Over at the Cartoon Research website, there's an article by Devon Baxter about the comic book work of Owen Fitzgerald. Owen's name is barely known in the comics community, in large part because it almost never appeared on any of the hundreds of comic books he drew. As far as I know, he only got credit on about three comics he ever worked on, all of which were written and edited by me…and I had to talk him into letting me do that.
It's a good article but Baxter couldn't fit in all the impressive things about Owen. The one I would have tried to find room for is that when he worked for DC, his work was occasionally inked or assisted by a kid in the DC Production Department — a kid who went on to become one of the world's great cartoonists himself. The kid, who told me he considered Owen a mentor and a teacher, was Mort Drucker.
Owen passed away in 1994. Quiet guy that he was, we didn't hear about it for a while and it wasn't until the 2/9/96 issue of The Comic Buyer's Guide that I was able to devote a column to telling folks about him. This is a slightly abridged (but still quite long) version of that column. I will meet you on the other side of it with some additional information…
It has been called to my attention by absolutely no one so far that I occasionally tell stories in which the editor of a comic book is the bad guy. And I'll admit: Though I have occasionally had the title of Editor hung on myself, my heart is ever that of a freelancer. And I don't even like to think of myself as a writer-editor…I prefer to be called a writer who occasionally edits. In the interest of Equal Time though, this column is about editors and how they can sometimes be victimized…how the freelancer (writer or artist) can sometimes be the villain.
A new editor had just been hired by the company and given a book to write and edit. It was a comic with a large cast and therefore quite the challenge to any artist. The editor got lucky when he managed to secure his first choice for the art assignment. The end-result was on-time and rather well-drawn.
But the editor was new at this and didn't realize that he should have had #2 well in the works as the art for #1 was being completed. At first, he didn't worry for the artist he'd picked was super-fast and reliable.
But then, the super-fast and reliable artist announced that he was leaving for a lengthy cruise on an ocean liner. He was willing to take work along — and he certainly would have gotten it done swiftly — but he wouldn't be anywhere he could mail pages in for at least six weeks. This clearly would not do and the editor began looking for a new artist.
He needed someone just as fast and just as reliable so he studied all the likely candidates and settled on one who was known for having both these qualities. The editor called the artist, quoted top dollar, warned him about the tight schedule and offered him the job. The artist thought it over for maybe ten seconds, then agreed. He also said he'd have no trouble making the deadline.
A cause for celebration! The editor finished his script quickly and sent it winging to the artist, along with reference on the characters.
A few days later, he called the artist to see that the package had arrived safely. "Got it," the illustrator announced. "Great script! I've already got it all broken-down and I've even got a few pages done. As for meeting your deadline…no problemo."
The editor exhaled, thanked various deities and relaxed for the first time since he found out Artist #1 was signing aboard the Love Boat.
Over the next week or ten days, the editor periodically called the artist. He liked the reassurance that the work was proceeding on schedule and, each call, the artist told him what he wanted to hear. If you've ever worked in comics, you've no doubt already guessed where this is leading.
The artist was to deliver a finished book — penciled — by the 15th. That was the day it had to go to the letterer and the inker and, from there, to a colorist, then through production and on to the engravers. As a general rule, a good editor would never cut it that close; he'd have a little "pad" in the schedule so that if someone got sick or slow, it would all still get to the printers on time. But the editor had gotten lucky on #1 and, well, he was young. He would, however, soon be growing older at an alarming rate.
On the tenth, he phoned the artist and was told, "I just have a few pages to go…you'll have it on the fifteenth, no problemo."
"Could you send me the first half of the book?" he asked. "I can get the inker started."
The artist hemmed and hawwed. "Uh, I don't actually have too many finished pages…see, when I work, I like to jump around and finish panels randomly 'til it's all done. But you'll have it on the fifteenth. No problemo."
The editor grudgingly agreed to wait…and he didn't worry a lot when he got off the phone. The artist was a pro and a pro delivers when he says he's going to deliver. At least, some do.
Came the fifteenth and there were no pages on his desk. He called the artist. "Just need another day," he was told. "I had to redo the first page…you would have hated it."
"I wouldn't have hated it if it were here," the editor responded. This was a Friday and the artist promised to have it in on Monday. "No problemo," he said seven or eight times.
Monday morn, there was a problemo: Not a page in sight. The editor called. No answer. No answer at the artist's number all day.
