Monthly Archives: March 2009

I was recently voted into a rather elite group — a club of comedians and comedy writers, mostly veterans in their field, called Yarmy's Army. Founded by the late Don Adams in honor of his brother, Dick Yarmy (Don's real name was Don Yarmy), Yarmy's Army is a place where folks in the business of funny sit around and tell stories and provide general support for one another and select charities. One of its distinguished members is the guest this Wednesday on Stu's Show, the show biz interview program hosted by Stu Shostak on his very own web-based station, Shokus Internet Radio.

He's Jack Riley, a very talented gent. You have to be talented to steal The Bob Newhart Show from Bob Newhart.

My old comrade Lorenzo Music was one of the creators of the show and I asked him once if they conjured up the role of Elliott Carlin and then cast Riley to fill it…or if they looked at Riley, realized how funny he could be playing self-obsessed, paranoid and belligerent, and concocted Carlin to make use of all that. "A little of each," was Lorenzo's reply. I thought Riley was the funniest thing on what would even have been a funny show without him. But then Jack's funny everywhere…on cartoon shows like Rugrats, in movies (including most Mel Brooks films) and on many, many other TV programs, including Mr. Leno's.

Stu's interviewing him tomorrow. I think this is going to be such a good show that I've decided to tag along and be in the studio for the live telecast. Listen to it. Call in if you get a chance. I guarantee you a fine time.

Now, very important: This is not a podcast. You can't download it and listen to it whenever you want. You have to "tune in" when it's on…which in this case is from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM to 9 PM Eastern. Stu's Show is done live on Wednesday and that's the best time to listen because, among other reasons, you can call in and ask questions. You can hear the show on your own computer by going to the website of Shokus Internet Radio at the appointed hour and clicking where you're told to click. The show reruns on other days, usually in the same time slot. Check out the site for a full schedule…and while you're there, take note of some of the other fine, free programming.

So here's where we are with the mystery of Lionel Ziprin, who claimed to have written war comics for Dell Comics in the late forties and fifties that sold in the millions and paid him $10 a page.

A few of you wrote in to suggest Mr. Ziprin was talking about Dell Comics of the World War II years like USA is Ready (1941), War Comics (1940), War Heroes (1942), War Ships (1942) and War Stories (1942). I don't think these are what he was talking about. They didn't come out in the late forties and the fifties, they didn't cover all different wars, they didn't sell in the millions and they certainly didn't pay $10 a page for scripts. Also, Ziprin said he wrote movie adaptations, and Dell published very few movie adaptations until the mid-fifties.

A lot of you wrote in to suggest he wrote Dell Comics of the mid-sixties like Air War Stories (1964), Combat (1961), Guerilla War (1965), Jungle War Stories (1962) and World War Stories (1965). Again, these books don't fit the timeline, they didn't sell anywhere near "millions" and they didn't pay $10 a page for script. They were also, according to most sources including Paul S. Newman, largely written by Paul S. Newman. There weren't all that many published, either. On the other hand, Dell in that same period did do a lot of movie adaptations…and did employ some writers who have never been identified.

So if Ziprin said he wrote for Dell "through the late forties and into the fifties," might he have meant 1961-1965? Possible. One of the challenges one faces when one tries to dope all this stuff out is that people err, people exaggerate…and sometimes, they just plain lie. It would not be at all unprecedented if Mr. Ziprin inflated the amount of money he was paid, though it would be a little odd, given that he was simultaneously complaining about having to sign away his rights to the work and not receive credit. Usually if you're bitching about how poorly you were treated in a job, you understate the pay. (Dell in the sixties probably paid everyone around $5 a page for script…or less. For a time, Don Segall was their star writer and he got $5 a page.)

It would also not shock me if he or anyone overestimated sales…in this case, by at least 400%. The date error seems less likely to me…but then again, we don't have a direct quote from Ziprin that the work in question was done in the "late forties and into the fifties." Someone else wrote that and maybe that person got it wrong. I'm correcting stuff like that all the time in obits about comic book people.

So that's as far as I can take it, I think. The only other "lead" would be for someone to call Sam Glanzman, who drew many of those war comics for Dell in the 1961-1965 period and see if the name "Lionel Ziprin" triggers any recollection. Anyone in touch with Sam these days?

The plunging economy has harmed a lot of industries…but not Broadway.

As you may recall, I feed a bevy of feral cats at my back door plus the occasional possum. I did have raccoons for a while but I decided it was better that they not be around so I've been bringing in the cat food when there's no feline around to dine on it, and when I see a raccoon, I chase it off.

About twenty minutes ago, I spotted two raccoons out there and went to shoo them away. They refused to be shooed very far. They'd flee into the next yard and the minute I went back into the house, they'd be back to sniff around mine, looking for stray chow. At one point, I grabbed up a flashlight and a camera and went out to scare them off. They refused to be scared…not by me, not by the camera flash. The picture above was taken from about three feet away from one, a moment before I stomped my feet and he (she?) scurried off.

As soon as I was back in the house, he (she?) and his (her?) twin brother (sister?) were back in the yard. I scared them off again. They came back again. And again and again. Finally, I think they got the hint…but now I'm back in my office and for all I know, they're out there now waiting for a pizza they ordered from Papa John's.

