Monthly Archives: January 2022

More bad/sad news: My buddy Ron Goulart — author of more books than most people have read — died this morning, the day after his 89th birthday. I don't know how many books Ron wrote and I wonder if even he did. A lot of them had other folks' names on them as author, sometimes even William Shatner's.

Of the many I could have stuck in the above graphic, I picked After Things Fell Apart because I liked it a lot and the title seems sadly apropos today.  His Wikipedia page has a partial (partial!) list of books that came from his typewriter and his glorious imagination…and as you'll see if you take a peek, other names were on a lot of them.

He was a great lover of comic books and a fine historian of the form.  He dabbled now and then in writing for comics and at one point, collaborated with artist Gil Kane on an ahead-of-its-time newspaper strip called Star Hawks.  The last time Ron and I were together — which I now sadly realize was too long ago — we had a long talk about how he wished he fit in better with the comic book field but kept finding more comfort in prose writing.

He was awfully good at it. He was awfully good at everything he did.

Veteran gag cartoonist Orlando Busino has left us at the age of 95. I don't write these about a lot of magazine cartoonists but Mr. Busino did exceptional work for magazines like McCalls, Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping and Saturday Evening Post, and many other magazines. His series Gus — cartoons about a large shaggy dog — ran for years in Boys' Life.

I first became familiar with his work, as did my pal Scott Shaw!, during a brief period when Busino worked for the Archie people. His work appeared in Archie's Madhouse and a wonderful, not-sufficiently-recognized comic book called Tales Calculated to Drive You…BATS. It was kind of like "What if Charles Addams had produced MAD?" Scott and I both remember exactly which newsstand we were patronizing in December of 1961 when we glimpsed the cover of Bats #3 (above) and grabbed up our respective copies.

Alas, Busino's time in comic books did not last long and he soon joined the ranks of talented writers and artists who were driven from the industry by its parsimonious business practices. But he did not suffer because magazines eagerly welcomed his work. He just plain drew funny. As Scott noted on Facebook, "He was a member of the National Cartoonists Society and a 3-time recipient of the NCS' Reuben Division Gag Cartoonist of the Year Award and several other awards."

Scott and I just spent some time on the phone talking about how cleverly Mr. Busino designed that Bats cover. I don't want to oversell it because it's just another comic book cover…but it's a real good comic book cover. Artists who draw covers today could learn from Busino's placement of all the elements and the way he leads one's eye around the drawing. If you want to get a better look at it, click here. I was nine and Scott was ten and it did everything a good cover does. It got us to buy the comic and never forget it.

Jordan Klepper revisits 1/6/21…

I know the Don Rickles drawing by Jack Davis — the one I posted earlier — was for some Friars Roast. I thought that was so obvious I didn't think to mention it. I just don't know which Friars Roast it was for. The Friars roasted Don Rickles about as often as Henny Youngman asked people to please take his wife. There were public Friars Roasts of Don Rickles, private roasts of Don Rickles, televised roasts of Don Rickles, members-only roasts of Don Rickles…

The Friars roasted Don Rickles more than the Lawry's restaurants have roasted standing rib primals. I just don't know which Friars Roast of Don Rickles this was for and whether the drawing was used in advertising. That's all.

Here's your chance to own a piece of Mr. Warmth. An auction house is selling off items from the estate of Don and Barbara Rickles — awards, paintings, books, photos, original comic strips…even a hockey puck or two. Because I've never seen it anywhere else, I grabbed and cleaned-up the image of a Jack Davis drawing of Rickles done, I would guess, for an ad or maybe just a private commission. You can see it larger above by clicking on it.

I haven't been through it all yet so if you see anything really interesting, let me know. Here's the link to browse and even bid on Part 1. Here's the link to Part 2. And they're bidding even as I post this.

Oh, how I hate having to write obits for people I knew, especially someone as nice as Dana Gabbard.  If you have an interest in old Disney comics or any funny animal comics or animation, you owe a special nod to Dana.  He did a lot to uncover the names of folks who wrote and drew that kind of material.  He published a great fanzine, The Duckburg Times, which I'm sure cost him a lot of time and money but he was proud of it as well he should have been.

Dana was around sixty, give or take a year or two, and he worked a lot in the rapid transit business and for a time, for DirecTV.  He'd been sick for quite a while and we don't yet know the cause of death other than it occurred when he was being transported to a hospital emergency room via ambulance due to respiratory distress.  His health problems had reportedly prevented him from getting vaccinated against you-know-what but we don't know if that awful disease was a factor.

