Yearly Archives: 2015

When I went to Facebook this morning, I found these two images a few inches from each other on my screen…

I just noticed that Comic-Con International has announced that Sergio Aragonés and I will be Special Guests this year. So I guess we'll be there.

Jonathan Chait on Dick Cheney's increasingly irrational attacks on Barack Obama. And while you're over there, read Chait on Rand Paul's promise to be the next coming on Ronald Reagan.

Here's a news item: At least thirty-five years after anyone cared, musician Don McLean has explained what his song "American Pie" was all about.

Let's go back to Comic-Con International in 2012. As usual, I hosted a panel on Cartoon Voices on Saturday morning of the con. We had a great panel including — you'll see a brief shot of him in this video — Chuck McCann. About twenty minutes from the end though, I brought on a Surprise Guest to a thunderous standing ovation. It was Stan Freberg and the audience just loved him. Here's an excerpt from his appearance…

A lot of people got the Iraq War all wrong…but no one got it wronger than Judith Miller, who was then reporting for The New York Times. When folks tell me the Times is a Liberal paper, I say, "At times, sure…but they couldn't have been more in the tank for the Bush Adminstration's war cries if they'd let Dick Cheney ghost-write their front page." Via Judith Miller's reporting, he almost did.

Ms. Miller has a new Wall Street Journal article out defending herself. She can't defend what she wrote as true but there seems to be this new standard being sold, at least in reference to Iraq: We can't fault people in positions of responsibility if they made mistakes — even if those mistakes cost thousands of lives and billions of bucks — if they were just wrong. If they lied, that's different. But if they were just wrong and they believed what they said was so, it's just a big Oops! No one to blame.

It's like if your doctor amputated your right leg and it turned out later that your leg was fine and he was looking at someone else's x-rays. It's an honest error. You can't possibly fault anyone for that.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting you read Ms. Miller's self-vindication but if you do, also read Simon Maloy's rebuttal to it. He has this odd idea that she's still not dealing in the truth.

Stan Freberg's magnum opus as a maker of funny records was probably Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America — the Early Years. It was a musical comedy album that came out in 1961, featuring clever songs and highly fractured interpretations of our nation's founding years. Dr. Demento has said he still can't decide if it's the best comedy album in history or the best history album in comedy. Either way, it was pretty good.

The brilliant Mr. Freberg planned it as a three-volume set: Volume One started with Columbus and took us up to the Revolutionary War. Volume Two would carry things through World War I and then the third release would bring things up to the present day. Stan wrote the songs, co-wrote the sketches and played (in the first one) Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and several other historical figures. He was aided in his efforts by superstar arranger/conductor Billy May and by a superb cast including Paul Frees, June Foray, Jesse White, Byron Kane and Peter Leeds. The tunes are wonderful, the jokes are funny and eminently quotable…and there's even a smidgen of real history in there. A great record.

It started with Christopher Columbus setting foot on the shores of America and being unable to cash a check because, after all, it was Columbus Day. It ended with General George Washington winning the Revolutionary War, after spending hours deciding which boat to rent.

That was the first album. It was a huge hit and Stan set to work on the second album. Then "things happened."

In the latter half of the last century, the most prolific producer of Broadway shows was a man named David Merrick. Hello, Dolly! was one of his. So was 42nd Street. So were dozens and dozens of others.

He was also perhaps the most colorful off-stage personality of the Broadway scene. Every Merrick show yielded tales of trickery, feuds, threats, more threats, and lawsuits – most of this deliberately and wickedly orchestrated by Mr. Merrick. He was said to consider any project incomplete unless he sued a few people and made at least a few enemies-for-life. (To learn more about the amazing, controversial career of David Merrick, seek out a book called David Merrick: The Abominable Showman by Howard Kissel.)

Shortly after the first volume of United States of America hit record shops, Merrick heard it and made a deal with Freberg to stage the whole thing – Volume One, plus the material that was to comprise Volumes Two and Three — on Broadway as a musical. The deal was on-again, off-again a few times but then finally it was on, and Freberg moved to New York to begin rehearsals. To his dying day, he wished he'd said no. He wished he'd stayed home and gone ahead with his plans to record Volume Two and then Volume Three. Merrick, however, insisted they be postponed, so as not to infringe on sales of the show's planned cast album.

So instead of making the records, Stan began mounting a Broadway show, and the fights with Merrick were legendary. A few of them are recounted in the Kissel book and more were told in Freberg's autobiography, It Only Hurts When I Laugh.

