From the I-Shoulda-Known Department: I shoulda known when I posted that episode of To Tell the Truth with Mayo Kaan, I would hear from people who knew more about him than I did. And I also shoulda known it might be my friend Steven Thompson. (Actually, I should probably say "one of my friends named Steven Thompson" because I know several. Steve Thompson, the expert on Walt Kelly who helps out with the Pogo reprint books we're doing is a different Steve Thompson and I know others.)

Anyway, the Steven Thompson I'm writing about at the moment did some digging a while ago and seems to have unearthed the truth about the man with the dubious story of having been the first model for Superman. You can read his full report here but here's the summary…

He was a bodybuilder and former artist's model, a lifeguard, and a one-time Vaudevillian, who made a homemade Superman suit in order to promote war bond sales to young people in and around his home town in Massachusetts for a while in 1942 before joining the Navy. Then about 20 years on, a reporter — accidentally or on purpose — referred to him as the original Superman and the story built from there.

People with bogus stories pop up in the news every day, especially in the Internet Era when there are so many sites desperate for content and clickbait. But it is interesting that Mayo Kaan got as far as he did with his claims at a time when the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were alive and denying his story…and when the owners of Superman, DC Comics, were also saying he was a fraud.

But it is far from the only time To Tell the Truth got hoaxed. On an earlier version of the show — on the episode for November 26, 1957 — they had on a man named Jack Bothwell who claimed to have been a kid actor in the Our Gang comedies. He was not.

Here is that episode. Mr. Bothwell was in the second of three games that evening and I've configured this video so it should start playing just before that second game…

As I wrote on this very blog way back in 2002…

A few nights ago, Game Show Network ran a 1957 episode of To Tell the Truth in which one of the contestants was Jack Bothwell, a New Jersey restaurant host who said that, in his younger days, he'd played Freckles in the famous "Our Gang" comedies produced by Hal Roach. As per usual for the program, Bothwell and two impostors answered questions from the panel whose mission was to identify the real Jack Bothwell. In this case, their problem was a little more difficult because — as the show's producers obviously were unaware — all three men answering the questions were impostors. You see, there was no character named Freckles in the "Our Gang" films and Jack Bothwell never appeared in any of them.

And as you may have noticed, one of the "impostors" in the segment was Barney Martin, who later had a pretty good acting career.

I'm sure there are other examples of frauds on old game shows and I intend to get to the bottom of this. As several of you noted in e-mails to me, the Mayo Kaan episode of To Tell the Truth lists my buddy Dick DeBartolo in the credits. Dick worked on a lot of Goodson-Todman game shows when he wasn't being one of the best and most prolific writers for MAD magazine. I have dispatched an e-mail to Dick asking — no, demanding to know if he recalls any fallout from that episode.

And I'd also like to know if this kind of thing happened on any other game show Dick worked on and if so, what did they do about it? I'm guessing they did nothing, which would not have been the fault of someone on the staff like Dick. The producers wouldn't want to get into a lawsuit — even one they were sure they could win — over something that would be so quickly forgotten. I will let you know what Dick says…assuming he has the courage to respond.

Here we have an episode of the game show To Tell the Truth that originally ran on October 23, 1973. They play two games in this half-hour and in each, three people all claim to be the same person and are quizzed by the panel. The real person with that name is supposed to answer honestly (hence the name of the show) and the two impostors, if they don't know the real answers, are allowed to lie.

And what's interesting to me about this episode is that I don't think anyone was telling the truth.

The first game is built around a man named L. Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the term of President John F. Kennedy. Colonel Prouty's name is well known to folks who've studied the assassination of President Kennedy. Prouty was one of the major sources of conspiracy theories about that murder. In the Oliver Stone movie J.F.K., there was a mysterious informant character called "Mr. X" who was based to a great extent on Prouty.

