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To paraphrase Groucho Marx, a child of five could improve on this immensely.  Anyone could make these parodies of Obama funnier.  Obama’s mannerisms, speech patterns, physical oddities (ears) etc. are ripe for satire. Add Michelle Obama and Joe Biden to the mix and it only gets better.  The audience would be rolling in the aisles. Obama presents a comedy writer with the potential for endless comedic situations.  Obama is a unique character who offers a buffet of satire, pregnant with possibilities.

But the folks at SNL know they can’t appear partisan by NOT parodying Obama, so they have to do something.  They present a bland milquetoast version that gently mocks Obama.  And they do it in the show’s opening segment, typically the strongest segment of the program, the attention-getter that sets the tone and hits you hard with the punch line “Live!  From New York! It’s Saturday Night!”

Now they’re busted.  Chevy Chase’s interview only serves to bolster Marlow’s case.  In that CNN interview, Chevy Chase says his lampooning of President Gerald Ford was driven by his support for Jimmy Carter.  And he makes no secret of the fact that SNL does this as standard operating procedure.

Chase: … And I certainly, obviously my leanings were Democratic and I wanted Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out and I figured look, we’re reaching millions of people every weekend, why not do it.

CNN: You mean to tell me in the back of your mind you were thinking, hey I want Carter …

Chase: Oh, yeah.

CNN: And I’m going to make him look bad.

Chase: Oh yeah. What do you think they’re doing now, you think they’re just doing this because Sarah’s funny? No, I think that the show is very much more Democratic and liberal-oriented, that they are obviously more for Barack Obama. [In the '70s], out of the Nixon era, and it was not unlikely that I might go that direction.

CNN: I talked to one political pundit who said, I think Chevy Chase cost Ford the presidency.

Chase: When you have that kind of a venue and power where you can reach so many millions of people and you’ve become a show that people watch, you know, you can affect a lot of people, and humor does it beautifully, because humor is perspective and has a way of making judgment calls. … So I think there was no question that it had major effect and in fact, in speaking with his family and then later him, and even reading some of his books … he felt so, too.”

This makes the case that SNL is manipulating their interpretation of Obama.  They’re not doing it to be funny.  They’re doing it to be able to say they’ve lampooned Obama.  It’s political cover.  It’s NBC.

My name is Bob Ewell. We’re all Bob Ewells if you check with the Left and their media mouthpieces.

Who is Bob Ewell? Well, if you’ve ever watched the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, you’d know that Ewell is the racist character who destroyed the life of an innocent man.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a classic American film, based on Harper Lee’s novel of life in 1936 Alabama and racial injustice that resided there.

The importance of this movie is that the cries of racism today, most recently by former president Jimmy Carter — which are not true — damage and set back the real cases of racism. This movie shows us real racism, which thankfully, we don’t see much of today. Jimmy Carter is screeching that we’re racist, that we don’t think Obama is qualified because he’s Black.
Watch To Kill a Mockingbird and see for yourself.

Now, Carter would know something about being unqualified, wouldn’t he? Arguably the most unqualified president in modern history, what’s his excuse? Last time I checked, his skin is pasty white.

The contrast is glaring between this made up political racism and the real deal — the real Bob Ewells of the world.

Like Television.com offers it for free online.

In a November 2007 radio interview I did on The Andrea Shea King Show with McMahon to talk about his then newly published book “When Television Was Young, Live, Spontaneous and in Living Black and White,” we talked about his life, and what it was like to share the NBC “Tonight Show” set with The King of Late Night.

McMahon was dealing with a bout of layrngitis, but it didn’t stop him from opening the interview with the famous words that announced to American viewers it was time for their eagerly anticipated nightly entertainment — “Heeere’s Johnny!”

Their Friendship

McMahon told of how he and Carson met.

“The first day I ever worked, I did a show with him called “Who Do You Trust” on ABC.  It was a quiz show, a game show in the afternoon, it was live, and he hosted it. He had another announcer, a fellow named Bill Nimmo who got his own show and he had to leave.   I came up and auditioned for the show and I got the job. Which was a wonderful, lucky happenstance for me.

“What happened was, on the very first show here I am a little nervous, you can imagine.  I’m doing the first show, and I’m replacing somebody.  I want to do a good job, and I’ve got a script in front of me and on this script it’s got these six responses of the day: “Swansdown Cake Mixes, the cake mixes you can trust.”  I have to read this.  Now, the audience at home doesn’t see me of course, but the audience in the theater does.  Johnny Carson comes over and sets fire to my script.  That’s the very first day I ever worked with him!

“Talk about buddies!  That kind of sealed us forever.  For at least thirty-seven years anyway.  And forty-seven years of friendship. But that sealed it. When he set fire to my script, I knew we were off and running, this is gonna be different than any other show I was on.  And then of course, when he got the Tonight Show he took me with him, which was another happenstance for me.  And we had thirty years of wonderful times on the Tonight Show.”

There never was a disagreement between them.  “We’d have dinner once a week or a couple of times a week.  We just became buddies.  We were like two kids kicking a can down the street, we just enjoyed each other, we liked to be with each other.”

