Monthly Archives: January 2015

One thing I plan to do in 2015 is to finish my long-planned and long-in-length biography of Jack Kirby. I started on it when his widow Roz was still alive at her urging and briefly thought I might get it finished while she was still around to see it. That proved to be impossible. She died a little less than five years after he did. That might have been time enough to chronicle the life of an ordinary person but this was Jack and I was still coming across new sources of information at the time we lost her.

At that point, I decided there was no further hurry. I should just keep searching for such sources and I would get the book done whenever it seemed to be done. That could have occurred a decade or so ago but the Kirby family became embroiled in various legal problems and I had to wait until that all got settled. Well, that all got settled so I'm planning to finish the book this year.

That's a goal, not a promise. If it takes longer, it'll take longer but I don't think it'll take longer. My current draft manuscript is at 231,607 words and that just covers Ant Man.

No, seriously, that's the whole thing at the moment but I have many areas to expand on and some that are so trivial, I need to do some heavy trimming. I'm thinking of publishing it in two editions — one for folks who want to know the details of Jack's life without hearing what he ate for breakfast on Tuesday, June 12, 1956 and a fuller edition for those who do. Incidentally, I am not planning on much artwork in it. That's what my first book on Jack was for.

I don't have a publication date yet. I don't even have a publisher, though I've had enough offers that I'm sure that won't be an obstacle. What I think I need now is a number of research assistants to help me as I double-fact-check and fill in some blanks on what I've already written. In a few weeks, I'll be asking for volunteers who want to help me get this thing as right as possible.

Just called Rose Marie and asked her about the song, "Mama Says No-No." Rose has some of the best, most interesting anecdotes about her career but there doesn't seem to be one about this tune. She heard it somewhere — she doesn't recall where — and used it in her act for about ten years…until she got tired of it. She thinks she was the first — and maybe only — person to record it. And that's about all there is to that.

If you're in Southern California on Saturday, January 24 and want to meet Rose yourself, she'll be appearing at the Hollywood Show out at the Westin Hotel by LAX airport. Around 80 celebrities will be there selling photos and autographs including much of the casts of Dynasty, Good Times, Lassie, Lost in Space, Laverne & Shirley and the movie, A League of Their Own. Rose will be there along with her co-star from The Dick Van Dyke Show, Larry Matthews.

And, oh yes, Dick Van Dyke will be there. That's pretty impressive.

On April 16 of 2007, I posted this here — a remembrance of a book that changed my life a little. I don't draw much anymore because, among other reasons, I got trapped in one of those vicious circles you hear so much about. The less I drew, the worse my drawing got…and the worse my drawing got, the less I drew. That I could/can draw at all has a lot to do with the lessons in this book published when I was six, and with cartooning lessons I got on my TV from Walter Lantz and a gent named Tom Hatten. Tom Hatten was the host of the Popeye cartoons on KTLA here in Los Angeles and he inspired a lot of kids — not just me — to want to learn how to do that. So did this book…

I mentioned recently here that my one-time love of Woody Woodpecker cartoons flowed from the drawing lessons that the character's "boss," Walter Lantz, used to give on his cartoon show. Let me expand on that and mention a book that I suspect figured big into the lives of many folks my age who got into animation or drawing. Around 1958 (though possibly before), the Whitman Publishing Company brought out Walter Lantz Easy Way to Draw, a "how to" cartooning book written clearly and properly for a young audience.

I doubt Mr. Lantz (seen below in the photo at left) had much to do with its contents. The book is credited to Frank McSavage and Norm McGary, two artists who worked a lot for Western Printing and Lithography, publishers of Whitman books and tons of coloring books, games and puzzle books featuring Woody and the rest of the Lantz menagerie. Western also created and printed the Lantz-licensed comic books published at the time by Dell…and this was such a lucrative relationship for Lantz that he seems to have surrendered a lot of control of his properties to Western. The designs of his characters were constantly changing on screen and when Western standardized them for their books and magazines, Lantz recognized that those artists (McSavage, especially) knew what they were doing and adjusted his films and the other merchandise to match. He also employed McSavage and McGary directly from time to time.

