As some say, there are times when acting beats working for a living.

In company like that, filming in the foothills of Alberta and staying at one of the best hotels in Canada, Calgary’s Palliser, it could only have gotten better if I’d been on my honeymoon.

In spite of the fact that I had the extreme pleasure of having a bedroom scene with Farrah Fawcett as my wife in the film, Ms. Fawcett’s character in Children of the Dust, though a bit “round the bend” … like some North American, pioneer Ophelia … had the profoundly healthy instinct of falling in love with Sidney Poitier.

Who could blame anybody for falling in love with Sidney Poitier?!

At that time in my life, however, I was not in love but seriously in trouble with a lot of things, mainly New York City itself … and I was seriously considering my eventual move to Canada.

I had already left the television series, Law and Order, largely because of my high profile battle with the Attorney General of the very Progressive Clinton Administration, Janet Reno. That row over Constitutionality was beyond politically incorrect and had become very common knowledge in Manhattan.

As the late sports writer, Dick Schaap asked of me, “Is there anyone in Manhattan that you haven’t offended?”

They hadn’t thought of a Glenn Beck Award in those days, so I had no refuge to possibly look forward to.

Mr. Beck’s present boss, Roger Ailes, flew to the rescue for a vaguely memorable moment with talk television, but by then Janet Reno and a family history of alcoholism had driven me into every bar from New York to Halifax.

President Clinton’s popularity ratings , however, were holding fairly strong, despite Janet Reno’s unconscionable attack upon the Koresh Compound, leaving 80 men, women and children dead.

The reasons for my departure from Law and Order seemed to have been Sidney’s main interest during our conversations on set. He was fascinated with the decision and didn’t so much argue with me about it, but ask very insightful and revealing questions, rather like he did in what is now my favorite Poitier performance, that of Mark Thackray in To Sir With Love.

“To Sir, With Love”

Early the next year, after Sidney and his family had moved to New York, he chose me to hand him his Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Board of Review.

Well, by then I had become persona non grata to the elite of Manhattan; and for Sidney to pick me that year as a presenter was a bold decision. His imprimatur was so important that even Stanley Crouch of the Far, Far Left Village Voice asked to have a copy of my words honoring Sidney and later even shared a burger and a beer with me.

Beginning my tribute was the very honest opinion about how drab and homely I felt standing or sitting next to Sidney Poitier.

I said something like, “Only Cary Grant could stand the challenge!”

Actually, after further thought, a cross between Cary Grant and Ronald Coleman might begin to do justice to Sidney Poitier’s handsomeness and his extraordinarily precise yet gentle eloquence.

However, after even further thought … and a recent, second viewing of To Sir, With Love … I doubt if most of 20th Century British Royalty could hold a candle to Sidney Poitier’s nobility.

“And nobility,” as the greatest English-speaking director of the theater, Sir Tyrone Guthrie once said, “is the rarest thing to find in an actor.”

Jose Ferrer had it. As Cyrano de Bergerac and Toulouse Lautrec, Ferrer bristled with the very obsession with detail that, I must say, is the mark of genius in any man.

However, if you couple that genius with the almost spiritual stillness of Sidney Poitier, a quiet which not only holds this audience of one in thrall but keeps the street-prowling thugs of Poitier’s supporting cast oozing with growing fear and awe … well, that’s not just acting at its best, it’s manhood at its highest level.

 ”In the Heat of the Night”

My own brief tribute to him at that award ceremony concentrated on one line-reading.

“They call me Mister Tibbs!”

The sounds of that line hissed at Rod Steiger like the warnings of a boa constrictor or python!

Rerun Ferrer’s Cyrano and you’ll hear a bravura display of such brilliance.

Poitier’s Mark Thackray, however, stuns us with his stillness, out of which he could move in any direction, at any time and with any speed required.

Dr. Guthrie, as we at the Guthrie theater admiringly called him, spoke of the most exciting moment in theater: “It’s not what does happen, but what might happen!”

Out of Poitier’s stillness, anything might happen.

Only Marlon Brando on screen and Laurence Olivier on stage had such potential danger to the extent that Poitier’s performances contain it.