The Funniest Bit

McMahon recalled the funniest moment on the show, the one that to this day holds the record for the longest sustained audience applause.

“Ed Ames had been a singer with his brothers, the Ames Brothers, then he went out on his own.  And then he went into acting. He got a job on a frontier show as an Indian.  And he was trying to show Johnny how you threw a tomahawk.  He was gonna throw a tomahawk at a cut-out we had.  We’d taken a piece of plywood and we’d drawn a cowboy outline on there in black chalk, full size.  You know, with the guns and the holsters and the vest and the badge, the ten-gallon hat and the boots.  Ed Ames was supposed to throw this hatchet, or tomahawk, at the target.  Now, he threw it and it struck the cowboy where no cowboy should be struck.  Especially if he plans on having a family.

“Johnny had three of the greatest lines ever — ad libs.  And to give you an idea of how sharp he was, Ed Ames of course is embarrassed and wants to go and retrieve the tomahawk.  There it is with the handle sticking out.  You can imagine what that looked like.  Anyway, Johnny grabbed him.  He knew that he had gold.  And when the laughter subsided a little bit, he said, ‘I didn’t even know you were Jewish’.

“More laughter.  And then when that subsided, he said, ‘Welcome to the Frontier Bris’.

“And it’s not over yet. Wait a minute. Because Ed Ames was so nervous he said, ‘Do you want to try it Johnny?’  Johnny looked at Ed Ames, he looked at the poor cowboy with the hatchet sticking out and he said, ‘Well, I couldn’t hurt him anymore than you did.’

“That was like in the third year, so that kind of gave us a definition of where we were headed on the “Tonight Show.” I think that exemplified to the audience what was going to happen for the future, so twenty-seven years later, they didn’t want him to say goodbye.  They didn’t want us to leave.  They wanted us to stay right there.”

May 22, 1992 – The Goodbye

“There were really two closing nights.  The next to the last show was really the last show.  That was where Bette Midler sang to him and Robin Williams was his crazy, wonderful self.  But that last show was like a compilation of all of the bits that had happened over the years, and we saw some of the people on the screen that had left us, who are no longer around.  And we saw a lot of the good stuff that had happened, and it was just like a big basketful of goodies.

“But the night before is the one people think as the last show, and that’s where Bette Midler sang that wonderful song — a parody of  ‘One for my Baby, one more for the Road.’   And at one point she said — and I think this exemplifies the thirty years of the Tonight Show — she said, ‘And all the class that you showed.’  And boy, did he have class when he did that show!

“They called him the King of Late Night, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s still the King of Late Night.

Carson’s Foil

“I loved being the second banana.  You know, it’s quite a challenging role.  The whole idea is that you have to be in when you’re needed, and out of the way when you’re not needed.  And that’s kind of like a tightrope walker, that’s a balancing act to try to do it right.  And hopefully I did it right all those years because he didn’t say, ‘Let’s get another guy.’   He kept me.

“We knew each other, we saw each other, we had fun together, and it translated itself onto the screen.  I think people knew that.  In fact, on that next to the last show, he commented about that.  He said, ‘You know, a lot of couplings on television aren’t really good friends.’  You know what happened with Martin and Lewis.  I’m told that the Marx Brothers didn’t hang out together.  Abbott and Costello apparently were not good friends.  I don’t know.  But he said, ‘We are good friends.  We go out to dinner, we have fun together, we enjoy each other.’  And it’s true.  We just had a good time together.”

The Brigadier General

Not many people know that McMahon flew 85 combat missions in two wars.

“Well, the very first show I was on was a play I was in.  I was going to Catholic University in Washington right after World War II.  I was a Marine fighter pilot in World War Two and a test pilot.  I taught carrier landings and so forth.  But anyway, the war was over, and I wanted to continue my education.  I had been in Boston College for a year and a half and I got an OK to go to Catholic University and I studied drama and speech.  I was in a play that was broadcast from Washington, through Philadelphia to New York, in 1947.  That’s how far back I go. And it was the first use of the coaxial cable which took programming through a city, which never happened before.

“Then in 1949, Sept. 12th, a Monday, I started in Philadelphia on a show called “Take Ten”, that was the call letters, you know, the number of the station — WCAU in Philly — and there I was, host of a three-hour daily live variety show… I was the producer, I was the make-up man, I swept up the studio, whatever you had to do.  I was on the air from 12 to 3, and I was the happiest man in North America.

“I had thirteen different shows — on the air thirteen different shows a week.  Unbelievable!

“I was called back for the Korean war and off I went for a year and a half, but when I got back I went right into the same station.

“The California Air National Guard named me a Bigadier General, an honorary position, but in the Marine Corps, I got to be a full bird, what they call a full bird, a colonel.  And I’m very proud of that, and I’m very proud of my career in the Marines.  I had six years, two wars, 85 combat missions, so I’m very proud of that.”

Hollywood Then

“It’s not the same, no it’s not.  It’s unfortunate.You know, in World War Two, even in Korea, everyone was kind of involved.  They called Korea the ‘forgotten war’ but still, everybody had someone, a cousin or somebody that was in the war, and in World War Two, everybody was in the war — the Gold Star mothers, you know, everybody was involved.  We had certain restrictions and rules we had to abide by and it was a different situation.

