Monthly Archives: March 2003

That Disney check I posted here brought a lot of e-mail about Walt, so I thought I'd post my favorite photo of the man.  I never met Mr. Disney but over the years, I had the pleasure to hear him discussed by many close associates, including Floyd Gottfredson (who drew the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip for several dozen years) and Al Levitt (a blacklisted writer who wrote screenplays for Disney under a pen name).  All spoke warmly of Walt, and described a man quite unlike the reactionary, mercenary executive that has sometimes been described, usually by folks with little or no first-hand intimacy.  I have therefore never really believed the negative portraits.  I think they have more to do with some folks' emotional problems in dealing with "father figures," and perhaps with some of the company's business practices, especially post-Walt.

Someone wrote me to ask if the story was true about Disney wearing a conspicuous Goldwater button while receiving the Medal of Freedom from then-President Lyndon Johnson.  The main Internet debunker of urban legends says it's not so, and I note that at the time of the ceremony, Walt was employing Al Levitt to write films like The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and The Monkey's Uncle.  Insulting the President that way doesn't seem likely for a man who would concurrently employ a writer who'd been accused of being a Communist.  There are a lot of stories about Mr. Disney that I suspect are not exactly true.  He wasn't frozen, he could draw (at least a little), he didn't pre-film lectures to his staff to be shown at five-year intervals after his death, etc.

Like so many things that have borne the Disney name, Walt was larger than life, and a good subject for fantasy and legend.  He was also a mass of contradictions: An artist who largely gave up drawing; a businessman who did some pretty uncommercial things; an adult who not only indulged his inner child but built the kid an 85-acre amusement park.  Fifteen months ago, I sat in an audience full-to-overflowing of grown-ups who felt a professional and personal connection with a man most of them had never met, almost begging for insights from those who had.  I suspect that long after Mickey and Donald have faded from memory, the world will still remember Walt.  And they'll still be making up stories about him.

Speaking of Floyd Gottfredson, as I was just a minute ago, here's a link to a tribute site where you can read some fine articles and see many samples of his work.

Want to learn all about your neighborhood?  You can find out all sorts of data, courtesy of the 2000 census, by clicking here and entering your address.

Long before the term "supermodel" was coined, Katy Keene was one.  She first appeared in Wilbur Comics #5, cover-dated Summer of '45, and published by the Archie people.  Katy may have spent her days modeling glamorous gowns, but she had the same kind of familiar comic adventures: Troubles with boy friends, rivalries with girl friends, and even a bratty younger sister.  The publishers saw instantly that it all appealed to the same folks who purchased the Archie titles, and they kept the lovely Ms. Keene around for decades, both as a back-up feature in those books and — beginning in 1949 — also in her own title.  One thing that convinced them of Katy's popularity was an enduring and unprecedented avalanche of mail.

Cartoonist Bill Woggon, who created Katy and her adventures, had the idea of asking readers to submit their own fashion designs for his leading lady to wear, and every story was footnoted with little captions: "Katy's swimsuit designed by Becky Lou Freebish of Jerkwater, Alabama," or whatever.  In truth, Woggon — and the many fine artists who assisted him over the years — usually had to embellish and improve the readers' submissions, but he at least tried to incorporate their concepts.  When other companies began imitating the same gimmick, the usual procedure was to cheat.  The artists would draw whatever they wanted and then some secretary would wade through the mail and assign reader credits whenever some kid's sketch seemed vaguely close — or if none did, they'd make up phony names.  Woggon never did that.

Katy's comic book lasted until 1961.  Apart from a few reprints, she didn't get star billing again until her book was revived in 1983 — reprints of Woggon's work, then new stories by a fine Katy fan named John Lucas — and it lasted until 1990.  She still has devout fans out there who collect old Katy Keene comics, which are not always the easiest thing to find in complete form.  You see, most issues also included cut-out paper dolls, and many readers cut them out.

