Monthly Archives: February 2002

One of the world's greatest animation directors, Charles M. "Chuck" Jones died this afternoon.  It hasn't made the wire services at this moment but any minute now, they'll erupt with the sad news.  Someone once wrote that if all Chuck Jones had ever given us was What's Opera, Doc? and One Froggy Evening, he would still be hailed as one of the greats.  It's very easy to forget — and watch the obits and see if this isn't the case — how truly staggering was this man's lifetime output.  He was born in 1912 and started as a lowly cel washer (the rock bottom job in the biz at the time) in 1932, working for Ub Iwerks.  In 1936, he became a junior, apprentice animator at Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio (aka Warner Brothers) and, just two years later, directed his first cartoon, The Night Watchman.

Before long, he was among the architects of the legendary Warner Brothers cartoon style, supervising some of the exploits of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as well as several series that were all his…most notably, Pepe LePew and the legendary Road Runner and Coyote.

When theatrical animation died out, he segued to television where his output was more varied, but still hit occasional heights with specials like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  The last few years, he had supervised several animation projects and done a lot in the field of limited edition cels.

This is only a short overview.  In the days and weeks to come, I'm sure we'll hear and see tons of specials, articles, obits and tributes to the man.  And you know what?  They still probably won't list all that he did.

Tom Galloway calls my (and, therefore, your) attention to this short-but-sweet article in USA Today.  It's about the Silent Movie Theatre, which is also the subject of this article on this site.  I've never met Charlie Lustman, the entrepreneur who saved the place from oblivion and is, apparently, making a go of it, but I am grateful to him for the effort.  He's a hero.  I would question though his quote in the article that, "Buster [Keaton] was the most original of all.  He never repeated a gag once in his career."  This is a minor point but it's an excuse for me to suggest that we oughta all badger Sony to release Keaton's sound shorts — assuming they own them — on home video.  Talk about repeating old gags.  The films aren't vintage Keaton but, hey, what is?

Some are a bit sad, especially when they recycle his old routines with increasingly-unfunny results.  But most are well worth watching and a few, like Grand Slam Opera, are quite enjoyable.  And while we're wishing, I wish someone would put out some good copies of The Buster Keaton Show — the one he did for TV, the one where he labored in a sporting goods shop.  Again, it's sometimes uncomfy to see him reusing old bits, but the genius was always evident, at least in the background, and sometimes it took center stage.  (Keaton also did a live show for TV, only a few bad kinescopes of which seem to exist…but I think all the episodes of the film show are still in existence.  I have one or two on tape and can't imagine that there wouldn't be a market for them.)

The prolific author Stephen Longstreet has passed away at the age of 94.  (Here's a link to an obit.)  But that's not a picture of him…that's Phil Silvers.  Long before Bilko, long before Silvers was a major star, he headlined a Broadway show called High Button Shoes, the book of which was sort of written by Mr. Longstreet.  That is, Longstreet penned the script and then — if we believe the legend — he departed, leaving others to revise it during its out-of-town try-outs.  Legend further has it that those try-outs were so disastrous that other hands — mostly Silvers and lyricist Sammy Cahn — wound up changing every word of the book.  In any case, High Button Shoes was a considerable success, and Silvers believed he was the reason.  He was therefore miffed, after the show opened, to read items that kept turning up in the gossip columns about a planned movie version.

The first one said, "Author Stephen Longstreet is in talks with Danny Kaye to star in the movie of his Broadway smash, High Button Shoes."  The next said, "Author Stephen Longstreet says he expects Red Skelton to star in the movie of his Broadway hit, High Button Shoes."  The next said, "Stephen Longstreet reports that Ray Bolger is close to signing to star in the motion picture version of High Button Shoes."  It was when he read the Bolger one that Silvers lost his temper and, from his dressing room on Broadway, dispatched a telegram to Longstreet, who was out here in Hollywood.  It said:

IF I READ ONE MORE ITEM ABOUT WHO'S PLAYING MY ROLE IN A MOVIE OF HIGH BUTTON SHOES, I WILL START PLAYING THIS SHOW EXACTLY AS YOU WROTE IT.