“Unfortunately now, it’s tumbled into a thing almost like Vietnam again where these boys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan — they should be honored as well and it disappoints me that they’re not.”

Fade to black

We went on to talk briefly about his book and with that, his faltering voice faded and he said goodnight.

McMahon was gold, and to Carson’s credit, he recognized it and kept him close by.  Sadly, we’ll never see the likes of the late night duo again.  Ed’s passing marks the end of a sparkling era in late night TV.

Goodnight, Ed McMahon.  Thank you for everything.

During a recent interview on my radio program “The Andrea Shea King Show”, Hollywood conservative Burt Boyar, longtime friend and biographer of the late great Sammy Davis, Jr., said he’s concerned that the true story about the talented entertainer who fought and broke through racial barriers will never be seen on the silver screen. Two years ago, Boyar had negotiated a deal to sell his two biographies to filmmakers who were all set to tell the story on celluloid.

Reflection: Sammy Davis Jr. snaps a photo of himself and Jerry Lewis posing in the reflection of a mirror.

What entanglements are keeping the former member of the Rat Pack’s compelling life from being made into a movie?  A life studded with Tinseltown’s glittering constellation of stars whose orbits intersected his?   Luminaries like Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Liz and Burton, Paul Newman, Berle, Bacall, Bennett, Damone… when Hollywood was at its most glamorous?

Who is Burt Boyar? And why does he care?

The treasure hunt for answers begins on Broadway, circa 1954 when Burt and his wife Jane were moving within the inner circle of New York City’s theater district.  His daily column  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway,” a widely read ‘who’s who’ of the theatrical world, was prominently positioned on the front page of the Morning Telegraph.

The Boyars were hitting the hot spots — the El Morocco, the Copa, the Latin Quarter, the Stork Club — gleaning tantalizing tidbits to toss to ten million readers as they sipped their morning coffee over the morning news.  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway” was published in every Newhouse and Annenberg newspaper.  A mere mention in the column was gold, shining nuggets of priceless publicity coveted by actors and their press agents.   Manhattan’s most sought after couple were out every evening.  “Jane and I would go to every nightclub in town to see who was around and form the basis of what I was writing about. We went to virtually everything,” Boyar begins.

“In fact, we were on the ‘first night’ list, which was a wonderful thing and often a horrible thing at the same time.  Every show that opened, we automatically received tickets for opening night and we had our same seats, just like all the critics.  And you think, ‘My gosh, how glamorous can you be?  You go to every theater opening in New York!’  But if you think about it, there are some 200 shows every year. Of them, there are maybe five hits. And you have to sit through every one of the others.  You cannot imagine what it was like. You sit there wondering, ‘How did they ever pay for this?  Who would put up money to finance this?  How do we get out of here?’  But you couldn’t leave early, because then you’d be accused of writing about something you hadn’t seen,” he jokes.

Boyar also wrote a weekly column for TV Guide.  “I had a lot of audience and so naturally I got invited everywhere,” he says.

At about this time, Sammy Davis, Jr. was performing in “Mr. Wonderful,” a dog of a show that was getting lousy reviews — except for the last 40 minutes when Davis was onstage.  Critics loved his Vegas-Copa-Miami Beach nightclub act.  Boyar took note, and rang him up.

“When I called Sammy, he said, ‘What do you say we have dinner one night?’  So that very night we went out to dinner, Jane, Sammy and I, to Danny’s Hideaway, which was a theatrical steak house.  It’s closed now but it was a very hot spot in those days.  As dinner was coming to an end, he excused himself and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go do the show, but what do you say we have dinner…’ And he thought a second and then he said,  ‘how about having dinner five nights a week?’   And as it turned out, we had dinner seven nights a week!”  It would be the beginning of a long friendship.

Boyar does his best Jolson imitation for Sammy's camera while Jane Boyar enjoys the show.

“We were always together from then on.  It’s one of those wonderful things that happens occasionally in your life — you meet someone with whom you have an enormous chemistry — and it was just instantaneous best friends.  I admired his talent tremendously.  He was unquestionably the world’s greatest entertainer. And he was such a charming man offstage. He dressed beautifully and he conducted himself with such courtliness.  It’s hard, really, to believe he had never had any education whatsoever. His education was the theaters that he played since the age of three. So I guess that has very good value because when you consider that in vaudeville, he would play before six audiences a day.  You’d get a lot of touch with the public, and you’d learn a great deal from people.”

In Black and White

A white hot star onstage, black negro offstage, Sammy Davis, Jr. “wasn’t treated well because of his skin color, at least not until he was such a big star that they couldn’t keep him out.”  Boyar recalled the denigration Davis endured.  “I cannot describe the pain of seeing a friend receive standing ovations in those days when they had to be earned, then leave the theater and be called a ‘nigger.’