No answer on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, the letterer was coming by, asking the editor when that book would be in. The inker, who was holding himself available for the job's imminent arrival, also was inquiring. "Any day now," the editor told them…for indeed, that is what he believed.
Thursday arrived. The pages didn't.
Nor were there any on Friday, at least in the morning. He dialed the artist's number every ten minutes all day. Finally, long after quitting time, someone picked up.
"I'm coming over for the pages," he told the artist.
"No, don't," said the artist, who had only answered his phone, thinking it couldn't be the office calling at this hour. "I don't have them all done yet."
"You were almost done a week ago."
"Yes, well, I had some problems…personal things. I'd rather not go into them. But I can have it all in on Monday."
"Fine," said the editor. "Get me the last pages on Monday but I'm coming over now for whatever's done." It was a two-hour drive to the artist's house — four hours, both ways — but things had gotten desperate.
"No," the artist barked. "I don't have enough to make it worth your while."
"I'll take whatever you've got," the editor said. "How many have you got?" The book was twenty-four pages.
"Well, let me see…" The artist went through the sounds of apparently counting out a number of pages. "I only have ten finished," he said.
"Okay…I'll drive out and get the ten."
The artist gulped. "Well, they're kind of rough…"
"I'll live with it. The inker can tighten them up."
"Oh no, I wouldn't want an inker to do that."
"I'll pay him extra," the editor said.
The artist's voice grew firmer. "I'll tighten them up and have the whole job to you by Monday. No prob-"
"I know, I know — no problemo! Well, I have a problemo. The inker has been sitting around with no work for a week. He turned down another job because you assured me the pages would be here for him last week. So he's already lost a week's pay. And the production department is ready to burn me in effigy. I have to have those ten pages. I'll be there in about two hours."
"Well, I don't really have ten pages," the artist said.
"A minute ago, you had ten pages."
"I just counted again and I guess I miscounted."
The editor raised his voice, ever so slightly: "How many do you have?"
The artist paused and answered, "Two."
"Two?"
"Two."
The editor queried how "almost finished" had turned into ten pages and how ten pages had now turned into two. "I think you're using the wrong end of the pencil."
"I have it all drawn…but only in my mind. I can put it on paper real fast. If you'll give me until Monday…"
"I'll be there in two hours," the editor said. "I hope the two pages haven't turned into one panel by then."
The editor jumped in his car and started driving, pondering en route just what he was going to do. After a while, he stopped thinking about what he was going to do to the artist and began wondering what he was going to do about getting a book to press. He decided that trusting this artist to have anything in on Monday would establish new high scores on the Stupidity Meter.
Eventually, he found his way to the artist's house. It was dark and there was no answer when he rang the bell. A manila envelope was on the porch. It contained the script, which meant that the artist was not going to attempt to draw any more of it. There were also two penciled pages — not good but not bad. The editor got the distinct impression that all or most of them had been drawn in the past two hours while he'd been on the freeway.
There are few feelings more awful than sitting there with a deadline long past and no way to meet it. The editor felt more than a little helpless that night as he returned home late and paced the floor of his home, alternately fuming at the fibbing artist and pondering how to get twenty-two pages drawn in record time. He momentarily considered publishing a reprint instead but didn't figure that the readers would be too thrilled to have the second issue of this comic be a reprint of the first issue of this comic.
The next morning — a Saturday — he began phoning artists, looking for someone fast who could do some or all of the pages of this book with the huge cast. One after another proved unavailable…but then one of them said that he'd heard somewhere that Owen was looking for work.
Suddenly, there was sunlight…
"Owen" was Owen Fitzgerald. When I started this tale, I intended to keep everyone unnamed but, as I wrote, I recalled the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me that night — yes, I was the naive editor of our tale — and I remembered the way Owen saved my hind quarters, as he saved so many in his long, incredible career. For most of that career, he was utterly anonymous and, in gratitude, I decided I shouldn't keep him anonymous here…even if it means admitting to you that I was the guy who was so stupid as to get himself into this predicament.
Owen Fitzgerald
Owen Fitzgerald was the fastest artist I've ever known.
And I know about fast artists: I've worked with Jack Kirby, Dan Spiegle, Pat Boyette, Alex Toth and others who have been hailed as the fastest ever. Many say that my best buddy Sergio Aragonés is the fastest artist alive and in a recent column here, I suggested that the late Mike Sekowsky might be due that honor. I forgot about Owen when I wrote that.
