I had been very disappointed back in February 2009, when I not only missed the Hollywood Show on the weekend of the 14th, but I also missed seeing Marvin Kaplan in a play that evening in Hollywood. Marvin was a funny character actor seen in numerous films and TV shows from the 1950’s until the modern day. In addition he provided the voice of Choo Choo in the Top Cat cartoons. You might recognize him bestas frequent Mel’s Diner patron Henry Beesmeyer in the TV show Alice. Or perhaps as Mr. Gordon in four episodes of Becker. Or the hotel desk clerk in Midnight Madness. Or even in a more ominous role like Uncle Pooch in Wild at Heart.
But what I knew him best as was the bespectacled, perhaps neurotic gas-station attendant Irwin in the epic comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Along with fellow nerd Arnold Stang, they managed to single-handedly destroy their own gas station while trying to capture Jonathan Winters, and only end up pissing him off. It’s one of the few truly great comedic scenes in the entire sprawling film.
So I finally got a second chance to meet Marvin Kaplan, and this time it was a great success. My friend Bill Cappello had given me some stills from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and I had one ready for him to sign had I met him almost two years earlier. I brought it along with me again in the hopes of catching up with him after his performance at the Beverly Garland Theatre in Burbank with other members of C.A.R.T. (California Artists Radio Theatre), on October 9, 2010.
When I asked him to sign my photo, he took it with him, walked over to a seat in the theater, and carefully and methodically inscribed it as seen above. With the amount of effort he put into doing this, it was clear that this guy was tremendously kind and interested in his fans. I posed for a photo with him, and thinking that he had accidentally blinked his right eye, got a second one with him. Apparently, he just has a bad eye sensitive to the flash, as he closed that eye in the second photo as well.
Or perhaps know that I had been waiting two years to see him, he was winking as if to say “this time you did it, kid.”
This concludes the celebrities whom I met after the C.A.R.T. performance in Burbank. Return to the original posting here…
That’s actually his right eye that closed during the photographing, not his left.
Bill
January 23rd, 2011
Good to see you corrected it after my initial comment, which now makes no sense to first time readers. Oh well….
Bill
January 23rd, 2011