When you get up in the morning, phone your friend of 35+ years, cartoonist Scott Shaw! Discuss the comic book story the two of you have agreed to do together for an upcoming special anthology and for God's sake, wish the guy a happy birthday! In fact, maybe you can post something cute on your site saying it's Happy Scott Shaw Day…that is, if you can figure out where the exclamation point goes in that phrase. And while you're at it, plug his website, Oddball Comics, and tell people it's full of the zaniest, wackiest comic book covers ever and that they'll have a great time if they click on over and read some of his Oddball Comics Commentaries.
I can't believe I actually got out of bed to post the above. Good night again.
Okay, Mark is confused again. It's the top of Hour 4 where I am and Jerry's getting emotional. He's paying tribute to a woman who used to work for him…Lil Mattis. He describes her as "one of the best lyricists that I had ever heard in our business." It's not clear if she passed away or just left his employ, though his manner would suggest the former. To honor her, he sings "Even Now," a song made famous by Barry Manilow. At the end, he shouts, "Lil Mattis…she wrote that!"
Did she? Really?
I mean absolutely no disrespect to Ms. Mattis but the official songwriter credits for "Even Now," as listed on the sheet music and in the BMI Database, say it was written by Marty Panzer and Barry Manilow. Ms. Mattis was a member of ASCAP and a search of their listing for Lillian Mattis lists only eight songs, including a couple of Jerry Lewis movies and TV shows, along with the lyrics to the title song of the Jack Lemmon movie, How to Murder Your Wife. "Even Now" is not listed among her credits.
So what's the deal here? Did Jerry just pay tribute to Lil Mattis by singing a tune she had nothing to do with and giving her credit for it? Or did he just reveal that she ghost wrote that song and others took credit for it? [UPDATE, years later: Mystery solved.]
Changing subjects slightly: It's hard not to notice that Jerry Lewis has two modes for introducing performers. When he's introducing a pal, he's smiling and loose and urging everyone to go see them and obviously not paying a lot of attention to what's on the TelePrompter. But then along comes an act that's just an act to him, if that. He introduces The Village People with an unenthusiastic reading of the prepared text with no personal Lewis recommendation or plug…and then at the end of a performance pre-taped elsewhere, he doesn't thank them, doesn't say anything at all about them. It's off to the tote board.
Then again, the guys in the once-outrageous costumes who just sang "Macho Man" and "Y.M.C.A." are The Village People in the same sense that Steve Martin is Inspector Clouseau. I'm guessing one original member…two at most.
Okay, here comes Lance Burton. I'm going to watch one of the best magicians in the world, then go to bed. TiVo's getting it all down and I'll resume Jerry watching/blogging tomorrow. Nighty-night.
Did you ever wonder what the toys are doing when no one is watching? Yeah, me neither. But if you're my age or thereabouts (I'm 54 physically, 6 emotionally), you might recall this commercial. Or have had your very own Popeye jack-in-the-box.
(Quick aside: This is my second link to a new video site called Veoh. They offer a program which you can download to your computer and then it will download videos to your hard drive for you. There are some slightly suspicious things about this downloading software. On my system, it kept loading itself into memory and running in the background even when I didn't want it there, so I deleted it. I don't know if it's unsafe or if it was just some anomaly with my computer. Until such time as folks who know more about this kind of thing than I do weigh in, you might want to proceed with caution regarding the Veoh software…but the watching of online videos should be safe.)
Jerry keeps saying it's his fortieth MDA telethon but the website says it's the 41st. My pal Earl Kress phoned to explain why Lewis said it was his 56th telethon. It started as a local event in New York and later went national. So it's his 56th (or so) telethon but his 40th national telecast, give or take a couple. Before Earl called, I was further confused as Jer welcomed some firefighters by saying, "These guys have been with me on the telethon for 52 years." These were New York City firefighters so they started with him on the local broadcasts.
I don't know why I care about this, either.
Jerry just introduced the next musical act…Gary Lewis and the Playboys. How'd they arrange that booking?
