey the world and art of Emily Dickinson in The Belle Of Amherst

Having established this high-water mark in 1976, the pair were naturals for the first-ever convocation of the Emily Dickinson International Society when it formed in 1980.  My father was the organizer and keynote speaker for this 3-day extravaganza, and hosted a raucous opening night gathering in our Amherst home.  Alas, I wish I'd been there, but I was an enterprising college grad making his way in the world and had to read James Atlas' coverage of the proceedings on page 1 of the New York Times.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Nantucket Week: Anne Meara

I was stroller-ing north along Center Street one June morning in 1994, pushing my infant daughter ahead of me when a familiar face exited the Center Street Market and onto the sidewalk

I knew comedy duo Stiller & Meara from 1960's appearances on Ed Sullivan, the Smothers Brothers, etc. and for their "Blue Nun" wine commercials. Though they've became renowned also as Ben's parents, at this time he'd only begun to get visibility doing weird stuff like MTV "Rock The Vote."

Here came Anne Meara - Brooklyn bray and arms out - announcing, not asking, at top volume: "This Bay-beee! I gotta pinch this cute Bay-beeeee!" 

She leaned forward and seized my little girl's rosy cheeks and kneaded them with her thumbs 'til they both glowed.

I loved Anne Meara in The Out Of Towners (1970) and, of course, co-starring with sonny Ben-chick in Zoolander (2001).  What a bold, fantastic, old-school comic - and what a piece a woik!