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LOS ANGELES — Peter O’Toole was famous for his commanding, Oscar-nominated turns. Mark Linn-Baker was a budding actor. Richard Benjamin, who starred in “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “Westworld,” had a few television directing credits.
The sum of these unexpected parts was the 1982 comedy film “My Favorite Year,” starring O’Toole and Linn-Baker, directed by Benjamin and produced by Mel Brooks. It paid a loving tribute to the early days of TV in the mid-20th century and the variety shows that were the “Saturday Night Live” of their day.
When Benjamin read the script by Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo, he immediately turned to his wife, actress Paula Prentiss.
“I hope they want me for this, because it’s great,” Benjamin recalled.
The film, which marks its 40th anniversary, is set in 1954 and stars O’Toole as the late but still glam icon Alan Swann, who appears in “Comedy Cavalcade” to pay off his IRS debt. Linn-Baker plays Benjy Stone, an energetic young writer tasked with keeping Swann out of trouble (read: sober) until broadcast.
Inspiration for “My Favorite Year” includes Sid Caesar, the star who ruled the decade of television, and “Show of Shows,” a hit from 1950-54 that was followed by “Caesar’s Hour.” The film is inspired by Errol Flynn’s films such as Captain Blood, and Swann’s “Captain Tortuga” seen in a fake clip.
Brooks, who wrote “Your Show of Shows” alongside another stage and screen giant, Neil Simon, said in his 2021 memoir “All About Me!” that the movie represented “my love letter to Sid Caesar and the early days of television, and it was a great story.”
“It’s one of the three best television shows I’ve ever seen,” said David Bianculli, television critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air” and author of the “Dictionary of Teleliteracy.” Some of his top picks: “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and Simon’s play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”
“My Favorite Year,” available on streaming services, had a respectable box office opening in October 1982, coming in third behind “Officers and Gentlemen” and “ET the Extra-Terrestrial.”
Joseph Bologna plays the talented, manic (and sexy) King Kaiser. Others in the incredible cast include Lainie Kazan (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and episodes), Jessica Harper (“They”), Bill Macy (“Maude”) and Selma Diamond. An actor in sitcoms, including the 1980s “Night Court,” Diamond’s television roots were scripted and included “Your Show Show.”
Benjamin was a teenage fan of Caesar’s show and recalled how he and his equally devoted friends would get calls after it aired on Saturday nights to replay the highlights.
“The show changed everything. Comedians used to stand up and tell jokes, but here was something funny that was character” and stretched with extended sketches, Benjamin said. “It seemed like a miracle that this (film) came to me.”
His agent had approached him about the job, and a meeting with Brooks and producer Michael Gruskoff convinced them that Benjamin could handle it.
The role of Swann had not yet been played, and it was Hollywood’s luck that it went to O’Toole, giving his seventh out of eight Oscar nominations (he lost to Ben Kingsley in “Gandhi”). O’Toole received an honorary Academy Award in 2003.
Albert Finney was offered the part but was dragging his feet. Benjamin was sent to the San Francisco area, where Finney was working on another film, to talk him into it – or risk seeing the project collapse.
Finney said he liked the script for “My Favorite Year.” But after doing several movies in the United States, he longed to return to the London stage even though he was only earning “125 pounds a week,” as he did. Put it on.
“Why don’t you get O’Toole?” Finnie helpfully suggested. “We do this all the time. I turn something, you turn something low” and the other takes the role.
Prentiss, who had starred opposite O’Toole in the 1965 film “What’s New for Pussycat,” supported the idea. So did the producers, who again tasked Benjamin with getting the actress to say yes. O’Toole felt the script was excellent but it was good. I’m curious about the exhibit that includes Swann’s tombstone, and the birthday of 2 Aug.
O’Toole asked that a date be arranged with each actor who played the project. When told otherwise, he replied, “That’s my birthday, and how old I am.” Therefore, I have to make a film. “
(The cemetery scene was filmed but cut when it seemed too low-key for test audiences, Benjamin said.)
O’Toole showed off the breeze during the shoot. Benjamin remembers expressing concern to him about a play where an actor’s head would hit an exposed tile wall. “I was trained in music hall,” says the English O’Toole, referring to his country’s version of vaudeville. “I could do it all day.”
Linn-Baker (“TV Ghosts,” “Perfect Strangers”) found O’Toole to be a kind and generous mentor and is often amazed by his work, which includes “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Becket” and “The Lion in Winter. ” O’Toole died in 2013 at the age of 81.
“The relationship that Benjy and Swann had on film is as good as the relationship we had off screen,” said Linn-Baker, currently on Broadway in “The Music Man” with Hugh Jackman. “He took me under his wing. What little I know about acting, I know from watching and listening to him.”
Kazan, who played Belle Steinberg Carroca, Benjy’s remarried widow, remembers meeting O’Toole for the first time when she and Brooks knocked on the actor’s dressing room door, heard a muffled “come in” and found O’s underwear on. The device sits on the sink and washes her hair.
“He stands up and says, ‘Miss Kazan, my absolute pleasure,'” the actress and singer recounted with delight. “I fell in love with him. He was so amazing to me. “
Kazan, who earned a Tony nomination for reprising the role of Belle in the 1992-93 musical “My Favorite Year,” said she raised an outspoken Jewish mother among her relatives, including an aunt who was “the best person” and. Kazan’s mother, a beautiful woman who wore “all these beautiful clothes.”
An invitation to a Brooklyn dinner from Belle to Swann leads to a culture clash of epic comedy proportions. At one point, Benjy’s middle-aged aunt Sadie walks in wearing a revealing wedding gown, prompting an awkward compliment from sister Belle.
“Do you like it? I only wore it once,” replies a beaming Sadie, while Swann, amused, looks on.
For all its fun punch lines and slapstick, “My Favorite Year” is a fitting Valentine to original TV creativity. The templates they created are still copied and popular, even amidst the great changes of the 21st century.
The plot of the movie is fantasy, but “the world it’s set in is really zany, and it’s very beautiful,” Bianculli said. “I show your ‘showcase’ in my class (at Rowan University), and it still works.”
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