I'm a few hours behind the rest of the world but thanks to TiVo, I'm watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Jerry looks good but Ed McMahon is a far cry from the guy who used to sit next to Carson and go "Hi-yo!" He starts the festivities by introducing the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman as "the mayor of Los Angeles."
I'm a bit confused, too. Jerry begins by announcing this is his 56th telethon and that it's "officially" the fortieth MDA telethon. I'm not sure what that means but the MDA website says "The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon is the 41st annual Labor Day show."
I'll report back if I notice anything else interesting.
The Batman TV show (the one starring Adam West) went out of production in early 1968. In 1972 or 1974 (accounts vary), Burt Ward got back into the Robin suit and Yvonne Craig redonned her Batgirl tights to film this ad for…well, you'll see what it's an ad for when you watch it. That's Batman producer William Dozier — who narrated the original show — reprising his role, too.
But that is not (repeat: not) Mr. West playing Batman. At the time, he had decided those days were behind him and that he would never again wear the costume or do the Batusi, the better to establish that he could play other parts. So the guy in the bat suit is Dick Gautier, who may be best known to you for playing Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, Robin Hood on When Things Were Rotten and about eight thousand other appearances. Dick, with whom I've had the pleasure of working a few times, is one of the funniest human beings on this planet and also, as you can see on his website, a gifted cartoonist. I always thought that if they'd made a TV series of Will Eisner's The Spirit when Gautier was younger and if James Garner wasn't available — or maybe even if he was — Dick would be the guy.
The clip runs one minute. The person who prepped it for uploading to the Internet has an odd way of spelling the word "commercial" but there's nothing I can do about that so don't complain to me.
A certain segment of the population is always talking about "supporting our troops" and I'm often baffled by what they mean by that. At times, it seems to mean not suggesting their leaders are fallible or that the war is not being fought properly or even not challenging incumbents.
I would think that "supporting our troops" meant — at an absolute minimum — making certain that they have the best possible equipment…to, you know, kinda minimize as much as possible the chance of them being killed. I would also think it would involve paying them a good wage and guaranteeing them the best possible medical care, both during and after their military service.
I would also think it would include doing something about predatory lenders. As recounted in this article, a lot of soldiers are simultaneously trying to serve while struggling with personal debt…and there are people out there who are exploiting this dire situation. It also, of course, suggests that while we might honor the soldiers' service and pray for their speedy and safe return, we sure ain't paying them enough.
One of the reasons this is a problem for our soldiers is that last year, in what many claimed was a bill bought and paid for by the credit card industry, our federal lawmakers made it much more difficult to declare personal bankruptcy. There was an amendment offered to that bill by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to exempt our servicemen and servicewomen from that vulnerability, at least while they were fighting overseas. The amendment was soundly defeated. Someone ought to ask the senators who voted that way if they think "supporting our troops" includes forcing many of them into the hands of loan sharks.
In 1929, MGM began shooting a big, expensive color musical starring Lawrence Tibbett, a performer of grand, operatic presence. The film was entitled The Rogue Song and it was well into production when the studio's ranking genius, Irving Thalberg, decided it was in dire need of corrective surgery. Lionel Barrymore was directing and doing a fine job of proving that a great actor could also be a leaden, uninspired director. The movie lacked many things but what it really lacked was comedy. At the same time, the marketing folks were fretting its commercial appeal, especially overseas where Tibbet was largely unknown. Thalberg decided that both problems could be solved with two additions to the cast — one named Laurel and the other named Hardy.
Not long before, MGM had borrowed Laurel and Hardy from their native habitat — the Hal Roach Studios — to appear in an all-star feature, The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Their presence in that had enlivened the proceedings and been singled out by critics. In light of that, a deal was brokered whereby Roach would again loan their services to Metro…and this time, Hal Roach himself would come along to direct and consult. New scenes were scripted to add the additional characters to the continuity and others were deleted to make room. In one interview years later, Laurel said that Tibbett had actually completed his scenes and returned home to New York when he was summoned to return to Hollywood for additional shooting.
