Monthly Archives: December 2021

This is Part Two of a multi-part article about how Batman changed forever, at least for me, on Thursday, March 26, 1964.  If you haven't read Part One, go read Part One first.

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As we all know, Bob Kane created Batman and drew every Batman story through the mid-sixties and no, I didn't even believe that when I was twelve. I had never heard of Bill Finger, the friend of Bob Kane's who wrote most of the early stories, particularly those that added new villains and other key elements of the Batman mythology.

I hadn't heard the names of any of the artists who really drew Batman then but I had a clue. I knew those stories weren't all by Bob Kane because there were different art styles. I thought, "He must have helpers" and I wondered which art style was really Bob Kane. It turned out none of them really were.

There was one style that looked an awful lot like the style of the guy who drew some of the Superman-Batman stories in World's Finest Comics but they weren't signed…by Bob Kane or anyone. If that was Bob Kane, the man who signed every Batman story, why wasn't he signing his Superman-Batman stories? And the same art style could be seen in the Supergirl stories in the back of Action Comics. If Bob Kane didn't have time to draw all the Batman stories, why would he anonymously be drawing Supergirl stories?  Eventually, the artist began signing those Supergirl stories and I found out his name was Jim Mooney.

Here is how it worked. In the beginning, Bob's "studio" produced the art for Batman stories. Bob did a little of it, especially on the syndicated Batman newspaper strip. But he had a lot of assistants, all of whom drew better than he did, and he increasingly lost interest in sitting at the drawing board day and night, especially when someone else could be paid to do that.

He worked up a deal with DC Comics whereby "he" would supply a certain amount of Batman art per month. He would be paid so well for these pages that he could hire someone else to do all or most of the artwork on them and then he could live quite well off the rest of that compensation. DC didn't care. Much of what they published wasn't actually drawn by the guy they hired to draw it. Joe Shuster had an awful lot of help on Superman.

If DC wanted more Batman pages than the deal with Kane called for, DC was free to hire artists on their own — anyone as long as the art was signed "Bob Kane."  The list of those artists included one of my favorites, Dick Sprang, along with Curt Swan, Winslow Mortimer, Jim Mooney and inker Charles Paris.  The main guy who worked directly for Kane cranking out pages was Sheldon Moldoff but there was a period there when Lew Schwartz did the unsigned honors.  Another of my favorites, Jerry Robinson, worked for Kane for a while and then for DC as did George Roussos.

By the early sixties, most of the Batman stories were penciled by Sheldon Moldoff for Kane with occasional jobs by Mooney or Sprang. Sprang retired in 1963. Charles Paris or Sheldon Moldoff did the inking. The art by then was not wonderful but I think the main problem was the scripts, which had gotten very silly. A lot of them involved Batman not fighting crime in Gotham City (i.e., the original premise of the feature) but battling space aliens, occasionally on other planets. There were two reasons for this…

One was that Batman had been hanging around a lot with Superman. As originally conceived in the forties, World's Finest Comics was a thick comic book that had room for a long story of Superman and a long story of Batman — DC's two big guns — and room for various back-up features. But as comics (and everything else) became more expensive to produce, comic books got smaller. In 1954 when they contracted from 64 to 32 pages, someone decided that rather than toss out more of the back-up features in World's Finest, they'd feature Superman and Batman together in one story instead of two separate ones.

When you appear with Superman, you're already fraternizing with someone from another planet. And when he's all-powerful and can fly and pick up Buicks, the stories have to be about some villain Superman can't defeat in three panels…or a crisis of interplanetary awesomeness. That means cosmic-scale menaces and lots of monsters and space aliens. So Batman was now in that world and a few years later, he wasn't just palling about with Superman…there was also the whole bloomin' Justice League of America.

So he was now a guy who fought mortal criminals in Gotham City and interacted with unworldly beings, be they friend or foe.

The other reason: The best-selling comics DC published were those that featured Superman and his featured players. The editor of those books, Mort Weisinger, liked to spend much time in editorial meetings boasting about his sales and suggesting he knew better than ever how to sell comics. And maybe he did just then with regard to the Man of Steel. But increasingly, Batman editor Jack Schiff felt pressure to make his comics more like Weisinger, even to the extent of emulating plot ideas and cover scenes.

The more sales on Batman and Detective Comics went down, the more they tried to do more of what was selling for Superman and the less Batman was Batman and…oh, it was not a good time for the Caped Crusader. Sales were falling and something had to be done. It was and in the next part, we'll discuss what was. I found it on a newsstand on 3/26/64.