All of this, unfortunately, is leading up to an obit for Bill Woggon, who passed away March 2 at the age of 92.  Woggon was a charming man who devoted much of his life to cartooning, and who injected a personal touch into a kind of comic that was too often produced by anonymous assembly lines.  He was an enormous friend and teacher to many artists who assisted him, including Floyd Norman, Bill Ziegler and Barbara Rausch.  In his later years, he was delighted by the vast number of adults in both fields who told him he was an inspiration that had led them into cartooning, fashion design and even — in at least a few cases — modeling, itself.  He will be missed but his work will not be forgotten.

The two most recognizable voices in the world of movie trailers today are Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas.  There are other guys who narrate movie trailers but a majority of them are "doing" LaFontaine or Douglas, at least to some extent.  There are also other voiceover guys who profess to be combining the two.

LaFontaine is the guy you associate with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Terminator II commercials.  Here's a link to a demo of his work, and you'll need the dreaded RealPlayer installed to hear it.

And you can not only hear Hal Douglas but actually see him at work.  He's on-camera for the trailer for the Jerry Seinfeld documentary, Comedian.  Here's a link to a site where — assuming you have Apple QuickTime installed — you can view said trailer, which is very funny.  (Thanks to Marc Wielage for the referral.)

Polls like this one are saying that if the next presidential election were held today, by a slim margin, registered American voters would vote for an unnamed Democrat over George W. Bush.  This is good news for the Democrats but, given their track record, they'll probably blow it by eventually naming someone.  Then watch their advantage plummet.

It's bothered me for a few days that I erroneously recalled that Fred Allen died while walking his dog.  It probably isn't worth two thoughts, but I was sure I'd read that somewhere.  Turns out, I did.  The producer of What's My Line?, Gil Fates, wrote a book about the history of that show.  In it, he says Allen was walking a dog when he suffered the fatal heart attack.  This is apparently wrong, but at least I can stop wondering why I thought that.

I had great fun writing the Garfield TV cartoons for many years.  Here's your chance to write the Garfield comic strip.  Over at the cat's website, they've installed Garfield's Comic Creator, an online tool that allows you to put together your own Garfield strip.  Mix and match characters and backgrounds and props, and type in your own dialogue.  (And to answer an oft-asked question: No, I don't know when any of the Garfield cartoons will be issued on DVD in this country.  The producer seems to be in a state of perpetual negotiation for this to happen.)

I agree completely with this article by Roger Ebert on the Pledge of Allegiance.

I have to make time to say a few words about a very funny man named George Miller.  I just got two simultaneous e-mails from stand-up comedians telling me that George (one of their own) passed away yesterday, presumably from the leukemia he had been fighting for some time now.  I did not know George well but back when I was hanging around the Comedy Store, I saw him achieve two truly amazing distinctions.  One was that when he went on, all the other comedians would stop and listen.  Even in the back, where they talk incessantly about their own careers, they'd shut up and watch George.  And the other astounding thing was that they all liked him, personally.

His act was low-key and totally his own.  The material was not screamingly funny but it was unique.  He'd start slow and just when people were starting to wonder, "Who is this clown and where's the men's room?" he'd wallop them with a punch-line, not just out of left field but clear outside the stadium, out somewhere in the parking lot.  His pace didn't work all that well on television — though Mr. Letterman loved him and had him on often.  But in a club, when he didn't have to get a laugh every X seconds, he did just fine.

George had been ill for many months, and the rumor mill says that his medical bills were covered by one or more of his more successful friends.  I can believe that because, like I said, everyone liked him.  They liked his act but they liked George more.

I'm swamped with no time to write anything tonight, so here's a little oddment — a 1949 check actually signed by Walt Disney to move $600 into some special account.  I used to know a little something about handwriting analysis but I've forgotten every bit of it.  Still, doesn't that look like the signature of someone who would be highly creative and determined to make his name very famous?  The man almost wrote his name like it was going to be a company trademark.

