Monthly Archives: December 2006

Here's another one of those Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer studio. This one is called Volcano and it was released on July 10, 1942.

Superman/Clark Kent doesn't have many lines but the ones he has sure don't sound like Bud Collyer to me. The narrator is said to be a gentleman named George Lowther, who also wrote and directed the Superman radio show at times. He also authored a very nice book about the character in 1942 and is said to have contributed a number of key ideas to the Superman legend. And that's about all I know so you might as well go ahead and click. If you need me, you know where I'll be.

E.J. Dionne on how George W. Bush wanted this war…but apparently not enough to pay for it.

One of my favorite places on this planet is the tourist attraction in Los Angeles known as Farmers Market. My parents took me there when I was a toddler. In fact, I have a fuzzy but certain memory of being taken along to a baseball game at Gilmore Field, right next door to the Market, when the Hollywood Stars played there. This was before L.A. had a major league team, though come to think of it, there have been many years since the Dodgers moved here when that still seemed to be the case. In any event, the Stars played their last game there in '57 when I was five and I remember being to at least one of them.

Everything in that area then was Gilmore: Gilmore Bank, Gilmore Field, Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore gas station, etc. The Gilmore Bank is still there, though in another building. In the photo above, if you look at the far right, you can see the screen of the now-extinct Gilmore Drive-In where around 1959, I squirmed through a double-feature of Onionhead and Once Upon a Horse. Onionhead was the movie that convinced Andy Griffith to get into television and Once Upon a Horse was the movie that proved Rowan and Martin were not the new Martin and Lewis. Then as now, the Gilmore Company owned and operated the wonderful amalgam of merchants, grocers and eateries that is Farmers Market.

I remember the way Farmers Market looked when I was a kid. Parts of it have been torn down since then but the portions that remain don't look all that much different. Or to put it another way, those sections have probably changed less than almost any other well-travelled part of Los Angeles. I wrote a few other thoughts about it in this post last September…and I even wrote them sitting at a table at Farmers Market.

If any of my friends are as fascinated by the place as I am, they might want to check out the new Farmers Market website. It's just been remodelled and there's a very nice History section with photos aplenty. And now that I've gotten to thinking about it, I have a yearning to dine there. (It wasn't the main reason I picked out the home I now live in, which is within walking distance, but it was a contributing factor.) I think I'll post a link to an article and a link to a video and then take a hike over there for supper. See ya later.

I fixed the link in the post before last but I fixed it wrong. I think I've now fixed it right. And trust me, I wasn't trying to have to make corrections on a post about corrections.

In the previous post, I accidentally — but appropriately — linked to the wrong page. It has now been corrected.

2006 in media errors and corrections.

In the past, I've posted links to a couple of the Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studio, and later (after Max got kicked out of his own studio) by its successor in interest, Famous Studios. Today, we go back to the first in the series, which was just called Superman when it was produced by Max's operation and released September 26, 1941. The 8,000 different companies that have since put it out on home video have occasionally referred to it as The Mad Scientist but as you'll see, that title appears nowhere on the film.

Bud Collyer did Superman's voice in this one, Joan Alexander voiced Lois, Jack Mercer was the villain and I'm not sure who did the other voices. Perry White sounds a little like Jackson Beck.

This is a stunning work of animation and it runs a little over ten minutes. I'm told that at the time it came out, it was the most expensive non-Disney cartoon short ever made. It looks it. The Fleischer artists did a good job of capturing Joe Shuster's earthy drawing style and giving weight and form and shadow to his characters. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of "Best Short Subject (Cartoon)" but that's not as impressive as it sounds. Back then, each of the major studios had the clout to get at least one of its shorts nominated so it was probably just a matter of Paramount picking it as the short they wanted to have receive a nomination. Still, they seem to have recognized its excellence…or maybe it was just its price. Either way, you get to watch it for nothing…

You have a couple of them. You can find out what one is in this list of names for things you never knew had names.