Click here to jump to PART THREE

Imelda Staunton performs "Losing My Mind" in a 2017 production of Follies by the National Theater…

The electricity in my neighborhood just came back on after being out all morning so the second chapter of my Batman article will be a little tardy getting up here.

Several folks e-mailed to tell me, in case I didn't know, that a liquor store in New York sold only liquor and nothing else. One person informed me they didn't even sell tobacco products. I guess I knew that. I was just surprised back in 1970 that the head of DC Comics, after telling us they were dealing with all sorts of distribution problems didn't know that a substantial portion of their product being sold in California was sold in places called liquor stores.

Every few days, we learn more and more about what happened in our nation's capitol on January 6 and the evidence points in only one direction. William Saletan reviews the latest pieces fitting into the puzzle.

I'm remembering Thursday, March 26, 1964. Join me there for a moment and for the other chapters of this story. We'll be jumping from time period to time period a la Peabody and Sherman but we'll keep coming back to that day.

I'm 12 years and 26 days old and a ritual of my life is finding a comic book rack every Tuesday and Thursdays because that's when the new comics are put on sale in most cities and certainly in mine. There are no comic book shops. You find a comic book rack in a drugstore or a market or a newsstand…and in my native Los Angeles, you find them a lot in liquor stores.

Quick flash forward to 1970. The first time I visited the DC offices in New York, I met dozens of people who'd created the comic books I'd read most of my life. One of many was Carmine Infantino, who at that point I believe had the title of Editorial Director of the line. A year or three later, he was promoted to Publisher and a year or two after that, he was severed from the company as totally and coldly as the way he himself had sometimes discharged longtime employees.

I'm there with my then-partner Steve Sherman and Mr. Infantino starts asking us about comic book distribution in Los Angeles. He asks us where we buy our comics. We tell him we each go to a different liquor store. He is stunned. In New York, a liquor store is a place that sells liquor, tobacco products and very little else. Why would kids go into a liquor store?

We explain that in Los Angeles, liquor stores are mostly like mini-markets also carrying groceries, notions and magazines — including comic books. He says, "That's a convenience shop." We tell him, "In L.A., they're called liquor stores." News to him. He makes some notes.

Back to 3/26/64. That day, I go to Pico Drug, a great establishment in West Los Angeles and the source of much of my comic book collection. There, I find all the new comics and I begin plucking the issues I will purchase off the glorious rack there. At some point, I find the new issue of Detective Comics, a book I have collected for several years. I have purchased every issue new off the racks since I began collecting super-hero-type comics and I have found 50-100 back issues at second-hand bookstores. So I know the comic well…

…but suddenly, unexpectedly, it has changed. It was the first time I ever saw a comic book change like that.

We'll be discussing that change in Part Two of this, tomorrow. Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Blog.

Click here to jump to PART TWO

Hey, you know who that is? The guy, not the cat. That's Sid Krofft, the master puppeteer and showman…and my occasional employer over the last half-century. I worked for Sid and Marty a lot and whatever it was, it was fascinating. And fun. And there were many other perks, including the people I met and hearing about the people they'd met. Some folks think I know everyone who's ever been in show business. It is to laugh. Compared to Sid, I'm a friendless hermit.

He is much loved throughout show business and lately, he's had a lot of famous celebrities on the podcast he does live every Sunday afternoon at 3 PM on Instagram. Apparently though, everyone famous is busy for the holidays because his guest this coming Sunday the nineteenth will be me. I'll post more details before then if you want to tune in…which you should do every Sunday, even when I'm not his guest.

Another Muppet appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show — this time, the one for March 1, 1970…

My longtime pal Jim Korkis is one of the foremost experts out there on All Things Disney. He saw I'd posted a link to the all-poultry production, A Fowl Affair, and he sent me this message. The connection honestly had not occurred to me…

For me, of course, the most interesting thing about that 1931 short you posted is that it predates Disney's Donald Duck by several years. A Fowl Affair done by Al Christie was part of the Gayety Comedy series and released April 20, 1931 and the live duck wearing a sailor suit was used prominently in the film poster and in advertisements for the film.

The sailor suit was the first popular children's fashion trend when Queen Victoria's decision to dress the four-year Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, in a scaled down version of the sailor suit of the Royal British Navy. The suit was used in stage musicals of the time because of its distinctive look.

