Monthly Archives: June 2020

Here's the number "Style" from the 1964 movie, Robin and the 7 Hoods. I remember seeing this film with my parents at the Crest Theater in Westwood when I was twelve years old. I remember my folks and others saying that Frank Sinatra was the greatest musical performer alive and I recall after the film thinking, "Well, I guess that wasn't a good example of his greatness. One of these days, I'm sure I'll see him do something that will show me why people think that."

Years later, a devout Sinatra fan told me to not hold this film against his idol. It was shot right after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Frank, he said, was still despondent about that. And then during the production, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped and though he was ultimately freed unharmed, the whole ordeal was so agonizing that Frank (Senior) wanted to abort the film but was eventually convinced to finish it.

Okay, those are probably decent excuses for not giving a top-rate performance but I'm still waiting for that video or film clip or recording that will convince me Francis Albert Sinatra deserved his reputation. I like Dean and Bing more in every way, though Bing doesn't show why he deserved his rep in this number either. But the songwriters — Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen — do.

Ten years ago, a stage musical based on Robin and the 7 Hoods was in tryouts at the Old Globe in San Diego and said to be headed for Broadway. I haven't seen any sign of that, either — but here's probably the best number in the movie…

• Take down the statues of everyone who fought for the Confederacy except Jubilation T. Cornpone.

There was an altogether appropriate outpouring of praise and respect for Denny O'Neil all across the Internet yesterday. It made me think, as so many passings do, how many good and smart people I've met in the comic book industry. It's most of them. It's why at a comic convention, I may know less than 5% of the people in the hall but I still feel among friends.

Pardon the strained segue here but you know when I don't these days? When I'm around people not wearing masks. Are they making some sort of political statement? If they are, it seems like a crazy one given the apparent links lately between a city "opening up" and having the number of reported cases of COVID-19 increase. Even if you believe there's no cause-and-effect relationship there, I'd think you'd wear a mask just in case you're wrong. That's one of the problems with politics these days: Too many people who won't consider the possibility that they're wrong.

Yeah, it's weird to be in a public place these days with so many people wearing masks and trying to maintain their distance. To me, it's even weirder to be among people who think…I don't know…"This whole virus thing is a hoax"…or "I'm so damned healthy I won't get it and I don't care if I carry it to someone else"…or "The president says it's over"…or whatever. I'm torn between wanting to ask these people what the hell they're thinking and not wanting to be anywhere near them.

I miss crowds. Unlike some people, I don't mind them as long as there's a place I can go to get away from them. When I go to Las Vegas alone, as I sometimes do (or did), I like that I can work or sleep in my room and feel utterly isolated…and then I can just hop in an elevator and within two minutes, be surrounded by mostly-happy people. And when I have enough of that, I can escape back to the solitude of my room just as easily. Right now, there's no place where I can be among mostly-happy people at all, let alone a crowd where I feel safe.

This will end. We're all just waiting this thing out…and that's another thing I think when I see unmasked folks in the shopping center: They might be making themselves feel better by acting like it's over but it isn't and they're more likely prolonging it. It's frustrating to be in the tunnel and not know how long it is, how far you'll have to travel to see that light at the end. But you just have to keep going because there really isn't a good alternative. Wish there was.

Denny O'Neil, one of the outstanding comic book writers of his generation, has died at the age of 81. He died at home of natural causes, we're hearing, and those who knew of his recent health problems are not surprised. I spoke to him about four months ago and he was talking then about not having much time left. I'll tell you in a moment what I called him to talk about because it might interest you.

Denny had been a reporter writing about comic books in the sixties and then he moved on to become a writer of comic books in the sixties. He always said he owed his new career to two people — Roy Thomas, who suggested Denny try out for a writing job at Marvel (which he got) and Dick Giordano, who was then the editor at Charlton. When the work for Marvel dried out, Dick kept Denny busy writing for Charlton — sometimes under the name Sergius O'Shaugnessy — and then when Dick moved over to DC, he took Denny with him. Before long, Denny was the main writer of Batman and a little later, of Superman. He wrote most of DC's main books at one time or another and often worked as an editor there.