Earlier today, I listed some of the men who drew comic books in the forties (or before) who are still with us and, in most cases, still active in the industry. I hadn't intended my list to pass for complete, and adding the following still won't make it complete but here are some more, along with the year in which I believe they did their first comic book or comic strip work: Sam Glanzman (1939), Joe Giella (1945), Al Jaffee (1942), Al Feldstein (1947), John Cassone (1940), Roger Armstrong (1940), Dan Spiegle (1949), Jerry Grandenetti (1946), Sy Barry (1945), Joe Edwards (1942), Ric Estrada (1949), Frank Frazetta (1944), Al Williamson (1948), Harry Harrison (1947), Bill Lignante (1949) and Lee Ames (1940).

And of course, once you get into the early fifties, there are a lot more: Steve Ditko (1953), Jack Davis (1950), Ramona Fradon (1950), Dick Giordano (1951), Mike Esposito (1952), Angelo Torres (1954), Mort Drucker (1951) and a number of others. It's kind of amazing to realize that the first issue of MAD was published almost 55 years ago and of the four stories in that first issue, three were drawn by men who are still around.

Gordon Kent and others are writing to ask if I have any personal anecdotes about Peter Boyle, the fine actor who has died at the age of 71. I have maybe a fourth of one. I always thought Mr. Boyle was a fine actor, starting with the film in which most of us first heard of him, Joe. It was a clumsy, sometimes tasteless effort but amazingly, Boyle was quite wonderful in it and its story, which was appallingly relevant in 1970, may be even more pertinent today. Or maybe not, I don't know. I'd have to watch it again.

My one encounter with the man came at the 100th birthday party for the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences in 1996. I was talking with the Guest of Honor and with another great voice thrower, Paul Winchell, who was then a spry 74 years young. Boyle came over to say goodnight to the Señor and somehow, he and I got to talking about what guys like that meant to our childhoods. I don't remember the words but the jist of it was how wonderful it was that Wences and Winchell had lived long enough to be properly honored and to maybe, just maybe appreciate the impact of their work on others. It's a bit chilling to recall the discussion today and to realize that Boyle did not even make it to the age Paul was on that evening. You hope he realized how much his work — Peter Boyle's, I mean — had meant to so many others.

If ten minutes with him is any indication, he was a crusty but sincere man, very devoted to his work. I saw an interview with him not longer after and was struck by how serious he was about acting…serious enough to give it his all but not so serious that it skewed out of proportion to other things in the world. The obits I'm seeing now on the Internet are short and obviously prepared in a hurry…but if you come across a longer one that goes into depth about his life, and about how he gave up life in a monastery for what some would view as the extreme opposite, give it a read.

That said, the following clip does not represent the extent of Peter Boyle's acting prowess or the seriousness with which he approached his work. But it sure is funny.

Paul Krugman on "The Great Wealth Transfer." Quick summary: Yes, the economy has improved in some ways over the last few years…but George W. Bush and his crowd have made certain that it only improved for the super-rich, even at the expense of anyone below that level.

Every time I post an obit for someone like Martin Nodell, as I had to do the other day, I read messages from people lamenting how our heritage is slipping away…how the founders of the comic book industry are almost all gone. This is true and, of course, there's nothing that can be done about it, and we need to honor and interview these folks while they're still with us. This requires that we remember which ones are. This morning in an obit for his father in the L.A. Times, Marty Nodell's son Spencer says, "My dad is one of the last of the Golden Age artists. Guys like [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster, [Batman creator] Bob Kane, they've all passed. Jerry Robinson [co-creator of the Joker] and [Batman artist] Sheldon Moldoff are still with us, but otherwise they're all gone."

Well, not quite. Paul Norris, who co-created Aquaman, is still with us at the age of 92. George Tuska, who was drawing for Will Eisner's shop in 1939 would certainly fit anyone's definition of a Golden Age artist. He's still around at the age of 90. Nick Cardy, who started with Eisner at the same time, is a much younger man of 85.