The Rogue Song was released in early 1930 to decent reviews (Tibbett got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor) and a decent box office response, especially overseas. It was not a smash hit but the consensus seems to be that it did a lot better with Laurel and Hardy than it would have without. In some cities, they were billed as its stars even though their total footage count did not warrant that.
How was the film? I dunno. I haven't seen it and neither has anyone else for more than half a century. It is a lost film.
A few pieces of it have turned up here and its sound track exists there but there are no complete prints. Laurel and Hardy fans have fantasized about locating one, not because they expect a masterpiece but because, well, it's a lost film…one of the few gaps in the Stan and Ollie library. Also, apart from one public service short they made in the forties, it was their only appearance before a movie camera loaded with color film. It's hard to remember this since some of their movies have been colorized…but they were all in black-and-white. All except for Tree in a Test Tube (the public service film) and The Rogue Song.
Our clip today is of a bit less than three minutes of The Rogue Song. This may whet your appetite to wish the rest would someday be located or it may make you say "eh" and decide that nothing wonderful has been lost. There isn't much of Laurel and Hardy in these three minutes and one suspects their scenes were shot some time after the surrounding footage. But as we say here at news from me, a little Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy.
A lot of people say they want to know what's going on in Iraq. I'm not convinced some of them do. I think a lot of people (the loud ones, mainly) want to know just enough to support their pre-existing view of the Bush administration. That which does not must be ignored or written off as propaganda or bad/biased reporting.
There are times I think the best way to know what's going on — assuming you really do — is to ignore all the pundits. Ignore the guys on the left who tell you what you should think. Ignore the folks on the right who tell you what you should think. Even — gasp, choke — ignore me. Just look at official documents and give them whatever weight common logic tells you they're worth.
A few days ago, the Department of Defense issued a 63-page report on how things are going in Iraq. I think it's reasonable to assume that the Pentagon is not going to make things sound worse than they are over there. If anything, they will err on the side of spinning events to make things look rosier.
Here is a link to an Adobe PDF of the report. I just went through the whole thing — and while I won't claim I understood every nuance and detail, large chunks of it are perfectly clear…and most of them are not encouraging. Civilian deaths are increasing and spreading over a wider area. Increasingly, citizens are giving their support to insurgent and militia groups that are providing security where the national police forces have failed, and homelessness and displacement have taken a sharp rise. Economic conditions are bad and confidence is low. And this is not some critic of the Bush administration saying all this. This is the Pentagon.
But like I said: Don't listen to me. Read it for yourself. And don't ignore the good news that's in there, either.
The things I do for you people. The other day, I bought a roll of "five flavor" Lifesavers candy…the first roll I've bought in (I'm guessing) 46 years. They were a nickel the last time I purchased one. Now, they're 69 cents and the rolls are just as hard to open as they were then, and I think the Lifesavers themselves are slightly smaller.
Orange does, indeed, seem to be back and the other four flavors are pineapple, raspberry, cherry and watermelon. This is not to suggest they all taste like the corresponding fruits. As one reader of this site, Rob Staeger, wrote me when we were discussing Hostess Orange Cupcakes, "When I was in college, my friends and I realized that they didn't taste like oranges at all. We came to the only logical conclusion: They tasted like the color orange, not the fruit." (The above photo does not seem to be of the current flavor line-up.)
So how do Orange Lifesavers taste these days? I'm afraid I'm not the one to ask. Ever since my Gastric Bypass Surgery, my sweet tooth has gone sour. One of the unexpected changes in my body is that I've lost about 80% of my taste for sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, especially the latter. Things taste sweet but it's a joyless sweet. Recently, just as an experiment, I tried a few of my favorite cookies and I'm sure they still taste the same to most folks…but it was just a mild pleasure to me, barely worth the effort.
This does not displease me. Losing the fun of sugar is not a bad trade-off for dropping all that poundage. In fact, I'm not sure that a lack of fondness for sugar isn't a very good thing in itself. It's certainly not something I would have imagined I could ever have…but I gave up Pepsi-Cola and other sugary, bubbly soft drinks back in February with surprising ease. In fact, I'll tell you when I did it. It was those four days when I was hospitalized for Cellulitis. I drank no soda in the hospital and didn't miss it. I already knew I'd probably be having the Gastric Bypass Surgery before the year was out, and that it required the abandonment of carbonated beverages and caffeine. So I decided to see if I could keep the soda abstinence going and I haven't popped a pop-top on a pop since.
