Monthly Archives: February 2013

Most of you probably know of Carl Barks, the man who created Uncle Scrooge and who for years wrote and drew the comic books of that rich old duck and also of his nephew, a poorer duck named Donald. Barks produced delightful, timeless stories which are reprinted year after year around the world…and probably always will be. His work inspired many of us who work in comics…and also in fields where the connection is not so obvious. There are moments in Steven Spielberg films, for instance, that connect to his love of Barks.

A lot of folks who followed Carl have tried to write and/or draw Disney Comics in the Barks tradition and some have come close. The only person who has managed to clearly distinguish himself in that realm is a gent named Don Rosa. I have known Don since before he got the gig — when his "dream job" was still a dream and seemed so unattainable that he didn't even attempt to get it. Then he got it and the work he did was quite outstanding and popular, especially in Europe. Again, what he created was a body of delightful, timeless stories which are reprinted year after year around the world…and probably always will be.

But he doesn't do that anymore. He stopped forever in 2008 for six reasons which he recently detailed in an essay you can read online. Before I give you the link so you can do this, let me tell you a few things. One is that I have minor quibbles with a few of his historical points. Carl Barks did receive more than his page rate for the comics he did. He worked for a company called Western Printing and Lithography (not for Dell Comics, as many people assume; this article explains the difference) and Western paid him a pension and a few other benefits. For a time in the sixties, Western had a profit-sharing plan for its writers and artists that yielded bonus money if the sales of a comic they were working on went up.

Barks wasn't the only person working on Disney Comics who got this and in some cases, the amounts were tiny. But just as a matter of record, Don is only mostly accurate about what others before him received, not totally accurate. He is, of course, 100% accurate with regard to his own situation and probably that of everyone who's written or drawn Disney Comics since gents like Barks and Paul Murry and a few others.

I would also add that Don is absolutely correct when he describes the hard, almost obsessive work he put into his stories. He was uncommonly dedicated with the comic work he did before he began applying himself to Disney Ducks and it only got more intense when they handed him the chance to work on his childhood faves. Believe every word of that. He is also telling the truth when he talks about all the extra, uncompensated work he did to promote those comics via interviews, tours, signings, etc. They never had a better ambassador.

All that said, I'll give you this link so you can click and read what Don wrote about his retirement. It is not for the most part a happy story and he is by no means the only person to create great comic books and to wind up feeling exploited and at least financially underappreciated. Some companies have learned that it isn't good, morally or just in consideration of future revenues, to treat The Talent that way…but not all have learned it and some who have would still for some reason rather treat people like another Scrooge treated Bob Cratchit before the ghosts appeared.

Still, Don does have the pride of creating all that fine, fine work. They can't take that away from him — though somewhere at this moment, a lawyer is probably trying to figure out how they could…

Forgive me if I've posted this before. I have the feeling I did but can't find it anywhere on this blog. It's test footage that was shot in 1922 to show how Kodachrome film stock worked. Observe four and a half minutes of pretty ladies…

Back in this posting, we previewed a new revue forged from two classic comedy records of the sixties: You Don't Have to Be Jewish, and When You're In Love, The Whole World Is Jewish. The new play, which combines material from both with all-new songs and sketches, is called When You're In Love, The Whole World Is Jewish and it's currently playing at the Greenway Court Theatre on, appropriately enough, Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. I saw it Friday evening and I would recommend you rush to get tickets…but you may not be able to. Even though they've extended it another week, as of Friday the entire run was almost sold out. (If you want to check, here's the link. I just looked though and it says no seats are available.)

Friday evening was Press Night, a fine time for them to have technical problems…but they did and they overcame them. I had a very good time because, first of all, I'm a sucker for that kind of humor. The show is 90 minutes of jokes, some of which were ancient when Myron Cohen told them on The Ed Sullivan Show, some new to me. But the oldies were golden oldies and they even did the one about the Klopman Diamond, though for some reason they insisted on calling it the Plotkin Diamond.

