Monthly Archives: November 2006

And it's even worse when you have to post three in one day…

Dr. Jerry Bails, sometimes known as "The Father of Comic Book Fandom," died in his sleep last night from an apparent heart attack. He was 73 years old.

He was one of the first people (some say The First) to attempt to document and chronicle the history of the medium. In 1961, he published Alter Ego #1, one of the first fanzines to ever put comic buffs in contact with one another. You can read a lot about it and about Jerry in this article by Bill Schelly.

Those of us who loved super-hero comics in the sixties owe a tremendous debt to Jerry. He was a strong cheerleader for the revivals that constituted what we call "The Silver Age of Comics." Almost all of the checklists and databases that exist today of what's been published and who wrote and drew it began with Jerry's work.

Jerry handed Alter Ego off to his friend Roy Thomas in the early sixties. It ended when Roy went off to become one of the top guys at Marvel Comics…and by then, there were hundreds of similar homemade magazines. A few years ago, Roy revived it and it's now one of the best magazines out there about comic book history. I'm sure future issues will tell more about Dr. Bails and his massive contribution to comics. On a personal note, I feel an enormous sense of loss. I never met Jerry in person but I've subscribed to his publications and projects since the mid-sixties and aided him with research whenever possible. We corresponded from time to time — by mail and later by e-mail — and you could tell that he'd managed to channel his passion for the medium into constructive, non-nerdy purposes. The art form is a lot better for having had him as a champion.

Boy, I hate having to do two of these in one day…

Playwright-lyricist (and occasional performer) Betty Comden has died at the age of 89. Working together with her partner, the late Adolph Green, she gave us a stunning array of stage musicals and motion pictures. The list includes On the Town, Wonderful Town, Peter Pan, Bells Are Ringing, Applause, Do-Re-Mi, Subways Are For Sleeping, The Will Rogers Follies, On the Twentieth Century, Good News, The Band Wagon and Singin' in the Rain. Any three of those alone would get you into the history books and that's only a partial list. The New York Times has a good, long obit.

Three people in the last half hour have written to ask if I was going to post a link to the climax of the famous Thanksgiving Day episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. Okay, here's a link to the link I posted last month here.

A truly funny writer named Chris Hayward died last Monday at age 81 following, as they say, "a long illness." Hayward had a long history in both animated and live-action television, the former including scripts for Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Fractured Flickers and other Jay Ward programs. Even while he was working on those, he branched out into non-cartoons with scripts for 77 Sunset Strip and several other detective shows of the day, then segued into variety shows (writing mainly for Steve Allen) and situation comedies with Get Smart, The Governor and J.J. and My Mother, the Car. He and fellow Ward writer Allan Burns created The Munsters and later, Hayward was one of the main writers on Barney Miller.

I met Chris only once…the way a lot of writers meet other writers: On the picket line. We were traipsing around ABC Studios with our signs in '81 when someone introduced us. Chris was quite pleased that I knew of his work for Jay Ward, though quick to credit Bill Scott for making funny work possible there. And I'm afraid I don't recall anything else that was said that day. I'm just pleased I got to tell the man what a powerful influence his work was on a lot of us.

Just to remind me, if not you: I will be showing my face in Columbus, Ohio this weekend at the annual Mid-Ohio Con, which is run every year there by Roger Price. I don't go to a lot of cons these days because, frankly, I've been to too many boring, generic ones. But every time I can make it back to one of Roger's gatherings, I do. The others I've attended have all been enormous fun with a fine, friendly atmosphere and enough stuff to see and do that you never get bored.

I'm hosting two panels there. On Saturday afternoon at 2:30, my pal of many decades, Tony Isabella, and I will be interviewing Gary Friedrich, Dick Ayers and Herb Trimpe — three men who did an awful lot of comics for Marvel, teamed and apart, in the sixties and seventies.

Then on Sunday morning at 11:30, I'll be interviewing Al Feldstein. I may ask Al about his stint as writer-editor of EC Comics, creating things like Tales from the Crypt and Weird Fantasy. Or I may ask Al about his longer, more lucrative stint as editor of MAD Magazine, turning it into the best-selling humor publication in the history of Mankind. Or I may ask him about both.

The rest of the time, I'll be wandering around. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, come on by. See the panels. Check out the Dealers Room. Heckle Tony Isabella. And say howdy.

