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19 The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

CONTENTS Issue #10 September 2020 Columns and Special Features

Retro Heroes 50 Years of Shaft

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Running for Laughs: Fake Presidential Candidates

Retro Interview Family Affair’s Kathy Garver

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon The Secret Origin of Spider-Man

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Cartoon Preview Specials, Part Two

46 11

Retro Interview The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s Geri Reischl

Oddball World of Scott Shaw! Ed “Big Daddy” Roth

Ernest Farino’s Retro Fantasmagoria The Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone

Departments

Retrotorial

RetroFad The Twist

Too Much TV Quiz

Retro Toys Godzilla Merchandise in the U.S.A.

Retro Travel Stuckey’s

3 RetroFan™ #10, Sept. 2020. Published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $67 Economy US, $101 International, $27 Digital.

ReJECTED RetroFan fantasy cover by Scott Saavedra Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Shaft © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Shaft artwork by Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Ivan Nunes. Shaft art © Dynamite. Family Affair © Don Fedderson Productions. Godzilla © Toho Co., Ltd. Brady Bunch © Paramount Television. Howard the Duck © Marvel. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2020 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224

by Michael Eury

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Shaun Clancy Robert V. Conte Michael Eury Ernest Farino Tim Hollis Andy Mangels Will Murray Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw! David F. Walker DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Nick Barrucci Gary Browning Dynamite Entertainment John S. Eury Mark Evanier Brian Heiler Heritage Auctions Sean Lickenback Alan Light Anthony Molchan Alexis Persson Rose Rummel-Eury Toho Company, Ltd. VERY SPECIAL THANKS Kathy Garver Geri Reischl Chris Clark Tidyman

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RetroFan

As this issue went into production in early February 2020, Americans were reeling from the Senate presidential impeachment trial, the partisan rancor after the State of the Union address, and the confusion clouding the voting tabulations at the Iowa Democratic caucus. Yikes! It doesn’t matter which political party you support, or if you’re non-partisan and trying to peacefully coexist in the middle—it’s a political madhouse out there! The Monster Times, the tabloid fanzine that thrilled fandom during its 1972–1976 history, might have had the right idea when endorsing Godzilla for President in 1974, in the wake of Watergate, another highly charged, politically polarizing event. Of course, with all due respect to that mag’s editorial staff, Godzilla, being born in Japan, was ineligible to run for the U.S.A.’s highest office. Still, no one can raze a battlefield like the King of the Monsters, so we can imagine what a blast a Ford/Carter/Godzilla 1976 presidential debate might have been. By the time you read this in the summer of 2020, the U.S. presidential campaign will be well underway—and so this issue our own Scott Saavedra revisits the days when both stand-up comics and characters from the comics alike took a stab at getting votes (as well as laughs). Fake presidential candidates have been around for a long time to spice up an otherwise sober process, and new ones tend to surface every four years, with J. R. Ewing, Bill the Cat, Cthulhu, and Stephen Colbert among the many additional “candidates” who have since vied to become POTUS in campaigns that never took themselves too seriously. (And if you’re still sore that King of the Monsters—featured in a special Godzilla merchandise article this issue—didn’t make it to the White House back in the Seventies, the good news is, eligibility aside, he’s running again in 2020.) John Shaft never ran for president, but he changed America in a major way. First appearing in the 1970 novel Shaft by author and The French Connection screenwriter Ernest Tidyman, John Shaft was the trailblazing black detective that inspired a generation of African Americans and proved a box-office and multicultural success. This issue, we welcome guest writer David F. Walker—author of Shaft novels and comic books—who has penned a scintillating Shaft history commemorating the character’s multimedia journey that now spans 50 years. Special thanks go Chris Clark Tidyman, widow of Shaft creator Ernest Tidyman, for kindly and enthusiastically approving RetroFan’s coverage of her husband’s famous creation. There’s lots more waiting for you this issue. Regular NEXT ISSUE: columnists Ernest Farino, Will Murray, and Scott Shaw! are in fine form, Tim Hollis is back with another RetroTour, and we welcome two multitalented celebrities to our pages, as Kathy Garver (beloved as Cissy from Family Affair and the voice of Firestar on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends) and Geri Reischl (known and loved as “Fake Jan” from the infamous Brady Bunch Variety Hour) are interviewed. And columnist Andy Mangels has dug up so much wild and wacky information about those fun but insane Saturday morning preview specials that we’re expanding what was to be this issue’s concluding Part Two of his serial into three parts, meaning more preview madness awaits next issue! There’s so much material in the pages that follow, we’ve had to bump this issue’s Celebrity Crush and RetroFanmail features to next issue. In the meantime, don’t forget to tell your friends about us, and share your comments with me about this issue at euryman@gmail.com.