And the other main reason I enjoyed myself was that the cast is outstanding. Here — let me embed a photo of them and then tell you who they are…

The men are, left to right: Barry Gordon, Michael Pasternak, Robert Shampain and Jay Brian Winnick. The ladies are, also left to right: Ellen Ratner and Rena Strober. I probably liked Barry Gordon the best just because he's Barry Gordon and I've never seen him not be wonderful…but honestly, there were no standouts because everyone was terrific. They weren't cast that long ago and I suppose it's due to the expertise of the director, Jason Alexander, that the ensemble functioned like they'd been working together forever. I get impressed by teamwork. As in a good basketball game, it's important that someone scores every few seconds and that's only possible with the support of other players.

Actually, there was one standout. There was a fine live band fronted by Deborah Hurwitz. A woman of extraordinary talent, she played and sang what I believe were mostly her compositions between scenes. One musical number also incorporated expert caricatures by artist James Malia, whose work you can enjoy here.

The producers (who also contributed new material, as did Mr. Alexander) are Danny Gold and Billy Riback, and how they put this whole thing together so well is beyond me. I suspect they have a show here that can run and tour as long as there are Jews in this world…or at least, people who appreciate Jewish humor. Which is, of course, everyone. So don't worry that you can't get seats for this run. There'll be another, boychik.

I started writing a blog post the other day about how often we allow ourselves to be manipulated by fear, and how fears are cranked up (or completely fabricated) by those who wish to exploit us. Then I came across this piece by my friend Paul Harris, the best danged "talk radio" host I've ever heard, and realized he'd just done it, and done it better than I would have. I'm especially disgusted with the "end times" people who argue we have to buy their products to prepare for end times or vote for a certain candidate to prevent them.

You thought you'd heard the last of the Fred-Astaire-as-Alfred-E.-Neuman matter but you thought wrong. As several folks have written to tell me, there's a longer clip of the dance number on YouTube — one that includes Fred's introduction to it. In it, he says, "…coming under the heading of things I've always wanted to do, is Duke Ellington's classic composition 'Sophisticated Lady.' Here's our version with Barrie, myself, and the boys." So there's your (almost) final piece of evidence that it was F. Astaire under the mask. You can watch the intro and the whole dance number again here.

And I say "(almost) final" because one of these days, I'm going to be somewhere Barrie Chase is appearing and I'll ask her.

I grew up (to the extent I grew up) in Los Angeles in the sixties. That meant I often listened to 93/KHJ Boss Radio, the top-rated local Top 40 station. If you liked hearing the same hits played over and over, it was a great companion. They didn't play a lot of commercials and their on-air personalities — they called them Boss Jocks — didn't talk much.

Much fuss was made about the Boss Jocks and I never quite understood the delusion that they were superstars. They all had the same playlist and said pretty much the same things in their brief interjections so they were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. Still, the station promoted them (and they seemed to all believe) that the kids were tuning in to hear them, not the Beatles or the Doors or Petula Clark or any Mama or Papa.

Here's twelve and a half minutes that should give you a good idea of what KHJ Boss Radio sounded like when I was in high school. It'll be more authentic if you can figure out some way to listen to this on a transistor radio with bad reception…

Film critic Rex Reed is getting a lot of attention at the moment for his review of the the movie Identity Thief. In it, he described actress Melissa McCarthy as "humongous," "tractor-sized" and a "female hippo." If you heard about this, you probably had the same reaction I did: Rex Reed is still alive?

Reed is getting hammered and criticized for his remarks…and in fairness to him, the trailers for the movie do make it look like an hour and a half of fat jokes with Ms. McCarthy cast for her weight. What strikes me as the outrage here is that folks are acting like what Rex Reed says matters.

There are many film reviewers in this country who do have followings and who have some connection to the tastes and interests of those followers. Reed has been writing reviews since the mid-sixties and I don't recall anyone caring what he said unless it was because it was tasteless and outrageous. Years ago when talk shows would have him on, he occasionally managed to contribute to some interesting television by being colorfully bitchy. Even then when he was heard by many, I wondered if any human being ever made his or her selection of movie ticket purchase because of something Rex Reed wrote.

