Dick Cavett offers a fine remembrance and some good video clips of the late Tony Curtis. And take a peek at the Comments section where a couple of readers clear up the mystery of whether Mr. Curtis did, in one of his costume-drama films, actually say, "Yonda lies the castle of my fadda." Apparently, he said something close to that but not in the film commonly cited.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Recommended Reading
Jason Surowiecki on how Netflix put Blockbuster out of business. If I were running a comic book shop, I'd read this article over a couple of times.
Mike Esposito, R.I.P.
Longtime comic book inker Mike Esposito has died at the age of 83. In the above photo, which I took at a mid-seventies New York comic convention, Mike is the gentleman on the right. The fellow on the left is his good friend and frequent co-inker, Frank Giacoia.
I wish I'd also taken a photo of Mike with his best friend and more frequent collaborator, Ross Andru. Ross and Mike were lifelong friends dating back to high school, bonding over their mutual desire to become professional cartoonists. Esposito got serious about it after his discharge from the Army in 1947 when he attended the (then) newly-formed Cartoonists and Illustrators School run by Burne Hogarth in New York. Andru was also a student there — one of the best, as evidence by the fact that Hogarth hired him to assist with the art on the Tarzan newspaper strip. In the meantime, Esposito began to get work as a penciller and an inker for Fox Publications and Timely Comics. In 1951 after Andru's Tarzan job ended, he and Esposito decided to team up and try to establish themselves as comic book publishers. Mikeross Publications did not last long but it produced one highly memorable comic — Get Lost!, which was one of the first and best imitations of Harvey Kurtzman's new comic book, MAD.
Thereafter, Andru and Esposito became primarily an art team for other publishers. Ross pencilled and Mike inked…and since Mike's end of it went faster than Ross's, Mike also picked up work inking other artists. They worked for most of the major houses but became best known for their long association with DC, particulary with editor Robert Kanigher, for whom they did Wonder Woman, Metal Men and hundreds of war comics. Later for DC, they drew Superman, The Flash and dozens of other features. During the sixties, Esposito began inking for Stan Lee at Marvel, working under the pen name "Mickey Demeo" so DC wouldn't find out. He inked almost every comic they published then and almost every penciller but especially stood out when handling Jack Kirby pencils (or layouts) on The Hulk and John Romita pencil art on Spider-Man. Eventually, Esposito did so much for Marvel that he began using his real name…but he also inked many comics under the name "Joe Gaudioso" and there were others. His friend Ross joined him at Marvel and they collaborated on Spider-Man and other strips. Andru passed away in 1993.
Mike was a jovial, dependable gent who was trusted by editors and liked by his peers. In the seventies, he gave assisting work to a number of young artists, helping them to learn the industry and gain a foot in the door. He was also a good friend to other inkers, always ready to aid a colleague with a deadline problem. For many years, friends tried to persuade him to travel to San Diego to be honored and interviewed at the Comic-Con International but he always declined, citing health problems and a reticence to fly. I'm sorry we never got him to make the trip because I think he would have been surprised and overwhemed to learn how many fans he had.
Today's Video Link
In the late sixties/early seventies, there were comedic treats for those of us who lived in L.A. and were smart enough to find our respective ways to KRLA on the local radio dial. Today, that station is a mess of second-string Limbaugh wanna-bes but back then, it was a solid Top 40-style station that didn't limit itself to the Top 40. And in-between the hits, one could often hear comedic brilliance from a group called The Credibility Gap that produced little segments and drop-ins. The membership of the troupe changed from time to time but the four main guys I recall were Harry Shearer, Richard Beebe, David L. Lander and Michael McKean. They did very smart, funny comedy that is still being ripped-off now and then by others.
This is Shearer, McKean and Lander from a 1975 episode of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show with Shearer doing his spot-on impression of Mr. Snyder, which I always found superior to the Aykroyd version. The group disbanded soon after this, though they occasionally reassembled or worked together in other ways. McKean and Lander were Lenny and Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley, McKean and Shearer were members of Spinal Tap, etc. Here's a ten minute clip that shows you the kind of thing they were doing back then…
Go Read It!
Eight False Things The Public "Knows" Prior To Election Day.
Alex Anderson, R.I.P.