In a long master shot within To Sir, With Love, Poitier’s character approaches a particularly dangerous thug in the room and does so … very slowly … while harnessing a bottomless supply of potential rage and violence that one is glad the door opens to interrupt the potential massacre.

That was in a long shot! Poitier, like Olivier, could hurl his persona up into the balcony of the Brooks Atkinson Theater!!

Either in my award speech or at a later date I said this about Sidney Poitier:

“You see a face that you’ve grown up with and admired, someone who was an icon of America, a symbol of strength and persistence and grace. And then you find out that in the everyday, workaday world of doing movies, he is everything he symbolizes on screen.”

Now, after seeing To Sir, With Love again, I kick myself for not urging Sidney to do a Ronald Reagan …

“Run for the Presidency, Sidney!”

It’s too late now. He’d be running for a political party I stopped supporting just before I met him.

Our “Sir” of To Sir, With Love, Sidney Poitier, is at the very top of American Royalty.

Its epitome actually!

Thank God his mother accidentally gave birth to him … indisputably … in the United States.

If she hadn’t, we might have been deprived of his unsurpassable nobility on screen and hours of instruction on how American Royalty should behave.

1)  People jumping from burning buildings.
2)  Congress standing outside, humbly bowing their heads, and praying.
This was a shocking sight.
3)  The pews of my church completely full of people…and for several months after.

It’s human nature to remember God when we’re in big trouble.  Even agnostics offered up a prayer that day.  We needed super human help from a higher power to defeat the Enemy Without.

God answered our prayers, and along with the excellent leadership of Bush, Cheney, our fantastic military, and superb FBI and CIA, we have been safe for eight years.  Thank you. 

Now we need that Divine help to defeat the Enemy Within.

Strangely, our present White House and Capitol seem to be crawling with sneaky subversives who are intent on destroying capitalism, freedom and the American Way as we know it. They have lots of different labels and labels that keep changing.  They are like a cancer that slowly eats it’s way across the healthy host until it is fat enough to kill it.

When I was 12 years old,  I was warned of Communism and required to read “1984″ by George Orwell.  I hated the dark, sinister story of a free country that turned bad.  I wanted to think about The Carpenters, and Bread, and how to get my hair to look like Farrah Fawcett.  My high school was Christian, so we were aware of spiritual warfare, invisible enemies.  We were taught that the 2nd Amendment, the right to “bear arms” would prevent a military takeover. Instead, they said, the Communists would try to destroy us “from within” by encouraging sin in our youth.  Promiscuous Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n Roll, and a disrespect for authority would render our citizens helpless and weak. (Rap and it’s profanity hadn’t been invented yet.)  This subtle, invisible, inward takeover was more powerful.  Apathy, lack of education, lack of a family unit…lack of God.

II Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”  We had to memorize that Bible verse and I still know it by heart today.  I graduated in 1976, the Bicentennial of our country, so we were wearing red, white, and blue bell bottoms when we recited that verse at graduation.

Now, every day, minute by minute, I have been watching the prophetic fiction of “1984″ become reality.  My voice is irritating, but I’ve been squawking like a rooster, to my fellow Americans, “Wake Up!  Wake Up!”  I think it’s starting to work.

There is a painting of our first Congress humbly praying to God.

When I see Obama brag ”I have a gift,”  “I just wanna spread the wealth,” or ”The police acted stupidly” or  lie “My health plan will not add one dime to the deficit.  It will not fund abortions or insure illegals.”  When I see Pelosi sneer ”un-American, Astro-turf,” or ex-Czar Van Jones say, “Republicans are A–holes,” I replace those images with the image of our leaders humbly praying to God for help.  This is my dream.

Then, I roll out of bed, humbly get on my knees and pray.  “Help!”

From the director of “Julie & Julia” over at HuffPo:

I understand that Ryan O’Neal has confessed, in the current edition of Vanity Fair, that he recently failed to recognize his own daughter Tatum at a funeral and accidentally made a pass at her.

Everyone is very judgmental about this, but I just want to say that I sympathize. …

As it happens, Ryan O’Neal had not seen his daughter Tatum in years. He thought she was a Swedish person. I completely understand. … So who’s to judge? Not me.