Easy Way to Draw is a great book and my copy, which I must have gotten soon after it came out, moved me to sit for hours and attempt to replicate the drawings it featured. There was a concise, understandable explanation of the principles of animation along with step-by-step diagrams on how to draw Woody and his pals. Lantz had all these characters like Homer Pigeon that I didn't really know that well…and as an avid reader of Walter Lantz comic books and watcher of Walter Lantz TV shows, if I didn't know them, no one did. But I learned to draw them about as well as a kid my age could have learned to draw them and I'm sure it made me like them more. One day in school — I don't remember exactly why — I did a big drawing of Homer Pigeon on the blackboard. All of the kids in class were impressed, even though none of them knew who it was, either. Alas, these skills had limited value. When I got a little older, I learned you couldn't attract girls by showing them how you could draw Wally Walrus.

I'd wager big that I'm not the only person in my age bracket who was encouraged in a career towards drawing and/or animation by this book. It appears to have been kept in print for some time even if that meant dropping chapters and slapping a more "modern" cover on it, which they did. Still, you don't see a lot of copies around because it encouraged its owners to draw right in the book or cut out certain pages. So either you loved the book enough to despoil your copy or you loved it enough to keep it in pristine condition and never want to part with it. I'm in the latter category. I wonder if anyone's done a "how to draw cartoons" DVD or computer program that is now having the same impact on the nine-year-old Future Cartoonists of America.

Here's one of the great things about this blog. I just posted a question about a song on the Michael Feinstein show…and before long, my friend Dave Sikula sends me the answer. Not only that but his answer includes a link to this video featuring another friend — the great comedienne and performer Rose Marie.

The song is called "My Mama Says No-No" and it was written by Sammy Gallop and Ted Fiorita, not for a Broadway show or a movie but just for the popular song market. Dave thinks Rosie introduced it and if this weren't the middle of the night, I'd call her and verify that. I'll call her at a decent hour and let you know what she says. In the meantime, here she is belting it out like a champ. Thanks, Dave…

New Year's Eve, PBS ran the second in a series of specials that Michael Feinstein is doing from the newly-reopened Rainbow Room in New York. Each is an hour of Mr. Feinstein and some cabaret and Broadway performers singing the kind of songs that cabaret and Broadway performers sing. If you missed it and you enjoy that kind of thing…well, I can't embed the video but you can watch it online here. It runs an hour and I thought it was pretty good.

Quick question: About halfway through, Feinstein introduces a young lady (young = 16 years old) named Julia Goodwin who sings a peppy little song that I don't recognize. Should I? Ms. Goodwin, by the way, is obviously someone we're going to hear a lot from in the future.

And if you missed the first of these specials, you can watch it here. Warning: PBS links have a way of disappearing when you least expect. So do PBS stations.

Years ago, the folks who make Kentucky Fried Chicken decided that for marketing reasons, they'd try to hide or at least play down the fact that their fried chicken was fried. They began stating that KFC stood for Kitchen Fresh Chicken. At around the same time, Kellogg's didn't change the makeup of their Sugar Frosted Flakes. They just changed the name to Frosted Flakes.

Now, High Fructose Corn Syrup is getting a new moniker. Somehow, it all reminds me of the real bad golfer who turned to his caddy after 17 holes of terrible shots and divots and lost balls and going way over par. They were at the eighteenth hole — the most difficult one on the whole course — and he asked his caddy, "How do you think I should play this hole?"

And the caddy answered, "Under an assumed name."

Our first Mushroom Soup Day of 2015. Mark, having blogged aplenty the last week, is scaling back to a more human pace today.

I spent the first day of the year writing pages for a book that no one is paying me to write or even knows about…just something I'm doing for myself to decide whether it's really a whole book worthy of offering to publishers.

