Hey, remember that awful 1940 Li'l Abner movie I keep mentioning here? The one you can buy on DVD for a buck in some stores? Well, you can get it even cheaper than that. Over at www.archive.org, where they offer a lot of public domain stuff for download, you can get it for free…which is still overpaying, as far as I'm concerned. Here's a link to the download page where it's available in an array of formats. (Don't be surprised, by the way, if this site is difficult to reach. It gets a lot of traffic and is often overloaded.) Thanks to William Stiteler for tipping me off.
By the way, I just noticed one more bit of dishonesty about the Digiview Li'l Abner DVD. As reported by Jim Bahler, the cover says the film on the DVD not only features stars who aren't on it but says it's 114 minutes in black-and-white. The 1959 color version was 114 minutes but the 1940 version, the one on that DVD, is 78 minutes. This suggests to me that the folks at Digiview didn't even bother watching the entirety of the movie they were selling. They just sent someone to the Internet Movie Database to look up its length, and that person got the wrong Li'l Abner movie. Maybe that also explains why they billboarded the wrong stars, though that smells like a less innocent mistake to me.
Mike Douglas, Phil Seuling, Wendy Pini, Jamie Farr.
Around 1970, when I got into the comic book business, the consensus was that there wouldn't be a comic book business for long…and not because of me. The traditional method of distribution — comics sold on a returnable basis to newsstands around the country — was failing, or at least it was failing comic books. The biggest distributor, Independent News, was making large sums off more expensive, adult publications like Playboy and Penthouse, and some there suggested that newsracks were no longer a place for kids or low-priced periodicals. Since comic books were low-priced and largely for kids, this was a pretty ominous suggestion, especially when you considered that Independent News not only distributed DC Comics but was a part of the same company. In other words, DC's wares were being sold by an outfit that no longer believed there was a future in selling comic books. With that attitude, there couldn't be much of one.
The "returnable" part was what was really hurting comics. Marvel would print 500,000 copies of an issue of Spider-Man and would get paid only for those that actually sold. So if the racks were crowded (or the distributor trucks filled with an extra-thick issue of Playboy that week), 50,000 might not make it to the racks at all. Many more copies would get damaged and returned with all the unsold copies for credit. 300,000 might actually be sold and the rest would get pulped…obviously, not the most efficient way to do business. In the past, the ratio had not been that bad, and a publisher could make a tidy profit…but by the seventies, the numbers were closing in on the comic book industry.
To the rescue came not Superman or Batman but a Brooklyn school teacher named Phil Seuling. Phil ran the big comic conventions in New York for years so he knew the fan market and its buying power. Around 1973, he began proposing to DC and Marvel that he sell their comics in a different manner, by-passing traditional newsstands and getting them directly to comic book dealers and shops. He would pay slightly less per copy to the publisher but he'd be buying the comics on a non-returnable basis, so a sale would be a sale; no printing five copies to sell three.
At first, publishers rebuffed his proposal. The "direct market," as it would come to be called, did not seem lucrative enough to warrant the attention, to say nothing of how it might further destroy the old method. But before long, it became apparent that the old method was being destroyed, with or without selling books the Seuling way, so DC, Marvel and other companies tried it. Within a year, around 25% of all comic books were being sold via "direct" distribution, through Seuling's company and about a dozen others, with 75% still on conventional newsstands. Within ten years, those percentages were reversed. Today, the "direct market" is the primary market…though Phil, sadly, did not live to reap the full benefits of his idea. He died in 1984 at the age of 50.
That's Phil in the above photo, second from the left, holding a stack of comic books. The man at the far left is talk show host Mike Douglas, and this is a still from his popular afternoon show, air date July 28, 1977.
Seuling was a guest on that episode to discuss comic book collecting and conventions and such. He was asked by the producers to bring along "a superhero" to surprise the audience…and Mike Douglas. They apparently expected Phil to find a guy in a Batman costume or something, but Phil had a better idea.
The character of Red Sonja was then big in Marvel Comics. Developed by editor-writer Roy Thomas from a brief appearance in one of Robert E. Howard's stories, she was one of the sexier characters around. Some of that was due to the way Roy wrote her and some to the way she was depicted by her illustrators…most notably, Frank Thorne. But a lot of it was because she began turning up at comic book and science-fiction conventions…in the flesh. There were many young women who seized on the inspiration to fashion an appropriate costume and to parade about the aisles and masquerades. None of them drew more stares or attention than Wendy Pini.