I met Dana at some San Diego Con or other a long time ago when he approached me for help in identifying unknown artists who drew Disney Comics for Western Publishing…for Dell or Gold Key publications.  There was no money for him in this; just the satisfaction of doing something he felt should be done.  Thereafter, I saw him at every comic convention in Southern California that he was physically able to attend.  A lot of the photos I have of the audiences for panels at Comic-Con are like "Where's Waldo?"  If you look hard enough, you can almost always find Dana somewhere in them.

We're talking here about a really great guy with a great sense of humor and a true love of funny comic books and the folks who made them.  We need more people like Dana Gabbard, not less.

Here's Bob Saget appearing with Johnny Carson back on January 4, 1989. When he comes out, he talks about but does not identify the previous guest. It was Jimmy Stewart…

Back in this post about the comedy team of Davis & Reese, I said that among the throngs of teams formed to try and emulate the success of Martin & Lewis, they were probably in third place after Rowan & Martin and Allen & Rossi. I got a number of e-mails from people asking about other teams like Stiller & Meara, Burns & Schreiber and even Skiles & Henderson. Those were all successful teams but (a) they came a bit later, after the rush of Dean/Jerry imitators and (b) they didn't fit the template of the handsome straight man (usually a singer) and a monkey.

Someone even asked me how I'd rank the team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who were closer to Martin & Lewis than a couple of acts currently touring who bill themselves openly as Martin & Lewis impersonators. I dunno. About all that survives for inspection of Mitchell & Petrillo is the movie Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, a film I've heard folks describe as "so bad it's good." In May of 2019, I took a lady who still hasn't forgiven me to a screening of it and about fifteen minutes in, we decided it was "so bad it's bad" and got the hell outta there. But maybe on stage doing their own material — if indeed they ever had their own material to do — Duke and Sammy were terrific.

I did see Marty Allen and Steve Rossi in what I think may have been their last-ever engagement in Las Vegas. It was at the Sands Hotel about a year before there was no more Sands Hotel. I always found Marty Allen pretty funny on TV but that night at the Sands, there was only one person in the showroom laughing at him and it wasn't me. It was Steve Rossi.  He acted as if every syllable out of Marty's mouth was hysterical and he kept telling us how his partner was the funniest man who ever lived.  If any of that had been true, it might not have been their last engagement.

"Winchester Cathedral" by a British group called The New Vaudeville Band somehow got onto my 1972 mixtape. The song came out in late 1966 and it was one of those "I can't believe this was a hit" hits…by a band nobody cared much about when they weren't singing this song. KHJ was still playing it occasionally when I taped tunes off the air and I stuck it on my mixtape.

It was a pleasant enough tune but not one I wanted to hear too often. On the tape, I remember it followed "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits and as that song ended, I'd reach for the fast-forward control on my tape player and zip past "Winchester Cathedral." One day in the eighties, I was in a Sizzler restaurant and they were playing "No Milk Today" and I caught myself instinctively reaching for a tape player that wasn't there to fast-forward through a song that would not follow.

And that's about all I have to say about this song. Here they are…The New Vaudeville Band on a 1966 Hollywood Palace hosted by Kate Smith, lip-syncing to a song that is not "Winchester Cathedral," followed by them lip-syncing to a short version of "Winchester Cathedral." You may want to fast-forward through the first one…

And since we've been talking about Allan Sherman here lately, here's his parody of the song…

Len Webb wrote…

I'm curious as to why you have not mentioned the passing of Sidney Poitier on your blog. I was actually looking forward to reading your opinion of his legacy.

While it's quite possible that you've never met the man, I've noticed that hasn't stopped you from offering your thoughts on other significant industry deaths. I am and will continue to be a daily fan of your writings, but this was an absence I was moved to comment on.

My opinion on his legacy is the same as everyone else's: Good actor…in a great many fine films…did a lot to break though racial barriers. But I think one of the first rules of doing a blog like this is to never forget that anyone reading your site is probably reading dozens of others before and after they get to yours.

When anyone important passes, I ask myself the question, "Do I have anything to say about the person that dozens of others aren't saying?" In this case, the answer was no. I never met the man. I haven't seen that many of his movies and I'm no authority on any of them or his career. There were hundreds of articles and tributes all over the 'net before I could have posted one. If I had, I would have just been repeating what you read elsewhere.

It's official. It was a rumor when we reported it back here but now it's been announced that a Peter Luger Steak House will open at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas around the end of 2022. That's fine for me because I doubt I'll be in Las Vegas before then. The Peter Luger in Brooklyn is probably my favorite restaurant…though I must admit I haven't been to it in a long time.