British boys began wearing sailor suits in the 1860s. Prince Edward began dressing his own sons in sailor suits in the 1870s and, once again, the influence of the royal family helped to popularize the sailor suit for young children. The fashion trend really took root in the 1870s when advertisers began marketing it. By the 1880s, the sailor suit was a popular fashion trend for girls as well as boys. The sailor suit became so popular in the 1880s that few boys grew up in England without wearing it and, for some, was practically all they wore. The trend migrated to the United States and was popular when Walt Disney was a kid.

An interesting note. I can believe the notion Mr. Disney asserted about how dressing a duck in a sailor suit was an obvious idea, given the connection to water. I can also believe it was just because Walt (or someone) was influenced by all the kids around wearing sailor suits. And I can even sorta believe that Walt (or someone) consciously or unconsciously got the idea from A Fowl Affair or its poster. One of those "we'll never know" things, I guess.

Here's what appears to be a late interview with Mr. Sondheim, mostly about his days at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. This was probably conducted in conjunction with the school staging a series of events about his work in January of 2020 called Sondheim@90@Williams…

After reading this post here, Robert Rose sent in this late-night question just in case I happened to feel like taking it up…

In your post Sunday about West Side Story, you write (of the 1961 version), "It's one of those films where I find myself thinking, 'This is really well-made but I'm having trouble caring about those characters.'" I seem to recall your making similar comments about other musicals, of both stage and screen — that you often enjoy the production, the songs, the performances, but have trouble caring about the characters.

I wonder if you'd care to provide any counter-examples, particularly among the better-known musicals? Ones where you either identified with one or more of the characters, or they at least made you really care what happened to them, even if it was only because they made you laugh?

Just a random late-night question if you happen to feel like taking it up.

I could give you examples for days. I find myself caring about Mama Rose and Louise in Gypsy, about most of the cast in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, most of those in Follies, Guys & Dolls, Damn Yankees, How to Succeed…, Liza and Higgins in My Fair Lady, John Adams in 1776, Li'l Abner and Daisy in Li'l Abner, the two lead ladies in Wicked, and on and on.

And maybe "cared" isn't the proper word so much as "interested in." I don't necessarily "care" about Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett or the major players in Hamilton but I want to see what happens to them…even when, as is almost always the case, I know the ending.

My favorite non-musical moment in any musical may be in Music Man when Harold Hill, realizing he's becoming emotionally trapped in River City and having a rare (for him) moment of self-awareness says, "I always think there's a band, kid." There are a lot of sappy, contrived beats in that show but Harold Hill's turnaround always gets to me.

Different shows hit different people different ways…and different actors matter. I've seen Merrily We Roll Along with about five different casts and I'd say three out of the five caught me. The Superman musical never won me over…and that's quite a trick, doing a Superman musical and not getting a guy who loves Superman to care about Superman. None of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals except Carousel and South Pacific ever really won me over…but I'm thinking: Maybe it was the production, not the play. (Although I've probably seen Music Man eight times, including twice with Birthday Boy Van Dyke, and the above scene never fails.)

It's all a matter of individual choice, of course. Friends raved about Rent and most of it left me cold. Company, to me, is still a show where I sit through bloodless playlets masquerading as a coherent show in order to get to some great musical numbers. But I recognize a lot of people find it life-changing.

I don't know if this is any sort of answer to your question, Rob. It may be as simple as: A play either grabs you or doesn't. I think I'm highly grabbable but some shows — and West Side Story is so one of 'em — just don't do it. Ah…but the ones that do — to locate one of them — make the non-grabbers worth it.

One of these days, you may need a role model to show you how to function at an age most would call "old" without acting like you are. If you do, I highly suggest this guy who is, the calendar would have us believe, 96 years of age today. If he is, he hasn't told his body. He still moves and gets around and even dances like a much younger man…and I don't mean a much younger man of, say, 92. I mean way younger than that.

He would also be a good role model for anyone who needed to learn to be incredibly nice. This might be especially important if you were famous and beloved and everyone wanted to tell you how much they adored you in this movie or that TV show. To be honest, that's not likely to happen to either of us but just in case you surprise me…

In my lifetime, I have been with two celebrities who were astoundingly nice to strangers who approached them in public. It was a constant occurrence but they always acted genuinely pleased and surprised by a moment of such adoration, even if the previous one was less than ten minutes earlier.

Dick was one and the other was Jimmy Stewart. I was unable to tell whether it was good manners or good acting but either way, they sent the fan on their way with a happy memory to last a lifetime or two.