His scripts for Charlton had been way better than Charlton deserved for the low rates they paid. His scripts for DC were way better than the higher rates DC paid. He had a way of infusing old strips with fresh approaches. A lot of people credited him for bringing "relevance" to comics, crafting stories about current events and issues, most visibly in the acclaimed Green Lantern-Green Arrow series he did with artist Neal Adams. I thought it was a matter of Denny just trying to move comics a little more into the real world at a time in the early seventies when most comics could have been set in the forties without making much difference.

Green Lantern-Green Arrow was, as noted, critically acclaimed. I was more impressed with what he did with Batman, and not just the stories he wrote of that hero that were drawn by Adams. You could tell that a lot of the other writers of the Caped Crusader were at least starting with Denny's Batman and building on what he'd done. I was also really impressed with a run he did later on Iron Man for Marvel. Denny had never been coy about discussing his own problems with "substance abuse" and while it was risky to explore those themes in Iron Man, it made for one of the most personal runs of a comic of its kind.

Actually, I was impressed with just about everything Denny did and the few times I got to work with him in an editor/writer relationship, I found him to be as good at editing as he was at writing, which was very good indeed. He was also a very conscientious writer, willing to mentor others and help out in any righteous cause. Several times when Jack Kirby got into his famous battles with comic book publishers, Denny was among the first to call me and ask if he could help in any way. A fairly small part of his career was built on continuing characters that Jack had launched or help launch but that didn't matter to Denny. He respected Jack greatly and if he could help, he would help.

I always enjoyed talking to the man. I always learned something. Recently, I wrote the foreword for a set of books that'll be out in August and I'm going to try to tell this so it doesn't sound like a plug. It's a reissue of the Marvel Mini-Books that were put out in the sixties — little tiny comics like this one…

The books carried no credits and while I could identify the artists from their handiwork, I wanted to identify the writers so I did some detective work. At one point, I realized Denny had a staff job at Marvel at the time they were done. He was writing Millie the Model so I figured he might have written the Millie the Model mini-book and called to ask him. It turned out he hadn't written the Millie one but he did vividly recall writing the Captain America one depicted above.

In fact, he said it was the first super-hero comic he ever wrote and he told me he did it in about two hours and loved writing it and that as far as he knew, I was now the only human being in the world who knew he'd done that.  I was going to save that "scoop" to be divulged in the foreword but it seems more appropriate to give it up here.

I said, "Then you never autographed a copy?"  He said, "Never.  No one knows I did it."  And then he offered, assuming he could find a pen with a fine-enough point, to sign the copy in the new replica set to me when it comes out and never sign another one for anybody.  "You'll have the only autographed copy that ever exists," he promised.  I'm sorry that's not going to happen, not because I wanted the collector's item but because I don't get to talk with Denny anymore.  He was one of the brightest, nicest guys I've met in comics and maybe one of the most important writers the field has ever had.

This year marks forty (40) years that I've been a member of The Academy of Magical Arts, a society for magicians and aficionados of what they do.  Maybe you've heard of our clubhouse — The Magic Castle, a big mansion up in the hills of Hollywood full of magical artifacts and history and when it's open, fine performers and fine dining. It's closed now for obvious reasons.

When I first joined, it had one wonderment that's no longer there…Dai Vernon. "The Professor," as everyone called him was born in 1894 and devoted his life to magic. He performed it, he invented it, he studied it, he lived it. He billed himself as "The Man Who Fooled Houdini" because he did. Almost every major figure in magic in America (and a few other countries), knew Dai, leaned from Dai and craved his approval.

