Last year, the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild foolishly bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award to the proprietor of this website. This year, they've come to their senses and they're giving it to Jack Mendelsohn.
I first knew Jack's name from a brilliant, short-lived Sunday-only newspaper strip that he wrote and drew from 1959 to 1960, Jacky's Diary. It was funny but a lot of people apparently didn't "get it." It looked like the work of a child but it was signed, "by Jacky Mendelsohn, age 32-and-a-half." I loved reading it in the papers and I treasured the one issue of the comic book published by Dell. I later learned that this Mendelsohn guy had quite a history, writing (and even directing) theatrical animation for Paramount's cartoons studio, writing other comic strips and comic books. Jack, for example, wrote the Felix the Cat newspaper strip and most of the classic comic book, Panic, published by EC Comics in imitation of its own MAD. Jack soon became a top writer of both live-action and animated cartoon shows.
My pal Scott Shaw! has a good rundown of the man's career here so I'll just mention that Jack's credits include Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Three's Company, The Groovy Goolies, Scooby Doo, The Carol Burnett Show, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hong Kong Phooey and the movie, Yellow Submarine. That's a very partial list. Jack became a good friend of mine and I'm delighted to see the Lifetime Achievement Award go to someone with more actual Lifetime Achievements than all us past winners put together. In fact, the best thing about winning last year was that I got to be the one to call Jack and tell him that he won this year's award.
The presentation is on Thursday, November 4, 2004, at the Writer's Guild of America, West building at 7000 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048. The reception begins at 7 PM and the awards ceremony is at 8:00. Call the Guild at (323) 951-4000 for further info.