Vince Bugliosi, in his book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, lists many of Prouty's wilder and debunked claims and describes him as…

…a right-wing zany who was a member of the Liberty Lobby, the…group that supported neo-Nazi David Duke's 1988 candidacy for president and embraces the notion that the Holocaust is really a Jewish hoax. He also served as a consultant to Lyndon LaRouche's right-wing National Democratic Policy Committee at a conference of which he provided a presentation comparing the U.S. Government's prosecution of LaRouche (for conspiracy and mail fraud) to the prosecution of Socrates.

So that's the first guest supposedly telling the truth. Nineteen minutes into the show, we come to the second subject…Mayo Kaan. Mr. Kaan was a one-time body builder who popped up in the early seventies claiming that he was the model for Superman. And he did have a photo of himself from earlier decades posing in a makeshift Superman costume.

But I personally heard both Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster say they'd never heard of him and had never been where Kaan claimed they discovered and hired him. This appearance on To Tell the Truth was part of Mr. Kaan's personal publicity campaign. He died in 2002 but many years before, he seems to have stopped promoting himself as The First Superman because so many reporters were poking holes in his claims.

In this segment, he claims he went to Hollywood and starred in one of the first Superman movies for Warner Brothers. If you know anything about the Man of Steel, you know that Warner Brothers didn't make a Superman movie until 1978 and it starred Christopher Reeve. The first screen appearance of Superman played by a real person, as opposed to a cartoon, was a serial made in 1948 by Columbia Pictures where he was played by Kirk Alyn. Some of the other claims Mr. Kaan made here and elsewhere didn't seem to match reality either.

Fans and collectors have offered various theories on what part of Kaan's story might be true. That photo of him in the homemade Superman suit — which is shown after they reveal which of the three men is the real Mayo Kaan — is just about all the evidence he had. It could have been as simple as him dressing up that way for publicity or maybe to submit himself to DC Comics to play Superman. It has also been theorized that he was hired to play Superman for some personal appearances, as were others. Me, I think it's enough that Siegel and Shuster (who are never mentioned in this segment) said they never heard of him.

Also in the show, you'll hear panelist Gene Rayburn insist that in the Superman movie or TV show, the Daily Planet building was actually a shot of some building in Providence, RI. Also not true. I believe the building in the Kirk Alyn serial was one then located at Wilshire and La Brea here in Los Angeles. And in the George Reeves TV series, they used the Los Angeles City Hall.

So here's the factually-challenged episode of To Tell the Truth. Let me know if you hear anyone get anything right…

I have had naught but praise for the people who run the Comic-Con International in San Diego. The more I attend that con…the more panels I host and the more I get involved with the inner working of the organization…the more impressed I am. It's clearly one of those endeavors which people do so well that it appears easy when it is anything but.

He has since retired from active involvement but for a long time, my pal Gary Sassaman was one those folks doing the impossible each year. He was at various times, Director of Programming, Director of Print and Publications and Director of Print and Digital Media but he did way more than those titles suggest. And as Director of Programming, Gary got me more deeply involved in hosting panels and he also provided the germ cell of the idea that grew into the annual Quick Draw! game.

Two things you should know about Gary. He's been blogging about his convention-going experiences and about his favorite comics over at his blog. Click on that link and go read anything that catches your eye. You will go back for more.

Second thing: He's the guest this Tuesday on the podcast of the San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog. I did it a few weeks ago. He's up this Tuesday and if you're interested in the inner workings of that convention, I'm sure you'll enjoy the show. It starts at 6:30 PM Pacific Time. Go to the SDCC Unofficial Blog to watch it live or watch it later.

And while I have your attention…

Earlier today via e-mail, Gary and I were trying to figure out which conventions had the first ever Quick Draw! and the first Cartoon Voices panel. You'd think I'd know such a thing but there are a lot of things I should know and don't. Anyway, he came across material that showed that the first Quick Draw! was done at WonderCon in 2002.

I told him I thought the first Cartoon Voices panel was at Comic-Con in 2000. Gary had a copy of the program guide for that year and he looked it up. It said the Cartoon Voices panel was in Room 8 and it featured Gregg Berger, Laura Summer, Tom Kenny, Lucille Bliss, Bill Farmer and "a few surprises." Well, that was not the first Cartoon Voices panel. It was the second or third, I believe.

