12/24/23
Newsletter #536
The Crack of Dawn
Of the many interesting, if not exactly memorable, things I found myself doing over the course of 25 years in Hollywood, one was accompanying my friend Rick to a screening and memorial event at the Academy of Motion Pictures for the director/actor, Jerry Paris (whose real, though adopted, name was William Gerald Grossman, and the child of Russian Jews). They were showing The Grasshopper (1970), which Paris directed. Jerry Paris died at the age of 60 in 1986, so I’d guess this event was about that time. Jerry Paris is probably most notably remembered as the guy who directed 237 out of 255 episodes of Happy Days, a show I personally never watched, but it ran for eleven seasons. Still, you have to be impressed with the sheer size of that number – very few TV directors ever direct anywhere near to 237 episodes of anything. And Jerry Paris directed hundreds of other TV shows, as well as theatrical and TV movies, too. Beyond that, as an actor he appeared in 105 movies and TV shows.
Jerry Paris first came to public notice as the next-door-neighbor Jerry (with his wife, Millie) in The Dick Van Dyke Show. When I watched the show as a kid as it first aired, at the outset almost every episode was directed by the show’s creator and co-star, Carl Reiner. However, as it went along season after season (1961-66), I noticed Jerry Paris began directing episodes. By the end of the series Jerry Paris was directing most of the episodes.
And once I was aware of him as an actor, then I spent my life noticing that Jerry Paris as a character actor is all over the movies of the 1950s. He’s a member of Marlon Brando’s gang in The Wild One (1953). He’s one of the main crewmembers aboard the ship in The Caine Mutiny (1954), and he’s the one who sings the Yellow Stain Blues song. Jerry Paris is Ernest Borgnine’s brother in Marty (Best Picture, 1955). In The Naked and the Dead (1958), Paris plays one of the two Jews in the company, the other being Joey Bishop.
Anyway, Rick and I found ourselves attending what we had thought was going to be a film screening, with perhaps a few live comments, that turned out to be a lengthy memorial for Jerry Paris. We had shown up because they were screening the rarely seen, and purportedly well considered, film, The Grasshopper (1970), which had particular meaning to Jerry Paris and had apparently gotten a terrible release in 1970. The film oddly starred Jacqueline Bisset, Jim Brown and Joseph Cotton. Wonderfully, both Jim Brown and Jacqueline Bisset were there, and both spoke about what a joy it was making the movie, and that Jerry Paris was truly a nice guy. Jim Brown was proud to have starred in a serious, non-exploitation movie. Many members of the Happy Days cast got up, like Tom Bosley and Al Molinaro, and told funny stories about Paris. Once I knew who Al Molinaro was – I guess he was the chef or the owner of the burger joint in Happy Days that Ron Howard frequented – we both realized that we both banked at the same branch of Bank of America, and after that, since he’d seen me at the memorial, when I’d see him there, I would wave hello and he’d wave back.
Of Jerry Paris’ vast career, my two favorite aspects are: he played Marty’s brother, and he directed the comedy western, Evil Roy Slade (1972), which I thought was the funniest TV ever made, and it came out two years before Blazing Saddles (1974). Slade is a perfect part for John Astin, who I thought was extremely funny. As a baby, Evil Roy Slade is abandoned in the desert as a baby, but he’s already so mean that the wolves won’t adopt him. He’s the meanest man in the west. The film was co-produced and co-written by Gerry Marshall, who would go on to produce Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, and hire Jerry Paris to pretty much direct every episode of a show that ran eleven seasons. Marshall also spoke at this memorial, and he got a few laughs. It was a lighthearted affair.
Anyway, when they finally showed The Grasshopper, it was just plain dull, bad and lifeless. It hadn’t gotten screwed on its release, it was simply a piece of crap. Why did Jerry Paris have a soft spot in his heart for this film? Who knows? When it was over, we all filed silently out of the theater, our heads lowered, from what now felt like a grim memorial service, but had started off well.
It’s foggy here today, which is always kind of cool.