The best one — the one I have to tell here — is the one where they were rehearsing the Battle of Appomattox. Merrick, after observing a run-through, marched up to Freberg and said, "Take Lincoln out of the Civil War. He doesn't work."

Stan gave out with a loud, understandable Huh? "Don't you think people will notice his absence?" he asked the producer.

"Oh," Merrick replied. "You'll miss him, I'll miss him, a few history buffs will miss him, but the average person won't notice." He also suggested moving Barbara Fretchie from the Civil War to the Revolutionary War, because they needed a strong female character in that section.

Most of their exchanges, alas, weren't this funny, at least to Stan. He finally decided that Merrick was trying to destroy his spirit, and he yanked the project. Broadway lost what might have been a wonderful show but, worse, Volume Two of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America was indefinitely shelved. By the time the legal battles abated, Stan had lost the momentum of the project.

I loved that first record. I played it over and over and over, and I wasn't the only one. Soon after, a group called the Beatles became the hottest thing in the history of show business. When Paul McCartney was once asked what kind of music he liked to listen to, he mentioned a couple of songs from Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. I'd call that a pretty good compliment — wouldn't you?

I'm not sure exactly when I discovered it — around '63, I guess. Maybe a bit earlier. I bought a copy at a record store on Westwood Boulevard in West L.A., just north of Pico. If you know the area: It was located right where they built Junior's Delicatessen which is now Lenny's Delicatessen, which is where Ken Levine and I just had lunch which is not the least bit relevant to this article.

Every time I went into a record store thereafter, I would zip over to the Comedy section and peek in front of the index divider for Stan Freberg, on which his name would inevitably be misspelled. I would fervently pray that Volume Two would be there but it never was. A few times, I asked the clerk in the store on Westwood if he had any idea when it would be in and I was always told, "No, and we've had a lot of people asking."

Little did I know that (a) it would take thirty-five years and (b) I would get to be there for its creation. For that matter, there's a (c) and a (d): I didn't imagine that I'd get to know Stan and work with him…and that we'd even lunch at Junior's Delicatessen — on the very same hunk of real estate where I bought the first volume of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America.

Throughout those thirty-five years, Stan was asked over and over, "Say, is Volume Two ever coming out?" It came to be the Eternal Question of his existence.

The first time I met him, I figured that he was probably sick of people asking him about it, so I held off and didn't ask immediately. I think I held off for about four minutes. The answer, of course, was that he had moved on to other work, he was no longer making comedy albums and neither was Capitol, and his company of actors had scattered and, in a few sad cases, passed away.

And there was another reason which I didn't mention the first time I wrote about all this. Stan was expensive. He put a high price tag on his creations, demanded total control and always went first class. His musical arranger/conductor did not come cheap and what he had Billy May arrange and conduct was a full orchestra. Full orchestras never come cheap. Neither did the cast Stan wanted to use. He also demanded (or maybe just needed) a large cast and plenty of studio time to do multiple takes and then to spend days editing and mixing, editing and mixing.

During those 3.5 decades, he was often approached by record companies about bringing forth Volume Two. They were all enthusiastic about it. That was, until they saw the budget. Record companies simply did not spend that kind of money on a comedy record…especially a comedy record with commercial prospects that faded as Volume One became more and more a distant memory. Finally though, some outside investors came in, not so much because they expected to make a fortune off the album but as they simply felt it should be done.

So one day, Stan called and asked if I could meet him for lunch — at Junior's, which was frighteningly appropriate. He had a tuna sandwich and I had corned beef and he asked me if I'd help him out with Volume Two. I said…well, what do you think I said?

I'll tell you what happened next in our next installment of Freberg Stories. I'm not sure yet how long it'll be before it appears but it should be less than thirty-five years.

Comic Book Resources reports on the panel we did last Friday at WonderCon: Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai and myself discussing Groo the Wanderer and other current and upcoming projects. Their reporter misheard a few things…like I don't have a wife and I'm sure Sergio didn't say I did. But most of the info is correct.

Leonard Maltin remembers Stan Freberg. I was present for the "impromptu musicale" he describes and I recall the delight of the audience…and the look of disbelief/joy on Leonard's face that he was playing piano to accompany Stan Freberg.

The New York Times has a nice piece by Douglas Martin, which I came across because of this Tweet…

One quibble: It says Stan's career doing voices for animated cartoons ended in 2011. Just for the sake of accurate history (and to not truncate Stan's amazing longevity in this profession), Freberg was a semi-regular on The Garfield Show for the last few years and did his last recording for us in June of 2014.