Does anyone reading this have access to a program guide for 1999 or 1998? We need the program guide that lists the schedule, not the souvenir book full of articles and artwork. If so, could you look for the Cartoon Voices panel hosted by me? And if you find it, write me and tell me what you find? Thanks.

Here's the second installment of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's informative series on the history of voiceover. If you missed the first chapter, you can view it here before you watch this one…

You will note in this one, Anna has a little problem with an interview in which Mel Blanc said something that doesn't pass serious fact-checking. One must always remember that people don't always remember. Even the most honest of us can get confused or misspeak. In Mel's case, I had enough contact with the man to formulate a theory why some of his stories don't seem to be utterly accurate.

Unlike other cartoon voice actors, Mel was a star. The others rarely (if ever) got billing. The others did radio shows as he did but didn't get prominent roles and featured billing the way Mel usually did, plus his association with Jack Benny made him pretty famous. And Mel understood the value of self-promotion. A number of the best voice actors became voice actors because they didn't hunger to be on camera. Some even liked the relative anonymity.

So Mel appeared on a lot of talk shows. He was a busy voice actor but never too busy to give an interview. And of course, the interviewers would always ask the same questions over and over: "How did you get into doing voices?" "Where did Bugs Bunny's voice come from?" And so on.

If people keep asking you the same questions over and over, you tend to give them the same answers. And if you're on talk shows, especially in front of a live audience, your answers need to be (a) quick and (b) funny. If accuracy is a condition at all — and with some people, it isn't — it's a distant third. When I was starting out in my vocation of writing things for which people would pay me money, I did a fair amount of writing "panel," that being stories that would be told while sitting in the guest chair with Johnny or Merv or the hosts of Good Morning, Oxnard.

A publicist for whom I worked occasionally would call and say that a certain client was up for a guest slot on The Mike Douglas Show and was "in need of panel." So I'd work with the client to make some anecdote they had shorter and simpler and it of course had to have a great punch line. I'm not going to say we sometimes made up completely phony stories…

Well, yes I am. I can't lie to you people. We did. Guests on talk shows still do that and often employ others to help them do it.

So what I think happened with Mr. Blanc was that he developed answers to talk show questions that weren't exactly fibs but weren't exactly the truth, either. As I said, what is wanted in that situation is quick and funny. If you were a serious animation historian, you wanted something detailed and accurate but if you were a talk show host and you had Mel Blanc on your show, you wanted quick and funny.

And Mel did a lot of those shows, especially after his near-fatal auto accident in 1961. Once he'd recovered enough to make the rounds, everyone wanted him on their programs to tell his story, and he wanted to do as many of them as possible to show the world that he was back and able to work. And I think sometimes, he got a little lost between the "talk show" version of a story and the real one. That happens a lot with people who get asked the same questions over and over and over and over…

Anyway, we eagerly await Part III of Anna's valuable history lesson. Good stuff.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series long ago, I have a mess of food allergies and food intolerances. In fact, the list of things I do not eat grows longer as I get older. Around 2008, my "sweet tooth" miraculously disappeared and I began to not like — and sometimes feel strange after I did eat — anything with a lot of sugar in it like cakes, candy, pies, pastries, ice cream and even some fruits. Lately, I am increasingly unhappy in both ways with foods that have what chefs call "a little heat" — hot sauce, red pepper flakes, cayenne, etc. If its name includes the word "Cajun," my stomach doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

You probably can eat most or all of these things. I can't. These days, we're somewhat more aware that some bodies don't handle gluten well and others can go into anaphylactic shock from peanuts. Most restaurants know that not everyone can eat everything, and also that some of those who can't eat everything have lawyers who can sue anyone.

So yes, it's better than it once was. But an astounding number of people I encounter still say things like: "What do you mean you can't eat asparagus? I eat asparagus all the time! Asparagus never hurt anyone."  There was a time, like around when I was six, I might have said that to someone who said they couldn't eat peanuts.