“He was not treated well by either the whites or the blacks.  I remember when he was playing New York City, he was playing the Copacabana and I got him a reservation at the hotel around the corner — the Sherry Netherland — and he was completely criticized, roundly criticized by both the white press and the negro press for not staying at the Hotel Teresa in uptown Harlem, which is what all black entertainers would do when they played the Copa.”  The Teresa Hotel, known as the ‘Waldorf of Harlem,’ was built in 1913 and wasn’t desegregated until 1940.  Frequented by local celebrities, it was a Harlem hot spot.  By comparison the Sherry Netherland, in the heart of midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, was always considered five-star, world class.

“Sammy said, ‘Look. I’m going to go as first class as my fame and my money will allow. I want to live as well as anybody else in my position.’  So he stayed at the Sherry Netherland, which was wonderful.”

In his prologue to “Sammy, An Autobiography,” Burt wrote: “After an especially hurtful racist outrage, Sammy murmured ‘We really should let them know.  We really should tell them.’  We talked about how, and it evolved into a book…”

“I began writing ‘Yes I Can’ and the column at the same time.  I thought I could do both,” Boyar says.  “And we’d travel with Sammy.  We’d go to Las Vegas and Chicago, and Tahoe and Florida, wherever there was entertainment, wherever I might possibly write a column at the same time.  But it became impossible to serve the two masters.  You really couldn’t do justice to either of them.  So we took what we thought was a one year leave of absence on the column, and six years later we finished the book, and so the column was gone.  The only thing about it that made me feel badly was a man by the name of Bruce Horton who was the head of the Register and Tribune syndicate, and he was out there selling our column — he sold us to the Detroit Free Press and the Toronto Star, a lot of big papers — and here I was, about to take time off and tell him I can’t produce. I’m sure I embarrassed him and he had every right to be furious with me, although he never said a word.  But that was the only misgiving I had about it.”

The couple lived on the road with Sammy on and off for the next four years, running a tape recorder every night into which Sammy would reminisce and recount the gems and shards that made up the mosaic of his life.

“We did (hang out with Sammy) for the first couple of years,” Burt says.  “The rest of the time we were on our own, just writing and rewriting.  After “Yes I Can” came out in 1965, we had no column, and suddenly we were making a lot of money and it was ‘Wow! This is a great life!  We don’t have to be up until four or five in the morning, we get up when the sun comes out!’”

The Boyars later moved to Spain where they resided for 28 years.  There they wrote two more books, “World Class” about the world of tennis, and “Hitler Stopped By Franco,” a book that evolved from their friendship with Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s daughter Carmen and her family.  Over the years, they kept in touch with Sammy by mail and telephone.  Following Jane’s death in 1997, Boyar subsequently combined both biographies into a single edition titled “Sammy – An Autobiography.”  He eventually returned to America, settling in the Los Angeles area where he still makes his home today.

The present scene:  An empty theater, a darkened screen.  Somewhere in the distance, Sammy is dancing and singing on an ethereal stage, entertaining a roomful of heavenly hosts.

The movie version of ‘Yes I Can’ is mired in litigation and has been for some time.  Burt explains, “I often hear people say, ‘Such and such a movie took ten or fifteen years to make.’  I now know why.  It is the most extraordinary thing.  What happens is you have a property that looks like it could be a moneymaker.  People come out of the woodwork that claim to have rights, and no movie company wants to invest 60 or 70 million dollars and are unable to distribute it because of a lawsuit.  So they insist that everyone must sign off — every potential rights holder must sign off.   In our case, I own half of the copyright.  Sammy owned the other half, and when he died it was left to Altovise, his wife.”  Altovise Davis, Sammy’s wife of twenty years, died March 14, 2009, nine years after Sammy passed away from throat cancer.

“It was complicated before that, but she had a manager who had made some kind of a contract with her in which he wound up controlling more of Sammy’s life than she.  He had far more to say about it than she.  And we had a this fabulous deal through two wonderful producers, Craig Zaden and Neil Meron who produced Chicago and Hairspray and the last Jack Nicholson movie, “The Bucket List.”   They were really, really excited about it and they sold it to New Line and everybody was really ready to go, we’re ready to sign it.  And the deal that was negotiated after six or seven months of negotiating was really as good as it can get.  And then this manager suddenly appears on the scene — a man with whom I had gotten along with perfectly well earlier, and he suddenly said, ‘We have to quarterback this’.

“I guess he meant ‘We have to be in charge, we have to continue the negotiations’.  Well, I thought, this is ridiculous.  It’s already ready to sign, and he said, ‘No, we have to  quarterback it because it involves Sammy Davis Jr.’s life rights.  Which doesn’t exist — there’s no legal term such as ‘life rights’.

“Anyway, I thought, ‘Well all right, what harm can be done?’  So he brings in this lawyer from New York who was not a movie lawyer, and the man decides he’s going to teach Hollywood how to be Hollywood!  And he makes demands that are deal breakers.

“The first one was Altovise, who was originally a dancer, but had not danced in probably 30 years, and had never been a choreographer.”

Altovise, a trained actor and dancer, met Sammy in the mid-1960s when they were both appearing in Broadway musicals, he as the lead in “Golden Boy” and she in the chorus line of “High Spirits.”  She successfully auditioned for a London stage production of “Golden Boy” and, after its run, she joined his nightclub act as a dancer.