It was easy to forget about Owen. He was quiet and unassuming…and he talked with a slow, Arkansas drawl that didn't suggest he could do anything quickly. Still, put a pencil in his hand, blink, and you totally missed the creation of the picture.
Owen worked mostly in animation. He'd worked at Disney, worked at DePatie-Freleng, worked everywhere. In director Chuck Jones' autobiography, Chuck Amuck, there's a group shot photo of all the artists working with Chuck at Warner's at the time. Even Chuck forgot about Owen and had to identify him in the photo caption as an unnamed "Talented layout artist."
When I met Owen, he was the all-purpose trouble-shooter at Hanna-Barbera. Whenever a show was in deadline trouble, they'd put him on it and the show would suddenly be on or ahead of schedule. His work was so good, he'd have been hired anywhere, had he been one-tenth the speed. His velocity was an extra bonus as was his versatility. Some guys can draw humor but not adventure, some can draw adventure but not humor. Owen could do it all.
He was a layout artist and in animation, the work of a layout artist is measured in scenes: "How many scenes did you do today?" A good, competent layout artist ought to be able to do forty scenes in one week. A fast one does fifty or maybe even sixty. There were tales of Owen doing well over a hundred without breaking a sweat and that's with extra-long lunch breaks. All he needed was a pencil, paper, his cigarettes and an unlimited supply of Coca-Cola.
At one point when H-B was producing Jana of the Jungle, two episodes had to be done quickly and simultaneously. The supervisor put seven artists on one of the shows; on the other, he put Owen along with Jack Manning. (Jack was another fast artist; in fact, he was the guy who drew #1 of my comic and then got on the cruise ship.) Owen and Jack finished first. And they were both in their sixties, whereas the seven guys on the other crew were all in their twenties or thirties.
Owen worked occasionally in comics, mostly in the fifties. He was the first artist on DC's Bob Hope comic book. He also drew Ozzie and Harriet and a few issues of The Fox and the Crow. For a time, he assisted Hank Ketcham on the Dennis the Menace Sunday page and ghosted those wonderful, unsung Dennis the Menace comic books. Shortly before his death, he drew the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip for a while.
That Saturday morn, when I heard Owen might be available, I did figurative cartwheels. I got his number, called him and explained my predicament. "Can you draw this book and can you jump on it right away?"
In his slow, measured way, he asked, "Would Monday morning be okay?"
I gasped. "You can't start until Monday?"
"Hell, no," he chuckled. "I'll finish by Monday." I would never have thought that humanly-possible…but this was Owen.
I drove out and met him at noon in a parking lot midway between his home and mine. I ran some errands afterwards and when I got home at three, there was a message from Owen on my answering machine: "Hey, this is easier than I thought…already have three pages done. I'll have it finished by tomorrow afternoon, easy." Darned if he didn't.
For the issue to be done at all in that time was amazing but as it happens, he also did excellent work — no short-cuts, no cheating. It didn't look at all like a rush job.
By now, I'd learned my lesson. I quickly wrote #3 and gave it to Owen to draw. He took his time on this one. He took three days. I could have gotten the whole first year of the comic done in a month if Owen hadn't gotten another animation job and declined further comic book assignments. In the year or two following, he occasionally had a few days free and I'd rush out a script for him. I am said to be a very fast writer but Owen could draw 'em faster than I could write 'em.
Laff-a-Lympics #3 – Art by Owen Fitzgerald and Scott Shaw!
I was sad to hear he'd passed away recently…and not just because I might someday need his services again. I was sad because he was a very nice man and he came to my rescue in a desperate hour of need. Wherever he is today, I'll bet their comics are all on schedule.
Okay, that's the story and by now you've figured out that the comic book all this panic was about was Hanna-Barbera's Laff-a-Lympics. The inker, letterer and colorist were — in that order — Scott Shaw!, Carol Lay and Carl Gafford. They were also all heroes in getting #2 and #3 done and off to press in a hurry.
Still, through no one's fault but mine, #2 got in two weeks late. When I published this article originally, I left out part of the tale because I thought it might be in bad taste just then. Enough time has passed that I think it's okay to share it here…
This, of course, is a story about me screwing up and engaging in much panic and worry about the consequences. The main consequence I was worried about was not me getting fired. It was me getting yelled at by John Verpoorten. My job as an editor in the Hanna-Barbera Comic Book Division in Hollywood was to deliver a publishable, ready-to-print comic book to Mr. Verpoorten, who was the Production Manager for Marvel Comics back in New York.