Or "Oh, you can eat asparagus the way I prepare it! I put cheese on it. You'll never know it's asparagus!" (To these folks, I usually say, "First, let me make you some rat poison. You'll really like the way I prepare it! I put cheese on it. You'll never know it's rat poison!")

I learned I just plain couldn't eat certain things when I was around twelve. Not long after, I learned a very valuable lesson in a very frightening way. It took place in a very fancy and famous restaurant.

Fancy restaurants serve fancy food. Fancy food usually means many ingredients and the more ingredients they put into it, the less likely you are to get an accurate (or even any) answer to the question, "What's in this?" I could fill this blog for days with stories about how impossible it is to get that answered in some places. The wait staff doesn't know…or doesn't seem to be that concerned about accuracy.

The chef is too busy…or occasionally even resents the question. Once, dragged to a Thai restaurant by a date who insisted we go there that night, I asked the waitress, "Which dishes do not have coconut milk in them?" She didn't know so I made her go and ask the cook. The answer turned out to be, "Whichever ones he chooses to not use it in this evening." Well, that was helpful.

This is getting too long so I'm going to save the story of the fancy, famous restaurant for the next installment of this column…but I'll give you a hint. How many of you recognize this man?

It wasn't exactly like that but when I saw that movie years later in a theater, it reminded me of what happened that evening in that famous, fancy restaurant. Fortunately, it did not happen to me but I was an observer…a horrified, scared-to-death observer. I'll tell that story next time.

• I know just enough about the Depp-Heard case to be very proud that I know so little about the Depp-Heard case.

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem favor us with another selection…

Busy this morning with an article that must be written but also with disputing a bogus charge to one of my credit cards. The preliminary charge came through this morning at 5:02 AM and I woke up, saw it and thought, "I've never done business with that company…nor would I."

I called the credit card company and they suggested calling the company. They also told me this wasn't the first time this company has charged my card that amount. I missed a couple of previous transactions long ago that they cannot now be disputed. I have to wait until this charge is "posted" in three days before opening a dispute of this charge.

So I called the company five times. I got voicemail the first four but someone answered on the fifth try. A lady there says they have no record of "Evanier" on their computer and she's passing me on to their Billing Department which won't be in tomorrow and will call me Monday. By then, the charge will be posted and I can call the credit card company again to start the inquiry from their side.

I can think of a dozen different ways to make this process more efficient and reduce fraud but I figure if I could think of 'em, they could think of 'em and there are probably many good reasons why they do it the way they do it.

Okay, back to that article…

Here is me on Alicyn's Wonderland…

How to Order More Free Home COVID Tests From the Government.

• Madison Cawthorn urged parents to raise their male children to be "monsters." I had a daydream just now of Herman and Lily Munster deciding that the best thing they could do was to not raise their male child to be Madison Cawthorn.

The largest face in the above montage belongs to Alicyn Packard, one of the busiest voice actresses working these days.  She's on so many shows that I don't know how she finds the time to produce and host her own…but she does.  It's called Alicyn's Wonderland and on it, she interviews important people in the worlds of animation and videogaming. This week though, she couldn't find anyone important so her guest is me.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple, Spotify and just about everywhere else good podcasts — and even ones with me on them — are available.

Or you can watch the video version of this podcast which debuts on YouTube this evening at 6 PM West Coast Time. I think some sort of "watch party" will be happening online then but it'll be there any time after when you want to tune in.  She's a great host and you'll probably want to check out other episodes that don't have me in them.

Several folks who are fans of Langer's Delicatessen here in Los Angeles are horrified beyond belief that I prefer Langer's corned beef to Langer's pastrami. One wrote, "I can understand that someone might prefer the corned beef at some delis to the pastrami since some pastrami isn't wonderful. I cannot conceive of anyone preferring Langer's corned beef to Langer's pastrami."

To this person, I say, "Okay, you're right. I'm the only person who ever felt that way. Langer's has been offering corned beef and freshly cooking several of them every day since they opened in 1947 — five years before I was born! — just in case decades later, I dropped by — as I do every few years — and ordered a sandwich. I am the only person who'd rather have it than their pastrami."