“The first demand was that Altovise had to be the choreographer of the movie.  Complete deal breaker.  There’s no way that you can take a major musical and have a novice attempt to choreograph it.  Nor did she want to, which I learned later.  At the time I wasn’t in touch with her and so I didn’t realize that it wasn’t she who had demanded it.  It was the manager.  He was just looking for more revenue.”

“Then he had to own the soundtrack.  That was another deal breaker.  Obviously, if you’re a studio and you invest 60 or 70 million dollars in a movie, you want every revenue source there can be, and you’re not going to give it to a man who has no track record as a record producer or anything.  It was all just a hustle.

“So we finally went to court to get rid of him, and we have been in court for 680 thousand dollars, which is one way of putting it – those are the legal fees we’ve run up on this project so far.  And more to come.  I could not imagine that these people would be so idiotic to hang on when they had absolutely no grounds for the thing that they were asking for.  They were killing a golden goose.”

“Also, according to the copyright law, at the time in 1965 when ‘Yes I Can’ was published, the law was that when a man dies, his copyrights go to his wife and to his children, without specifying in what percentages or what way – fifty-fifty?   It’s up to them to decide.  And Altovise had very generously agreed to split evenly with the children – there are four children, so that was no problem.

“The problem is not that I can’t go out and do the movie on my own, but no studio will take the risk of a major investment when there’s a potential of a lawsuit, even if they’re nuisance lawsuits.  If that potential exists, they don’t want to get involved.  This has happened before and they have wound up having to pay as much as 15 million dollars in blackmail, actually, to be able to release the film they’ve already shot.  So they don’t ever want to get involved in that again. And who can blame them?”

So the film project sits on a shelf, hamstrung through greed and avarice.  However, Boyar managed to salvage thousands of Sammy’s photos and negatives. “Everybody who was close to him knew he was taking pictures because he always carried a camera,” Boyar says.

“The photos were in a warehouse just stuffed away in boxes, not protected, not really taken care of the way you should take care of them.  Thousands of prints, thousands of negatives.  And probably within a few years, they would’ve been lost.  They’d be worthless.  They weren’t sorted, they weren’t in any particular order because Sammy never cared.”

He recalls Sammy’s obsession with the latest and best equipment. “Of course once I had a little education, Sammy once said, ‘I needed a new Nikon this and a Canon that, both with eighteen lenses and sixty-two filters.  In terms of addiction, I think there is nothing more powerful than men’s toys.  This may sound a little paranoid but I am positive that somewhere in Germany, in Japan, there are men awake in the middle of the night thinking, ‘Now Sammy Davis has an extra $50,000, let’s think of something he doesn’t have that we can sell him, the ultimate, the definitive… he’ll jump to be the first one to have it and we’ll get that $50,000.’ I am positive of that.’”

Burt knew Sammy didn’t have plans for his photography.  “He never thought, ‘Well, I’ll publish pictures of Frank and Peter and Dean.’  His pleasure in photography was to take pictures of people that he liked, and if he liked the picture, he would send it to you — an 11 by 14.  He had no future plans for his photography.  It was purely for pleasure.  So he never bothered keeping records carefully and keeping the negatives attached to the proof sheets.  So it was a tremendous job separating them, but we did it.”

In a labor of love that came close to matching the affection Davis had for his latest single lens reflex, Boyar selected hundreds of images that have been included in a coffee table book collection of Hollywood’s glory days, seen through the lens of Sammy’s myriad collection of Nikons, Canons, and Rollieflex cameras.  ‘Photo By Sammy Davis, Jr.’ went into print in 2007, the last book published by Judith Regan.

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin preparing to go on stage.

“The book contains photos of Hollywood stars that no one else had access to.  For example, Frank Sinatra in his pajamas.  Now only someone like Sammy would be there to take that picture and Frank would only allow someone like Sammy to take it.

“There is a characteristic picture of Sinatra playing with his fingernails. When he was just about to go on, he was always very nervous and he would work out his nerves on his fingernails.  And so there’s a picture of him standing with Dean and he’s working on his nails.  These are things that only Sammy understood,” Boyar explains.  “The stories that accompany them are from taped conversations Sammy and I had over the course of our friendship. We used a handful of them in Sammy’s autobiographies.”

Sammy caught Peter Lawford the morning after a big one.

There are other pictures – Peter Lawford with a hangover.  “He looked like he was desperately in need of a steam room,” Boyar comments.

“There is a picture of me in the book.  It’s about three quarters of the way in.”  Sure enough, there’s Boyar captured in Sammy’s lens, vamping an Al Jolson routine as wife Jane laughs in delight. But the back-story wasn’t so funny.

“What happened is one night we were out, and somebody called Sidney Poitier a black, and in those days that was a very negative statement.  And it drove Sammy up the wall.  I’ve never seen him so upset.  He generally was very, very put together and he was very accustomed to racial epithets, so things didn’t bother him.   But I guess because he loved Sidney, it really did bother him and he was really, really angry, just really upset.  And we got back to his hotel room and he looked at me and he said, ‘Do that corny Jolson thing you do.’   Which was — I used to love Al Jolson, so I would do Jolson.  I knew all the songs. And so I started singing and I didn’t realize that Sammy was actually taking pictures of me at the time because I was so involved with my performance.  Imagine the audacity of singing to the world’s greatest entertainer!  Anyway I did it until finally he was laughing and the moment had passed and it was done.