August 2020

October 2020 No. 11 $9.95

Why can’t I get a date?

SUPERMAN’S FREAKY PAL, JIMMY OLSEN

Interview with

David Selby Dark Shadows’ Quentin Collins

Who is... The Niece of Frankenstein?

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

re entu Adv The TV’s

Su s of

perm

Casper • Rod Serling • Scratch models • Quisp and Quake & more!

FEATURING <right> Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury

RETRO HEROES

Fifty Years of

(ABOVE) Cover artwork to Dynamite Entertainment’s comic book Shaft #1 (Dec. 2014). Art by Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz, with colors by Ivan Nunes. Shaft © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Shaft art © Dynamite.

by David F. Walker It is difficult to fully understand the tremendous impact John Shaft had on the pop-culture landscape 50 years ago, but to say that he helped change that landscape forever wouldn’t exactly be hyperbole. When the black private detective stepped out of the pages of Ernest Tidyman’s 1970 novel Shaft and on to the big screen in the 1971 film of the same name, the world of pop culture was primed and ready for something new. And that something new, embodied by actor Richard Roundtree, strutted through the gritty streets of Times Square to the rhythm of a funky theme song written and performed by Isaac Hayes. Audiences went wild, and everyone from book publishers to film producers to toy manufacturers took notice as the popularity of Shaft and a handful of other films paved the way for the blaxploitation movement that dominated the first half of the Seventies. To be clear, Shaft was not the only character to bring about a seismic change in how black masculinity was portrayed in popular entertainment, nor was director Gordon Parks, Sr.’s film truly a blaxploitation movie in the truest sense of the word. But at the same time, any examination of the emergence of the black action hero in the Seventies, the explosion of films produced and marketed to an urban (black) audience, and the lasting legacy of badassery must shine a spotlight on the black private dick. John Shaft was to black action heroes in the Seventies what James Bond was to spies in the Sixties, the difference being that there had been plenty of spies before Agent 007, but only a very small number of black action heroes came before Shaft. Given the iconic legacy of John Shaft, it is hard to believe that he was the creation of a middle-aged white man trying to change careers. Ernest Tidyman, a crime reporter from Cleveland, was looking to transition from journalism to fiction, but had found little success with his first novel, 1968’s Flower Power. At the same time, Macmillan Press mystery editor Alan Rinzler was looking for something new to shake things up within the genre. Rinzler had already worked with author Claude Brown on his successful memoir Manchild in the Promised Land (1965). Set in the Forties and Fifties, Brown’s gritty comingRetroFan

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RETRO heroes

of-age account of his experiences in Harlem became a critically acclaimed and controversial bestseller. Rinzler hoped to capture the gritty realism of Manchild in the Promised Land, and give it a home in the mystery genre, leading him to reach out to literary agent Ronald Hobbs. One of the few black literary agents in the Sixties, Hobbs suggested Tidyman, who was still better known for his reporting than his fiction. Commissioned by Rinzler in 1968, Tidyman began to develop a mystery for Macmillan that would star a hardboiled black private detective named John Shaft. Tidyman’s creation began to take shape in late 1968, but John Shaft was not the first black private detective in crime fiction. Shaft had, in an artistic sense, several brothers—or perhaps cousins—who came before him, clearing some of the paths yet to be traversed in mainstream books or movies.

readers to Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs. On paper, Tibbs and Shaf t have very little in common other than their skin color and the fact that like Toussaint Moore, their creators were white men. But the importance of In the Heat of the Night and Virgil Tibbs is undisputed, as the character came to life on the big screen in Norman Jewison’s 1967 film adaptation starring Sidney Poitier. Winning the Oscar for Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night would go on to spawn six more novels by Ball, two more films starring Poitier (The Organization and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs), and a television series starring Howard Rollins as Tibbs. Ernest Tidyman went to work writing Shaft in late 1968 with a publishing deal in place. He finished the book in 1969, and began shopping it in Hollywood nearly a year before its publication. Even before Shaft came out, there was interest in turning it into a movie. In the Heat of the Night had been a turning point for the

Room to Swing’s Toussaint Moore and In the Heat of the Night’s Virgil Tibbs were among the trailblazing black detective works paving the way for Shaft. In the Heat of the

Night © United Artists. Courtesy of Heritage.