The press items stopped.

The first 24 issues of MAD Comics — it became MAD Magazine with #25 — have to be the most-reprinted comic books in history.  I must have at least ten copies of the best stories and six or seven of the worst.  That's not even counting the fact that I own them all in their original printings…a revelation that probably causes you to wonder why then, I buy all the reprints.  It's because I am a monumental chowderhead, that's why.  (Didn't think I had a good reason, did you?)  Anyway, the first time any of that material was reissued was in a series of Ballantine paperbacks that came out in the fifties.  They were black-and-white and the pages were chopped up and printed sideways, one third of a comic book page to each paperback page.

It was a helluva thing to do to such wonderful material but, somehow, it didn't matter to those of us who discovered the golden wit of the seminal MAD in this venue.

It threw me at first.  I'd started reading MAD with #70, by which time it had evolved far from the comic book issues edited and written by Harvey Kurtzman.  I picked up the first paperbacks, which were then in print, expecting the kind of stuff being done in the current magazine — Spy Vs. Spy, Don Martin, movie parodies, etc.  When I didn't get it, I felt swindled…but when you're that age, you tend to think, "I paid for it, I'm going to read it."  So I read it, "it" being the very first one issued, The Mad Reader.  And I loved it.

As noted, I have all those stories in many color editions, with the pages intact and rightside-up.  Still, there's something wonderfully nostalgic and even historic about those old paperbacks.  I just thumbed through my first edition of The Mad Reader and vividly recalled where I was when I read it.  Like the Grinch's heart, my sense of humor grew three sizes that day.

If you just want to read Kurtzman at his best (abetted by Will Elder, Wally Wood, Jack Davis and John Severin), there are other reprintings you should seek out…including DC's forthcoming Mad Library editions in hardcover and vivid color.  But if you wax melancholy for those old paperbacks, you can order reissues of the first two over at Amazon.  They are The Mad Reader and Mad Strikes Back, and clicking on their names will whisk you over there to order them and give us a tiny cut.  And do beware of the Potrzebie.

A friend sent me this picture of a famous (in Broadway lore) full-page ad that ran only once and only in one edition of The New York Herald-Tribune.  Wanna hear the story behind it?  Good.  In 1961, the notorious Broadway producer David Merrick had a musical called Subways Are For Sleeping that was limping along at the box office, losing business and about to warrant closure.  One reason was that the seven major Broadway critics had been indifferent — some, outright negative — about it.  So, if only to cause trouble, Mr. Merrick had his staff dig up seven men with the same names as the seven critics. He brought the men in to see the show, wined and dined them, and secured permission to use their names and photos along with quotes about how much they enjoyed what they'd seen.

An ad was prepared and submitted to all seven newspapers…and it would have gotten into all seven, some say, had not a copy editor at one of the papers spotted the hoax just moments before press time.  (The tip-off?  The photo of Richard Watts.  The theatre critic with that name was not black.)  The alert copy editor phoned all the newspapers in town and they all pulled it…except that the early edition of the Herald-Tribune was already on the streets.  No matter.  Merrick secured what he wanted, which was an enormous amount of publicity.  The grosses on Subways took an enormous leap upwards and, while the show was never a huge hit, it managed to last out the season and turn a modest profit.

It was a brilliant publicity stunt…and one that Merrick had wanted to do since the idea occurred to him years earlier.  What stopped him was that, back then, the critic for The New York Times was Brooks Atkinson…and Merrick couldn't find anyone else with that name.  When Atkinson retired, he was replaced by Howard Taubman…and there was an insurance agent named Howard Taubman.

Some called Merrick "The Abominable Showman" and there are those who worked with him who still get migraines at the mention of his name.  I don't doubt that all or most of their tales are true…but I do think this ad was a stroke of genius.  They don't make them like David Merrick any longer…which is both good and bad.