“I didn’t know the pictures existed until Vanity Fair was doing a ten-page take-out for the magazine, a ten-page article on the book, and David Friend, who does special features for them, came here to look at the pictures and he says, ‘Hey, this is you!”  It was a negative and I would have never spotted it because I don’t have an eye for that sort of thing, but David had been a Life Magazine photo editor and as a photo editor he had a very, very sharp eye.  I was delighted to have it.  Sammy played the greatest role in my life.  Having the opportunity to write those books really made a whole life for Jane and myself.”

The legendary entertainer’s images, confined within the cover of a book, might not be moving pictures projected on the silver screen, but somehow there is sweet irony that Sammy himself created the montage of his life, directing and choreographing his story through his own camera lens, from beginning to end.

Books by Burt Boyar:

“PHOTO BY SAMMY DAVIS, JR.” Text by Burt Boyar

“YES I CAN” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“WHY ME?” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“SAMMY – An Autobiography” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

Other books by Burt Boyar:

“HITLER STOPPED BY FRANCO” by Jane and Burt Boyar

“WORLD CLASS” by Jane and Burt Boyar

Self-described Black American Conservative Lloyd Marcus was feted last Friday night before the Santa Barbara Tea Party by famed songwriter Tom Snow at Snow’s fabulous Montecito mansion overlooking the valley and Pacific Ocean beyond.

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In less than a month, Lloyd Marcus has appeared on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly, an Orlando Fox TV program, The Bcast with Liz Stephan and Scott Baker on Breitbart.TV, and too many radio shows to mention. 

Pajamas Media TV has discovered him and brought him on board to be the face of PJTV’s American Tea Party project.

He has signed a deal with the same people who handle Paul Shanklin, the talent behind the parodies on The Rush Limbaugh Show, to distribute his music through iTunes, Amazon and Wal-Mart Download.  Lloyd’s albums can also be obtained through his website at LloydMarcus.net

So what does Lloyd Marcus, son of a preacher man, say about all this? How is he keeping his head on straight amidst this whirlwind?

During an hour-long interview on my radio program The Andrea Shea King Show, Lloyd and his wife Mary shared their journey from then to now, and pointed to the influence of people like Rush Limbaugh along the way.

“After the Orlando Tea Party, I got phone calls and emails from all over the country asking me to perform at various Tea Parties,”cLloyd began. “So I signed up for one in Santa Barbara, California.

“Oh!  And I have to tell you!” he excitedly interrupts himself.  “This is a perfect example of the American spirit because the day before the Tea Party, the organizers were told that they could not have a singer!  And their venue got scared and backed out.  They had already flown me in from Florida.  That committee hung in there and fought and found another venue and pulled the whole thing off and 1200 patriots came out — so all these conservatives came out of hiding,” he laughed.

“It turned out great. I was kind of nervous for them because at the last moment they had to change the venue.  But over a thousand people found us, and they were pumped up!  They almost seemed to feel liberated, like they had been hiding in the shadows.  And so this was a breath of fresh air for them.  These people were psyched and fired up!”

After the rally, emcee and national talk radio host Tammy Bruce passed along a message to Lloyd that Mike Leahy of Top Conservatives on Twitter, or TCOT, wanted to talk to him.  Leahy is the publisher and editor of the TCOTreport.com, and has taken the lead in organizing most of the Tea Parties to date. He recently joined Pajamas Media TV where he hosts a regular online Tea Party update newscast.

“He asked me if I would stay in town because he was with Pajamas Television and wanted me stay a couple of days and do some television shows,” Lloyd explained.  “So he drove to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles, picked me up, and I’ve been here ever since.  They have so much stuff on the table, and now they want me to be at the Sacramento Tea Party on the 15th.  It’s just gotten huge.  It’s just been nuts!

“Do you know that as of yesterday, we had 500 Tea Parties around the country, and that number is growing daily?  They are almost expecting double that as of Tax Day.  No marketing firm in the world could pull that off.  This is being driven by the passion of the American people.  This thing is huge!”

Lloyd commented on the whirlwind in which he finds himself.

“You know, there’s something about this that’s a perfect storm,” he marveled. 

“This is bigger than me.  And that kind of overwhelms me.  Yes, a lot of really neat stuff is happening for me, but this is about our country. And it’s big.”

To appreciate that statement, you have to know where Lloyd’s coming from.  He and his wife Mary have been together for 30 years, through thick and sometimes very thin.  Theirs is a story of deep valleys amidst the highs.

First, they’re an interracial couple.

“You can imagine thirty years ago that wasn’t acceptable,” Lloyd began. “Her dad said ‘If I see that guy on my street, I’m gonna shoot him.’  But she told her parents ‘If he’s not welcome here, then I’m not welcome here’.  She was willing to give up that relationship.  But they have changed; her folks are absolutely wonderful now.  They love me and I love them.”

There were other hurdles.