John Verpoorten
Mr. Verpoorten was a much-beloved gentleman who was very good in the thankless job of getting freelancers to hand in their work on time. He handled so many comics that probably every day of his life for years, he dealt with much the same problem I had.
I suspect that part of the reason he was hired for that position was that he could look very menacing. He was large — taller than me and I'm 6'3" and he was even wider than me. When he was perturbed or it was necessary to get tough with a tardy writer or artist, he could sport a really chilling scowl and be a very effective Bad Cop.
I was really afraid of him. I'm not sure specifically what I was afraid he would do. He was 3,000 miles away from me so I didn't think it would be physical but…well, let's just say I was dreading the phone call demanding to know where the hell the issue was. Really dreading it.
Okay, so let's scroll back to the point in the story where Owen has drawn the comic over the weekend. I have Carol and Scott working madly on finishing it with Carl standing by but it's still going to be late…perhaps two weeks late. I decide that instead of waiting for that call, it will be more professional and less painful if I call John and tell him the book's going to be late. "Might as well get it over with," I muttered to myself. And also, I didn't want to do to him a version of what Mr. "No Problemo" had done to me.
I put it off until Wednesday I think but that morn, I steeled up all the meager courage I ever possess (about a gerbil's worth) and dialed Marvel's number in New York. An operator answered and I told her, "Mr. Verpoorten's office, please." She said she'd connect me. It rang and another woman answered, "Production Department." I asked for John Verpoorten. She asked who was calling. I told her and then she said…
"Oh, Mark, I guess you haven't heard. John died over the weekend."
In my life, I have never celebrated or even grinned at the death of another human being; not even folks who have seriously wronged me…not even serial killers or torturers or people who call you up and tell you they're with Microsoft and you have a virus on your computer which they can remove if you give them remote access. I have never been happy when anyone dies…
…but for just one moment there after I heard what the lady on the phone told me, I did a little mental fist bump and went, "Yessssss!"
Then I settled down into proper reverence along with the guilt about the mental fist bump. I sent in the second issue as soon as it was done and no one said anything. Not a word. We got #3 done A.S.A.P. and then…
Well, remember how the artist on the first issue, Jack Manning, drew it and then left on a cruise? I had a couple days before he left so I wrote two Laff-a-Lympics scripts in two days and gave them to him to take along and to draw on the boat. Around the time we finished #3, Jack got back from his trip and he turned in the pencil art for the two issues so I had #4 and #5 all drawn…and plenty of time to find a new artist and get him to work on #6. (Jack was too busy to do any more just then.) I remained well ahead of schedule for the rest of the book's run. Almost.
Anyway, that's the story of how Owen Fitzgerald saved my hide when I made just about the dumbest mistake a boy comic book editor can make. If you ever become the editor of a comic book, don't count on anyone bailing you out the same way. They don't make 'em like Owen anymore.
Hey, it's been a long time since I embedded a cartoon that I wrote. When I was a lad, one of my favorite comedians — and I almost never saw him; only heard him on records — was The Old Philosopher, Eddie Lawrence. I thought he was hilarious.
In 1994 when we were doing the final season of the original Garfield and Friends, the producer let me record a couple of voice tracks in New York so I could use some New York voice actors. My "wish list" was Arnold Stang, Jackson Beck, Imogene Coca…and Eddie Lawrence. As it turned out, Mr. Beck suddenly had to record some commercials for the Little Caesar's pizza chain on the one day I could record there so I never got him…and Imogene overslept. I took her out to dinner and to see a Broadway show but I wound up recording her a few weeks later when she was visiting Los Angeles.
I'm going to quote some things now from earlier posts on this blog, slightly amended…
I called Eddie Lawrence's agent in New York and said I wanted to hire him to do one or two Garfield cartoons. Here was the deal. I told the agent, "What I really would like to do is write for the Old Philosopher. I know Eddie has always written all his own material so I don't want to offend him. If he doesn't want anyone else writing for that character, I absolutely understand. I'll just write a different kind of Garfield cartoon and have him play a role, just so I can meet him and say I worked with him. If, however, he is willing to trust me, I'll do two cartoons with the Old Philosopher character and we'll pay him twice as much."
The agent said, "I don't know…Eddie is really protective of that character."
I said, "Tell him I know his work backwards and forwards. Tell him I will send him the material in advance…which is something I've never done for anyone else in six years of this show. Tell him I will overwrite the monologues. I'll write them 50% longer and he can cut the jokes he doesn't like or reword them or whatever he wants."