He appeared in a number of episodes done for the show's fourth season and his last session was to record an hour-long special we produced after the completion of Season 4. The fourth season and that special have aired all over the world but not yet in this country. I am told Cartoon Network here is planning to run them this October.

Today (Wednesday), Stu Shostak has discusses the state of the TV industry with his resident TV critics, Steve Beverly and Wesley Hyatt.  They'll be talking about how James Corden's doing on The Late, Late Show, some new channels that may be coming to a TV near you, the recent FCC ruling in favor of Net Neutrality, the Brian Williams situation and many other lively topics. Tune in. Enjoy. Especially if you like hearing grown men rant.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. Buy 'em all! Save a fortune!

The word "genius" gets tossed around a lot in the entertainment world, applied at times to anyone who has been anywhere near a success. One of the few people I've met who truly earned it was Stan Freberg.

Stan had more than a few successes. Right out of high school, he was hired as a cartoon voice actor for Warner Brothers Cartoons. He was half the cast on one of the first hit TV shows for kids, Time for Beany. He was a best-selling recording artist for Capitol Records, creating discs that have stood the test of time for both inventiveness and sheer musical delight. He starred in the last real network radio comedy show in the classic tradition.

And then he got into advertising, bringing the concept of the "entertaining commercial" to a whole new level. For a long time in this country, if you laughed at a radio or TV ad, it was either created by Stan Freberg or by an advertising agency that was consciously trying to imitate Stan Freberg.

Those were the highlights of his career and there were others as an actor, puppeteer, voice performer, writer and all-around creative talent. He inspired several generations of notable practitioners in his fields.

I had a long and fascinating history with Stan, starting when at an early age, I discovered his work and loved every single bit of it. I used to tell him — quite honestly — that I got a goodly chunk of my sense of humor from him. I was hardly the only person who told him things like that. I later got to know him and work with him and consider him a very close friend. I'll post some more stories about him in the coming days.

Six months and three days ago, some of us were involved in a tribute to Stan that was staged at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Stan was like a little kid on Christmas morning, he was so happy to be there. So were an awful lot of Freberg fans who were thrilled to be able to give Stan the gift of their applause…a small payback for all that he had given them.

Today in the early morning, he died in the place he most enjoyed being…in the arms of his beloved wife, Hunter. She took such good care of him. Without her, I have no doubt we'd have lost him years ago. He was 88.

People are writing and calling to ask me if I know of plans for a public memorial. There are no plans yet. I believe there will be something but not for a while.

Stan Freberg was an extraordinary man. He was very honest and very perceptive, an observation which should come as no surprise to anyone who knew him only through his work. That was one of the things that was so compelling about it: Even his advertising was truthful. He would not sell a product, no matter what fee was involved, if he didn't believe in the message. He was one of the first people in his field to turn against cigarette advertising, for example.

He was gifted with an amazing imagination and the performing gifts necessary to transfer that imagination into something that others could see and hear. He was a wonderful singer, a superb mimic and a terrific actor. And take note of this: Of all the actors who'd been doing voices for animation in recent years, Stan was the guy who'd been at it the longest. He recorded his first cartoon voice roles in 1945 for release in 1946. As far as I know, his last job was in an episode of The Garfield Show I voice-directed last year. It's currently scheduled to run on Cartoon Network this October, giving Stan a career span of 69 years.

Right after Stan's first wife died, I would go over and take him out to dinner, just to get him out of the apartment. One night, I took him to Matteo's, an Italian restaurant that like so many in Los Angeles, boasts not so much about its food but about that fact that Frank Sinatra used to dine there often.

The maître d' they had then would greet you and then, to make you feel special, he would tell you, "I'm going to seat you in Mr. Sinatra's booth." Every time I went to Matteo's, I was seated in Mr. Sinatra's booth and it was a different booth every time.

I don't think it's there now but when you walked in, you passed a display of photos that looked like a shrine to Mr. Sinatra. As the maître d' escorted us to tonight's Mr. Sinatra's booth, we passed it and I pointed out a picture. It was this picture…

The man you don't recognize at lower left is record tycoon Glenn Wallichs. The others were then the top recording artists for Capitol Records: Frank, Danny Kaye, Gordon MacRae, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Stan. That evening at Matteo's, Stan was the only one still with us.