We lost him in 1992. The last thirty years of his life were spent at the Castle, making himself available to anyone who wanted to meet him, hear his stories, get advice on their magic and, if possible, get a little of that approval. He'd usually be found on a certain love seat in the front parlor. The Magic Castle was filled with exhibits and history and shows and acts from all over the world…but there was no better way to spend your time there than sitting with The Professor as he held court. I was occasionally in his audience.

Here he is on a TV show probably from the early eighties, performing a trick that's even older than he was — the cups and balls. If you're familiar with this feat, the way he does it might strike you as the standard way to do it. That's because the way Dai Vernon did a trick became the standard way. Everyone else who has done the cups 'n' balls since — which is like 90% of everyone who ever took up magic — starts with the way he did it and puts their own spin on it. Here's how he did it…

So it's Day 92. I'm still allowing very few people into my home and they either wear a mask or I know how much they've been isolating in their lives and I'm satisfied it's safe for us to isolate together for a while. I go out rarely and only for a good reason. Walking for exercise is a good reason and when I walk somewhere, I wear a mask. When I drive somewhere, I wear a mask from the moment I leave my car until the moment I'm back in my car.

In the two latter situations, I carry a little man-purse that contains an extra mask, a small vial of hand sanitizer, rubber gloves and a few paper towels.

I have no intention at the moment of changing any of this. I am unconvinced it's safe to "reopen" or to gather again in public places or to assume my chances of getting the virus are now down around the same level as my chances of getting hit by a meteor. I'd love to find out I'm wrong and that it's a lot safer than I think but I would still not take chances.

I am following what is said by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others of similar expertise and credentials but I am not altering my conduct except as approved by my personal physician. I believe it is brain-dead stupid to place any value on "health information" that comes from non-doctors and especially from politicians. I understand the president thinks we've turned the corner, the virus is going away and that it's safe now to cram into buildings and stadiums with others, especially when you're gathering to cheer Donald Trump. But this is a president who believes that convincing your followers that you've achieved something is just as good as actually doing it.

I am not spending a lot of time watching the news except for the weather and televised car chases. I am not spending any time trying to change the mind of anyone whose political views differ from mine though I might try it if I ever meet anyone who is willing to change their political views. When I do peek at the news, I like the way the Black Lives Matter campaign is winning over people, some of whom I did not think were winnable.

My health is fine. My mental attitude is pretty good. I'm getting work done. I have plenty of toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, Kleenex-type tissue, soap, bottled water, my favorite pantry items and several apps that can be used to have meals delivered. Life is pretty good here and I hope you can say the same.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham just won the renomination of his party for another term. He also won the dubious honor of being the subject of a song parody by my fabulous friend Shelly Goldstein…

Thank you for all the notes telling me I shouldn't be concerned about posting trivia during a period of national crisis. I have the feeling that if I don't post trivia then, I won't be posting any until many months after the next President of the United States takes office.

Here's a question that keeps running through my mind and don't bother offering theories because (a) I have more than enough and (b) none of us can possibly know. But what the hell has to be going through the mind of Derek Chauvin — the police officer who ended the life of George Floyd — these days? I can imagine he thinks he did nothing wrong…or at least nothing wrong that many other cops haven't done without being charged with murder.

He must realize though that some pretty bad things have happened to his fellow officers because of his actions. He may also realize that even if some slick lawyering and legal technicalities allow him to avoid prison time, it's not like he can go back to work as if nothing happened. Henceforth, everything will be different for all of us but especially for that guy.

I'm going to guess that he thinks it's unfair for him to be punished for doing his job as he thinks was expected to do it…and he may view the fact that the other officers on the scene didn't stop him as proof of that. He may think he's being set up to take the fall for the entire system and if that's what he's thinking, I'm not sure he's wrong. Still, if he's right, that's not a reason he should go free. And can you imagine the fury in this country if he did?

He was originally charged with Third Degree Murder which was later upgraded to Second. I'm wondering if he was charged with Third because the prosecutors were fairly confident they could get a conviction on Third Degree and the important thing was, they thought, to not have this guy found Not Guilty, thereby triggering that anger and the associated actions.