I spent most of the second day up at the Magic Castle. The Castle opened its doors on January 2, 1963 so you can do the math and figure out which anniversary it was. They opened yesterday to members only and had a big party and there was a kind of "State of the Castle" presentation about how it's doing and what it will be doing so I got to see a lot of friends and magicians and magician-friends.

There was a special performance by Tom Mullica, who was long hailed as the master of "cigarette magic." Here's a video I posted once here of Tom doing the act that earned him that distinction. It's an act he no longer performs for health reasons and also because many performing venues frown on (or are legally prevented from) allowing smoking, especially the way he did it.

Tom now performs a tribute act in which he transforms himself into his old friend, Red Skelton. But last night at the Castle, he returned to his magical roots and favored us with a new, smokeless magic act and many folks in the trickery industry were there to see this very clever man.

I will be back with you soon.

This is a rerun of an item that first ran on this blog on September 27, 2003. It's about two pilots that were done in the seventies that attempted to turn the Archie comic books into an hour-long live-action prime-time TV series. I was peripherally involved as they were done by the company for which I was writing Welcome Back, Kotter.

Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, I was not a writer on either, though I turned down an offer to work on the second. I was an unbilled consultant on the first. What happened was that the Komack Company had obtained the rights to do these special-pilots and Jimmie Komack had this odd notion of how to approach doing an adaptation of an existing property. His view was that it should be done by writers and producers who were completely unfamiliar with the source material so their minds were uncluttered by what had been done before.

While I was working there, he also did a pilot that brought back the not-dissimilar character of Dobie Gillis. Dobie's creator Max Shulman had co-written a pilot script for the revival — a real good one, I thought, that updated the property but still captured what was great about the old series. ABC assigned the project to Komack's company and Komack used the Shulman script to attract the necessary actors from the original version — Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Frank Faylen and Sheila James. Then, once they were committed, he tossed out the Shulman script and had a new one written by two writers who'd never seen the original show. (If you think I'm making this up, read Dwayne Hickman's autobiography.)

Jimmie took a similar approach to turning Archie into a TV show. The creative staff he engaged were not totally unfamiliar with the property but he urged them not to read the old comics and to instead work from a rough outline someone had written about who they were. This did not sit well with John Goldwater, who ran and co-owned the Archie company and who regarded himself as the creator of the feature. One day, Komack called me in and said, "You know all about comic books, don't you?" I said I did. He said, "Archie Comics?" I said I did. Later that day, he brought me into a meeting with Mr. Goldwater, who was visiting from New York, and introduced me as his resident Archie expert and consultant.

The meeting went roughly like this. I was introduced to Mr. Goldwater and I managed to get in that I'd written many comic books and that I'd apprenticed with Jack Kirby. Mr. Goldwater was impressed at the mention of Jack, who'd worked for his company a few times. We spoke for a few minutes and somehow, I managed to wedge in a nice nugget of trivia. Kotter was sharing a stage then with a new ABC sitcom called Fish, a spin-off of Barney Miller starring Abe Vigoda. I mentioned that Abe Vigoda's brother Bill Vigoda had been a top artist for Archie. "Is that true?" Jimmie asked. Goldwater nodded it was true…and since he was impressed that I knew a lot about Archie Comics, Jimmie decided to quit while he was ahead and send me back to work. So I never got to talk much with John Goldwater. Later, Jimmie did consult with me on a number of points including some of the final casting. But I didn't write on the shows, nor was I credited on them. Here's the interesting (I think) story I posted here about them in 2003…

Okay, I promised this story. But first, let me note that Gary DeJong did some research and unearthed the info that the first of the two Archie pilots done in 1976-1977 aired on December 19. 1976 and starred Audrey Landers as Betty, Hilary Thompson as Veronica, Mark Winkworth as Reggie, Derrel Maury as Jughead, Jane Lambert as Miss Grundy, Susan Blu as Midge, Jim Boelson as Moose, Whit Bissell as Mr. Lodge, Michelle Stacy as Little Jinx, Tifni Twitchell as Big Ethel and Amzie Strickland as Mrs. Lodge. Byron Webster played Mr. Weatherbee and Gordon Jump (whose passing started this discussion) played Archie's father. In other words, referencing the earlier anecdote, Gordon Jump came in to audition for Mr. Weatherbee and got the part…then, since the producers couldn't properly cast the role of Archie's father, they moved Jump to that slot and put their second-choice in as Mr. Weatherbee. As I recall, the role of Archie's father was much larger than the role of Mr. Weatherbee so that may explain the decision.