Which really amazes me. Once upon a time, I went through a six-pack per day and got severe headaches when I tried to withdraw. I didn't think I could give up Pepsi any more than I could give up exhaling. Guess I don't know me as well as I thought I did.
Since the surgery, I can and do eat sugar but it has to be in moderation. If I ingest too much, I am liable to endure an attack they call "dumping." Symptoms include such fun things as bloating, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, weakness, sweating, and rapid heartbeat. I have never experienced this but I have read articles (like this one) from people who have and it sounds like one of those experiences you don't need to ever experience.
But I wasn't afraid to try a Lifesaver. One Lifesaver only contains 10 calories and 2 grams of sugar and I guess it momentarily reminded me of being a kid and getting my bi-annual (birthday and Christmas) gift of Lifesavers from Uncle Nate. 46 years from now, I'll have to try another one. Hope they still have the orange then.
Over on his weblog, my buddy Earl Kress mentions one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera characters…Chopper the Bulldog from the Yakky Doodle cartoons. It got me to wondering how many people know that Chopper was sorta, kinda inspired by the great western actor, Chill Wills.
In 1961 when the Yogi Bear show was in production (with the Yakky cartoons as a segment), Mr. Wills was in the news, at least in Hollywood. The year before, he'd had a showy role in the John Wayne movie, The Alamo, and there was talk of him winning an Academy Award for his performance. Much of this talk came from Chill Wills, who took out a series of costly ads in the Hollywood trade papers, first to tout himself for a nomination and then, after he was nominated, to ask people to vote for him.
In later years, it would become fairly standard to see the pages of Variety and Hollywood Reporter crammed with ads urging members of the Academy to vote this way or that way. At the time though, it wasn't such a well-established industry custom…and even later when it was, the ads would usually not be so personal. Today, there will be pages aplenty suggesting you vote for Nicolas Cage but those pleas are not purchased by Nicolas Cage or signed by him.
The Wills ads struck many as excessive and offensive. In one, he said that the producers of The Alamo were praying as hard for Chill Wills to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the defenders of the actual Alamo had prayed for their lives before battle. Others were worse, though late in the campaign he seems to have realized he was alienating voters and toned it down. After the balloting closed, he took out a full pager that said, "Win, lose or draw, you're all my cousins." This prompted a response ad from Groucho Marx who wrote, "Dear Chill Wills…Am happy to be your cousin but I voted for Sal Mineo." When the envelope was opened, it turned out that most people had voted for their cousin, Peter Ustinov, for his role in Spartacus, and it became industry legend that Chill had put a chill on his own chances with his trade ads. (Twelve years later, the same would be said of the campaign mounted on behalf of Diana Ross for her performance in Lady Sings the Blues.)
So one day in the midst of the voting in '61, Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and their creative team are working on their newest show. They'd decided to build a cartoon around a little duck character who'd appeared occasionally in their earlier cartoons. He'd been called Itty Bitty Buddy (or Iddy Biddy Buddy) when he'd appeared in earlier H-B cartoons and a slightly different version of the duck had popped up in the Tom & Jerry cartoons that Bill and Joe had directed for MGM. They'd named his newest identity Yakky Doodle Duck and now needed a strong supporting character to play off him. They found a direction for that character when…
Well, if we believe something Barbera once told me — and I'm not saying I do — the phone rang and it was Chill Wills, calling to ask J.B. to vote for him. Joe told me he promised Wills he would, got off the phone and thought, "Gee, what a great voice…and that manner. That's just what our duck needs." Before the day was out, Chopper the Bulldog was born.
Cute story…and maybe it's even true. Or maybe Joe just noticed one of Chill's ads in Variety and that provided the inspiration. A lot of Hanna-Barbera characters started with some reference point to a comedian or character actor — Jimmy Durante for Doggie Daddy, Bert Lahr for Snagglepuss, Joe E. Brown for Peter Potamus, etc. Either way, Chill Wills inspired Chopper.