She said she'd check with him. The next day, she called me back and said, "Eddie says he'll do the two episodes with the Philosopher….but I'll warn you. He's going to be really fussy about the material." We verbally "shook" on the deal and a week later, I sent the scripts to her to pass on to Eddie.
I was packing for the New York trip when the phone rang. On the other end was the unquestionable voice of Eddie Lawrence and he said, "Mark, you have been listening to my records." I would love to be able to tell you that he did everything I wrote just as I wrote it but in fact, we spent about a half hour then and another half hour after I got to New York fiddling with the jokes. Which was fine with me. I wrote two Old Philosopher routines for Eddie Lawrence and I am a happy man because of it.
The day we recorded, I did one first with Arnold Stang. Happily for me, Arnold was an hour early to the recording session, as many old pros were, so we got to spend an hour talking about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Top Cat and other things he'd done.
We then recorded his Garfield episode. He and I were in the booth in midtown Manhattan. Lorenzo Music, Gregg Berger, Thom Huge and the other actors in the show were in our usual recording studio in Hollywood and we were all linked by telephone and Internet. In the cartoon below and the ones I did with Eddie, you can't tell that L.A. actors were 2,798 miles from their director and guest stars. I just figured that mileage on Google Maps. Back to quoting from an earlier post…
While I was recording with Arnold, Eddie Lawrence arrived. He and Arnold were longtime pals, and when Arnold and I were done with his cartoon and he exited the booth, he and Eddie embraced.
Then Arnold looked him in the eye and sounding as serious as Arnold Stang could possibly sound, he pointed to me and said, "Eddie, don't give this young man any trouble. He's a fine director and you just do everything he says."
Eddie promised he would. That wasn't good enough for Arnold. He added, "If you give him any crap, I'll come back here and kick your ass." Then he handed me his pager number and said, "Remember…if he gets out of line, call me and I'll come back and kick his ass." This wasn't necessary but there was one moment when Eddie was giving me a little problem and I had to threaten, "I'll call Arnold." He immediately apologized and agreed to do it the way I wanted. The power of an Arnold Stang threat.
Here's one of the two cartoons I recorded with Eddie, who passed away in 2014, thirteen years after Lorenzo Music. The voice of Binky the Clown was done by Thom Huge. Binky appeared a lot in the early seasons of Garfield and Friends and then I decided he'd worn out his welcome (and Thom's vocal cords) and he didn't show up for a long time…until this episode, in fact.
By the way: If you stay for the end credits after the cartoon, you'll see Eddie's name…but several of the other names don't belong. For most of its run, Garfield and Friends was an hour-long show and the end credits pertained to both halves. When the shows were chopped into half-hours for syndication, no one redid the end credits so a lot of them have been wrong. The shows were recently remastered for high-def and we took the opportunity to fix all the voice credits. The new versions will be turning up somewhere soon.
Enough of this! Here's Eddie and it's still a thrill for me that I got to work with this man…
I didn't watch Trump's first State of the Union speech live — it's been a long time since I watched any of these live and in full — but the post-speech analysis isn't screaming out any headlines. When the press all weighs in, those who lean left will say he seemed More Presidential Than Usual and maybe this will mark the start of a new, more dignified Trump. And those who lean right will say he's always been presidential and tonight, he really knocked it out of the park. And then within 48 hours, he'll say or do something outrageous to remind us that there will never be a new, more dignified Trump.
Around the time the speech was concluding I got a call from a pollster with a few topical questions, one being "Do you favor the erection of a wall on the Southern border of the United States to limit illegal entry into this country?" I was going to tell the lady I favor all erections but I figured if I was the twenty-fifth person she'd phoned to ask that question, I'd be the twenty-fifth person to say something like that.
She offered me three choices: Yes, no and I don't know. I said no but I'll bet the answer that would get the biggest vote would be if they offered Yes but only if Mexico really and truly pays for it. That part of the concept seems to have gone away, though.
In other news: A staunch reader of this site, Andy Rose, writes to tell me, "The old ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania (inspiration for Glenn Miller's "Pennsylvania 6-5000") was converted into TV studios more than a decade ago" and he sends this link to a page that describes what they have going there. Sounds like a great place to do a show. The last few times I stayed at that hotel, it wasn't a great place to stay and for a time, we were hearing reports that it would be torn down. I guess they wouldn't have built that studio if the hotel was going away.