The other day, I posted a nice video link here of Terry Jones, he of Monty Python fame. Kim "Howard" Johnson, the world's foremost Python authority, informs me that Mr. Jones is making a rare (so rare he's never done it before) appearance in Chicago on May 9, hosting a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's at the Lakeshore Theater and if you click over there right now, you may be able to score some tix before they sell out. Mr. Johnson will be interviewing Mr. Jones after the film…and if I could be there, I would be. Hope someone records their chat.

I am informed by any number of folks, starting with Bill Mullins, that the "Sam the Bellhop" routine was not invented by Bill Malone but by Frank Everhart, a magician-bartender who worked at the Ivanhoe restaurant-dinner theater in Chicago back in the late fifties. Mr. Everhart apparently did it with just a stacked deck and Malone added in all the fancy sleight of hand and false cuts that make it into a truly dazzling effect.

Here's a little puzzler or possible area of research for us comic historians…one brought to my attention by Scott Edelman. Last week, a gentleman named Lionel Ziprin passed away at the age of 84. I had never heard of Mr. Ziprin but he was apparently rather well known as a New York-based writer of poetry, mysticism and other heady topics, and the center of some artistic circles. He also apparently had a connection to the comic book industry. In his New York Times obit, it says, among other things…

Physically unfit for military duty, Mr. Ziprin began writing poetry after attending Brooklyn College and worked at an assortment of extremely odd jobs. He helped create a short-lived puppet show called "Kabbalah the Cook" for television. For $10 apiece, he wrote the text for a series of war comic books published by Dell.

And over on Mr. Ziprin's website, Scott found the following…

Through the late forties and into the fifties, Ziprin also cranked out comic books for Dell Publishing. At the time, DC Comics had a lock on the superhero genre. "You couldn't write about Superman or space. Dell made contracts with all the movie companies and I wrote a series of comic books on every battle in the Pacific and European theatres. They gave me the theme, or movies would come out, big movies; they handed me the script, and I had to put it into comic book form. All I got was ten dollars a page: six boxes, balloons and lines, and I had to sign away everything, that it was not my property, no credit. But I was America's best-selling writer of comic books, my comic books sold in the millions of copies."

Hmm. Like I said, I never heard of Mr. Ziprin and have seen no mention of him in any of the comic book history projects. That last sentence above is an obvious exaggeration. Dell had, during the period mentioned, a number of comics selling a million copies per issue and one or two that sold upwards of two million…but those were of name characters, mostly Disney, and if you ever wrote Donald Duck, you'd certainly mention that any time you talked about your work.

I am, however, not here to suggest Ziprin never worked for Dell. I assume he did, and there certainly are plenty of folks who did who have never been identified. I'm just a little fuzzy on what he worked on and when. I can't think of a series of comic books that firm published about "every battle in the Pacific and European theatres," especially not one done in the late forties and into the fifties. They weren't paying ten bucks a page for script back then, either. (As an aside: At that point, if you were working on the comics published by Dell, you were actually working for a separate company called Western Printing and Lithography. A more detailed explanation of the relationship between the two firms appears here.)

It would seem more likely to me that he worked for Western in the late fifties when they were really cranking out the movie adaptations. A few of them did sell into the millions and if the material was complicated, they might have upped the money occasionally to ten bucks a page. All those, however, were edited out of Western Publishing's Los Angeles office, which rarely employed writers outside of town. (They had a New York office and an L.A. office, and the only times I know of a writer or artist crossing over were cases where someone had a contract with one office and there was some special reason to have him do a job for the other.) The obit for Ziprin says he lived in New York until the late sixties when he moved to Berkeley.

So it's all kind of puzzling. Anyone here have any other ideas? Am I forgetting some Dell-published war series that would make all this make more sense?

Bill Rabkin, who I haven't seen in way too long, writes about ideas for Diagnosis Murder (on which he worked) which didn't get off the ground…including a proposed animated episode with Scooby Doo.

The eminently sensible Colleen Doran posts some tips on how to spot a fraudster. There are many out there, seekling to prey on eager writers and artists…and as the economic downturn continues to turn down, there will be many more out there offering "opportunities" that you should turn down.

Josh Marshall has one up that you simply have to read.

This coming Tuesday, there's a kind of Chuck Jones Celebration on Turner Classic Movies. They'll be running a new documentary, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, created by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern. This film, which I haven't seen yet, is built around one of the last filmed interviews with Jones and it includes clips from cartoons he directed and new animation based on drawings he made during the conversation.

They'll also be running a mess of short cartoons directed by Mr. Jones and the not-often-seen feature he did in 1969, The Phantom Tollbooth. The first time I met Chuck was shortly after that film had been released and he was explaining to a small group of his admirers why it had disappeared suddenly from theaters…so suddenly, in fact, that few of us had the chance to see it then. I can't quote the whole explanation now but it was a long narrative about high-level takeovers at MGM and of one regime promising theaters a slate of "kids' movies" for matinees and how by the time the film was done, there was new management reneging on that commitment. It sounded like he was blaming "the suits" for its failure but then he added, with a Bugs Bunny twinkle of candor, "…and I guess the film I made just wasn't good enough to overcome all that."

It's not Jones at his best or even his near-best but C-grade Jones is still better than a lot of folks operating at the tops of their games…and it's also, like I said, not a film you get to see often. A DVD release is said to be on the horizon but I think they've been saying that for a while.

TCM is also, of course, showing some of the best Jones work, including (inevitably) What's Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening and Duck Amuck. In fact, the full schedule is here. I wouldn't count on the short cartoons starting exactly when they say they're going to start.