Since an Academy Award Nominee wasn't about to do voicework for what Hanna-Barbera paid, an actor with a similar vocal quality had to be found. Joe Barbera looked as far as Channel Five on his TV, hiring the local Bozo the Clown, the gravelly-voiced Vance Colvig, Jr. Vance was a second-generation Bozo. His father was Vance "Pinto" Colvig, the first Bozo on records and on local TV. Below is a photo from the 1989 Al Yankovic movie, UHF. That's Vance…and I'm sorry I couldn't find a better photo of him.
Vance Colvig (R) with Kevin McCarthy in the movie, UHF.
(Finding the voice of Yakky Doodle was a little harder. For that, Barbera had to go all the way over to Channel Thirteen…to an afternoon kids' show called Cartooneroony, hosted by "Uncle" Jimmy Weldon and his duck puppet, Webster Webfoot. Weldon did a great duck voice for Webster and it also became the voice of Yakky.)
And that's about all I have to contribute to the subject of Chopper the Bulldog. Yeah, I know: A lot more than you wanted to know. But that's what the Internet is for.
[UPDATE: Jim Engel just sent me an e-mail asking me if the Chopper characterization wasn't based on the Wallace Beery role in the movie, The Champ. He's right and I meant to mention that. But the character started with the Chill Wills voice, the same way The Jetsons started out to be based on The Life of Riley and turned somewhat into Blondie along the way. So I guess I did have more to contribute.]
Jerry Lewis is doing his 41st Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon this weekend. The entire network telecast from Las Vegas is 21 and a half hours but some cities only run portions of it and some let their local segments lengthen the broadcast. In Los Angeles, for instance, the entire show will run 23 hours on KCAL Channel 9…I think. My TiVo is somewhat confused because the schedule has the festivities broken into four separate parts. The first and third are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon while the second and fourth are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon (Cont'd). If you want to record the whole thing, you need to mark all four sections.
Thanks to my little satellite whatzis, I can also watch on it WGN in Chicago. They're running fifteen hours of it, then they go away for a baseball game. The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs are currently locked into a life-and-death struggle for last place in the National League Central Division and you don't want to miss that. After they duke it out, the station will cut back to Jer for around two and a half hours.
Wanna know about guests? The following is from a press release…
MDA National Chairman and Telethon star Jerry Lewis, joined by anchor Ed McMahon and co-hosts, Jann Carl, Tom Bergeron, Norm Crosby, Billy Gilman, Larry King, Tony Orlando and Bob Zany. This year's on-air talent includes Celine Dion, Paul Anka, Goo Goo Dolls, Lee Greenwood, Dave Matthews Band, Joshua Bell, Jo Dee Messina, Daddy Yankee, Cheap Trick, Rita Rudner, Neil Patrick Harris, Ray Romano, William Shatner, Donald Trump, Sean Hayes, Lance Burton, Clint Holmes, Louie Anderson, George Wallace, Julie Roberts, Maureen McGovern, George Clinton, Village People, the casts of Phantom of the Opera, Shout, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Color Purple and The Wedding Singer and more.
Not bad…but still a far cry from the days when Sinatra would come on to sing and would bring along his friend, Dean Martin. I linked to a fuzzy and brief clip of that moment here but we now have access to a longer version that includes more of the performances before and after. Here's Part One, which you may or many not want to skip. It's Frank singing before bringing Dino on and it runs a little over eight minutes…
And now, here's Part Two, in which Sinatra brings Dean onto the stage and the audience goes understandably crazy. This part runs a little under ten minutes…
Finally, here's Part Three, which is mostly Dean Martin carrying on for four minutes. I suspect an alien from another planet could watch this and find it hard to believe the man ever made a living as a professional entertainer…but I still enjoy watching Dean even when he's phoning it in from the wrong area code. There will be nothing like this on this year's telethon but there will be Shatner. That's something.
