Longtime MAD magazine writer Lou Silverstone died last Monday at the age of 90. He was one of the publication's funniest contributors and also probably its tallest. Silverstone hailed from Plainfield, New Jersey and in college, majored in accounting. He got into that field for a time but longed to try comedy writing.
He began writing for MAD in 1962 with a parody of the TV series Bonanza called, of course, Bananaz. He was one of their best authors of TV and movie spoofs, and his fellow MAD scribe Arnie Kogen just told me he always envied the name Silverstone came up with for his parody of the movie, Five Easy Pieces. He called it Five Easy Pages.
His work appeared often in MAD until the early nineties when he joined the competition, writing for Cracked, which was then edited by former MAD associate editor Jerry DeFuccio. Silverstone eventually became co-editor there for several years. He also briefly dabbled in TV writing (Candid Camera), animation (authoring scripts for the Rankin-Bass studio, including for the Jackson 5ive cartoon show) and in comic books (writing for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents during its initial publication by Tower Comics in the sixties).
Silverstone's involvement in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents came about when he was writing sexy stories for men's magazines and contacted former MAD artist Wally Wood about perhaps drawing a comic strip for one of those publications. Wood instead recruited him for the new comic he was drawing for Tower, and Lou created the character, Menthor. He also for a time assisted Al Capp with the writing on the Li'l Abner newspaper strip.
I never met Mr. Silverstone but Sergio Aragonés and Arnie both described him as a very quiet, likeable guy who wrote some very funny pieces for the magazine. I remember articles with his byline being very clever indeed.