Everyone on the Internet is sending me the following info, so I might as well post it here:

Here is a useless but curious piece of information.  Today, at 8:02 PM, something will happen that will not happen again for 110 years. For one minute, it will be 20:02, 20/02, 2002.  You will have to wait until 21:12, 21/12, 2112 to see anything like this again: December 21, 2112, at 9:12 PM.

Reminds me of how MAD Magazine once pointed out that 1961 was an upside-down year…the first year that read the same upside-down as rightside-up since 1881 and the last until 6009.

Last week, we raved about the legendary voice demos of Paul Frees and posted a link to a site where you could hear one.  Well, just our luck: That link's server has been shut down.  So I've uploaded an MP3 file of a different Frees demo to my site's server.  Depending on which browser you're using and what audio programs you have installed, you should be able to listen to it and/or download it by clicking on the link below.  Warning: This file is almost 6MB and it runs for five minutes. So, if you're on a dial-up connection, I wouldn't chance it.

Great example last night on Game Show Network of why Garry Moore was maybe the best TV host ever, at least for that kind of show.  The rerun was I've Got A Secret for January 14, 1959, back when the show was broadcast live.  The second guest was a gent named Jack Mosely (sp?) whose secret was that using only his own lung power, he could inflate an inner tube until it burst.  Naturally, he had to demonstrate this…but when he did, it took a lot longer than usual.  Long past the allotted time for the stunt, Jack was still blowing into the thing, which had expanded to the point where it seemed ready to explode…but didn't.

On and on he went, with the audience getting hysterical — and, even on a black-and-white telecast, you could see that Mosely was turning eleven shades of fuchsia.  Through it all, Moore kept up a witty, unscripted running commentary and resisted the shouts of his producer to cut the spot off.  Special Guest Andy Griffith was still to follow but obviously, Moore reasoned that they had to play the act out to its pay-off.  I suspect he thought — no doubt, correctly — "Not one person in America's going to change channels until that tube goes kablooey!"  Instead, when a commercial became mandatory, Moore had Mosely pause and then, following the break, the inner tube inflation resumed, now with Andy G. joining Garry to do play-by-play.  The tire finally went bang, knocking Mosely on his ass and prompting an incredible audience ovation.  They never got to Griffith's "secret" but so what?  It was good, fun live television…and honest.

Silly stuff, of course.  But I couldn't help think that it would never happen on a TV show today…and I'm not even certain there's a host who could properly ad-lib and cope with all that spontaneity.  It isn't just that we rely too much on precisely-edited videotape.  It's that the star and format have to be protected at all times.  They have to know exactly what's going to happen and have lines prepped for when it happens…and if it doesn't happen that way, they stop tape or edit.  Even on a live program — say, an awards ceremony — any chance of surprise is kept to an utter minimum.  Maybe the mania some folks have for watching live, televised police chases is because it's such a novelty to view something other than sports on TV where fate, as opposed to a producer, is in control.  With all the "reality" shows around, it's only a matter of time before it dawns on someone that real, effective reality begins with allowing the unexpected to occur.

Have we reached the end of the great publishing practice of MAD Magazine knock-offs?  Since Bill Gaines's silly periodical began cleaning up on newsstands fifty years ago, rival publishers have been whipping up knock-offs with names like Sick, Blast, Crazy, Up Your Nose, The National Review, etc.  (Okay, forget The National Review.  It hasn't been funny in years.)  But most of the others were…some for a long time, some for a few issues.  My favorite of them was Sick, especially in the first issues edited by Joe Simon and written (mostly) by Dee Caruso…but the longest-running of them all was Cracked, which started in 1958 and endured into the new century without, insofar as I could see, ever developing a viewpoint or style of its own. At times, it looked like MAD's refugee camp, employing folks who were on the "outs" with Gaines.

