I am now about to cause some of you to spend a lot of time on a webpage other than mine.
Less than a year ago here, I told you about an old pal of mine, a large-hearted, industrious gent named Paul Maher. Paul was a devout fan of entertainment that fell under the general classification of "children's television" and he died some time back without realizing his dream, which was to erect a museum devoted to such material. He spent much of his life amassing artifacts and material for his dream.
One of the things Paul did was to videotape — at a time when that was not as easy to do as it is now — interviews with folks who'd worked in children's television, mostly in animation. Someone has put a number of his interviews online on this page, including long ones with Don Messick and Larry Harmon, and shorter ones with folks like Paul Winchell, Alex Lovy, Ward Kimball and Grim Natwick. Not all of his subjects' names are spelled correctly. I haven't watched them all yet but on the ones I've watched, the voice you'll hear asking the questions is Paul's.
Those of you interested in comic book history may be especially interested in his chats with Pete Alvarado and Owen Fitzgerald. Because they worked almost exclusively on comics that didn't have credits, both are not as well-known as they should be. They were among the most prolific comic book illustrators of their time, especially Pete, who I wrote about here.
Owen may have been the fastest comic book artist I ever worked with — and yes, that's including Jack Kirby and Sergio Aragonés. Among the many comics he drew were the early issues of DC's Adventures of Bob Hope and for long periods, he ghosted the Dennis the Menace comic books and Sunday pages for Hank Ketcham. I worked with Pete on Gold Key comics and with both men at Hanna-Barbera and since both have passed, I'm so glad Paul shot these videos of them.
Make a point of watching at least the beginning of Owen's video. He draws Alvin of Alvin and the Chipmunks and as you'll see, he doesn't approach the drawing the "normal" way, which would be to rough in the head shape and then place the features. When he drew — and I saw him do this — he would just start anywhere, almost at random. Sergio sometimes does that and Kirby did, too. Most other artists cannot.
Another odd thing about Owen: He could draw anything as long as he couldn't see it. At Hanna-Barbera, he was constantly being handed model sheets and drawings of new characters he would have to draw and he would look at them, put them away and draw the characters perfectly from memory. He could not do it with the model sheet in front of him. Just an amazing talent.
Paul shot videos of many amazing talents. Go browse the page and if you can, drop something in their donation box. I'm not sure who's running things there but if they're carrying on Paul's work, they deserve your support. In fact, while you're over on that site, go to the main page, click on one of the characters there and you'll see the kind of things Paul collected.