I pointed to it and said, "Hey, Stan! There's you with Frank!" The maître d' whirled around and gasped, "You mean you actually met him?" It was pretty much the same line reading he'd have given if I'd said, "Hey, Stan! There's you with Jesus Christ!" Stan did know Frank. They were good friends. Once when Frank toured Australia, he took along Freberg as his opening act.

We had a lovely dinner. When I asked for the check, our waiter said, "It's been taken care of." I thought Matteo's was comping us but no. A minute later, he came over with a cloth napkin on which another diner in the restaurant – one, the waiter said had already left – had written in ballpoint pen…

Mr. Freberg…you don't know me but your work has meant so much to me over the years. It's an honor to pay you back in even a tiny way by paying for your dinner tonight.

It was not signed.

Stan sat quietly when he read it and he cried a tiny bit. Being around him, I was aware that he often got reactions and praise like that and it wasn't just "You're very funny," though there was that. More often, it was heartfelt acknowledgement that the work was special and that, like the guy said on the napkin, it "has meant so much to me over the years." That's kind of the same thing I've been trying to say here but I didn't have a cloth napkin.

Here, minus the first three minutes or so, is a video of the Cartoon Voices panel we did at WonderCon last Saturday to a full house. The actors were, going from left to right on the dais: Gregg Berger, Julie Nathanson, John Mariano, Sumalee Montano, Bob Joles and Kathy Garver. The video starts with Gregg telling what he's done and demonstrating some of his most famous voices (you missed a few, including Grimlock) and then he's followed by the other five doing their greatest hits.

Around the thirty minute mark, we commence a cold reading of the story of "Cinderella" with the actors reading lines they hadn't seen before and improvising the hell out of what was on the paper. We do this often at WonderCon and Comic-Con. I get five or six actors, stick them with a rather bland script and turn them loose.

I don't think some folks in the audience realize that much of the joy comes from them not sticking to the lines as written…although this particular cast impressed me for getting some pretty big laughs with clever readings of unaltered dialogue. But there's a lot of ad-libbing in there, too and they get the credit for all the funny. My big achievement was getting the panel to end at exactly the right minute…

Here's an article about the announcement that WonderCon 2016 will be held in Los Angeles and as you can see, it gives dates of March 25-27. Here's the first part of the piece…

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) – Next year, cosplay and Hollywood will collide when WonderCon moves from Anaheim to Los Angeles. "Los Angeles is honored to have been selected as the destination for WonderCon 2016," Mayor Eric Garcetti said. "We look forward to establishing a long-term partnership with Comic-Con International, the presenter, and helping them establish a home base in L.A. We anticipate the show to be highly attended and to set the precedent for future successful Comic-Con events in L.A."

Translation: "We really, really want to steal Comic-Con from San Diego." I doubt that's possible but I do think they're going to give WonderCon a great deal and a lot of cooperation. You do that kind of thing when you're courting. Unmentioned anywhere in the piece, however, is the reason that WonderCon is moving to L.A. and that it's a one-year contract.

The Anaheim Convention Center is expanding, adding 200,000 square feet of space and 1,400 parking spots. There will also be numerous other upgrades and additions, including a climate-controlled pedestrian bridge that will connect to the second floor of the existing facility. This limits the number and size of conventions that can be held there in 2016 and there is no room for WonderCon. That's why they're staging next year's close enough for me to get there by bus — which I may do. If you think parking in San Diego is difficult…

The expansion in Anaheim is supposed to be completed in "early 2017." That may or may not be in time for that year's WonderCon but whenever it's done, L.A. will have to compete with a much-improved Anaheim Convention Center…and compete not just for WonderCon or Comic-Con. Anaheim isn't spending $180 million to keep servicing the same conventions. They're gunning to steal other cons and probably have their hearts set on several that now book the L.A. facility. The Anaheim Convention Center was already larger than the Los Angeles Convention Center. It will become even bigger and, presumably, nicer. Of course you know, as Groucho and Bugs Bunny both said, this means war.

Depending on what magnitude of Hollywood promotions it attracts, WonderCon in Los Angeles could be huge. This is by no means a prediction but I had an interesting fantasy yesterday. Some of the facts argue against this so let's just leave reality aside and treat this as highly speculative fiction.

Let's imagine that many of the big TV-movie studios see WonderCon L.A. as a great place to promote upcoming product, even more so than Comic-Con. They decide March is a much better time than late July to promote the blockbuster movies they have coming out in summer. They also realize it's easier (and cheaper) to get cast and crew members to L.A. than it is to San Diego. You may have to charter a plane to get Michael Fassbender to Comic-Con. He can get to WonderCon in Los Angeles by calling an Uber car. I may do that, too.