Matt Yglesias makes an important point. One of the big reasons that Trump's approval rating is at 38% instead of 22% is that the economy is in pretty good shape. It was in pretty good shape back when Trump was running for office but he trashed it at every turn, insisting (for example) that the low unemployment rates were phony. Now, it's pretty much the same economy. Just about everything that was going up under Obama is still going up at the same rate. The difference is now, Trump is claiming credit for fixing it and Republicans are agreeing: Yes, yes, this is a great economy! The only difference is that he's skewing more of its benefits to rich people. Read what Yglesias has to say.
Each year, Matt Taibbi lays down some rules for a State of the Union Drinking Game. Here are the rules for tonight. I have never had even a sip of an alcoholic beverage in my life but this president may make me start.
At least, don't count on a Season Pass getting you what you want tomorrow night.
That's the night of the State of the Union address and several of the late night shows will be broadcasting live after it. This means they may not start and end when your TiVo or DVR thinks they'll start and end. I thought I'd take a look at the pages where one gets tickets to sit in their audiences and see when they're doing each show. Remember, the speech is at 6 PM Pacific Time, 9 PM Eastern…
In New York, the website for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert wants its audience there at 9 PM. They usually "tape" (that is no longer the right word) at 4:30 PM. In the past, most of the shows they've done "live" have only been partially live. They brought in two audiences and pre-recorded some segments of the program with the first, then did only some parts of the show live. Looks like they're doing the whole thing live this time.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah usually records at 5 PM but according to its ticket website…
PLEASE NOTE: The taping on Tuesday, January 30th, will be a LIVE SHOW starting with a viewing of the State of the Union followed by the taping. Check-in for General Guaranteed reservation holders will open at 6:30pm and close at 7:30pm.
…which I don't understand. To get a good seat, you have to be there at 6:30, wait around to watch Trump speak at 9 PM and then still be there for the live telecast starting at 11 PM or later? I thought for a moment the website was converting to Pacific Time for me but they wouldn't want people to get there at 9:30 to view a speech that starts at 9. So I dunno what's up there.
Meanwhile, the same company's website for The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which usually wants people there at 5:30 for a 6:30 recording tomorrow wants them there at 10:30 PM for an 11:30 broadcast. Which makes sense.
(By the way: I didn't know this but apparently, Mr. Klepper's show — which further by the way, I like a lot — is done from the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue, across from Penn Station. Weird.)
The website for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon doesn't have ticket listings for this week and I don't see anything online about doing his show live tomorrow night. His lead guests however are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who will undoubtedly talk about Trump. It would seem odd to record that conversation before the speech. Late Night with Seth Meyers is recording at its usual time of 5:30 PM according to its ticket website.
What about the two late night shows from Los Angeles? Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which I don't think has been live in many years, usually gets the audience there at 4:15 PM. According to its website, tomorrow night they convene at 6:45. James Corden is doing his show at its usual time of 4 PM.
Call me crazy but I have this odd feeling that the speech will be an awful lot about how everything is going as great as it possibly could and if it isn't, it's because of those damned Democrats — and did I mention there was no collusion, no collusion, no collusion? I'm hoping someone will take the whole speech and put it on YouTube captioned with fact-checking but of course, that could take a while…like until the next State of the Union speech. We can only wonder who'll be delivering that one.
The day after Christmas a little over a month ago, I posted this message here…
Note to self: If you go out for dinner on any future Christmas Day in the future, don't go late. Amber and I journeyed to one of our favorite restaurants last night for an 8:45 reservation. The gentleman who led us to our table informed us that service was running slow because "One of our chefs walked out on us" — he did not explain why — and whatever entree we ordered might take as long as an hour to get to us.
I felt sorry for our server who then had to apologize over and over for things that were not his fault…mostly the fact that they were out of so many items including bread. I have never before been in a restaurant that ran out of bread. I was on my cell phone at one point when he came by our table and I told him, "I'm having a pizza delivered." He said, "Good idea. Could you save me a slice?"
I feel sorry for our server again. I just received an e-mail that the restaurant has closed permanently. It was the McCormick & Schmick's in El Segundo and it was always good until that one evening…and even then, it wasn't that bad and the problems seemed to me forgivable. It's also a place I'll miss for a personal reason. The last few Christmases that my mother was able to go out for dinner, that's where Carolyn and I took her.
We started one year when my gift to her was the snazziest wheelchair you ever saw.