Who played the title role of Archie Andrews? Well, that's the story I wanted to tell. After extensive auditions and screen tests, they picked a young man with brilliant red hair but no real acting experience, at least on television. Somehow, things didn't work out. I never heard exactly what happened but suddenly, the role of Archie was being played by the producers' second choice, an actor named Dennis Bowen who had appeared a few times on Welcome Back, Kotter. (Kotter was produced by the same company. Dennis played the recurring role of Todd Ludlow, an honors student who sometimes heckled the Sweathogs.)

The Archie pilot was an odd mix of sitcom and variety show. It was an hour in length and there were blackouts and little, self-contained storylines of about ten minutes each. Between these, the focus would shift to a rather generic rock band that played bubble-gum style music. The whole thing was being targeted for the 7:00 Sunday evening slot and I recall a lot of argument over how many scenes there could be of Betty, Veronica and a number of good-looking female extras in swimwear and sleepwear. The writers had scripted a number of quick jokes at a swimming pool, and one of the short stories involved the boys crashing a slumber party that Veronica was throwing at the Lodge mansion. Both had been planned expressly to get the ladies into scanty outfits, which the ABC programming department encouraged. At the same time, their Standards and Practices folks ran around demanding less-revealing bikinis and nighties. Some of the best jokes in the show wound up being cut because the girls were showing a half-inch too much of their physiques.

The mix of sitcom and sketches didn't quite work. There was a second pilot with the same cast and pretty much the same idea and it didn't work, either. As I recall, the main change from the first one was that they replaced the generic rock band with one comprised of Archie, Betty, Jughead, etc. Danny "Neil's brother" Simon was the head writer on this try.

Anyway, the great story, the one I wanted to get to, was what happened because they replaced Archies in the first pilot. Somehow, the ABC publicity department never got the word and all the p.r. they issued for the show contained the name of the first actor, the one who was replaced during rehearsals. Poor Dennis Bowen had to endure publicity photos that displayed his face but identified him as the first guy. A few years ago when the Archie comic book folks published a book on the character's history, they said the first guy had played the role.

What happened to that first redheaded guy? Well, he eventually got a TV series, then he left it and made some movies. Now, he's back with another TV series. Can you guess who it is?

Here's an interview with the late, great Larry Gelbart. There are no bad Larry Gelbart interviews and none which are not of value to anyone who thinks he or she is or can be a writer. This one though is kind of interesting because the interviewer asks a lot of basic general questions, the kind that usually come from non-writers looking for easy answers to complex questions. Larry is polite and does his best to answer…

• I've never been disappointed by a food product or a DVD if it had Paul Newman's face on the package.

Having never lived in New York, I really don't have a sense of how good or bad a public servant Mario Cuomo was. All I know is that he gave great speeches in which he explained the Liberal agenda in a simple, non-inflammatory manner…and yes, I know some who read this site think that's impossible.

If you're never going to listen to a (moderately) left-wing speaker for any reason except to hate him and find points to argue, skip the rest of this paragraph. But I was very impressed with Cuomo's two most notable speeches — the one in 1984 nominating Walter Mondale and the one in 1992 nominating Bill Clinton. Of the two, I think the second was the better one, possibly because he had a better product to sell. Those two links go to C-Span videos that I can't embed here. They're both pretty long but both pretty good.

Like I said, I don't know how good Cuomo was as governor of New York. But our country lost a fine orator when the man passed away yesterday. They don't make 'em like that anymore…or if they do, they now feel they have to accompany their rhetoric with some grenade-tossing.