I suppose he's sold a few now in that he's gotten Identity Thief some attention. But that kind of thing may be about the extent of his influence. With the Internet allowing every filmgoer to post opinions and "word of mouth" reaching more people, being rude may be about the only way an old-style film reviewer can matter.

I've been derelict in linking you to Fred Kaplan articles. Here he is writing about John McCain's childish interrogation of Chuck Hagel. Has there been anything lately that didn't make John McCain look petulant and quite uninterested in doing what's right for his country?

And here he [Fred] is about how the Senate Intelligence Committee ain't doing much better than McCain. The wisdom of our elected officials is getting smaller and smaller. Soon, it will be small enough to drown in Grover Norquist's bathtub.

I don't believe in mind reading, E.S.P., communicating with the dead, Astrology, eating cole slaw or psychic powers. But every so often, I see something that impresses even me. Make sure you watch this one 'til the end…

One of those folks who doesn't want their name affixed to their question sent this question…

You wrote, "My expectation when I started at age 17 was to be a writer and darn near nothing else for the rest of my life…and so far, with my 61st birthday a month away, I've managed it." What was it at that age that made you decide you wanted to be a writer? When did you know that's what you'd do the rest of your life?

At that age, nothing. I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was around six or seven years old. I have no memories of ever wanting to be anything else…and lately as I've been cleaning out my mother's house, I keep finding evidence of this. I found a "book" I wrote and drew at age six in which I was trying to emulate Dr. Seuss. It and other things I scribbled out at the time got me enough praise and encouragement — and not just from relatives but from teachers — that I kinda figured, "Okay, so that's what I do. Fine."

There was a period later in life when my usual answer to the question of what I wanted to be was "cartoonist" but that was just kind of my way by saying I wanted to write little stories and if no one else would draw them, I would. I could never conceive of myself drawing something I didn't write but I could easily imagine myself writing something I did not draw. Along the way, I also began to wish I could write TV shows and Hanna-Barbera cartoons and books and other things.

Around age 16, after having a lot of letters published in comic book letter columns and writing for a few fanzines, I got some offers from comic book editors (Mort Weisinger and Jack Miller at DC, Dick Giordano at Charlton) to submit scripts to them. I wrote a few, mostly out of curiosity at what would happen. At the time, every interview I read with anyone in comics said you had to live in New York to work for them on a steady basis and I had no intention of relocating. Still, I wrote and sent off a few submissions…and I came darned close. The nearness of several sales convinced me I was facing in the right direction. At age 17 when I got out of high school, I said to myself, "Okay, time to get serious about this" and I began selling articles to locally-published magazines.

The first check I got was for several times what my father made a week back then. I remember being handed it in a sealed envelope in the editor's office and when I got out to the street, I immediately opened it up, stared at it and thought, "Okay, so that's what I do. Fine." I didn't feel like I'd won the lottery. It felt very natural to me. I think before that, I knew that was what I should be doing with the rest of my life and that was the moment when I figured it was probably going to work out like that.

I have never had a moment since when I considered another line of work. Some might attribute that to limited vision or narrow aspirations or something about playing it safe in life…and it may well be but I choose not to believe that. I just believe I stumbled into the profession at which I was least incompetent and that I enjoy it enough to stick with it as long as it'll have me.

This is a conversation from a few years ago — Steve Martin interviewing Tina Fey who's promoting her then-new book, Bossypants. But they talk about a lot of other things, too. This runs 71 minutes…

This afternoon, I attended the funeral of Bonny Dore, the lady I wrote about here a few days ago. The place was packed with her family and friends…and also my friends. I sat in front of Marty Krofft and near Judy Strangis for what was about as well-organized and comforting a memorial as any I've attended. Part of the reason for that was that Bonny, a producer right to the end, gave some explicit instructions to her wonderful husband Sandy on how the service was to be conducted. She even gave me the last of many writing assignments I got because of her. She told Sandy to call me the minute she died about writing the obituary that would be circulated. I was glad to do it for her and surprised that she didn't find a way to give me notes.