Why? Because it's in Brooklyn…and even when I'm in New York, it's a difficult place to get to. First off, you have to make reservations way in advance. Secondly, to get out there, have dinner and get back to Manhattan means giving up the idea of going to a Broadway show that evening. So it comes down to: Do I want to have dinner at my favorite restaurant? Or do I want to have dinner at a really good restaurant closer to the theater district and see a show? I usually opt for the latter.

Here's an excerpt from the press release…

Operating for nearly 135 years, Peter Luger is New York's top-rated steak house and a favorite among locals and tourists alike. The iconic German beer-hall setting has become a world-famous choice for family gatherings, deal-making, and special occasion celebrations. With its notoriously gruff, bow-tied waitstaff, old-world charm, and on-site dry-aging of legendary USDA-Prime steaks, dining at Peter Luger has become a culinary rite of passage.

A Peter Luger in Vegas will be so much more convenient. I'm just hoping they can properly replicate what makes it special. The meat shouldn't be a problem but where are they going to find sufficiently-gruff waiters?

The archives of The Ed Sullivan Show are a great record of comedians who are mostly forgotten. Not only did Ed secure the services of just about every major comedian then working the hotel and night club circuits, he also booked comedy teams. In light of the monumental success of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, there were an awful lot of them…for a while.

It seemed like every comedian who didn't have enough work was hooking up with some male vocalist who didn't have enough work, thereby creating a duo that didn't have enough work. Many of those pairings literally lasted for one engagement but a few stuck around for a while. The two most successful in the fifties and sixties would probably be Rowan & Martin and then Allen & Rossi.

Rowan & Martin were a rare exception because neither of them were singers and when they hooked up, they tried it with Rowan being the funny one and Martin being the straight man. When they swapped roles, it worked better and they caught the fancy of Walter Winchell, who promoted them in his column. That made all the difference.

In next place might be the team of Pepper Davis and Tony Reese. Davis was the big goofy one whose delivery was sometimes compared to Joe E. Ross. Reese was the little one who sang and played straight. Reportedly, they met when both were booked into a night club in Wildwood, New Jersey. It must have seemed like a natural for them to team-up and have some agent sell them as "The new Martin & Lewis!"

Soon, Davis & Reese were everywhere, including around a dozen appearances on Ed's show and about the same number on Merv Griffin's. They struck me as one of those acts — there were many — that weren't so hot on TV but if you were seeing them in a night club after a few drinks, they were probably hilarious…enough. They even made a record album.

The most interesting thing I recall about them is that around the time the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) was all the rage, Davis and Reese made a pilot-of-sorts parodying it. This is all from memory and I may be a bit off but I remember it being a five-episode, shot-on-video, low-low budget serial that ran once, Monday-thru-Friday in Los Angeles on Channel 9. I think Davis played the Robin-like character and Reese played the Batman-type guy and that's all I remember about it other than that it wasn't very funny. Does anyone else recall this thing? I don't know if it was local or national or what.

At some point, they split up and did some solo acting jobs. Davis settled in Las Vegas and played a lot of clubs and hotel rooms there. He was on the TV show Vega$ a lot, usually playing one of those dumb-but-dangerous henchmen that the master villains always seemed to employ. He died in 1990 and Reese passed in 2013.

Here's one of their appearances with Ed in their glory days. This one is from March 25, 1956 and it presents a little mystery to me. They close with Davis singing a list of all the states to the tune of the David Rose song, "Holiday for Strings." In 1964 on his album Allan in Wonderland, Allan Sherman had a song called "Holiday for States," sung to the same tune and featuring the same states in roughly the same order. Sherman was credited as its writer and I don't know if he wrote it for Davis & Reese or bought it or stole it or if someone else wrote it and everyone just helped themselves. But it's pretty much the same parody…

Those who wish to remove Joe Biden (or any Democrat) from the White House will never stop insisting that the U.S. economy has never been worse and that it will soon destroy everything we hold dear and we must all save our homes and lives and children by electing Republicans. In point of fact, the economy's doing pretty well…as Kevin Drum points out.

And while you're over there, check out his chart on how vaccinated folks are doing in New York compared to unvaccinated folks.

John Oliver is not fond of The DaVinci Code…

Here's some good (I suppose) news. The Golden Globe Awards are not on television this year. That's right: The awards that everyone knows are a meaningless joke but they pretend otherwise are not being televised. Here's why.