I just bought a new external hard disk online at Amazon and I passed on two options I was offered…

1. A 2-Year Warranty for $4.95. The hard disk comes with a three year "limited warranty" and there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to what this warranty would do for me that the "limited" one doesn't. It also doesn't say that this is an extended warranty so it may cover the first two years of the product's life, which are already covered in some fashion.
2. A 2-Year Data Recovery Plan for $9.95. This proposition gives me more information. It says, "If your drive stops working, the Rescue data recovery plan will recover the data from the failed drive and return it to you on a new piece of external storage." That sounds interesting until you get to this line: "If your data isn't recovered, you get your money back."

Okay, so follow me on this. Let's imagine that I have no technical capability to recover data from a damaged drive. None whatsoever.

I offer this deal. When you buy a new hard disk, you send me ten bucks. If the drive never fails you, I keep the ten bucks.

If the drive does fail, you send it to me and I send it back to you with your ten bucks and say, "Sorry, I couldn't recover your data." I don't even have to send you that new piece of external storage I send you if I do recover your data, which I don't even try to do.

What is my potential loss here? Well, I haven't investigated far enough to know but I suspect when you send me your drive for possible data rescue, you have to pay a postage and handling fee for its return. If you do, I'm out nothing. I might even make a few more bucks off that postage and handling fee. If you don't, then I'm out the cost of sending you your refund and returning your drive.

Since most people who bought this insurance wouldn't be sending drives in for my "services," I'd still make a pretty dandy profit from not being able to reclaim anyone's data. I may need to rethink my career choice.

Here's more on the cheapening of JetBlue. My longtime pal Joe Brancatelli knows everything about air travel in this country and here's what he has to say.

Tim Wu on how uncomfy and expensive air travel is becoming. It may be our fault. As he notes, JetBlue is discovering that wider seats and not socking us with all sorts of fees is not cost-effective these days.

Hope things are better for you this year than last year even if things last year were pretty good.

The Groo project I was working on is our new limited (but not very) series, Groo: Friends and Foes, which will run twelve issues, the first of which goes on sale January 21. Each month, Groo encounters someone from his past who is either a friend, a foe or (more likely) a foe who acts like a friend. Each issue can be read separately but there's a minor connective storyline throughout the twelve episodes. The first two covers look like this, only larger…

For those of you interested in comic book lead times, the issue I was working on will be #6, plus I wrote promotional copy for #7. That's not easy to do when you have no idea what's going to be in #7.

Each issue also includes one of the world-famous Groo letter columns, which someone once called the best letter column in an industry where no one does letter columns anymore. This is not true. There are other letter columns…just not very many of them.

For years now, I've been pointing this out and insisting that we have one and most other comics don't because we care about our readers and others don't care about theirs. They just want your money and don't give a damn what you have to say. In fact, they probably hate you and mock you in private and don't want to even waste five seconds reading your messages.

I meant this as a joke when I started saying it but absolutely no one involved with any other comic has stepped forward to disagree so I've decided there must be something to it. This does not apply to any other comic books I write, by the way.

The Groo: Friends and Foes series is produced by Sergio Aragonés, me, Stan Sakai and a colorist who is usually but not always Tom Luth. Due to excessive crowd scenes and the necessity of sleep for human beings, we must occasionally give Mr. Luth more time to color it than a monthly schedule permits. Sergio, Stan and I have been doing what we do on it since 1982 and Tom signed on shortly after. (Stan does the lettering. What I do is a little more difficult to explain and — I'm almost pleased to note — understood by darn near no one.)

In other news: About a dozen readers of the site wrote in with the solutions to the mystery (see previous post) about why the first string critics who attended and reviewed the Marx Brothers' Broadway debut on May 19, 1924 weren't down the street seeing and critiquing the opening of Blossom Time. Answer: Yes, Blossom Time opened the same night but that was a reopening of a production from several years earlier. They could send the second string critics (or none) to see that.

That's one of the things I love about owning n' operating this blog. The readership is smart and solves riddles…even if none of you have figured out the lady with too much eye makeup in the beginning of the Odd Couple movie.

On with our year —!