Alex Anderson, an animation storyman who created Rocky & Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right, has died at the age of 90. I must admit that I don't know a lot more about him or his work with his friend Jay Ward than is contained in this obit but I felt his passing should be noted here. Thanks to Steven Silver for letting me know about it.
Go Read It!
What's gone wrong with Woody Allen's movies over the years? Obviously, it's the punctuation in their titles. (Thank you, Vince Waldron!)
Today's Video Link
The Beau Hunks is a Dutch musical group that likes to perform American movie music, mainly from the thirties and especially from Laurel and Hardy films. They strive to be "note perfect," meaning that their music is arranged exactly the way it was arranged for its most famous film presentation. This is not always simple because the original sheet music and scores are often unavailable so someone has to listen over and over to the movie and transcribe every note. The results are always worth it. I have all of their CDs and often listen to them as I motor about town.
Here, they recreate Raymond Scott's famous 1937 tune, "Powerhouse," which most folks recall as the tune that always seemed to pop up in a Warner Brothers cartoon when anything mechanical or robotic was occurring. I enjoyed this and I hope you will, as well…
Down the Amazon
A reader who signs his message Nikola sent me this link to a genuine piece of comic book history — a sketch that artist Harry G. Peter sent Dr. William Moulton Marston to try and settle on a costume for their new character, Wonder Woman. The handwritten notes are interesting as is the way Wonder Woman looks a little sexier here than, I think, she ever looked in the comic. But then the way Peter drew her in the comic all those years, she was about as sexy as Edgar Buchanan. I was always curious why, given all the artists then around who could have produced "good girl art," they went with Peter. Marston had effective creative control of the feature so it must have been a "look" he wanted…but why? Some of those early stories are pretty kinky so he probably had some sort of subtext in mind…and if I could have forced myself to read more than a dozen or so of those comics, I might be able to figure it out.
Lying to Pussycats
It's come to this: I have begun lying to pussycats. In particular, I have been lying to several of the feral cats I feed on my back porch. I do not feel good about this but I have found it necessary to lie to them, particularly to the one I've named Max. In the photo above, the cat on the left is called The Stranger Cat and the one on the right is Max.
Max is perpetually hungry. In the morning when I get up and go downstairs, Max is waiting. If I don't immediately open the sliding glass door, he pounds on it with a paw and he howls until I open a can of Friskies cat food (preferably, Mixed Grill) and the opened can and I are outside on the porch. Now, the way he would like his meal served is as follows: I would put one spoonful into the bowl. He would eat it in full, then give me a look and I would put another spoonful of food into the bowl and he would eat it. And then another spoonful and another and another until the can was empty, whereupon I would open another can. In this way, Max would not have to do a thing he hates, which is to eat food that has been in the bowl for more than two minutes and twenty seconds.
Well, I don't have time for that. I can't stand there all morning ladling fresh food into Max's bowl. I have things to do — calls to make, obits to write, Fred Kaplan articles to link to. So I dump the entire can into the dish and go back into the house to make a protein drink or something.
Max eats about a tenth of the can, then stops and yells for fresh food.
I am not about to open another can when he still has nine-tenths of one before him…and here's where the lying comes in. I walk out onto the porch with the empty can and the spoon and I mime like I'm putting more Mixed Grill into the dish…and most of the time, Max is fooled. He thinks he has newly-spooned chow in there and he resumes gobbling it down. Sometimes, I take the dish inside, do nothing to it, then bring it back out and place it before him. He thinks it's fresh food so breakfast continues. Of course, I accompany both fibs by telling him, "Here's more food for you, Max!" But there is no more food. I'm lying. I do this with the other cats, too. They've all learned from Max that if you take two bites and yowl, you get fresh grub.
I always feel guilty about this. I'm confessing to you here to get it off my conscience and also because I don't think Max has an Internet connection. If he does, I'm really screwed.
Freberg Alert!
We told you about this back in this item. On November 19, the Los Angeles-based group Writers Bloc is having another one of their events where someone interesting interviews someone interesting. In this case, it'll be Penn Jillette interviewing Stan and Hunter Freberg. How can that not be terrific? This link will tell you all about Stan and Hunter, a brilliant satirist and his dazzling partner-spouse. She's pretty darn interesting, too.