“I was an alcoholic for 19 years and she put up with that,” Lloyd revealed.  “I wasn’t happy with my life and I chose to hide in a bottle.  And when you’re living with an alcoholic… she had to handle everything,” he said softly.  “I had to go into rehab and she had to hold down the fort.  And she did.  So, I’m just blessed.”

Lloyd and Mary Marcus

Lloyd has been sober for more than twenty years.  “When I look back, I was very arrogant in certain ways, my music career wasn’t going the way I wanted and I was smashing dishes and I was just acting like a spoiled brat.  I’ve gone through a lot of growth — we both have.”

Flash back to 1993 when Lloyd left his art director job at a television station to make the leap into singing full time.

“This whole thing is Rush Limbaugh’s fault,” Lloyd laughed, “because I was listening to Rush, and he was talking about people who had lost their jobs due to companies deciding to downsize.”

Inspired, Lloyd decided to downsize himself.

“My company hadn’t done that, but I had always done music on the side, but had never really given it a shot.  I wanted to pursue my music career.  I came home and said ‘I want to quit my job’.”

“Mary said ‘OK, let’s do it’.  I wish I would have had half a brain and a game plan,” he laughed.  “I just walked in and quit!  I didn’t have any money in the bank saved.  That was kind of the arrogance of youth. You could do anything!

“We wound up being broke for fifteen years and to make a long story short, four years ago we were homeless.”  His voice caught with emotion.  “And Mary never threw it up in my face about what I did.  She has just been absolutely fabulous.

“Mary has always supported me being who I am.  Some guys marry women who don’t like them being who they are.  When we were dating 30 years ago, I sat in with the band at this nightclub and when I got back to the table, Mary said ‘Why aren’t you singing for a living?’  So she captured the vision even then.”

Mary added, “I was very excited.  The first time I heard him sing I thought ‘Oh my goodness… this man needs to be out there’.”

Fast forward to Lloyd at the piano with songwriter Tom Snow.  In describing the evening, Lloyd breaks into song, singing the opening notes of “He’s So Shy”, a smash hit penned by Snow for the Pointer Sisters.

“This guy has written songs for… Barry Manilow, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, Peabo Bryson.  And we’re hanging out at the piano!” he says incredulously.  “Singing together!  That was like too much!  I’m in this incredible home with these fabulous people — Tom Snow– this world renowned songwriter is playing piano for me and he and I are singing songs together and I kept thinking the only thing that would make this totally perfect is if Mary were here.  Because Mary deserves this, you know?” he said, his voice catching again.  “She’s worked her butt off and sacrificed so much.  This is the life that she deserves.”  Momentarily overcome, Lloyd regained his composure and stated with certainty, “But, it’s gonna happen.”

When asked what she thought of the events of the last three weeks, Mary said without hesitation: “About time!  This is fabulous!”

Lloyd’s songwriting comes from the heart about things he has passion for, even if it isn’t considered hip-hop and cool. 

“Everybody said ‘Why are you doing all these political songs?  That’s not how you make it in the music world.  You have to hide your political point of view’.  But I was compelled to write “Celebrate America” because I love my country.  I was compelled to write “Welcome Home Brother” because I really love Vietnam vets.  I was compelled to write “United We Stand” because I loved the mood of the country after 9-11.”

The success of Lloyd’s American Tea Party Anthem validates his belief that it’s based on – as Rush Limbaugh puts it – “talent on loan from God”.

“That makes all this perfect too, because all of my songs’ topics are things I care about.  And so many people always ask me ‘Why are you writing about this topic and that topic and not separating your politics?’  Because that’s what I’m passionate about!

“And that’s why it’s so sweet.  That the very thing that was supposed to be my downfall has been my launching pad. That is so sweet and I thank God so much for that.”

Lloyd and I met several years ago when I hosted a Sunday night conservative talk show on WDBO in Orlando.

Lloyd recalled, “I met you riding home one night in my car and I thought ‘Who is this person?’  And I feel like you pooh-pooh me when I say this, but when I heard you I said ‘This woman is as compelling as Rush without guests‘ because not everybody can pull it off without guests, and you were so compelling alone.  I think I sent you an email or two.” 

Lloyd, who is also a painter, did email me about a civil liberties situation he was then embroiled in over some of his works.  He related the story to my current listeners. 

“I am the president of the Deltona Arts and Historical Center and they called me for some paintings for their Black History Month display,” he began. 

“The representative from the city came and selected three of my paintings — that was on Friday.  On Monday that same representative called and said ‘You have to pick up your paintings because the city manager said we can’t hang them’.  I asked why.  He said, ‘Because of religious themes’.  Now, the only religious themes – one of the paintings had a bible on a nightstand, the second painting somebody was wearing an ‘I heart Jesus’ on a baseball ball cap in the background.  And the third painting was a New Orleans-style funeral and someone was carrying a bible and wearing a collar.  That was the outrageous religious theme!  So I went and picked up the paintings on Monday, and I was talking to my Dad and my Dad said ‘This is totally wrong.  You need to go public.’ 