The Comickaze convention held there last November at the L.A. Convention Center drew a reported 65,000 attendees. I can easily imagine WonderCon topping that. I can even imagine it topping Comic-Con…thought not by all that much just due to space restrictions. I don't know how many people it can hold but the L.A.C.C. has 720,000 square feet of exhibition space. (The San Diego Convention Center has 615,700. I keep meeting people who think if Comic-Con relocated to L.A., it could be twice or three times its present size with wider aisles and everyone who wants to go could go. I'll bet you it would still sell out in a few hours, be jam-packed every day and leave 100,000+ people unable to get admission.)

Okay, so let's say WonderCon is huge in my town. Maybe that success would keep it in L.A. Maybe they'd move it back to Anaheim in a year or two, figuring that much of that success would follow it there to a bigger, more modern facility. A lot of that would depend on the terms offered.

But then what would happen with Comic-Con?

In my little fantasy, the big exhibitors and studios gravitate to Wondercon…not all of them but enough to downsize Comic-Con a bit. It would still sell out, maybe in twenty days instead of twenty minutes. It would still fill all the hotels in San Diego for miles around. You still wouldn't be able to get a table at the Old Spaghetti Factory without an hour wait. There just wouldn't be quite so many people who want to attend the con and can't. The demand would be more the size of the convention center that houses the event.

And if that happened…Hey, who knows? The Comic-Con might even be a little more about comic books. I don't think it will ever be mainly about them again because I don't think the comic book industry will ever be mainly about comic books again. But if WonderCon did lure away some of the movie and TV promotions, Comic-Con could be a bit more about comics.

As I said, this is not something I'm expecting. I just got to thinking: You have Comic-Con in San Diego and WonderCon in either Anaheim or Los Angeles. Isn't there something wrong here? The one that's more about Hollywood is the one that's farther from Hollywood. Maybe some form of natural selection will cause each over time to trade emphasis.

Aah, forget it. It's not going to go like that and I have better things to think about than this. And since it's bedtime, better fantasies to muse about. Good night.

Brief interview with Lewis Black. By the way, if you're not watching his Internet show, you're missing some great stuff. It's over on this site and they don't leave the new shows up for very long.

I don't have a lot of details but the animation community is today mourning the passing of Cliff Voorhees, one of the most prolific and respected artists in the Hollywood cartoon industry. Cliff was one of those guys who was never out of work. Every studio wanted him on board because he was fast, reliable and good…and also someone you just liked having around the building. He was a very pleasant, easy-going gentleman.

His career was an odd one: He was an effects (assistant) animator on Disney's Lady and the Tramp, after which he decided he needed to learn more and enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute. After that, he worked on the newspaper strip, The Toodles for several years of what he described as eighty-hour weeks. He finally quit that and found work as an associate art director at Westways magazine, the official publication of the Auto Club, as well as doing illustration work for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

A friend told Cliff that there was work available at Western Publishing Company, drawing comic books for their Gold Key line. He applied and was quickly hired. He worked on most of their comics based on animated characters but most often drew for the Disney titles, especially Chip n' Dale. Some published sources date his work for Western from around 1974 to the mid-eighties but he was working for that firm well before I was and I started there in '72. No matter what he did in animation, he still moonlighted for Western until a year or two before their comics line ended in 1984. He also did work for Disney's foreign comics division, mostly on Super Goof.

Working in comics got Cliff back into animation in 1967, starting with Filmation where he worked on Archie, Fat Albert, The Brady Kids, Heckle & Jeckle, Star Trek and many more. He then moved to Hanna-Barbera for several years (mostly drawing Smurfs), followed by stints at Marvel Productions (Muppet Babies) and Film Roman. It was at Film Roman, when he worked on Bobby's World and Garfield that I got to know him. He worked for Nickelodeon on Angry Beavers and Cartoon Network on The Grim Adventures of Bill and Mandy and he occasionally freelanced for other houses. During the last decade or so of his career, he was known to retire, then get lured back, then retire again, then get lured back…

He was a nice man and he sure drew well. You can hear an interview that Steve Hulett recorded with Cliff in 2011 over on this page. I'll bet some of his friends will give it a listen just to be able to spend a little more time with him. (Incidentally, I don't think the Beagle Boys comic book sample they have up there is by Cliff, though it might be him inking Jack Manning's drawing.)