None of this is to in any way excuse or minimize the ghastly, inhumane thing that man did. I guess I'm just curious about this: He probably realizes the damage he did to race relations in this country…but I wonder if he realizes what he did to his own profession.

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I've decided to start up my webcasts again though I haven't decided what and when the first one will be. Something was bothering me about them beyond what I've stated here and I think I've figured out what it is. It's that I want them to be more conversations than interviews of the guest. You may understand what I mean if and when you see the next one. That is, if I'm at all successful in my goal.

Years ago, my friend Sergio Aragonés and I did a comic book for DC called Fanboy. I'm now seeing online that it's becoming safe for groups of five people or less to get together so I'm thinking we can arrange a gathering of everyone who bought a copy of Fanboy.

We're just now learning — thank you, Anthony Tollin — of the passing of veteran comic book/strip artist Frank Bolle on May 12 at the age of 95. Over the years, Mr. Bolle worked on at least two dozen newspaper strips, sometimes as a ghost artist or assistant and sometimes credited. Among them would be Winnie Winkle, On Stage, Tarzan, Gil Thorp, The Girls of Apartment 3-G, Rip Kirby and The Heart of Juliet Jones. He was equally prolific in comic books.

Born in Brooklyn, he began drawing comics in 1943, assisting other artists at first but working solo within the year. Soon, his work turned up at Timely (now Marvel) Comics, Fawcett, Lev Gleason and Magazine Enterprises. It was for the last of these that he co-created the masked western heroine, The Black Phantom, who was neither black nor a phantom. She was however, like all the women he drew, extremely attractive.

In the fifties and beyond, he worked for DC and Atlas and began a long association with Western Publishing on their Dell and later Gold Key Comics. Among the comics he did for Western were Flash Gordon, The Twilight Zone, Grimm's Ghost Stories and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom. For Charlton, he drew The Phantom and many, many romance comics. He also popped up at Marvel from time to time, usually inking for comics like The Defenders and their Captain Marvel. All of this was in addition to his long stint drawing a number of features for Boys' Life, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.

More often than most artists, he was anonymous but you could spot his clean, attractive style and often, he would sneak an "FWB" (his initials) somewhere in a panel. From all indications, he worked until just a few years ago, capping off a career that spanned over 70 years.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Bolle on a panel at Comic-Con International in 2004 when he also received an Inkpot Award for his long, illustrious career. He was a charming gent who seemed genuinely surprised that so many fans knew of his work and had comics of his they wanted him to sign. If they'd brought every comic in which his art appeared, that would have been a very, very large pile.

On Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, just south of Hollywood Boulevard, there's a big newsstand that has been there as long as I can remember…although it used to be bigger than it is now.  It's the World Book & News and as of the last time I drove by, it was still there despite a decade or more of news stories that it was closing.  Starting in the late sixties, it was a place I sometimes went to buy new comic books and other kinds of magazines.  I actually met a few fellow comic book fans there and made some friends.

It was kind of a landmark and so is the alley to the right of it which has been seen in more movies than Michael Caine…and that's a lot of movies.  Since its on-screen appearances date back to the days of Chaplin and Keaton, some silent movie scholars are crusading to get the alley declared as some sort of historical site.  I'd grant official landmark status to the whole thing but I'll settle for that alley.  Read all about it here.

I just found out one of my favorite comedians has started a video podcast. So far, there have been five installments posted to YouTube (and probably elsewhere) of I Don't Know About That with Jim Jefferies.  Each one is ninety minutes or so of Jim Jefferies talking with someone about something and I admit I haven't watched all of them yet but I probably will.

I'll watch the May 4th edition and then I'll watch the May 5th installment and then I'll watch the one he did on May 12th which I'll probably follow with the one from May 26th and I've already watched a lot of his June 9th show.  One of his co-hosts is Forrest Shaw, a comedian I thought was real good as Mr. Jefferies' opening act the first two times I took Amber to see him.