Today, Wendy is best known as the talented artist and co-creator (with her husband, Richard) of the Elfquest series. Millions of copies have been sold of Elfquest graphic novels, prose novels, comic books, calendars, art folios and other items from that wonderful fantasy world…but in '77, Elfquest was just beginning. To most comic fans, Wendy was that lovely lady who dressed up as Red Sonja at conventions, often performing a little show with artist Frank Thorne.
So when Phil Seuling was invited to appear on The Mike Douglas Show and asked to bring along his own superhero, he brought Wendy. Neither Mr. Douglas nor his co-host, Jamie Farr, saw her before she burst onto the stage at the close of the segment. (Douglas was concerned that her costume — or lack of one — might offend the show's female viewers. There's no report on what Farr thought, but he probably wished he had an outfit like that.)
That's really all there is to this story. I wanted to run the photo because it's so wonderful, and because it gives me the chance to tell you about Phil. And I also wanted to mention that, much to Wendy's amazement, I have actually located a tape of that episode of The Mike Douglas Show for her. I haven't yet discussed it with the programming folks at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, but I'll bet we can find some event at the 2005 convention where we can show that segment to everyone who wants to see it. It's a great moment.
P.S. Since I posted this, several folks (including Gary Sassaman and Steve Thompson) have pointed out to me that 1977 was the year that Phil Seuling's big New York comic book convention could not find hotel space in New York, so it moved to Philadelphia. Philadelphia was where Mike Douglas taped his show.
Dave Mackey, who knows this kind of stuff better than I do, says that when the Columbia Li'l Abner cartoons were released on VHS a few years ago, they were not what one would expect. Instead of transferring color prints of these cartoons (which were originally made in color), someone did a tracing job on black-and-white prints. I don't have time to explain the technical end of this process so just trust me: It ruins the cartoon. Instead of seeing the work of talented animators, you're seeing what happens when minimum-wage employees trace their work, and not even every frame of it. In this case, says Dave, they were tracing material that wasn't so wonderful in the first place. So avoid those tapes, too.
Here's the great thing about having this weblog: Yesterday, we discussed what was up with the announced "new" episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? that ABC Family has announced they will begin showing on 1/17/05. Today, I hear from Jim Ellwanger who says…well, here. Read him for yourself…
I've been closed-captioning the new Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes over the past month or so. As far as I can tell, so far it's all leftover material from tapings for the later seasons (all with a 2000 or 2001 copyright date)…in fact, one of the episodes I captioned was material from the one taping I went to, in late 2000 or early 2001, from which I think they had already gotten two or three episodes.
They're edited as regular episodes, not as "best-of" compilations or anything like that. Last I heard, there are supposed to be somewhere between 22 and 29 new episodes, but don't hold me to that number, since I don't directly deal with anyone at the production company or ABC Family.
These are not episodes that were ever slated to run on ABC; we captioned the last batch of episodes for ABC in the first half of 2003, and I think all the episodes from that batch have already aired, either on ABC or ABC Family.
I don't know anything about the "lost" episode. It would have already been captioned in advance of its originally scheduled air date, so I'll be very surprised if it shows up now for me to work on.
Thanks, Jim. I've set my TiVo to grab these, and I'll try watching them with the captions on.
This item a week or so ago sent several readers of this site to their local discount DVD racks to see what kind of Li'l Abner movie was there. Several reported finding what appeared to be several different Li'l Abner movies on sale for one or two bucks a copy. Jim Bahler, for instance, wrote…
Walmart's Li'l Abner says, "Al Capp's 'Lil (their spelling) Abner" cartoon has been delighting funnies readers since 1934. In this, the first of Lil (again) Abner's filmed adventures, Al Capp's characters come vividly to life, with all of the strip's most notable personalities on board, including Lil (again) Abner (Jeff York, billed as Granville Owen), Daisy Mae (Martha O'Driscoll), Manny and Pappy Yokum, and the rest of the quirky gang. It's Sadie Hawkins day, and a prime opportunity for the women of Dogpatch to snare a husband. With not one, or two — but three ladies in pursuit, it's all Lil (must be a dame) Abner can do to avoid getting ensnared. Lil (yes) Abner stands as a fitting celluloid tribute to the work of Al Capp." The front (color) cover lists Peter Palmer and Leslie Parrish as being the stars of the film…and they're from the 1959 version! It's from Digiview Productions, Standard Full Frame, 114 minutes. B/W, Stereo Sound with Interactive Menus.