The woman Ryan O’Neal spent over a decade with and had a child with dies after a long agonizing bout of cancer, he hits on some “Swedish person” at the funeral, and that’s all fine…

What would be wrong is judging that kind of behavior.

Like most shallow, self centered knuckleheads in show business, I place an inordinate importance on talent. I love talent! It’s the one thing I wish dearly I had more of (and, on many nights, comedy club audiences throughout the tri-state area have wished the same…)

I’m a great audience member. I laugh easily, I applaud heartily. I’m always impressed with performers who can do things I can’t (which is why I’m impressed with most performers). Show me the hackiest ventriloquist act in the business, and I’m just amazed they can talk with their mouth closed. I once sang and danced in a Broadway musical (I played Vince Fontaine, the libidinous deejay, in the 90’s revival of Grease – ramma lamma lamma ka dingidy ding da dong…). I can’t sing or dance. I love people who can, even those who can’t do it very well.

So, I was always amazed by Michael Jackson. Pound for pound, who had more sheer talent? If you could quantify talent, give it a numerical metric, Jackson’s number was probably in the high three hundreds (to give you an idea of how high that is on my imaginary scale, my talent number is 17, Charo’s is 32, okay?. No one was even close. Not even the very versatile Tony Danza.

Of course, sadly, the following is also intrinsic to the story of the most talented man on Earth: 

• 1) Michael Jackson was pushed into show business. Kids shouldn’t be in show business, show business ruins kids. All child roles in theater, TV and movies should be cast with adult midgets dressed as children.
• 2) Michael’s dad beat him up.
• 3) Kids who are knocked around often grow up to mistreat other children.
• 4) Michael was accused of mistreating children.
• 5) There is no excuse for abusing children. 

So, even though my inordinate admiration for talent made me the last rational person in America to defend him (“No, you don’t understand, it’s because he had no childhood that blah blah blahbity blah…”), somewhere in the mid nineties even I gave up the ghost. I came to believe that poor, sad, incredibly talented Michael Jackson was probably succumbing to forbidden urges at his imaginary- sleep- away- camp- slash- lair.

So, when I heard the news last night on the radio (driving to a gig with the terrific comic Cory Kahaney – loads of talent!) I was…a little sad. Relieved? Less interested than I thought I would be?

What can you say? He can’t hurt himself or anyone else anymore. That’s about it.

I react differently to celebrity deaths these days. There was a time when the death of a beloved celebrity would be my own personal melodrama. When I was a young man, and John Lennon was shot, I was in the mass of mourners outside the Dakota honoring the memory of the slain Beatle by drunkenly wailing, sobbing and – with a few other loaded mourners – publicly urinating in the alley a few feet from where he was shot. (This was…um…my personal homage to…uh…Lennon’s lost weekend in L.A. days…)

Now, at the mature age of, ahem, 39ish, I’ve been through a few losses that actual were mine. Unlike Farrah Fawcett, or Ed McMahon, or Michael Jackson, these were people I’d actually met: my father, my mother, my father in law, a couple of very close friends (one died of AIDS, the other diabetes, both ridiculously young), people very close to my wife:  a close childhood friend who was in Windows on the World on 9/11, friends, relatives…

This is life. People die, families grieve, babies are born, the Phillies drop nine of their last ten so the Mets, even with all their injuries, are just a game out of first…

In the end, God sorts it all out, so I don’t. He’s better at it than me, anyway. After all, when it comes to talent, God’s number is off the charts.

I turned on the TV and clicked through the channels trying to find coverage of our event. I had heard earlier in the day that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both had died. As I clicked through the channels, I found every single channel had coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, even Fox News.

As I am not an “Idol” worshipper, it always amazes me how engulfed people can get in the lives of celebrities. I had an “ah hah” moment and realized that could be part of the reason our event was not as successful as we had hoped. We had lost viewers to the “Breaking News.”

I am not prone to want to listen for hours on end to all the hoopla surrounding his death, so I opted to turn off the TV and lay my weary body to rest.

After arising today, I turned on the TV, and you guessed it, almost every channel is still talking about Michael Jackson. The announcer is talking about all the crowds at the “Reagan” Memorial Hospital mourning his loss.

