As a co-star on ”The Tracey Ullman Show,” Sam McMurray is reinventing the wheel. One of the few variety shows on TV, the program seeks to avoid
”doing anything a la Carol Burnett. We don`t do gags,” says McMurray.
”We don`t have to end each scene on a punch line. What we`re essentially doing is (presenting) characters who are organically funny. We`re trying to break new ground.” Part of the groundbreaking is creating a gay couple who are raising a teenaged daughter. Somehow you just can`t see Garry Moore and Durward Kirby playing those two roles, can you?
There are some things you don`t forget. Shaking hands with genius is one of them. In ”Entrances: An American Director`s Journey” (Limelight), director Alan Schneider recalls the first time he read Edward Albee`s ”Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”: ”I remember vividly . . . page after page of Edward`s lightninglike words exploding in my brain. I felt as though I were being hit over the head with a succession of concrete blocks, and yet I didn`t want them to stop hitting me. . . . After a while, I called Edward to tell him that I had read his new play and loved it.”
All those June graduates who are trading cutoffs for pinstripes might want to read ”Welcome to the Real World!” (Ballantine), by Wes Smith. He offers the following advice: ”Harvey Wallbangers might be considered a poor choice of beverage for a business lunch. . . . Now is the time to decide what you want on your tombstone. Will it be: `He had a job that paid well, but he hated it`? Or will it be: `He didn`t have much money, but he had one hell of a time`?. . . Be nice to little people; you are still one of them.”
REPLAYS
”No person should be denied equal rights because of the shape of her skin.”
Pat Paulsen
”It`s much easier nowadays to place a black person on a job than somebody who`s fat.”
Kay Snow
”Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women.”
Sylvia Hollander