Target's L'il Abner (yes, a third spelling variant!) is quite different. For starters, the black and white cover has Buster Keaton's name larger than the movie title, so it's "L'il Abner starring Buster Keaton" according to the front and back. The copy reads: 1940, 73 minutes. Also starring Jeff York, Mona Ray. America's favorite comic strip comes to life! The gang from Dogpatch is all here: Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy Yokum, Earthquake McGoon and Lonesome Polecat. What'll happen when the Sadie Hawkins dance turns things upside down?
Surely it'll be stupefying!" It's from Genius Entertainment, under their "Golden Movie Classics" series.
Guess I'll have to put them both in the player and see what I've got…
Okay: they're the same movie — apparently, the 1940 version, although it's difficult to read the copyright, and no actors are listed at the beginning. However, Milton Berle is listed as one of the three writers of the "Li'l Abner" theme song. They're both black and white, of course. I put the Digiview copy in first, but didn't watch much of it. However, it had chapter selections, a "play movie" option, and a "previews" option. The Genius version just played, with no extras, chapters, etc. On the other hand, while I only watched a half minute or so of the Digiview version, I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the reproduction, whereas the Genius edition looks pretty clean. Not great, but it does appear to be pretty clean and "non-jerky" without much drop-out. I do think it's been remastered.
Hope this helps. Beware of the Walmart version if you're familiar with the 1959 actors. It ain't them!
Yeah…I've posted what I think is the cover of the Digiview version. It identifies Peter Palmer and Leslie Parrish as the stars and this is an outright lie. The version they were in — the 1959 color musical — has not been released on DVD. So any DVD you find, especially in the dollar bins, is almost certainly going to be the 1940 black-and-white version starring Granville Owen (aka Jeff York) and Buster Keaton. It's a pretty unwatchable movie, even if it does have Buster and a whole bunch of silent comedians, like Chester Conklin and Hank Mann, who hadn't worked since Mack Sennett closed down. Milton Berle used to claim he was one of the producers of the film but he seems to be credited only for co-writing a song.
There were actually several other times Li'l Abner was put on film. In 1944, the Columbia cartoon studio made five shorts that they apparently thought would be popular the same way the cartoon adaptations of Popeye were successful. They were wrong. There have also been at least three separate live-action Li'l Abner TV pilots, two of which have received some limited distribution on VHS in the collectors' market.
So I guess it's possible, if you buy a DVD that says Li'l Abner on the outside (or even L'il Abner), it contains one of those pilots. But the odds are pretty overwhelming it'll just be another copy of the 1940 version. The cartoons had a brief VHS release but are not presently out on DVD and neither is the 1959 movie. I hear from several sources, however, that the '59 version will be…probably before '05 is half over.
Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 at 12:29 PM
How do we help the folks in East Africa and Southern Asia who are suffering? Should one give money? Blankets? Food? This is a question that has mattered to me since many years ago when I heard a popular performer tell me he'd semi-regretted hosting a telethon to aid people who'd lost their homes in a flood in the mid-west. Everyone's intentions (including his) were only the best…but this particular telethon had been encumbered with red tape and way too many paid staffers. And as a result, though the telethon had raised a decent sum of cash, way less than half of it had actually been put to good purpose, and even that distribution took months. The performer said that after hosting that seemingly-successful telethon, he'd been deluged with requests to helm others, and that he'd declined most…not because the causes were not worthy but because, he said, he'd decided to confine his fund-raising and personal donations to only the most efficient efforts. Makes sense to me.
So yesterday, I called a friend of mine who works for a disaster-relief charity and asked, in effect, how one gets the most bang for one's donated dollars at the moment. Her answer was that really, while donations of food and goods always feel like "doing something," unless the final recipients are local, you're just saddling the charity with problems. So what should you give? Her reply:
There are really only two things that matter — money and, when they're short, blood. If you call us up and say, "I've got ten cases of canned food here for starving people overseas," I have to start looking in the budget for a way to get it from you and then get it to them, and that can be expensive and take time. If you give us money, I can have that money feeding hungry people in twenty-four hours.
The charity she works for is only peripherally involved in the current Africa/Asia efforts but I'll bet it works that way with most causes. She said that if one donates to the Red Cross or the Salvation Army, very little of the money goes to administrative concerns. "You can't put the money to much better use than to give to them," she said. "And the Red Cross can also tell you if they have a special need for blood at the moment."