“Well, I wrote a letter to the editor and I sent the letter via email Monday night. By Tuesday morning, I’m getting phone calls and it just went gangbusters from there.  Papers from around the country were calling me.  Lawyers were calling me.  And these lawyers were acting like sharks with the smell of blood in the water. They were gonna make me rich and blah blah blah.  But I didn’t do it for that.  I did it for the principle, because I thought this was totally outrageous and they were trying to ban any symbol of God from the public square.  And plus, how can you separate religion and God from the Black history? 

“Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver called me and said they wanted to take my case and they would only sue for the city to re-hang the paintings.  Oddly enough, they called the City and the City still said no.  It took about a month of pounding from national media and according to Mat Staver, the story went around the world.  There were papers in several countries writing about it, but it took the City getting pounded from people from around the country and a federal lawsuit.  We had a press conference on the Orlando City Hall steps the day that we filed a federal lawsuit.  It took all that for the City to finally say OK, we can hang the paintings.” 

Lloyd had performed at several troop support rallies around the country, including a rally for 19,000 in Tampa hosted by Glenn Beck, and the Gathering of Eagles in Washington DC.  So it seemed natural to Lloyd and Mary to celebrate their civil victory with a rally and fundraiser for a local veterans’ effort at the DeLand Airport to restore a U.S. Navy PT boat.  That was where we all met:  Mat Staver, now Dean of Liberty University Law School, his wife Anita, also an attorney and now president of Liberty Counsel; and Bud Hedinger, Orlando talk show host who would later emcee the Orlando Tea Party. 

Lloyd continued.  “When Lisa (Feroli) had the Orlando Tea Party and it was going to be hosted by Bud, I contacted her and said “Well, you’ve got to have Andrea, cause she’s part of the team.” 

I then wrote about Lloyd’s Tea Party anthem in my weekly “Surfin Safari” column at World Net Daily and included a link to the You Tube version of it. 

“Oh my God!  When that song hit World Net Daily that’s when it really took off cause that’s when all the bloggers picked up the ball and ran — they’re the ones that made that song national and sparked me getting the call from Fox News!” Lloyd said exuberantly. 

Sacramento Tea Party 

The Tax Day Tea Party in Sacramento on April 15^th will be ground zero for Pajamas Media TV and Lloyd Marcus.  Fox Business News honcho Neal Cavuto will emcee.  Lloyd will warm up the crowd. 

“I know that they are having Neal and they want to broadcast live from there and I think they said they have eight jumbotrons in eight strategic markets, so this will be broadcast live around the country.  I saw something on Fox today that people are calling me the ‘face of the movement’, which is cool,” Lloyd said. 

“Fifteen minutes before, I step on stage and sing some songs to rally the crowd — that’s my job – to get the crowd ready for the speakers. Then halfway thru the program, I come back and sing my American Tea Party Anthem.  And then at the grand finale, I lead the crowd in God Bless America.” 

The Left wants to muscle in on Tea Party action. Leftwing bloggers have issued preemptive smears and plan their own anti-tea party demonstrations.  They’re expected to infiltrate and agitate to cause an eruption in an effort to quash this nascent and growing movement.  But Lloyd’s not convinced they’ll succeed. 

“We are hearing the same thing, but in terms of them having Tea Parties on April the 11th, no way in the world is this going to match what we’re doing on the 15th.  They’re just not going to have hundreds and hundreds of tea parties on the 11th.  Now, the media will probably cover them like they’re having hundreds, but what they’re doing is going to basically be a drop in the bucket.  And as far as them coming to our rallies, they’ll be so totally outnumbered… 

“This thing is rolling along like a steam roller.  And no one could have organized this and planned this.  This is about patriotism and love for this country.  That’s powerful and that is what’s driving this movement.” 

The Future 

“Everything is sort of up in the air,” Lloyd said about his new relationship with Pajamas Media TV.  “Bottom line is they know they want to use me…  and they have a whole lot of other ideas. They haven’t nailed it down. They’re saying ‘This guy has something’.  They’ve asked me if I would be willing to move there.  Mary told me to say ‘Yes.  To everything‘,” he laughed. 

I asked, “Are you prayerful?” Without hesitation, Mary blurted, “Oh my goodness yes!” 

Lloyd added,  “All the time.  I pray about everything.  I pray before every rally.  I haven’t gotten so good that I say ‘OK Lord, I got this one…’ 

“I pray before every event that God will tell me what to do, when to do, what to say, what not to say.” 

“And also to recognize that whatever you do say is perfect. You have to have that trust,” Mary chimed in. 

Lloyd agreed.  “But I’ll tell ya, when you go to homeless, you just learn to be grateful for everything, and that’s why  — somebody just said today “Wow Lloyd, is this stuff going to go to your head? 

“No-o-o-o!  Because I know that this is happening not because I’m smart, and not because I’m talented but… No, this is a God thing.  And I won’t be fooled into thinking anything else.  I could not have put myself here.  God did.  And I am humbled.”  

Author’s note:  To hear the interview, link to:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stations/HeadingRight/ASKShow/2009/04/10/Lloyd-and-Mary-Marcus-Repeat

LloydMarcus.net

Tea Party information at http://TaxDayTeaParty.com

TCOTReport.com

PJTV.com

Thanks to John McJunkin of AvalonPodcasting.com