Just something to think about.  Back to deadlines…

A reader named "Chaz" asks a Thundarr question that others have wondered about…

I noticed when I watched Thundarr that the letters "XAM" kept appearing on walls and old billboards.  In that show's post-Holocaust world, I always figured this was some sort of planted story point and we would someday meet Xam or find out that Xam was their God or something.  Since this never happened, I wonder if maybe the guy who painted the backgrounds was named Max and he just signed his work with his name backwards.  Can you inform me?

I can.  Ruby-Spears Production — the company that brought you Thundarr — sub-contracted a lot of its animation work to a studio in Utah named Ahern-Marshall, or A-M Productions.  At some point, a group of A-M employees broke off and formed their own animation company called "XAM!" (as in, "Ex-Ahern-Marshall").  The new operation also wound up animating a lot of Ruby-Spears shows, and someone there liked to slap the company's name into their output.  It turns up in a lot of other studios' cartoon shows of the eighties, as well.  Years ago, someone sent me a work of amateur fiction based on the premise that "Xam" was an alien Julius Caesar who had conquered the Earth in a scenario that linked together the worlds of Thundarr, G.I. Joe, Dungeons & Dragons, Spider-Man, Punky Brewster, and other disparate cartoon shows in which the author had noticed "XAM" signs.  Quite a crossover.

Also: Someone wrote to ask if there was ever a Thundarr comic book.  Well, sort of.  Western Publishing contracted for the property in 1981.  (You know Western better as Gold Key Comics, but by that time, they were changing the name of their line to Whitman Comics.)  They had at least three issues written and drawn of a standard-sized comic book and also assembled one issue in a small, pocket-sized format with which they were then experimenting.  Alas, Western was having distribution problems at the time.  I'm told they actually published a small run of the pocket-sized issue, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy.  They definitely did not get around to putting the regular-sized books out.  Those were postponed several times and then, when Western learned the show was going off the air, they scrapped the comics altogether.  At least one of the issues was written by John David Warner and drawn by Winslow Mortimer, and they may have done the other issues, as well — and no, I have no idea what became of that material.  A Thundarr newspaper strip was proposed, and Jack Kirby drew up a couple of sample weeks, but that never went anywhere.  Samples of that material were published in an old issue of The Jack Kirby Collector.

Thundarr the Barbarian was an ABC Saturday morning cartoon show I worked on at the beginning of the eighties.  The series was a minor hit and would have run more than two seasons but for Garry Marshall.  At the time, he had the three hottest prime-time shows on ABC — Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy — and he (or maybe Paramount) wanted animated versions of them on Saturday morn.  At that moment, if Marshall had wanted all the ABC executives to dance naked on his front lawn, they would have.  To make room for Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, they cancelled Thundarr.  (The following year, there was a Laverne & Shirley cartoon show and the year after, Mork & Mindy.  None of them did as well as the shows they displaced.)  The 21 episodes enjoyed some minor syndication as part of a package of other short-term shows but basically, Thundarr the Barbarian disappeared into obscurity.

But not forever.  As often seems to happen, a new generation catches on to a show and it comes back from the void in some form.  Thundarr went off in 1982 and just two years later, if you'd suggested that some company issue action figures or other merchandise, you'd have been laughed out of Toy Fair.  It was a dead, forgotten series that wasn't all that popular when it was on the air.  And yet now, twenty years after the last Thundarr was made, action figures are coming out from a company called Toynami, and other goodies may be forthcoming.  Those are the action figures below…

I really can't explain why the show is making a bit of a comeback.  True, they've been rerun on Cartoon Network and more recently on Boomerang, but they didn't attract much attention there; about as much as their earlier syndication did.  And also true, the kids who watched the show when it was originally on are now old enough to have kids of their own…but do youngsters ever watch a show because their parents liked it?  I think the answer may be that it was just a neat idea — a good-looking character with a good name and premise.  Since I only wrote one, I can also say that the scripts were generally pretty strong.  My friend Steve Gerber was the story editor and he really made that end of the production work.