No, I take that back. It wasn't a wheelchair. What my mother needed and what I got her was what's called a companion chair. The difference is that a wheelchair has the big wheels so the person in it can roll themselves around. A companion chair only moves if someone pushes it and the one I got her was a metallic cobalt blue and it glistened and made her feel very special. She called it her "Nascar Wheelchair."
Around the time she hit the age of eighty, walking more than about twenty steps at a time became impossible for her. She could get around the house but not out of it and when I told her, "I'm getting you a wheelchair," she agreed it was necessary but she was worried that, confined to the chair, there would be so many places she just couldn't go.
I assured her that the world had become very much wheelchair-friendly and to prove the point, on Christmas afternoon that year, I gave her the chair and then we took her down to that McCormick & Schmick's. I picked it partly because she loved the food there but also because I recalled the place had a very nice, functional wheelchair lift. You can see it in the above photo. It looks like a copper-colored box and it aids those who cannot climb those stairs to the right of it.
I pulled my car up front into the valet area, which is what you're seeing in this photo. Then I got her chair from my trunk and got her into it. As I did, the parking attendant said I had a choice. I could take her in via the wheelchair lift or I could roll her around to the other side of the restaurant where there was a ramp that would get her inside. I said, "We're using the lift" and then I wheeled her into it, got into it with her and we rode it up.
And then we rode it down.
And then we rode it up again. And down.
I did this over and over — up and down, up and down — three or four times to show her how simple it was, and I showed her how she could work the controls herself. A couple came by as we were doing this and they looked puzzled as to why this this weird guy was taking the lady in the wheelchair up, then taking her down, then taking her up again. I told them, "She wanted to go to Disneyland today but I'm not spending that kind of money" and then I began singing, "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears! It's a world of hopes and a world of fears…"
My mother laughed, asked me when we could go on the Matterhorn and then she said, "Okay, you've made your point. It's easier than I thought." We went in, had a lovely dinner and then I took her out via the ramp on the other side of the building, just to show her how, even when there wasn't a wheelchair lift, there was almost always a way to get her in and out of wherever she wanted to go. That made her very happy.
My mother died in 2012 but I left her companion chair in my trunk for years after and it sometimes came in very handy. I now take it along when I go someplace where it might. In the years since, I used it to transport June Foray, Stan Freberg, Jack Riley, Marvin Kaplan, David L. Lander, Rose Marie, my dear friend Carolyn and several others, and I loaned it out to friends who needed one for a short time. One day right after my knee replacement, Sergio Aragonés pushed me in it to a doctor appointment and one time in a mall, I got it to help out a couple of strangers. A woman had fallen and hurt herself and her husband needed to get her to a hospital. My mother would be happy to see her Nascar Wheelchair used to help others.
What she wouldn't be happy about was to hear that that McCormick & Schmick's had closed. The entire chain of steak and seafood eateries was founded by Bill McCormick and Douglas Schmick in Portland, Oregon in 1974 and eventually expanded to almost 100 locations. The company was acquired by the Landry's Restaurant corporation in 2011 and I don't know how they're doing elsewhere but since then, they've closed the fancy one in Beverly Hills, the huge one in downtown Los Angeles, the ones in Burbank and Pasadena and now the one in El Segundo. I wish I'd known a month ago it was the last time I'd ever eat there. I would have taken the wheelchair lift for one last ride — up and down, up and down, up and down…
Had a dream the other night: Trump ends State of the Union speech by putting watermelon in front of podium, smashing it with the Sledge-O-Matic. I'm thinking this probably won't happen but with him, you never know. Might also twerk or declare war on Toronto.
Left to right: Daws Butler, Don Messick, Doug Young
Cartoon voice actor Doug Young died January 7 at the age of 98. He was heard in many Hanna-Barbera cartoons between 1959 and around 1965 but is surely best known as the voice of Doggie Daddy in the Augie Doggie cartoons on the Quick Draw McGraw series. When the show was created, Joe Barbera and the writers decided that Augie's Dear Ol' Dad should sound like Jimmy Durante. They furthermore decided that Daws Butler — who played Augie and every other recurring character on that program — would supply that voice.
It was Daws who decided the part should be played by Doug Young. Daws was capable of playing both roles as he proved on the 1965 record album, Doggie Daddy Tells Augie Doggie The Story of Pinocchio. But that kind of voice was hard on Butler's vocal cords and he decided to tell Hanna-Barbera to get someone else for the job. Before he could do that, he ran into Doug Young in a record store.