So here's a link to a page where you can donate to the Red Cross. And those of you who were thinking of donating to this site…please double or triple the amount you were going to send me and send it there, instead.
Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 at 11:12 AM
I never thought it was "real" improv, as proven by the large number of experienced comedy writers listed as producers and consultants on its end credits…but I still enjoyed the American edition of Whose Line Is It Anyway? hosted by Drew Carey. I watched 'em when ABC ran them in prime time and I watched reruns on the ABC Family Channel until I got sick of seeing the same episodes repeated over and over. So it's nice to hear that starting January 17, ABC Family will be running what they're calling "new" episodes. I suspect they'll be filtering them in with the reruns I don't want to watch again but perhaps my TiVo can figure out the difference.
There seems to be some confusion as to just what these "new" episodes are. When Whose Line? went off ABC, there were reportedly a number of shows that had not aired, and some sources are saying that these are the ones that will start next month. Other sources claim that any leftover episodes from the end of the network run have already aired on ABC Family and that what they're doing now is to go back to the old tapes and build new episodes out of leftover material. One of the quiet secrets of both versions of Whose Line? (British and American) is that at each taping, they played many more games than necessary to fill out a half-hour, then chose the best ones to air. This is why, at the end of each game, the performers always return to their chairs, even if they're in the next bit. It makes it easier to chop out or rearrange segments if they all start with all four players seated.
If that's what they're doing — using material that failed to make the cut the first time around — this would probably mean a lot of bits taped during the show's first year. That season, they usually taped for 2 hours and whittled it down to one half-hour show. In later years, they generally taped a little longer but would cut the proceedings into four or even five shows. Does anyone have any firm details on whether this is what's being done?
One hopes they'll also run the one "lost" episode from the program's first season on ABC. One night in 1999, the show was preempted at the last minute by a Barbara Walters interview of Monica Lewinsky, and the scheduled episode never ran. Fans assume that this was because it was one of the few without Wayne Brady, who by then was becoming one of the most popular folks on the series. (His slot in that episode was filled by Patrick Bristow, who had appeared on the British version of Whose Line?) It would be nice to see it for the first time instead of the episode with Richard Simmons for the eightieth…and the points still won't mean a thing.
Jerry Orbach in the original Broadway production of Promises, Promises.
It's hardly the worst news in the papers today but I was still sad to read of the death of Jerry Orbach. Most folks probably know him for his appearances on Law & Order and other dramatic roles…but a lot of us think of him as a genuine star of Broadway musicals. Matter of fact, Orbach was in the first Broadway musical I ever actually saw in a Broadway theater, 42nd Street. He played the role of the callous, all-business Julian Marsh, who produced musicals but didn't seem to have any music in his soul. That was until about midway through the second act when suddenly, thrillingly, he burst into song with "Lullaby of Broadway." It was one of those "tingle" moments and it worked because Jerry Orbach was just so darn good.
Over on his fine comics news weblog, my friend Tom Spurgeon says that he fears we're about to see a lot of political/editorial cartoonists operating in a climate of fear. Here…I'll quote Tom's key sentence…
…with the newspaper business being what it is and more and more eyes at all levels of journalism on the bottom line, I don't see where any real resistance is going to come from if a set of complaints against a single work or editorialist were to build critical momentum.
I think Tom's right and wrong but mostly right. Once upon a time, the press in this country believed that the news was the news, and you report it as per established rules, regardless of whether it's what your readers want to hear. Now, more and more, people seem to want their news to reinforce what they already believe and to be free of facts or opinions to the contrary. More and more in this Rupert Murdoch world of ours, some news organizations are happy to pander to that need, while others increasingly fear offending anyone…even tiny groups if they're vocal enough. Which is bad news for this generation's Herblocks. You can't be much of a political cartoonist if you offend no one. It's not difficult to imagine editors or publishers folding if a small band of The Offended all make enough noise at the same time about some artist. With the F.C.C. doling out "indecency" fines based on a handful (as in, "less than five") complaints and advertisers sidestepping controversies every which way, it doesn't take a lot of bodies to form an angry mob.