Among many examples: The cover at upper right is from Cracked #10 and was painted by Will Elder…and for a long time, Cracked's lead artist was John Severin, who dated back to MAD #1.  When "MAD's Maddest Artist," Don Martin, went away mad in a contract dispute, he found a home in Cracked.  So did former MAD associate editor Jerry DeFuccio and one of MAD's most prolific writers, Lou Silverstone, who was an editor at Cracked for a time.  (A number of MAD scribes considered it a dandy place to sell their rejects, often employing pen names.)

Cracked did, however, demonstrate enormous endurance.  Rumor has it that this was because its publisher was in tight with a powerful distributor.  Indeed, the magazine managed some incredible feats of penetration, even getting into that most coveted of outlets, airport gift shops.  Last year at this time, it was the last surviving MAD doppelganger…but it's gone through a change of owners and some rough times.  At last report, it had been more than six months since an issue materialized, though the publisher is telling contributors that this is a temporary condition and that they will also receive money they have long been owed.  I hope so…but the two likeliest indicators of Death in magazine publishing are a suspension of publication and not paying your contributors.  If it's history, it will be a sad end to a glorious tradition.

This evening at 11:30 PM, KFTR — a Spanish language TV station based in Los Angeles and broadcasting on Channel 46 — is running How to Frame a Figg, the 1971 movie in which you co-starred with Don Knotts.  Let's see how you like being dubbed for a change.

As mentioned here recently, Dark Horse Comics is issuing a wonderful series called Classic Comic Characters.  Each month, you can buy a couple new figurines of the players from some famous newspaper strip.  (A good, honest place to order them is www.budplant.com.)  The little statues are issued in limited editions and a few months ago, they came out with Albert the Alligator, reptilian star of Walt Kelly's immortal Pogo.  In June, you'll be able to purchase Pogo Possum, hisself.  The pic at left was taken last evening on my breakfast table, placing the Pogo prototype alongside a finished Albert.  Don't they look great together?

This is because of the expert sculpture work done by the folks at Yoe! Studios but also because these were supervised by my best friend — and another of Walt's great creations — Carolyn Kelly.

I love it when a piece of merchandise perfectly captures the way a character oughta look.  Back in my Hanna-Barbera days, I lived in a state of perpetual argument with certain folks in the marketing division who didn't seem to know what Yogi Bear and Fred Flintstone looked like…or, if they did, they didn't care if the toys and t-shirts and lunch boxes matched up.  One of the joys of working for years with Jim Davis on Garfield was that it didn't matter to Jim how much it cost, the cat was going to look right.  I once saw him kill, without flinching, a $100,000+ deal because the manufacturer couldn't get the lasagna-loving feline to look the way he oughta.  Carolyn has been no less strident about getting her father's characters the way he drew them.  Would that more people who were in charge of great characters were as diligent and knowledgeable.

Thanks to Maggie Thompson, editor of Comics Buyers Guide, for her words about me in the issue I just received, which contains my final column for that publication.  I must correct one thing: The column that I did when that newspaper started was not in the first issue.  I recall it being in about the sixth or seventh…but it was definitely not the first.  (I'd correct some of the other nice things she said but I respect Maggie far too much to disagree with her…)

And just so we're all clear on this: My reasons for leaving CBG had to do with the business side of the operation, not with Ms. Thompson, who is a saint.  She's a lot like Mother Teresa except that Mother Teresa had the wisdom and compassion not to move my commas.

It's funny how something can be staring you right in the face for years and years…and suddenly, one day, you notice that which you should have noticed long before.  It's been there all along but somehow, you just didn't notice it.  If you click on the illo above, you'll see a reproduction of the front of Fantastic Four #7, published by the then-blossoming Marvel Comics Group way back in 1962.  It has an interesting but not spectacular cover which I'd looked at dozens of times over the years without spotting that which I recently spotted.  Actually, there are several interesting things about this cover.

