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Fearless Fosdick was a comic-strip-within-a-comic-strip, in this case appearing within Al Capp's popular Li'l Abner strip. Fosdick was Abner's hero and every so often, Capp would give the strip over for several weeks to the adventures of this Dick Tracy parody. At first, Tracy's creator Chester Gould was said to be amused by the spoof but increasingly less so as the spoof went on and on for years and Capp's merchandising revenues from the parody character eclipsed Gould's merchandising on the source material. (Gould himself later tried doing the same thing with Charles Schulz's Peanuts.)

One way Fosdick was exploited was with a short-lived TV series performed by marionettes. Thirteen episodes were made, the first debuting on June 15, 1952. Perhaps you are of sounder stock than I am but I was not able to sit through even the one below, let alone more than that. But it is a nice novelty. Mary Chase, proprietor of the Mary Chase Puppets, directed and did a lot of it. The script was by Everett Crosby, who occasionally wrote or managed business affairs for his older brother, Bing.

The voices were supplied by John Griggs and Gilbert Mack, two New York-based character actors who were seen on a lot of TV shows that came out of Manhattan. Both had really good careers doing voiceovers from commercials and cartoons. Mack is the guy who was often called in by Golden Records and given the impossible task of replicating the voices of the star characters usually voiced by Mel Blanc or Daws Butler. He was a pretty good voice actor when he wasn't trying to do that.

Here's the first episode of the Fearless Fosdick TV show. You will not be tempted to seek out others…