Anyway, that link will also give you the chance to reserve seats for the event, which will be over at the Writers Guild Theater on Doheny in Beverly Hills. And after the interview, Stan and Hunter will be selling and autographing copies of their great new CD, Songs in the Key of Freberg. (If you can't get there, you can order an unautographed one here. I like it a lot and so will you.) I'll remind you again about this before the 19th but if you're local, mark it on your calendar and reserve your spot.
Recommended Reading
A new batch of documents that the Pentagon didn't want anyone to see have been released by WikiLeaks. I don't know what to make of them but Fred Kaplan does.
Today's Video Link
Below we have moments from a recent evening (August 24) at the Writers Guild Theater with Ray Bradbury and Hugh Hefner. The subject was Ray's landmark 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451, and there was a screening of the 1966 movie based on said book. Before the film, the two men were interviewed — quite skillfully, it would appear from this clip — by Geoff Boucher, who presides over the Hero Complex blog at the L.A. Times. Geoff ably brought out an important point that many forget about Hefner. Never mind the naked ladies. Playboy, at least in its early days, really was a magazine folks could truly buy for the articles. It contained important pieces, fiction and non-fiction, and ran work that others feared to touch. Running Bradbury's then-controversial book took some nerve but also helped establish Hef as a courageous publisher who would defend the written word as vigorously as he'd fight to be able to market Miss October's chest.
I have, and will probably always have, enormously mixed emotions about Ray Bradbury. When I was about 13, he welcomed some similar-aged friends of mine and me into his office in Beverly Hills for an afternoon of talk about his work, the world, comics and writing. When he understood that I was serious about writing as a career, he invited me back for a one-on-one conversation that was enormously inspirational. He continues to be just that if only because despite his age and afflictions, he still manages to write almost every day. That I rarely agree with what he writes or with any opinion he has formed since around 1993 and that some of what he says or does these days makes me cringe is almost beside the point. Having interviewed him myself in several public appearances, I have seen how riveting and powerful his words can be and watched then as his wheelchair was engulfed by the best kind of autograph-seekers: The ones who have a palpable need to touch and thank an author whose work changed their lives and only for the better.
I probably need to reread Fahrenheit 451. It's been a while…like 30+ years. My sense is that it endures well as a work of compelling fiction but not of prophecy. Perhaps it needs a little add-on chapter where the characters decide it's sorta okay to burn book paper as long as you first digitize what's on it and make it available for downloading. Then again, if ever there was a novel that should be read in book form and not on a Kindle or iPad, it's that one…and just as a reading experience, it's a tremendous and important ride. I was sorry I couldn't make it to this event, which was part of a whole week in Los Angeles that celebrated Bradbury turning 90 but through the miracle that is YouTube, we all get to experience about ten minutes of it…
Sergio Alert!
I've taken to introducing Sergio Aragonés at events as the World's Most Honored Cartoonist. Which he is. He's appearing this Saturday at Book Soup, a fine store up in Hollywood, and there he will be signing copies of his exquisite new book, MAD's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonés: Five Decades of His Finest Works. If you're in the L.A. area, you may want to go and buy one. If you're not in L.A. area, Book Soup will sell you a signed copy…but you'd better order fast. Details are over on this page.
Housekeeping
I am in receipt of many e-mails wondering how come no tributes on this site for Barbara Billingsley, Tom Bosley or other celebs who've recently gone away. Easy answer: I have nothing to say about these people…or at least nothing that everyone else isn't saying. I kinda got started in the obit business because for a long stretch, whenever a veteran comic book creator passed, if I didn't write about them, no one else did. Too many deaths of people I thought mattered were passing without notice. The duty also intersected with my compulsive anecdote-telling, which was in full display Tuesday evening when I spoke at the Writers Guild. Mention a proper name in my presence and I probably have a story about the person — often but not always a first-person encounter — and it's difficult for me to not share it. My best friends have grown to be tolerant of it and a precious few may even have learned to enjoy it.
But I have no stories about Ms. Billingsley or Mr. Bosley. Never met her. Met him once for about as long as it took to tell him I enjoyed him in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway and wished I could have seen him there in Fiorello. That was it. Nothing else to write about either…and there are plenty of bios and remembrances around by folks more qualified to compose such things. Please don't take it as me not respecting them or their work. Sometimes, you just don't have anything to say worth saying. And sometimes, even I can realize that.