It may be a while before I catch up on all these so I can't tell you that I think they're all worth your time.  But just about everything I've seen Jefferies do was worth my time so make of that what you will.

I continue to struggle with finding a balance. My life here in mostly-isolation is quite pleasant when I can manage to get something done each day. I have to, for my own health, write something. Occasionally, there's also something constructive like working on my taxes or organizing a jumbled file in my filing cabinet or on my D drive.

But there's just too much news, little of which is good, and it's hard to take your attention away from it. Somewhere on this blog, I have probably quoted at least once a joke that Jackie Mason used to use at a time long ago when Richard Nixon was in the White House and Jackie Mason was funny. He said, "Because of him, I get up every morning and run out to see if my furniture is still there."

(I just did a search. This is my fourth time quoting it.)

Nowadays, I awake and I pick up my cell phone and flip to a news aggregator to see what stupid, baneful thing he's done already today — and you all know who "he" is. I'm not talking about Jackie Mason.

This morning, it was spreading the insane idea that when that 75-year-old unarmed protester who was doing nothing wrong got shoved to the pavement by a "peace officer" and wound up in the hospital…well, that was a set-up. The 75-year-old guy planned that to make the police look bad because he knew one of them would shove him and then that cop and all the rest of those fine officers would just march past, leaving him bleeding on the sidewalk.

Probably by now, someone has asked Trump if he thinks that's what really happened and Trump's hiding behind the excuse that he didn't say it was so. He was just quoting someone on the Internet. If you think Trump hates the press now, imagine what they'd be publishing about him if their criteria was that anyone said it on the Internet.

This then is my problem. It may be yours too but right now, it's mine. I want to…I need to spend my name not looking like the bad guy in a Tex Avery cartoon doing exaggerated "takes" at what's in the news. But boy, is it hard.

Yesterday, trying to get my blog off the topic, I posted a piece I wrote some time ago about errors in the credits of cartoon shows. It's valuable info for someone but just before bed last night, I read a fair amount of news about racial problems and reinventing police work in this country and the spread of COVID-19 — reopening ain't working so well — and other problems. Then I looked at my blog and having an item there about cartoon credits just looked wrong to me. Of all the things in the world, I picked that to post?

This blog will probably be quite schizophrenic for the rest of this year, careening madly between topical thoughts and non-topical. That's because my brain is doing that and the whole point of this page is for me to write what I feel like writing about, as opposed to what someone's paying me money to write. I apologize if any of you get whiplash because of this.

If you love show tunes, you may love this a little less than two hours of them in Kings of Broadway 2020, a video revue of great singers singing from their homes — all or most of them apparently singing live even though few microphones are in evidence. There are a few speeches in there about the George Floyd matter and they reminded me of a term I once heard — "The choir preaching to the choir" — and most of songs chosen are about sadness and heartbreak and getting over them.

But most of the performances are quite splendid though one gent does display the chutzpah of thinking he can improve on Sondheim lyrics. And it's a fund-raiser for Acting For Others, NHS Charities Together and Black Lives Matter Global Charities so if you enjoy it as much as I did, send some bucks to the cause like I did…

Every so often on animation forums, I see conversations that remind me to remind the animation community that credits on old TV cartoons are often inaccurate. In many cases, they were inaccurate when they first aired because the guy who made them up did a less-than-stellar job. (The name of Gary Owens was misspelled on the first season of Space Ghost, for example.)

Also, some artists and actors for various reasons asked that their names not be in the credits. Daws Butler, because he was so well-identified with his voicework for Hanna-Barbera, asked that his name not be on some of the shows he worked on for Jay Ward…and it's misspelled on others. I don't know the precise reason but Mel Blanc's name was not on several episodes of The Flintstones where it's clearly him doing Barney Rubble and others. Bill Scott was the voice of Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody and Dudley Do-Right and others on the various shows that featured those characters and he wrote a lot of the scripts as well…but is only credited as a producer.

