Every so often, I stick something up here because it's a piece of history (albeit the sort of trivial history usually covered in this blog) and I want to get it on the 'net so it's at least out there. I'm going to tell you about a cartoon special from the past, not because it's important but because I may be the only person alive who remembers it. Matter of fact, I even forgot all about it for a while…and I wrote it.
In 1979, the Ruby-Spears animation studio produced a two-hour weekly series called The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Hour. That's not the show no one remembers but I have to tell you a little about that endeavor before I get to the "lost" program. The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Hour was originally supposed to be a half-hour of just Plastic Man and I wrote several episodes when it was going to be just that. Then ABC decided to add in those other elements and expand the series before it debuted. There would be new segments of Fangface, a Ruby-Spears show that had been produced for the previous season, plus there would be additional Plastic Man segments and half-hours of two new properties — Mighty Mann & Yukk and Rickety Rocket.
It was an impossible workload for what was then a new, small studio and everyone was working overtime-plus. Not only were airdates looming (the first episode would be broadcast Saturday, September 22) but there was a decent-sized chance that the Animation Union would go out on strike on August 7. Not wanting to chance that a labor action would disrupt delivery dates, Joe Ruby (co-head of the studio) called me in and said, "If we have to, we can get scripts storyboarded and designed outside the union's jurisdiction but we have to get the scripts done before the strike. Can you write six episodes of Rickety Rocket in three weeks?" Usually, we had two weeks to write one script.
I was young and foolish in those days. I'm still foolish but not foolish enough to say yes to a question like that now…but I was then. I wrote six half-hour scripts in three weeks along with other assignments I had at the time, including a variety show for Sid and Marty Krofft. On August 7, not having slept the night before, I drove the sixth of these scripts out to the Ruby-Spears Studio, all the time hoping the strike was not happening…or at least not happening yet. I had enormous quarrels with that union at the time, some of which ended up before the National Labor Relations Board…but I was not going to cross any picket line. Fortunately, there was none outside the building when I got there at 1:45. What I did find was Mo Gollub — a fine gentleman and artist, as well as the president of the union — outside, pulling picket signs out of the trunk of his car. I asked, "Is the studio on strike?"
He said, "Not yet. We're going out at two."
I said, "Any reason I can't hand in a script now?"
He said, "None whatsoever." So I ran inside, delivered the last Rickety Rocket script and then came out and helped Mo finish unloading the picket signs. By 2:05, I was carrying one.
The strike only lasted about a week. The day after it ended, Joe Ruby called me in again. ABC, he told me, had just (like, that morning) decided they wanted a prime-time episode of Plastic Man that would air Sunday evening, September 16…a week before the new season started. It would include plugs for all the shows on ABC Saturday morning that year…and there might even have to be a plug or two for something in the ABC prime-time lineup. We had about a month to get the thing written, recorded, designed, animated and edited…which is not by any stretch of the imagination humanly possible. But we were going to do it anyway.
Joe said, "We'll need a finished script by tomorrow. ABC realizes that every day is critical if we're going to make our air date so they're going to waive the outline stage. You and I can just talk out an idea and if we agree on a plot, you can go right to script. Let's take a look at that list of Plastic Man premises you came up with before we started production on that series." He had it out on his desk. Several — proposals we'd done — were crossed-out on it. The best one that wasn't crossed-out said something like, "An evil villain with a head shaped like a candle is committing crimes to lure Plastic Man into his wax museum where he wants to immobilize our hero in wax and put him on permanent display." Joe picked that one, then called in Jerry Eisenberg, who was the show's producer and also the best (and fastest) designer of characters in the building. He told Jerry to start on sketches of the villain. Jerry asked, "What's his name?"
I thought for ten seconds and said, "Mr. Wicks."
Jerry wrote down "Mr. Wicks" on a pad and said, "What's he like?"
I said, "I don't know except that he's nasty and he has a head shaped like a candle…maybe skin that looks like candle drippings and hair on the top that looks like a wick." In under a minute (I told you he was fast) Jerry did a drawing that was perfect…and very much like what the character would look like when it got on the screen. So we had the character designed. One step down, eight thousand to go…and not enough time to do most of them.