Creig Flessel, who was drawing the covers of Detective Comics before Batman was in the book is alive at age 94. Jim Mooney, who drew his first comic book in 1941, is a mere 87 years of age. Joe Simon, who has a pretty impressive list of co-creations to his credit including Captain America, is 93. He started in comics in 1938. Joe Kubert, who's 80 years old, did his first comic book work in 1942.

Irwin Hasen is 88 and he started drawing comics in 1940. His occasional partner Bob Oksner is two years older and he started doing comics about the same time. So did Bob Fujitani, who's 86. Bob Lubbers (age 84) was illustrating for funnybooks in 1942. Carmine Infantino is 81 and he was drawing comics before 1941.

There are others I could add to the list…not many, sad to say, but there are others. Stan Lee wasn't an artist but he was an important figure of that era and he's not only going strong…at his current rate, he's going to outlive all of us.

Then you have a number of folks who are still with us who did their first comic book work later in the forties. Here are ten names and the years in which they first worked in comics: Russ Heath (1947), Gene Colan (1944), Dick Ayers (1947), Al Plastino (1948), Murphy Anderson (1947), Lew Sayre Schwartz (1948), John Romita (1949), Joe Sinnott (1949), John Severin (1947) and Will Elder (1947).

The point, of course, is not that we have a whole lot of these guys left…and Spencer Nodell, mourning his dad, can hardly be faulted for a bit of exaggeration at our collective loss. It's just that we need to treasure the pioneers of comics now, while we can, and not forget that they're here. It also still amazes me when someone suggests to a convention organizer that they invite some 91-year-old comic book legend as a guest and the organizer says, "Oh, my list is kinda full this year. I'll invite him next year…or maybe the year after." Let's not bury an entire generation before we have to.

And it's a special bonus because I didn't write any of it. It's another thirteen minutes of old cereal commercials for those of us who usually liked the commercials more than the cereal. (Warning: This package contains some repeats from others to which we've recently linked.) Among those in this collection, you'll find a couple of Alpha Bits spots with Jack E. Leonard voicing his mailman character, a Crispy Critters commercial with Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Linus the Lion-Hearted, Ex-pugilist Rocky Graziano as a sea captain selling Post Raisin Bran, a Sugar Bear ad with Gerry Matthews as the voice of the bear and Ruth Buzzi as Granny Goodwitch, Tony the Tiger as voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft, and a lot of commercials that suggest that if you eat Post Sugar Crisp, you can beat up anyone you want to beat up.

Somewhere in there, there's a spot with Euell Gibbons, a "naturalist" who was very famous for a brief time, mostly in jokes that appeared in Johnny Carson monologues. Mr. Gibbons used to advocate the eating of odd (to some) plants and berries that could be found in the wild and was known to take lunch by nibbling away in public parks. For some reason, some ad agency thought he'd be a dandy person to be the spokesperson for Post Grape Nuts…and he may have been, I don't know. All I know is that I thought it made the notion of eating that cereal sound like eating tree bark and I always wondered why they thought that was a good idea.

Chris Kelly on how George W. Bush ruined the movie, Stalag 17.

There are a lot of polls out about potential presidential nominees in 2008, telling you that Hillary Clinton has X% support while Barack Obama has Y% and John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are battling for Z%. I not only think these polls are meaningless this early, I think they're especially meaningless with candidates who haven't indicated they're likely to run. A lot of people don't want to fall in love with someone they can't have. I think if Al Gore came out and said, "I'm running for president and I'm going to do everything I can to take back the White House for the Democrats," his numbers among Democrats would go way up.

Polls say that Clinton and McCain are the front-runners for their respective parties' nominations. Okay, that makes sense. They're also the two people perceived as most likely to make the effort, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Maybe this is all stating the obvious on my part because I keep reading polls that say that, to cite one recent one, Hillary is favored by 28% of self-identified Democrats, whereas Gore is only favored by 13%. Uh, maybe that's because Gore keeps acting like he isn't running and Hillary keeps acting like she is. And maybe that's all it means.