TV producer-pundit Lawrence O'Donnell is turning up on a lot of shows lately, mostly on MSNBC, arguing the idea that if one thinks the fighting should continue in Iraq, one has a moral obligation to enlist or to enlist one's family. Here's a snippet from one transcript…

I've reached a Rangel-like breaking point with my TV pundit colleagues who championed the Iraq war and now say we can't leave even if we went there for the wrong reasons. For every one of them, I have a simple question: Why aren't you in Iraq? Or why did you avoid combat in your generation's war? The one unifying characteristic that all of us men in make-up on political chat shows share is fear of combat. Every one of us has done everything we can to avoid combat or even being fitted for a military uniform. Just like George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney, we are all combat cowards. It takes a very special kind of combat coward to advocate combat for others.

That's all true, of course. None of these guys served and some of them used every possible trick to avoid serving. (Some of us were spared having to resort to that because we had high-enough numbers in the draft lottery.)

If O'Donnell's point is that you can't or shouldn't advocate for war unless you're prepared to pick up a gun, I'd disagree with that. Every election day, each of us Good Citizens is expected to mark a ballot covering a great many issues that will never impact us directly. The premise of Democracy is that we, the people, are qualified to collectively make decisions even when we have no skin in the game.

But I think it's a good thing that O'Donnell is making that argument, just as I'm glad Charles Rangel is out there, talking semi-seriously about reinstating the draft. Actions have consequences and you can't keep calling for more troops to be sent into combat without confronting that issue. Some (not all) of those who want us to be escalating and invading sure sound like they don't place too high a value on the life of an American soldier. At the very least, they seem to think there's an easy and endless supply, and we don't have to think about where they'll come from. It's vital that we not view our troops as an inexhaustible and discardable resource…and that even if we aren't sending our own kids or ourselves over to fight, we make that decision as if we were.

I've received two dozen e-mails about the Superman Broadway show and only 23 of them have reminded or asked me about the TV version that ran on ABC in 1975 as a late night special. ABC was then airing this odd anthology series opposite Johnny Carson called ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. One week a month, it was The Dick Cavett Show. One week a month, it was Jack Paar Tonite, featuring Mr. Paar's ill-considered return to the talk show business. And the other weeks, it was odd specials and pilots and shows that made you scratch your head and wonder what, if anything, was on someone's mind.

Their version of It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman! featured David Wilson as Superman/Clark Kent, Lesley Warren as Lois Lane, Kenneth Mars as Max Mencken (the Jack Cassidy role), David Wayne as the mad scientist, Loretta Swit as the lady who got to sing, "You've Got Possibilities" and Allen Ludden, the host of Password, as Perry White. A gent named Romeo Muller, who otherwise wrote most of the Rankin-Bass TV specials, adapted the script and made it campier and more politically correct. (The Flying Lings, who were crooked Chinese stereotype bad guys in the original became Mafioso types with Al Molinaro playing their leader.) Videotapes of this one are making the rounds but trust me. You don't want to see it.

Now, then. I asked if anyone could name a successful Broadway musical where all the protagonists are pretty much unchanged at the end. Brad Walker thought of one — You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown — so it's possible. It's just not likely. Brad also wrote the following to me…

I never saw it on stage but I did get the Original Cast album out of the library. The standout number, as you say, is "You've Got Possibilities" sung by the pre-Alice Linda Lavin. But I do have affection for "We Don't Matter At All," if only because I've come across the attitude so often: "Baby, you and I / We're just about as special / As a walnut or a fly / We don't matter at all." Existential angst has never been so bouncy.

One song that never made it into the album was, "Everything's Easy When You Know How." The gossip columnist and the mad scientist recruit a team of Chinese acrobats as henchmen. The acrobats are anxious to get back at Superman because no one will pay to watch acrobats fly when they can see Superman fly for nothing. (I'd move to Gotham.) Judging by their few lines in other numbers, the Chinese acrobats are severely stereotyped which accounts for their number being cut. When the show was broadcast on TV the acrobats were replaced by mafiosi, including Al Molinaro. I met Mr. Molinaro not long after that and he expressed surprise at the non-Midas touch of the Birdie creators.

Speaking of the TV show…they upped the camp value, took out Lois's spunk, replaced the gossip columnist with an ex-jock sportwriter (not Steve Lombard, but might as well have been) — none of which helped. The only addition I liked was when Superman is at his lowest, he gets his faith rekindled by a couple of youngsters named Jerry and Joe.

