Set in 1972, the new show is based on the character Sam Drucker, proprietor of the general store in the sitcoms “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction.”  After solving a soybean heist in Hooterville, Drucker has decided to become a full time crime fighter. He sells the store to handyman Eb Dawson and moves to Kansas City, where he goes up against a mob of gangsters headed by Mort “The Menace” Miller (an aptly sinister G. Leo Hall).     

“He may be a country storekeeper, but Drucker has big city savvy,” says show runner Donna O’Brien.  She and creative partner Sheila Trombley started developing the show two years ago, following the cancellation of the Plunk network’s “Cleo and the Choir,” which they created in 2017.    

Nimble released the first three episodes of “Drucker” three weeks ago – there are ten in season one – and the critics have been plenty enthusiastic:

• “The fact that Drucker always wears a shopkeeper’s visor, even when he’s fighting gangsters, says something about this man,” wrote Sandy Fritsch in the January 2 issue of Montezuma.  “What it says is that no matter how many bad guys he puts away, he’s not going to forget that little town with the Cannonball train and Shady Rest Hotel.”
• “Carson Clemmons is truly Sam Drucker,” the New York Compendium’s Monica Teller wrote on January 4.  “Not since Robert Redford played Dan Rather in 2015’s “Truth” has a performer melded so flawlessly into another character.”

Clemmons, who co-starred in Nimble’s 2018-22 “Toothpaste Wars” before “Psychopathish,” reportedly won the Drucker role over 200 other young actors – including Jimmy Coleman, who’d just completed a six season run playing the Hubcap Man in “Thank You for What?”

 “You could have knocked me over with a broom,” says Clemmons. “These parts always go to Jimmy or Alex (Peterberg, of “Unsung Singer”).  Clemmons is too young to remember Drucker’s original sitcoms, and admits he never watched their reruns on Nickelodeon.  “But I did know about the talking pig,” he says.  

That pig, Arnold Ziffel, doesn’t actually talk, of course, but rather communicates with oinks and grunts that certain humans seem to understand.  He’ll be featured in an upcoming episode, in which he sniffs out some counterfeit 20s the Miller gang has hidden. “I can’t really say any more,” says Clemmons, “except this is a different Arnold Ziffel than fans might remember.”  

O’Brien says other characters – or at least a version of them – will show up, too.

 “The Mr. Haney character didn’t go over with test audiences,” she says, “so we’ve replaced Eustace Haney with Eunice Haney.” Played by Syd Callings of “Seventh Day Adventists,” Eunice will come to Kansas City in episode six and end up helping Drucker disengage a cluster bomb. 

Also, one of the three daughters from “Petticoat Junction” – O’Brien doesn’t say which one – will seek out Drucker to help her kick a steroids addiction.

At 32, six feet-four, and with thick black hair, Carson Clemmons bears little resemblance to the actor who played the 1960s Sam Drucker. Frank Cady was shorter, bald, and in his late 50s.  “I guess it’s something about poetic license,” says Clemmons.  “And I guess it’s not about whether you have hair or not.”

O’Brien says that Nimble has been extremely supportive of the project.  “We asked them to re-build the Hooterville sets just for the first episode,” she says. “It cost them $15 million and they didn’t blink an eye.”  (CBS, the shows’ original network, had unfortunately sold the hotel, store and train sets to a Dutch conglomerate that planned to use them as part of a theme park that never materialized.)

“The only thing we went back and forth on was the catchphrase,” says O’Brien. She and Trombley have avoided catchprashes since their experience with 2009’s “Snake Lady” – when crooked CPA Sally Remson’s “Ditch the books, pass the pasta!” offended a national accounting organization, which then picketed outside ABC headquarters until the phrase was dropped.  

But citing the success of “Tase me with a taser!” from “Kitchenette Confidential” and “Formaldehyde, baby!” from “Laid Out,” Nimble insisted.  So O’Brien and Trombley came up with “We’re up to our nostrils!” 

“This is basically a comedic element,” says O’Brien.  “Everyone expects you to be up to your ass or your eyeballs, not your nostrils.” Different body parts were tested with over 50 focus groups, she says, and she’s confident the phrase will catch on with the public  “We’ve got people on the streets listening for it,” she says. “And we’ll be ready.”