Joe spotted Alan Dinehart in the hall and called him in. Alan cast the voices and directed the recording of them and Joe told him to book the necessary actors for a Thursday session. There would be, he explained, a new villain named Mr. Wicks to cast. Alan asked what he sounded like. Good question.
I had just seen Hans Conried in something and had been thinking how terrific he was…so I told them to try and book Hans Conried. Then I called my agent and told him to talk to the Ruby-Spears business department and settle on my fee and I went out and got in my car and drove home. By the time I was at my typewriter — yes, typewriter — the deal had been made. I cancelled plans for that evening and went to work. There was one thing that made it easier. Usually, a half-hour prime-time animated show would feature about 22 minutes of animation. Since this show would feature a number of plugs and clips to promote other show, the animated parts of "Louse of Wax" (as I titled it) only had to run about 16 minutes.
The next day around 4 PM, I brought the script in…finished, I hoped. Joe needed to get it over to the network before everyone left for the day and didn't think he had time to read it. He looked me square in the eye and said, "Is it okay to send it over? You didn't put anything weird in it, did you?" I swore to him there was nothing weird in it, though I silently wished there had been. He gave the order to have the script copied "as is" and messengered over to ABC.
Alan Dinehart walked in and said that Hans Conried was out of town. "He'll be back Monday but I don't think we can wait until Monday." I'd written it with Hans in mind so I suggested we book Walker Edmiston and have him do one of his many voices that was like Conried's but not so close as to infringe on that actor's proprietary rights.
The network had minor notes, I made the changes the next day and on Thursday, it was recorded…with Walker Edmiston playing Mr. Wicks. Then the artists went to work. I have no idea how they did it but the Sunday night before the new schedule debuted, Plastic Man and the ABC Saturday Morning Sneak Peek aired on ABC. We had two sequences in which Plastic Man talked to a large monitor on his plane and on the screen in live-action was Michael Young, a gent who was then the host of ABC's popular Sunday morning series, Kids Are People Too. In one, he introduced clips from all the new ABC Saturday morning shows. In the other, he chatted with an actor named Jimmy Brogan who was starring in (and there to plug) a new ABC prime-time sitcom called Out of the Blue.
The half-hour passed quickly. All the shows that had to be promoted were promoted…and Plastic Man saved the day and foiled the insidious Mr. Wicks. The following Saturday morning, production delays caused the two-hour Plastic Man show to have to debut in a for-one-week-only 90-minute version so they filled the gap by rerunning the preview special there…and then it disappeared. And by that I mean no one has ever mentioned it to me again, ever. Not once. I later became friends with Jimmy Brogan and I told him I'd written the parts he wasn't in and that I actually had a copy of the show on tape. He had no idea what I was talking about. He barely remembered Out of the Blue.
It has never been rerun and when they put out the Complete Plastic Man DVD, it was not included. Why? Because no one there knew about it and when I was interviewed for the DVD, I plumb forgot to tell them about it. At times, I feel like I'm in an episode of Outer Limits where Martians invaded the Earth, then wiped out the memories of everyone on the planet so they wouldn't recall the invasion…but they missed one guy who remembers. I am that guy.
But I have proof it existed. I not only found that horribly-drawn TV Guide ad above but I actually have a video of the special which I taped off the air. It went onto a 3/4" videocassette (the old pre-Betamax professional format) and I've transferred it to DVD. The two frame-grabs here came from it. It would not surprise me if this was the only copy of the show in existence.
It's not something in which I take a lot of pride…except maybe that I got my end of it done as was required. So it doesn't break my heart that it wasn't on the DVD set and that no one recalls it. In later years, I wrote (and sometimes produced) several of those Saturday Morning preview specials for other networks. I had previously done the 1978 one for NBC. Later, I did the one for ABC in 1983 and the ones for CBS in 1984 and 1985…and I think I did one other. The Plastic Man one was the only one that was animated but they were all done at the last minute. Some day here, I'll tell you about some of the others.