I had at least three "encounters" with Dick Van Dyke before I got to know him well enough that I could expect him to recall my name. All of those encounters were joyous exceptions to the advice that you should never meet your heroes.

I hope he has a wonderful day with his terrific wife Arlene. And I hope he's around long enough that we can look back and think of 96 as when he was middle-aged.

This is A Fowl Affair, a 1931 short comedy from Educational Pictures. Educational was kind of the low rung of the studios back then. Most of the comedians who starred in their films were either on the way down or on their way to nowhere but there was the occasional gem…and the occasional "What was someone thinking?" film like this one.

I hesitated before posting it because it contains some antiquated racial stereotypes and also because I don't think all of its performers were treated well. Then again. it was a long time ago and no one to my knowledge makes pictures like this one anymore. Maybe it's useful to remember the kind of thing that became unfashionable and why.

And it is, you have to admit, weird enough that it has genuine curiosity value. The Library of Congress must have spent serious money to preserve it. Pardon the odd framing but it was apparently scanned that way as part of its preservation.

One of the main characters was voiced by Billy Bletcher, who was a short guy with a deep voice heard in many films. He was the Big Bad Wolf and many villains in Disney films. He voiced the character who has the last line in the movie — just in case you make it that far…

There's much talk on the 'net today about why the new Spielberg-helmed remake of West Side Story seems to be — to use the nicest possible term — underperforming at the box office. I've seen about twenty-five explanations offered, several of which are in this article by Owen Gleiberman and I suspect there's some merit to all of them. There are so many reasons, you wonder why anyone is shocked.

I sure dunno why they aren't lining up for it. I haven't seen the film and probably won't until it's on my home video screen. I'm not as huge a fan of the original as some people. It's one of those films where I find myself thinking, "This is really well-made but I'm having trouble caring about those characters." The one time I saw the musical staged live, I admired the heck out of the dancing, the singing and the music but, again, didn't get deep into the story. That's my vote for why the movie is, as they say, "underperforming." But I'm sure it isn't the only reason and maybe not even the main one.

Since it probably won't get the attention it deserves, I'd like to note the passing of actress Cara Williams at the age of 96. She was a movie star, best known for pictures like Meet Me In Las Vegas and The Helen Morgan Story. She co-starred with Danny Kaye in The Man From the Diner's Club and was Oscar-nominated for her work in The Defiant Ones.

Like a lot of movie stars of her day, she then went into television and while she guest-starred all over the place, she was best known for starring in two TV series — Pete & Gladys (1960-1962) and The Cara Williams Show (1964-1965).

Pete & Gladys was a spin-off from and successor to the long-running series, December Bride, in which Harry Morgan had appeared as Pete Porter, the "wacky next-door neighbor."  On it, he was always talking about his never-seen-on-December-Bride "wacky wife," Gladys…and after that show went off, Pete and a few other characters on it were joined by Gladys  (played by Ms. Williams) in this new series.

This was in accord with some law in the television industry that apparently said that Harry Morgan always had to be on a series. He went from December Bride to Pete & Gladys and then on to The Richard Boone Show, Kentucky Jones, the revival of Dragnet, The D.A., Hec Ramsey and then on to M*A*S*H, followed by AfterM*A*S*H…and even that wasn't his last series.  He was also on Blacke's Magic and You Can't Take It With You.  If he hadn't died in 2011, he's probably be a regular on Fleabag.  Never mind that he'd be 106 years old.

Pete & Gladys was one of the better ones owing largely to the great chemistry he had with Ms. Williams and the fact that she was a terrific comic actress.  Comparisons to Lucille Ball were inevitable even without the same hair color but I thought Cara Williams deserved to be respected as a gifted comic actress in her own right.

I remember nothing about The Cara Williams Show other than that she co-starred with Frank Aletter, Paul Reed and (occasionally) Jack Sheldon…and that it wasn't as good as Pete & Gladys.  But she was probably great on it and there are several episodes of each series on YouTube if you want to decide for yourself.

She was a really good actress who had a fine, though maybe not long enough career.

Broadway performer Greg Hildreth performs "Buddy's Blues" from Follies. He's accompanied by Charlie Rosen's Broadway Big Band and some talented (but unidentified) ladies. I like this performance because, for one thing, it's quite unlike the way Mandy Patinkin did the number in the concert album…and therefore, the way most singers try to do it since. I believe Mr. Hildreth is in the new, just-opened revival of Company…