A few years ago, they released a new album with previously cut songs, like the dreary "A Woman Alone" (which was replaced by the more hopeful "What I've Always Wanted"), And then there was "Dot Dot Dot," a faux Winchell column set to music. Cassidy's character, Max Mencken, is a pencil-thin caricature of Winchell. "Dot Dot Dot" was dropped in tryouts, I imagine, because it skewed the proceedings even more Max-ward. I wish they had left in "Didjuhseeit?", a paean to fanboys: "Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Boy, he really is the Man of Steel! / Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Now I can tell that he really is for real!"

I heard from a couple of folks who saw the show on Broadway and enjoyed it. Here's a message from Steve Winer…

I saw the original show too, and I remember having a great time. Then again, I was twelve and probably one of a handful of audience members with an equal interest in comic books and musicals.

Don't underestimate the power of that original cast. Linda Lavin, young and fresh off The Mad Show, was charming and funny, and Jack Cassidy was, as always, a scene stealer in the best sense of the term.

I do remember finding the villain story a bit lame, but on the whole it was a fun show that might just have fallen in a strange crack between possible audiences — too hip for kids, not hip enough for adults. Then again, people are still performing it and talking about it forty years later, and that's not a bad legacy for a flop.

No, not bad at all. And I'm sure Jack Cassidy was wonderful in it. He was a terrific performer in everything he did, even if he was completely out of his mind. It's sad that he was never in a really big hit because he sure deserved one.

Lastly: I mentioned that Lee Adams and Charles Strouse had also done the songs for Annie. I was half right. Strouse did the music but the lyrics were by Martin Charnin. Sorry.

The above photo from the Macy's Parade preparations ran in this morning's New York Times. I know just how that man feels.

You'd think that today, Art Buchwald would be giving thanks just for being alive to give thanks. But instead, he has something sillier to offer us.

Here, in honor of Thanksgiving, is Jerky Turkey, a 1945 cartoon directed by the great Tex Avery. I linked to this one once before but that's now a dead link…so here it is again. If you'd like the background info on the film, it's all over at the original posting. Have a nice Turkey Day…and if you don't want to cook today, learn a lesson from this cartoon: Never, under any circumstances, eat at Joe's. This film will show you why…

I'm starting to feel sorry for Michael Richards.

The first time I heard about the incident at the Laugh Factory, I figured that he'd done something stupid on stage and that he was receiving the appropriate quantity of grief for it. I still think he did something stupid but I think the grief is expanding, all out of proportion. People are lumping him in with O.J. Simpson, drawing some sort of equivalency because they were both in the news on the same day. No doubt both were irrational with anger when they committed their sins…but stabbing two human beings to death strikes me as a wee bit worse than offending many more in a comedy club. Some of the offended have now engaged Gloria Allred to represent them in what seems like a pretty naked attempt to wring some dollars out of Mr. Richards. I would guess someone has looked up how much he made off his years on Seinfeld and guessed what percentage of the DVD moola is going to him, and figured he can afford to write a large check.

Allred is an attorney who has occasionally championed good and noble causes…but her prime motive always seems to be to get on TV and to try and shame someone into paying off her client(s). It's Justice, not in a court of law but by Press Conference. As I understand it, she isn't threatening — yet — to sue Richards, perhaps because she hasn't figured out yet what to sue him for. But she was on the news this afternoon demanding that Richards meet with her and her clients in the presence of a retired judge who would be hired to determine a sum of cash that the Seinfeld star should fork over by way of apology. In his appearance the other night on the Letterman show, Richards spoke of trying to control certain rages within him. I'm guessing that when he heard about Allred's demand, there was a lot more rage to control.

I'm even getting mad at her. Because of this woman, I'm sitting here, sympathizing with a man who got on a stage the other night and spewed racist crap to the point of making the audience walk out on him. The best possible interpretation you can make of Richards's rant is that he was high on something, enormously unprofessional and quite inept at handling his audience and his anger. That's the best. The worst would have something to do with having some sort of serious emotional problem and/or actually being a racist swine. Since I wasn't there and I don't know the guy, I'm not qualified to say that the worst applies. But he was certainly a jerk on stage and the proper penalty for that is for the public to stop paying to see you on stage. Anything beyond that strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment.