By the way: My assistant Jane and I had lunch delivered from Langer's yesterday. I'd forgotten how much I don't care for their potato salad but they do have the best potato latkes I've ever had from a deli. I am, of course, using the universal standard for latkes: The best ones that were not made by your mother are the ones that most resemble the ones made by your mother. I suspect that when my mother passed, her soul found its way to Langer's and is now there making the latkes.

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The other day here, I embedded a video of Rod Serling talking with some students and said I didn't know where this conversation had taken place or when. A few of you wrote in to theorize that because of Serling's remarks about someone maybe doing a musical on the life of Hitler, the conversation must have taken place prior to the release of Mel Brooks' The Producers, which was in 1967.

Well, Jeff Hetzel (an alumni of Ithaca College) tells me it was filmed at Ithaca College in 1972 when Serling took part in a seminar there. He had a long relationship with the school, occasionally taught there and that is where his archives are located. So, as with many good guesses that turn out to be wrong, pre-1967 was probably wrong.

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Lastly for now: I'm working today on some articles that will appear in the souvenir book for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Barring an unexpected surge in communicable diseases, I plan to be there and to host a mess of panels and present The Bill Finger Award and whatever else it is I do at that convention. My partner Sergio Aragonés does not expect to be there but I'm still planning to host a rousing game of Quick Draw!

My occasional employers since 1978, Sid and Marty Krofft will be surrounded this Saturday at the Orinda Theater in Orinda, California.  That's Sid on the left and Marty on the right, and they'll be surrounded by fans of the many TV shows they produced including H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Donnie & Marie, The Bugaloos, Pink Lady, The Brady Bunch Variety Show, The Krofft Supershow, Pryor's Place, Land of the Lost and so many more.

The event there is called Krofft Kon and it will also feature actors who appeared on some of those shows including Butch Patrick (from Lidsville), Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman (from Land of the Lost), Johnny Whitaker (from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) and Sharon Baird (from all of those plus others). I will not be there except in spirit. If you're anywhere near Orinda and want to go, here's a link that'll sell you a ticket.

Readers of this site know that I am not shy about telling the awful truth about some of the folks I've worked with. Well, Sid and Marty were always very good to me and I was proud to be a part, albeit small, of The World of Sid and Marty Krofft. They deserve this celebration and many more.

At first glance, I thought this e-mail was from Rob Petrie but it turns out it's from Rob Peters…

Your recent discussion about the quote "I hate writing, but I love having written" reminds me of something my old high school art teacher said many years ago. I have no idea if this was original to her or not, but she said that she was able to group her students into two groups: "Process Artists" and "Product Artists."

"Process Artists" were those that created art for the pleasure of the process of creating regardless of the end result. "Product Artists" labored over every line with a focus on the end product rather than the journey to get there. I assume that Dorothy Parker, Frank Norris, or whomever said that quote was in the "Product" camp. And based on what you've said, I assume you're squarely in the "Process" camp.

Aah, I don't think I buy those two categories at all.  I think the reasons any given writer writes or artist draws or composer composes are many and varied and I don't think most of us really understand them for ourselves, let alone to itemize what motivates others.  I'm sure a big reason for most people would be summarized as "Well, I have to do something to make a living and I think this would be a lot more enjoyable than any of the alternatives."

And in my case, I never had a lot of alternatives because I never thought I was any good at other things.  Or as I often put it when asked why I became a writer, "I just thought I was a lot less competent at everything else."

I also think most creative people become creative people because they just feel like becoming creative people.

The distinctions made by your old high school art teacher don't strike me as mutually exclusive.  You can get pleasure in creating via a process that includes a focus on the end product.  It's like going on some vacations: You enjoy getting there and you enjoy being there.  And you may not even think of them as separate activities.

Or to paraphrase the quote we've been discussing here: I enjoy writing and I enjoy having written.  And then I enjoy writing the next thing and when it's done, I'll enjoy that I finished it and start on something else.