In that piece, a version of which you read here, I didn't tell you a lot about what Bonny meant to me because…well, if I've learned anything in writing as many obit pieces as I have, it's that no matter how involved you were with the person and how much impact they had on our life, it's not about you. So now I can tell you more about Bonny without fear that I'm crowding her out of her own obituary…

As I explained here, I met Bonny in 1978. My agent sent me out one day to meet this lady who was in charge of darn near everything at Krofft Entertainment. I interviewed for a job on a forthcoming Saturday morn series called The Krofft Superstar Hour. The program was to be hosted by an as-yet-unhired musical group and they were in talks with ABBA. That fell through — ABBA spoiled everything by wanting money — and we wound up with the Bay City Rollers.

The Rollers were awfully nice chaps but they were a lot better at making music than they were at standing in front of a camera and welcoming you to the show. The mood on the set was also not helped by the fact that the group was breaking up and certain members of it were threatening to sue other certain members. It all led to a lot of chaos and production problems and very long nights at the studio…and I could only marvel at how Bonny, who had the title of Producer, handled crisis after crisis, usually with a lot more cheer than I could ever have mustered.

Perhaps the first crisis on the show had nothing to do with the Rollers. They hadn't even arrived in America at the time the show's Head Writer went crazy. And I don't mean ha-ha, kind of eccentric crazy. I mean men came and took him gently away to a hospital.

The staff then consisted of this Head Writer and two other writers — myself and a funny Canadian gent named Lorne Frohman. I told Lorne I was going to be Buddy Sorrell and he had to be Sally Rogers. Then came the day when the Head Writer had his breakdown at the office. About an hour later, Bonny called me in and told me I was now Head Writer. Soon after, we filled out the crew with a funny non-Canadian gent named Rowby Goren. Rowby was at the funeral today, too.

I did a lot of other shows with Bonny but while we were doing that one, Bonny did another big favor for me. She got me into animation writing.

Previously, I had been writing live-action TV shows along with comic books. I was, in fact, running the Hanna-Barbera comic book department during much of the time I worked for Sid and Marty Krofft. I was hired for that post (I told how that happened here) and then, completely unconnected to that, Hanna-Barbera brought me in to write a live-action pilot for them.

At H-B, as I would soon learn, they went through cycles on the following topic: Can writers who write live-action TV shows and movies write animation? The answer, obvious to all, is that some can and some can't. For some reason though, there had to be an all-encompassing policy about this. One day, Joe Barbera and his agents and partners would decide that the way to better their shows and sell more of them was to employ prime-time writers who wrote for the top shows and performers. So they'd bring in a bunch of them and some of what they did would be fine and successful and some of it would crash and burn.  This of course also happened with the shows penned by veteran cartoon writers.

At some point, Mr. B and his associates would decide that the problem was that live-action writers couldn't write cartoons and they had to get rid of them all. From my vantage point, the problem was that some of the live-action writers they hired weren't very good, just as some of the experienced cartoon writers they hired weren't very good. Still, the studio preferred to classify writers by their past employment. That's a problem sometimes in creative fields: What you've done before is all they'll let you do now.

I wanted to write cartoons and when I met with Joe on that live-action job, I let him know that. I told him I knew Hanna-Barbera's broadcast history better than anyone in the building…and that may have included him. I told him I was writing the comic books of The Flintstones and Yogi Bear and others, and that the Scooby Doo show on Saturday morning had even borrowed storylines from the Scooby Doo comic books I'd written. That all sounded to me like I was qualified at least for a tryout writing cartoons.

Alas, it was one of those "live-action writers can't write cartoons" periods at Hanna-Barbera. I'd come to the studio as a live-action writer with live-action credits and that's what I was to Joe Barbera.