The one area where I might part company with Tom — and I'm not sure if we agree or disagree on this — is that I think the free market should operate in this area. I don't think editors should be quick to drop cartoonists, and they especially should not do so in response to these little ginned-up, phony enraged protests. But it's also possible for a cartoonist to offend to no good purpose and/or spread disinformation, and those folks shouldn't be able to claim the First Amendment as immunity from getting replaced by someone better. It's not as bad with editorial cartoonists but lately, we've seen some incredibly shoddy "journalism" practiced by non-cartooning political commentators (Example: The thankfully-retiring William Safire). A few have even meekly advanced the argument that if something is clearly an opinion column, normal standards of factual accuracy do not apply.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that I think there are some lousy editorial cartoonists out there. I'm not sure the folks who control today's news media know how to differentiate between dropping one because he's ticking off readers who can't cope with alternate viewpoints…and one who's just plain uninformed or unfunny. Tom's right that there's a clear and present danger that the good ones will get dumped or pressured to tone it down. But there's also a danger that the standards for political cartooning will continue to descend, right along with the rest of most editorial pages.
Happy birthday to "Smilin'" Stan Lee, presiding guru of the Marvel Universe of Comics. That's him at right in the above photo posing with Lou Ferrigno, who played The Hulk on the 1978 TV series. If these two guys decide to do a fight scene, my money's on Stan.
The folks behind SaveDisney.com periodically send out e-mails with little quotes from Walt Disney. I just received this one…
"No one person can take credit for the success of a motion picture. It's strictly a team effort. From the time the story is written to the time the final release print comes off the printer, hundreds of people are involved — each one doing a job — each job contributing to the final product. And — if the picture wins an award, the feeling of satisfaction…can rightfully be shared by each and everyone."
Nice quote, quite true in some sense…but it does set you to wondering. Mr. Disney was not exactly lavish with the promotion of any name but his own. After he passed, his studio kept up and probably intensified the notion that it was the studio, not any human beings in particular, that made the magic. You can take the above remarks at face value to say that everyone contributes…or you can take it as a way of trivializing the individual contribution of each participant. If no one who works on a Walt Disney picture can be singled-out, then the only name that can garner any credit for the film is Walt Disney.
Last evening at a party, I was chatting with Richard Sherman, who among his (and his brother's) many credits are all the songs and even some story input to Mary Poppins, a movie has endured beyond all expectations. There's a new, very fine DVD out (order it here) with a great transfer…but the main reason to buy it is that it has several superb featurettes and "making of" glimpses, including a terrific segment where Sherman sits around the piano and discusses the score with Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews. The extras document a lot of the individual contributions that went into that "team effort" and remind you that it wasn't the studio that made that movie. It was human beings.
Two of those human beings, of course, were the Sherman Brothers…and they're sure having quite a season. Right now on London's West End, you can see hit stage musicals based on two of their movies — Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The latter is soon to open on Broadway in this country with the former sure to follow. Like a lot of you, I grew up on Sherman Brothers music. Nice to think that another generation is getting that opportunity.
(Before I forget: Jim Hill has two terrific articles about Mary Poppins — and plans for a sequel that never happened — over at his site. Read this one first, then read this one.)
As we reported here, it looks like the Trio cable channel is disappearing from DirecTV on the last day of this year. DirecTV is running an occasional crawl on that channel announcing this, and they've put out a press release and there's a statement on all the bills that are now arriving. They've told everyone except the TiVo folks, whose program listings still display Trio information on DirecTV channel 315 well into 2005 and will allow you to program to record shows on that channel you won't be receiving then. (I assume this is because there will still be some local cable companies carrying Trio, so not every TiVo owner will lose it. But it won't be on Channel 315 much longer.)
If you're a DirecTV subscriber, you might want to record one last show on Trio before it goes away. At 6 AM (West Coast time) on 12/31, they're running Final Cut: The Making of Heaven's Gate, the documentary I recommended in the above-linked news item. I assume it will surface elsewhere but it might be a while.
No word yet on whether this means the end of Trio but if you have 20 million subscribers and you suddenly lose 12 million of them, it will probably have some impact.
You only have a few more days to savor the classic Walt Kelly Pogo Christmas strips which we've put up over at The Official Pogo Possum Website. Nobody, as you'll see, ever did Christmas strips better than Mr. Kelly and we've posted eight examples over the last few days, plus we have the definitive, accept-no-substitutes lyrics for the classic carol, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie," which sure beat going "fa-la-la-la-la" when you hear that all-too-familiar tune. We'll have some other Pogo surprises up at the Pogo website in '05 but for now, go enjoy the Christmas strips before they melt away.
