I'm 50, Dammit!

America's "Girl Next Door", Doris Day, is 89 today. Wow. The bulk of her movie work was before our time, although we've seen it all thanks to Turner Classic Movies, but we certainly remember watching "The Doris Day Show" as kids. For years, Day was ridiculed as an anachronism, a representation of an era when America chose to favor naive fantasy over reality, but now, compared to the screeching banshees of Bravo's "Housewives" and MTV's "Jersey Shore" set, Doris Day and her work seems like a breath of badly needed fresh air.

Besides having a legendary show business career, Doris Day plays a footnote role in another famous American historical incident, the Manson killings. Day's son, Terry Melcher, was a record producer in the late 1960's, and he once met Charles Manson when Manson was attempting to launch a singing career in Hollywood. Melcher, who had previously lived in the house where Sharon Tate was murdered, brushed Manson aside, and so many believe that when Manson sent his followers to Tate's house and told them to kill everyone inside, his real target was Melcher, who he thought still lived in the house.

Also celebrating a birthday today is actor and comedian Eddie Murphy.

Murphy, who turns 50 today, has made some great, and some not-so-great, movies in the past couple of decades, but as more time goes by, we look back more and more fondly on his days on "Saturday Night Live", which rocketed him to overnight fame. What's stunning about Murphy's time on "SNL" is that he appeared on the show at only 19, seemingly out of nowhere, but he quickly took over the show, became its biggest star, and helped to revitalize the show after it threatened to go over the cliff after the end of its original five year run.

There haven't been many funny nights of "SNL" since the 1970's, but one brief, explosive era which helped to create the legendary status of the show was when Murphy starred. Some of his best bits were Gumby, Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, Buckwheat, and come on, that night that he opened the show as James Brown singing "Hot Tub", oh Jesus, that was real genius.

(eddie murphy as james brown in the "hot tub")

Richard Pryor's "Word Association"

We just mentioned yesterday that it was Richard Pryor's birthday, and we mentioned how much we loved his very famous "Word Association" skit from Saturday Night Live when he hosted the show in 1975. It's not on Youtube, but we found it on FunnyorDie.com. Enjoy! This shit is funny.

Dead Honkey!

Back in the summer, we noted that there was something oddly special about the day of July 28 because so many gifted comedians shared that same birthday. But July 28 has nothing on December 1. Today is the birthday of three legendary comedic performers, Richard Pryor, Bette Midler and Woody Allen.
.Richard Pryor was an incredibly gifted stand-up comedian who eventually became one of the most popular film actors of his generation. Pryor's trademark was the racy and raunchy nature of his act, which by today's standards seems tame, but in the 1970's, to say the things that Richard Pryor was saying onstage was shocking to many and geunuinely frightening to the entertainment establishment. Our favorite Richard Pryor moment was when he hosted "Saturday Night Live" in its first season, back when the show was actually funny, and Pryor performed the famous "word association" skit with Chevy Chase. That skit is still recognized as not only one of the most shocking moments in television but also the funniest. Pryor died in 2005; today would have been his 70th birthday.
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"The Divine Miss M" started out singing in the gay bathhouses of New York in the 1970's, and quickly became a musical powerhouse. But lurking just beneath the surface of Bette Midler's wonderous voice was also a true gift for comedy, as Midler has proved by starring in two decades of film comedies. As much as we love Bette Midler, though, we miss the younger Bette from the 1970's when she was much more raunchy and also, like Pryor, sometimes considered too "dangerous" for network t.v. Happy 65th to Bette today!
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.Woody Allen, who turns 75 today, is a true comedic triple threat, having achieved legendary status as a writer, performer and director. Younger generations only know him for his later, more serious films, but we'll always remember Woody Allen for his earlier, incredibly hilarious films like "Sleeper", "Take The Money and Run" and "Bananas". Allen deserves the most respect, though, for helping to invent modern comedy as we know it today by being a writer on such pioneering t.v. shows as "The Colgate Comedy Hour", "The Garry Moore Show" and "The Sid Caesar Show".

The Not Ready for Primetime Director

And speaking of John Belushi, word has come that Todd Phillips, the director-producer of "The Hangover", is preparing a bio-pic of Belushi. John Belushi was, of course, the immensely talented comedic actor who first came to fame as an original cast member of "Saturday Night Live", shot to bigger fame as the star of "Animal House" and "The Blues Brothers", and then tragically died of a drug overdose in 1983.
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It seems odd that a director, Phillips, with so few credits would be given the reins of a film about a person who is as important to the history of American comedy and pop culture as Belushi, but hey, sadly, that's how Hollywood works. You direct one hit movie, and suddenly, the whole town wants you to bear their children. And then when the movie turns out to be a huge suck-bomb, everyone wonders why the film was made in the first place. Hooray for Hollywood! Anyway, now that the potential film project has been made public, the guessing game is on as to who will play the iconic comedian.