Nimble has yet to renew “Drucker” for a second season, but O’Brien is confident that’ll happen soon.  “Once they see what happens between Mort Miller and the ballerina in Episode 8,” she says, “I think that’ll pretty much seal the deal.” 

The post “Drucker” – Starring Carson Clemmons – Makes it Three Hits in a Row for Nimble first appeared on Cubicle F.

 The curtain rises on 36 actors who go by numbers instead of names, seated in a circle. Two at a time – then four, then six, etc. – they take to the giant game board painted with large circles of varying colors. The show winds down three hours later, after a breathtaking 42 different numbers

That’s a lot of songs for one show – and while it may have worked somewhere else, the problem with a game-board show is that too many of the songs involve the same concept:  Right Hand Purple, Left Foot Blue and Don’t Kick My Leg Off the Yellow sound pretty much the same, for instance.

There are exceptions:  The lovely Sally Cloverland (Number 6) singing “How Do You Get to Know the Guy Above You?”  – as she’s poised nervously under 300 pound Number 33.  And Jerry Fillip (Number 22) singing the plaintive “A Whole Lot More Than Just a Game” generated a few sniffles in the middle of the second act.  

Word from the road:  As their last two shows – Up from the Down and Mechanical Mary – closed after six and two performances, respectively,  Alvierro and St. Marie-Vance desperately need a hit.  Unfortunately, so far no Pittsburgh critics been able to sit through an entire performance.  

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“It took us over nine years to get them all together,” says Moline, “including six months just to get 22 of Eddie Albert’s.”  The “Green Acres” actor owned a total of 436, she says.

The idea is for people to be able to take off their shoes, then put them back on using the same shoehorns once used by Bette Davis, John Barrymore, or Shecky Green.  “You’ll be experiencing exactly what these well known people experienced, feeling exactly how they felt when they put on their own shoes.”

Since 2010, when Portugese curator Alsim Planns was appointed the Simms’ director, there has been a major shift toward participatory exhibits – 2011s Variétés, for instance, which invited patrons to sort ketchup packs into categories, and 2020’s Courir! where trained squirrels chased people around a circular track 

“It’s no longer just about staring at a Picasso and asking your friend if it speaks to them,” says Moline.  Four years ago, incidentally, the Simms turned down her proposal to purchase 22 of the lesser known Picasso works – including Étude en bleu de comptable fiscaliste (Study in Blue of Tax Accountant) – and then allow patrons to draw on them with magic markers.

“They claimed it was the $234 million cost,” says Moline.

The FITS opening night reception is expected to draw over 600 – including Tamara Clorey, of Nashville, who will be showing her emerald-encrusted Elvis Presley shoehorn, for which she paid$3.7 million and claims is the worlds’ third most valuable.

The post Cleveland’s Simms Museum to Open Exhibit of 1800 Celebrity Shoehorns first appeared on Cubicle F.

The librettist, Pam Winters is a hot property right now. Her book for Seat of His Pants was nominated for a Clappy in 2018, and she co-wrote the Monica Rooney vehicle Girl in the Middle with Leona Fuller in 2020. (The latter ran for for 987 performances, even after Rooney suddenly refused to sing the Act 1 finale, Stay Away From Stanley, and was replaced by Sheila Feller)

The songwriting team of Sid Palmer and Al Rice hasn’t been so lucky.  Don’t Blame the Gypsy ran for three performances in 2013. Six years later, Theodore! – based on Leave it to Beaver – closed after just two when Willie Pitts, who played Eddie Haskell, got the lead in the sit-com,  Who’s His Father? .  (Pitts’ Good Morning, Mrs. Cleaver, My That Broach Looks Great on You was given to Hal Sims, who played Lumpy Rutherford, which didn’t help)

Most involved with Morey are wildly enthused about the project – particularly citing the act two eleven o’clock number: That’s Why They Call it a Cello! 

It’s also been reported that during a recent rehearsal producer Solly Weiner stopped the company in the middle of a first act tap dance routine to berate a clumsy chorus girl.  “You’ll never work in this town again!” he yelled, reportedly the first time that line has actually been spoken outside TV and the movies.

Hopefully such behavior can be attributed to a bad case of jitters, and the show will be the success everyone’s predicting. 

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