Reader Tom Wolper writes with an interesting question about the whole Michael Richards matter…

I understand the public interest about Richards's response to hecklers attracts attention because it touches nerves about race. But there is a secondary issue which I am curious about and nobody is discussing. Since you have friends in standup and I'm sure many of your blog readers appreciate standup comedy, I'd like to know what you think or newsfromme readers think about an audience member recording a live performance, editing it, and posting it publicly. i don't have any Improv stubs handy so I don't know if recording is explicitly prohibited in writing. On a pro sports ticket stub I see: "…and by use of this ticket agrees the holder will not transmit or aid in transmitting any description, account,
picture or reproduction of the Baseball Game to which this ticket admits him."

Are comics, in general, worried about bootlegs of their performances and are they worried about edgy or blue material being edited by an audience member to remove context, then being posted on the Internet?

Yes, comics are worried about bootlegs of their performance…and for just about every possible reason. Theft of material is a biggie. Back when I was hanging around The Comedy Store a lot, you practically took your life in your hands if you pulled out a note pad to jot down a phone number. A bouncer-type might come over to you and demand to see what you'd written because they knew the comics would get ticked off if they weren't policing that kind of thing. I've seen performers on stage stop in the middle of a set because they thought someone had a tape recorder.

So they're worried about that, they're worried about plain, old-fashioned bootlegging…and now, in the era of YouTube, I'm sure they're worried about material being posted on the 'net to make them look bad. If they weren't before the Richards controversy, they are now. In the past, some clubs have been rather lax about posting rules or printing them on tickets but this may cause them to get somewhat more strict, not only in terms of proclaiming the policy but enforcing it, as well. We may even see public venues that make you check any cellphones that has a camera. The folks who recorded the Michael Richards clip and posted it were probably breaking some Laugh Factory rule — and possibly a larger issue of copyright — but I doubt anyone is going to go after them about it.

The managers of The Laugh Factory, by the way, have posted this statement on their website saying, among other things, that Richards is no longer welcome on their stage. I'm not quite sure what the point would have been of having Richards apologize to Saturday night's audience for offending Friday night's audience but, hey, there are a lot of things in this world I don't understand. I think I'd be more impressed if The Laugh Factory apologized for the parking situation up there on a Friday night. If you've ever tried it, you know why things could get volatile in that room.

It amazes me — and maybe it shouldn't by now — that the "talking heads" discussing the Iraq War on our teevees can make predictions and then aren't held to any standard of results. You can be proven dead wrong about everything and still get a lot of air time. You can also still hold public office and even get a medal from George W. Bush…but that's a different problem. You'd just think that with all the people in this country who'd love to get on C-Span and the news channels to give their views, those who achieve that exalted position would be shoved aside if they're consistently off. I mean, you wouldn't keep going to a doctor whose track record was as bad as William Kristol's…but somehow, there's always a place for him on the Sunday morning news programs.

One guy who's gotten all or almost all of it right about Iraq is Scott Ritter, who is invariably identified as a "former weapons inspector." When Bush apologists say, of the fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq, "Everyone got that wrong," they're omitting Ritter, who was among the few who got it right. You'd think there'd be more interest in what he has to say now about Iran…not that he or anyone is infallible but come on. If two guys predict all the football scores and one guy gets most of 'em right and the other gets most of 'em wrong, who are you going to listen to for next weekend? Here's a link to a video interview with Ritter talking about Iran.

The Wall Street Journal has assembled some data and some confusing charts to see how the various major pollsters did in forecasting the Senate races just concluded. Answer: Not too well. Some of them were wildly off with their predictions, which we should all keep in mind the next time those same pollsters are telling us who's going to win.

We need a cartoon here, I think. This weblog doesn't feel right without a cartoon on it once in a while. This is A Day at the Zoo, a Warner Brothers cartoon directed by Tex Avery and released on March 11, 1939. There are no credits on this print but if there were, they'd say that the animation was done by Rollin Hamilton and that the story was by Robert Clampett and Melvin Millar. Clampett was already directing his own cartoons by this time and I have no idea why he received story credit on a Tex Avery cartoon. Voices were by Mel Blanc and Dave Weber, with Gil Warren as the narrator. Dave Weber, who also went by the name of Danny Webb, was the guy they usually called in when they needed a celebrity voice impersonation in those days.

That's about all you need to know right now. Enjoy the cartoon.