One day sitting in the Krofft offices, I told Bonny about this odd problem I was having. "You want to write cartoons?" she asked. I said yes. She picked up the phone and called Joe Ruby, co-founder of the then-new animation studio, Ruby-Spears Enterprises. She and Joe (and Joe's partner Ken) were close personally…and also geographically. The Ruby-Spears Studio was a couple of blocks from the Krofft Entertainment building.

"Do you need a new writer?" she asked. Joe said that as a matter of fact, he did. They'd just been assigned an ABC Weekend Special to produce for guess-what-network and he was trying to figure out who could do the script. I don't believe Joe even read anything I'd written before I got the assignment. As I recall, Bonny told me to go over to his office right away, I walked five blocks and became an animation writer. That was how much Joe trusted Bonny's judgment.

The lady at ABC who'd taken over Bonny's old job there liked that script and others I subsequently wrote for Ruby-Spears so she told Joe Barbera to get me on some of his shows. The first time I had a meeting with him on one of them, he stared at me and said, "Why didn't you tell me you could write animation?" So as you can see, I owe a lot to Bonny. From the time I told her I couldn't get hired to write a cartoon to the moment when I was assigned the first of what now must be over 700 scripts was about 45 minutes.

Joe Ruby and Ken Spears were also at the funeral today because they owe her, too. So do a lot of other folks who were present and who owed their careers — or at least a giant step in them — to Bonny. The rabbi this afternoon was correct when he pointed out that in a business (i.e., show) sometimes known for arrogance and selfishness, Bonny was a too-rare exception. She was giving and caring and I don't know how the hell she was able to put up with some of that nonsense and still keep smiling and laughing but she did, all the time doing things that did not seem humanly possible. It's a shame when cancer claims anyone but it's really a shame to lose someone like that.

Protecting your privacy on Facebook. Wanna know how to do that? Read this.

In keeping with this blog's policy of driving trivial topics into the ground and stomping down on them like a full trash can to get more in, we have even more evidence that the dashing face of Fred Astaire was under that very well-made Alfred E. Neuman mask. The above photo is of the great make-up artist John Chambers putting the finishing touches on his creation. It's from the 71st issue of Cinefex magazine and while the photo itself doesn't prove it was Fred, the article — for which Chambers was interviewed — said it was.

Also, oodles of folks who claim expertise at the style and grace of Mr. Astaire have weighed in to say no doubt about it, that's the guy…and a couple pointed out that the show was called An Evening with Fred Astaire and that NBC press photos of the time say it was Fred. Plus there's this from Tom Brown, who works over at Turner Classic Movies and is one of the reasons that channel is run like it's run by folks who know and love movies…

I forwarded the clip of Alfred E and Barrie Chase to one of Ms. Chase's good friends and fellow dancers, Christopher Riordan. Christopher also worked with Mr. Astaire and Barrie on the Hollywood Palace shows. He's an encyclopedia of dance history, and he confirms that it is Mr. Astaire.

I'm sorry this topic didn't come up back when I met Ms. Chase at one of those Hollywood Shows. I think we have sufficient proof now but it would be nice to add her testimony to the pile.

The thing that interests me most about this whole dance number is that it's from a show that ran November 4, 1959. Alfred had his first prominent appearance on the cover of MAD #30, the December 1956 issue which came out around October of that year. While the magazine was gaining sales steadily at the time, it wasn't that well-known at the time. It was selling around 300,000 copies an issue which wasn't that much and no generations had then grown up on it. Still, the face of Neuman had registered well enough that the folks behind Mr. Astaire's show knew it and figured enough of America would "get it."

This was a pretty big special and Fred Astaire was a pretty big star, especially when he was dancing. It was probably the first indicator of MAD breaking into the mainstream and impacting American popular culture.

Hey, what do you think it would have been like if The Andy Griffith Show had been done as a musical? It would have been a lot like Today's Video Link, pointed out to me by Anthony Tollin. Here ya go…