Also, on shows for Saturday morning, most studios including Hanna-Barbera, liked to make up one set of end credits for the entire season and use it (the same one) on every episode. They'd list all the writers, actors, artists (etc.) who'd worked on even one episode for that season as of the moment when those end credits were made up. That moment would be when the first episode had to air, which might be about the time Show #10 was being worked on.

So if they were doing, say, sixteen episodes that season, the names of folks who worked only on episodes #11-16 would not be included at all. And of course, an actor who did a small voice part on one of the first ten episodes would have the same credit as someone who did the lead character and had tons of dialogue in all sixteen.

Later on, when it became cheaper and easier to do end credits, most studios would make up the end credits individually for each episode. In some cases though, errors still occurred. And often when shows were syndicated, someone would start swapping around which cartoons appeared in which episodes without changing the end credits.

And sometimes, they just plain lost the end credits.

When the Hanna-Barbera series Top Cat was produced, it was a prime-time series and H-B remade the end credits each week to list the writers, artists and actors who worked on each particular episode. Those episodes were later rerun in syndication and on Saturday morning…and rerun and rerun and rerun. Eventually, the film prints wore out and there also came a day when they needed new transfers so the shows could look clean and perfect when released on home video or on the new, better-quality TV sets.

I'm a little unclear on the time sequence of all this and what was done for TV release and what was done for home video. My dear friend, the late Earl Kress, could have explained it all to me because he was deeply involved with a lot of the restorations. Earl spent a lot of time searching through film vaults that housed Hanna-Barbera's past, often spending days examining unlabeled and mislabeled cans. I'm pretty sure he was the one who found the original, lost-until-he-found-it opening from the first two seasons of The Flintstones with its original theme song.

I think (note italics) he was the one who found the negative to the closing of Top Cat but it was just the animation and music before the credits had been superimposed. As far as I know, prints with the credits in place have never been located. They had the episodes themselves but all they had of the credits sequence was what Earl found. What they then had to do was reconstruct the end credits.

They took the names off a print of one episode, had someone set them in a similar typeface and combined them with Earl's find to create one (1) end credits sequence which they tacked onto the new transfers of all 30 episodes.

Here's a frame grab from the credits for one episode as they all now exist. See where it says Kin Platt wrote the episode? Well, Mr. Platt wrote a few of them but he didn't write all of them even though his name is now on all of them and so listed in a couple of online episode guides. Same with Paul Sommer who is credited as "Story Editor."  He was that on some episodes, not all.

On the card with the voice credits, it lists Paul Frees since he guested on one of two episodes, one of which was the one from which they took those credits. Frees is credited on all 30 now and there are no voice credits for Daws Butler, Don Messick, Walker Edmiston, Bea Benaderet, Sally Jones and several other folks who were heard on various episodes of Top Cat.

H-B didn't even have cast lists so the actors were identified for the studio's records by folks like Earl and me who could listen to a show and (usually) identify who did which voice. But we couldn't identify the writers or various artists…so the same guys get those credits on every episode. A similar problem seems to have happened with some (not all) episodes of The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

That's about all I have to say about this. Like I said, this kind of thing is a problem with a lot of cartoon shows, especially those made for television in the early days. So watch out. I will probably have to post this again in a few years.

I keep seeing people worry that if/when Donald Trump loses, he will simply declare the election was rigged and refuse to leave. I'm sure he would do the first part of that. Every bad business deal and bankruptcy of his life has been someone else's fault. Every poll that shows him down is a hoax and every bad news story is fake. But my man Fred Kaplan explains why it's silly to worry that D.J.T. will refuse to leave the White House.

I've paid more attention to Trump this week because he makes himself so hard to ignore. I'll try to pay less attention this week.