Doug had been a working actor in the days of radio dramas — among many other shows, he was heard on The Cisco Kid, Red Ryder, Sherlock Holmes, The Lux Radio Theatre and The Whistler — but had not made the transition to television. Daws knew him from at least one of those shows on which they'd worked together and he remembered that Young did great impressions and could easily handle the kind of roles that voice actors called "throat-rippers." He also thought that Doug should be back in show business. So they went into Daws' home studio, put together a new demo tape…and that's how Doug Young became Doggie Daddy. I thought the result was one of the most memorable characterizations ever done for a TV cartoon.
Doug was in H-B cartoons for much of the sixties — he was Hokey Wolf's loyal sidekick, Ding-a-Ling, Yippee in "Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey," plus he played tons of supporting roles on The Flintstones and other shows including Jonny Quest and Hanna-Barbera's Laurel and Hardy cartoons. In '68, he moved to Seattle where he became very active with several groups there that keep alive the art of radio-style dramas and comedies. In one of these groups, he met and became friendly with my pal Frank Buxton, who sadly left us a few days before Doug did.
It was Frank who put me in touch with Doug for some long, pleasurable phone conversations, including one that took place on Stu's Show. I enjoyed chatting with him and letting him know how many of us there were around who loved his work. That is, whenever I could get him to stop telling me how much he loved Daws.
My thanks to Georgi Mihailov for letting me know about Doug's passing.
I've been having trouble writing the Woody Allen piece I want to write. In the meantime though, my cousin David — author of this fine book on Mr. Allen — appeared on the radio show of our friend Paul Harris and explained a lot of the things I was going to say. Give it a listen.
I will say for now, I'm disappointed in how hysterical some discussions become on social media. A person ought to be able to oppose a specific piece of civil rights legislation without being branded a racist. A person ought to be able to say they think Donald Trump is a bad president without being called a Trump-hater. And a person ought to be able to say they think Woody Allen is not guilty without being accused of siding with all the folks who have been accused of sex crimes.
While you're over at Paul's site, check out his disappointment with Stephen Colbert giving over a large hunk of his show to Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop line. My reasons are the same as Paul's.
If Trump wants his wall, it's real simple. He should get together with a lot of other billionaires, they should fund it and then when Mexico pays for it (like he promised), they can all be reimbursed!
One of the world's most-read cartoonists, Mort Walker died early this morning at the age of 94. He was a professional cartoonist for eighty years.
That's right. I said he was a professional cartoonist for eighty years. He was selling 'em from the age of 14 and drawing them years before then. In September of 1950, he launched his first of his many syndicated newspaper strips, Beetle Bailey. Originally set at a college, the feature didn't really take off until a few months later when he shifted it to an army setting, drawing on his own military experiences.
It soon became one of the most popular comic strips of all time and Mort could have had a very fine, lucrative life just producing it until he could draw no longer. Instead, he began expanding. He and his friend Dik Browne began Hi and Lois in 1954 and then he and Frank Roberge started Mrs. Fitz's Flats in 1957. In 1961, Mort and Jerry Dumas gave us Sam's Strip, which only lasted two years but which was revived (somewhat changed) as Sam & Silo in 1977.
There was also Boner's Ark, which Walker started in 1968, signing it with his real first name, Addison. There was also The Evermores, which he started in 1982 with Johnny Sajem. There was also Gamin & Patches which "Addison" launched in 1987. Some of these strips didn't last long but Mort still had an amazing track record…and Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois and Sam & Silo still persist to this day.
They will not suffer the loss of Mort because for years, they were produced by a squadron of Walker friends and relatives, with Mort writing and drawing as his health allowed. King Features Syndicate distributed all but Gamin & Patches, and Mort's output was so much a part of King's offerings that the New York office referred to his Connecticut studio as "King Features North."
Mort himself was a cheery, affable fellow who was also very involved in the National Cartoonists Society (serving as an officer and winning many awards from it) and in 1974, he opened the Museum of Cartoon Art, said to be the first museum devoted to the art of comics. The times I encountered him, he was delightful to be around and always willing to draw Beetle or Sarge for any of his fans. He sure had a lot of them.
If you'd like to know more about this extraordinary fellow, I would recommend a book he wrote in 1974 called Backstage at the Strips. It's kind of an autobiography up to that point, and a look at how he and others produced their strips back then. Here's an Amazon link to a paperback version that's still in print. It's also a love letter to the cartooning profession — a profession that served him well (and vice-versa) for, like I said, eighty years. That's right: Eighty years!