One thing it did not have was good animation.  Alex Toth designed the three central characters, and Jack Kirby designed everything else.  So you had a lot of terrific art that was then processed by the cheapest-possible animation house.  When I see the shows now, I can't believe they put some of that stuff on the air, but they did.  At the time, the "bar" for acceptable animation on TV was a lot lower than it is now.

Still, the show has its fans.  Here's a link to one fan site where you can find news, images, an episode guide, and an interview with the producers, Ken Spears and Joe Ruby.  There's also a petition to try and get Time-Warner — which now owns the show, as they will eventually own everything — to release the old shows on DVD.  Since Time-Warner doesn't even want to put Bugs Bunny out on DVD, I doubt they'll do Thundarr, but odder things have happened.  The mere fact that anyone remembers the show is pretty odd, all by itself.

• Wending Our Weary Way Towards War by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate
• There's More Than Just U.S. Credibility At Stake In Iraq by Joshua Micah Marshall, The Hill
• Patriotism and the Flag by Bill Moyers, Common Dreams
• Bush Pushes The Big Lie to the Brink by Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate
• Letter to a European Friend by Rod Dreher, National Review

This coming Sunday, CBS is airing Back to the Batcave, a new TV-Movie about the exploits of Adam West and Burt Ward, back in the days they were playing Batman and Robin on TV.  Here's a link to a CBS website that tells you all about this monumental event.  And don't miss the online trailer.  You really want to know what goes on after the costumes come off.

Over on his website, Jim Hill pulls an article out of his archives about some folks who didn't do voices in Disney films — like, why George Gobel turned down the role of Winnie the Pooh.  Go read it.  (If that link doesn't go forward you to it, look for a piece called "Who's in Pooh and Satchmo's a no-show.")

Surprising the hell out of everyone, CBS is covering all three hours of this year's Tony Awards.  This is the ceremony that, every year, finishes last in the ratings, prompting rumors that the network will dump it.  Instead, they're expanding it.  I don't understand and this article doesn't fully explain it.

Game Show Network's website apparently has the schedule wrong.  The Emmett Kelly episode of What's My Line?, featuring Fred Allen's final appearance, is probably airing Friday night/Saturday morning.  The following episode, featuring the tribute to Mr. Allen, would therefore run Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Thanks to Rick Scheckman for the info.

I've mentioned William Saletan of Slate is probably my favorite current political writer.  Don't always agree with him but I wouldn't trust a political writer (or my own opinions) if I did.  Here's a link to an article he wrote way back in 1999 that was right then, and is even righter now.

Correction: I am informed by several folks (including Alan Light and Kevin S. Butler) that Fred Allen died while out on a walk, not while walking a dog.  Mr. Allen did not like dogs.  If I'd looked it up instead of writing from memory, I'd have known that.  Sorry.

While I'm posting, here's a referral to an article in the New York Times about Jules Feiffer.

Tom Snyder is a broadcaster I have always liked and admired, ever since he was a local newsguy in Los Angeles.  (He was the last anchorman in a major market to work solo; that is, without another person at the desk beside him, alternating stories.)  I wish he had a show but at least he has a website.  And here's a direct link to some thoughts he published about his friend, Robert Blake.  (Thanks to "Tomalhe" for the pointer.)

VIRUS ALERT!  There are many out there, as you know.  What you may not know is that some "spoof" the address of the sender.  Example: Larry, Moe and Curly all know each other.  Larry, being a stooge, gets a virus on his computer.  The virus goes into his computer's address book and gets the e-mail addresses for Moe and Curly.  It then sends Moe a contaminated message that appears to be from Curly.  So be wary of mail, even from friends.  And don't presume that a virus-laden message is really from the person in the "From" line.