A new Fantastic Four cartoon show is about to debut. I have no idea if it'll be any good but its press releases are a little screwy. Here's an excerpt from one of them…
The original 1967 animated action-adventure series, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, premiered on ABC with 19 half-hour episodes produced by Hanna-Barbera in association with Marvel Comics. The complex characters were conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who then enlisted the help of Hanna-Barbera to create a half-hour broadcast network series. It was faithful to the source, featuring plots and characters straight from the original comics series and complete with character designs from the late acclaimed artist Alex Toth.
Itemizing the bad phraseology may be unnecessary for readers of this site but just in case: The Fantastic Four property was indeed created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby…but it was created in 1961 with Kirby handling the character designs and no Hanna-Barbera involvement. Years later, a cartoon show was produced by H-B, which is when Mr. Toth's design work was done in '67 as he distilled the Kirby models down for animation purposes, not as part of the creation of the characters. Also, there were twenty episodes (not 19) produced.
I never know what to make of things like this. Even if they handed the job of writing the press release to someone who knew nothing about the comic book or its first animated version, you could find all this info with about two minutes of Googling. The show is financed by a French studio and produced over there so I'm guessing the problem is that the press release was authored in that language and then someone did a bad translation job. Makes you wonder if wars don't sometimes get fought because of mistakes of this sort.
Today is the eightieth birthday of one of the world's great comic artists, Gene Colan.
Gene is one of those guys who was so prolific in comics that we all took him for granted. I have the theory that if he'd only drawn a couple dozen stories in the sixties and then disappeared, fans would still be haunting the newsstands with glazed eyes, wondering aloud, "When is he coming back?" Instead, Gene just did good, solid work from when he got into the field (around 1944) until…gosh, he's still drawing the occasional story so I guess it's 62 years and counting.
For about the first ten years of that incredible career, his work was okay but unremarkable. Some time around '54 — I think it was on a Tuesday — he seems to have suddenly decided to stop drawing the way everyone else was drawing (in order to please editors) and to start drawing like himself (to please himself). That was when the Gene Colan we know and love was really born. By the late fifties, he had a style that was all his own…and one reason it was all his own was that most other artists didn't draw well enough to replicate it. He seized control of dark and light in his panels, working in and out of shadow and posing his people so that even when what they were saying or doing was a yawn, you were at least mesmerized by the way they were lit. Dull scripts — and he was handed hundreds — sparked to life and his people actually breathed, right there before your eyes on the cheaply-printed comic book page.
In the mid-sixties, he began applying all this to Marvel Super-Hero comics, becoming the first guy in the place to break significantly with the Jack Kirby template…yet he still managed to do what Jack did: Make everything he drew interesting. He worked on almost every franchise in the place but most notably on Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil, Dr. Strange and (later and perhaps best), Tomb of Dracula. His delicate pencil work was inked by just about everyone who came within a block of the Marvel offices but most didn't understand the unique approach he was taking, working not in line and not in tone but in some middle ground of his own invention. I loved the work at the time but later, as I become more familiar with his pencil art, I came to realize how we only got 40%-60% of what he put into his pages. His best inkers — the Tom Palmers, the Frank Giacoias, etc. — managed to retain maybe 75%. Even Gene, on those rare occasions when they'd let him ink his own work, could only manage to keep 90%. He really was and is an incredible craftsman in graphite, and it's unfortunate that he did so much of his art at a time when comic book printing techniques were unworthy of him.
I've been fortunate to work with Gene on one or two occasions and would drop everything to do it again. Stan Lee wasn't kidding when he dubbed the guy "Gentleman Gene" because Colan truly is a gentleman, along with being a gentle man. He was never loud. He was never flashy. Those who worked with him rarely heard him complain. He just hunkered down and drew comics about as well as they can be drawn.
If you're a fan, drop by The Official Gene Colan Website. There, you can read a bio and interviews and see many examples of Gene at his best. You can also see the wonderful sketches he's now doing and if you're smart, order one…and there's also an e-mail link there if you'd like to drop Gene a note and wish him a happy birthday. Or even eighty more.