One is that, a week or three ago, my friend Will Murray pointed out to me — and I concurred with — his theory that Jack Kirby actually inked this cover.  Jack almost never inked at Marvel and a few weeks ago, if you'd asked me if he'd ever inked any Fantastic Four covers, I'd have said, "Certainly not."  But this one sure looks like it was.  Joe Sinnott inked the insides of #5 and was supposed to be the regular embellisher thereafter but, a page or two into #6, he suddenly found himself buried in deadlines and he turned the issue back.  Dick Ayers finished #6 and took over from there on.  Apparently, in the shuffle, it was necessary to have someone else ink this cover and Jack wound up doing it.  (As a general rule of thumb, the cover to an issue was finished around the same time as the insides of the previous issue.)

Will further notes that this cover probably also shows us the way Jack "saw" The Thing at the time — the way he was pencilling ol' Ben Grimm.  The odd texture of the character's epidermis changed a lot as different artists inked Kirby's pencils, though they all seem to have made him less claylike and more segmented than Jack intended.  Eventually though — and perhaps to some extent because of the inkers — Jack began to pencil the character less claylike and more segmented.

But neither of these is as interesting to me as this:  All those of you who ever met Jack, take a close look at the drawing of Mr. Fantastic.  Stare at it for a few seconds.  I did…and I was amazed that I'd never before noticed how much the character looks like Jack — especially, Jack as he must have looked around 1962.  In fact, the more I looked at it, the more it looked like him.  (I met Kirby in '69 so perhaps it looks more like him to me than it does to those of you who met him later, or only saw later photos.)  I always knew he drew himself into most of his stories — emotionally, if not visually — and, of course, there are blatant autobiographical elements to The Thing, Nick Fury and any other character who was ever caught puffing on a cigar.  It was no secret that Jack identified with most of his recurring heroes but I suddenly found myself saying, "My God…how could I never have noticed before how much Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards looks like Jack?"  And now that I've made that connection, I doubt I'll ever be able to shake it.

Chanteuse Extraordinaire Shelly Goldstein notes that we're seeing a lot of articles and interviews to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the landmark TV mini-series, Roots.  They're trotting out Ed Asner and Levar Burton and Ben Vereen and most of the surviving actors…but you notice which star they haven't interviewed?  Whose name isn't even mentioned?  Give you a hint: His first two initials are "O" and "J."

An Enron exec who testified this morn seemed to be setting up what may become the official "spin" from the Republican/Enron side of the scandal…namely, that Skilling and Fastow were sharpies who duped poor, innocent Ken Lay and the Board of Directors.  Do we think this will sail?  No, we do not.  For one thing, Skilling and Fastow won't take the fall without bringing others down.  For another, Lay has simply been too visible and, as the closest-possible buddy of the Prez, there's too much political advantage to be gained by keeping his feet to the flames.

But another problem — and I'm not kidding about this — is his name.  Think about it.  A lot of public figures are like a commercial product with a bad name.  Once upon a time, one-time advertising man H.R. Haldeman did a marketing survey on his "product," which happened to be Richard Nixon, and concluded that the negative connotations of "nix" were not helpful.  That was why in the '72 campaign, they minimized the usage of their candidate's name and plastered "Re-Elect the President" on most bumper stickers.  We've seen other public figures since who lost a point or two of favor because of their monikers.  It was easier to sell the idea that detective Mark Fuhrman was a racist swine because his name sounded Germanic and recalled the word, "fuhrer."  Democrats have less trouble pinning obstruction charges on a guy named Tom DeLay than they might have if the gent had a different surname.  And before him, it was easy to sell negatives about a man named "Newt," though — God knows — the guy did plenty to help them.

A guy named Lay is real susceptible to being portrayed as one who screwed a lot of people…especially when linked with a President named Bush and a Veep named Dick.  Skilling and Fastow are names that suggest connivers, as well.  The former connotes "skill" and "skinning" while the latter could be said to be pulling a "fasto."  So the notion that they were the masterminds may have some legs…but Lay's name is just too perfect for him to ever get completely off the hook.

I'm quite serious about this theory, by the way.  I call it The Sgt. Bilko Rule.