What a contrast–yesterday we were at the “Reagan” Library raising funds to support our troops and send care packages to the combat zones to let them know how much we appreciate and love them, and the rest of the world was focused on the news from Reagan Memorial Hospital that Michael Jackson was dead.

Our men and women are fighting selflessly to combat terrorism and defend our freedoms. These troops are willing to lay down their lives just like my son Marc Alan Lee did on Aug 2, 2006. These heroes aren’t begging for the world’s attention, they don’t seek to be recognized, honored, or worshipped, but we do need to remember them.

I thought about the world’s attention yesterday at the Reagan Memorial Hospital, how engrossed they were in the death of Michael Jackson.  My heart ached as I realized the priorities that most people have in life. How the media will dwell non-stop on Michael Jackson and his idiosyncrasies. My condolences go out to his family. I do understand the grief in losing someone you love dearly.

This man may have entertained millions, but did he do anything for their freedoms? He wasn’t willing to sacrifice his life for his buddies, for you or I, as my son did, or as our troops, our true heroes do. Each one of our warriors who signed up to defend the United States have written blank checks to this nation and they are willing to pay whatever price is required for our freedoms, including sacrificing their lives.

Why is the media not telling the stories of America’s Mighty Warriors? Why were people afraid to part with their money yesterday to send care packages to our warriors dodging bullets, IED’s and RPG’s, yet they had no problem buying flowers and gifts, piling them at Michael Jackson’s home, at his Hollywood Star, the Reagan Hospital or other memorial sites around the world? Our priorities as a nation are distorted.

For those of you who did participate and gave yesterday, THANK YOU! You understand the sacrifice our troops make and you have your priorities right.

Obviously, since losing my son, Marc, not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and how he lived his life to the fullest. I think of the words on his headstone, “Loved deeply, deeply loved,” which so describe Marc. His last letter home has changed peoples’ lives all over the world. If you’re moved by his letter, please make a generous contribution by clicking on the donate button at www.americasmightywarriors.org. He gave up his tomorrows so that you and I could have a today. Please be generous and do whatever you can for our troops, their families and the families of the fallen.

Marc wasn’t the only one with that attitude; I have seen the same character in our other brave warriors fighting for you and I. I always remember and pray for our troops who sacrifice so much for me and for this nation. They are the true heroes, they deserve our loyalty, our praise, our attention, our media focus. They need to know that we have not forgotten them. If you would still like to sponsor a care package and be part of the Troopathon 2009, it’s not too late, you can do that at www.troopathon.org.

Please America, check your priorities! We are a nation that was founded on God’s principles and we need to stay focused on what those are. May God continue to strengthen us and bless us as we follow Him.

You are realizing your age today if you grew up in the 1970s or ’80s. Farrah Fawcett, whose iconic image was as ubiquitous on the bedroom walls of American teenage boys as Kim Il Sung’s was in the homes of North Koreans, died of cancer at 62 yesterday. Age is the cruel fate of all sex symbols. In Fawcett’s case, she not only contended with Father Time but with the public’s changing tastes that dated what once symbolized sex. Demographics, and Sir Mix-a-Lot, killed the pin-up girl monopoly of bleach-blond anorexics. But even twenty years after her heyday, ’70s postergirl Fawcett so symbolized sex that her 1995 appearance in Playboy became the bestselling issue of the 1990s. To put this in perspective, an over-the-hill Farah Fawcett beat Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and Denise Richards in their primes.

Six years after Farrah Fawcett appeared on the bestselling poster of all time, Michael Jackson released the bestselling album in history. Thriller was so big that, not only did it inspire fashion and dancefloor trends, it outsold numbers two and three on the all-time list combined. Jackson, who before our eyes morphed from cuddly, precocious singing/dancing machine to the world’s biggest pop star to Howard Hughes, died yesterday too. For Jackson, life’s victory lap–that even an overweight and jumpsuited Elvis enjoyed–eluded him. The last image embedded in the public’s mind is that of Michael Jackson in a courtroom rather than on a stage. A court of law acquitted him of sexually abusing a minor. The court of public opinion convicted him of being strange. Seeing Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit, or Michael Jackson moonwalking, brings us back to a time when we were young. News of their deaths reminds us that we’re old.