One of the most important of Shaf t’s older literary brothers was a character introduced more than 60 years ago, and largely forgotten today. Toussaint Moore is considered by historians to be the first black private detective to appear in fiction. Introduced in author Ed Lacy’s 1957 book Room to Swing, Toussaint Moore returned in 1964’s Moment of Untruth. The same year that Lacy’s Room to Swing was published, author Chester Himes published the first of his “Harlem Detective” novels, chronicling the exploits of Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, two tough-as-nails detectives in the New York Police Department. Himes wrote eight novels starring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones between 1957 and 1968, and the characters would be crucial in clearing the way for Shaf t to take America by storm. Along with Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, another literary character was pivotal in laying the groundwork for Shaft. In 1965, author Joe Ball’s In the Heat of the Night introduced 4

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portrayal of black masculinity in film. In one of the film’s most revolutionary moments, Virgil Tibbs slaps a white man who seconds earlier had slapped him. And there was no retaliation. Tibbs was not made to pay for his ultimate sin of striking back against the racist power structure. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of cinema. Even football playerturned-actor Jim Brown had yet to do anything as incendiary in films like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra. While Sidney Poitier had earned his place as one of Hollywood’s top leading men in the Sixties, Jim Brown was establishing himself as the first black action hero in mainstream film. Before Brown’s rise to stardom, the closest thing to a true black action hero in Hollywood had been Woody Strode, but his roles had been in films of a different era—made before Virgil Tibbs slapped a white man. Brown’s movies came after the slap heard around the world, and he soon found himself as the leading man in movies like The Split and 100 Rifles.

RETRO heroes

The success of films like In the Heat of the Night and The market. Having cost less than a million dollars to produce, Split left Hollywood producers looking for something with a Sweetback was on its way to becoming one of the most financially hardboiled black protagonist, just as Tidyman’s soon-to-besuccessful independent films of the time, earning close to $15 published manuscript was making the rounds. Columbia Pictures million at the box office. Producers and studios sensed there was was interested in Shaft, thinking it would be a good vehicle for money to be made on this newly discovered “special market,” and actor Yaphet Kotto, who had a breakout performance in the 1970 the rush was on to find the next hit. As it turns out, the next hit film The Liberation of L. B. Jones. Largely forgotten by film critics or was already in production in New York, with Parks directing and scholars, The Liberation of L. B. Jones is one of the most important Roundtree starring. movies in the development and evolution of what would become Shaft debuted in the United States in June 1971. With a blaxploitation. In the movie, Kotto’s character kills a white police production cost of $500,000, it would go on the earn $14 million. officer, and escapes unpunished for his crime. This is the same The success of Shaft and Sweetback opened the floodgates to a thing done by the lead character in Melvin Van Peebles’s seminal wave of nearly 200 movies that would be released between 1972 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasss Song, only Kotto’s Sonny Boy and 1979. Between the two films, the archetypes and conventions did his killing a year before Van Peebles’ Sweetback did his. of what would become blaxploitation were firmly solidified, but Columbia passed on Shaft, and the book landed at MGM of the two, Shaft was the more mainstream title. Sweetback made Studios. MGM was in bad financial a lot of money, but it was initially situation following a series of box-office X-rated, and not an easy sale to flops, and it was looking for inexpensive white audiences. By comparison, films that could potentially pull in the R-rated Shaft not only found decent profits. The studio had wrapped success with black audiences, production on Cotton Comes to Harlem, it also had crossover appeal. based on the novel by Chester Himes MGM successfully marketed and directed by Ossie Davis. Starring the film by comparing Shaft to Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger James Bond and Bullitt—the Jones and Raymond St. Jacques as iconic hero portrayed by Steve Coffin Ed Johnson, the film was released McQueen—and in doing so, John shortly after MGM bought the rights to Shaft became a name-brand Shaft. Cotton Comes to Harlem was a huge badass. financial hit for MGM, earning it a place Although the film is faithful as one of the better-grossing films of to Tidyman’s original novel— 1970, and laying the groundwork for the Shaft is hired by the Godfather coming blaxploitation movement. of Harlem to find his daughter Macmillan released the first who has been kidnapped by the hardcover edition of Shaft in April of Italian Mafia—the character 1970—one month before Cotton Comes was watered down. In the book, to Harlem opened in theaters. The book John Shaft had a backstory was a critical and commercial success, that involved life as a juvenile and the deal made between Tidyman delinquent and gang member, and MGM was for three films starring a tour of duty in Vietnam, and the Shaft character. a brief stint as a college student MGM offered Shaft to director with aspirations of being a Ossie Davis, who turned it down. lawyer. Having been orphaned at Gordon Parks, Sr., a highly respected an early age and bounced around Macmillan’s first edition of Ernest photographer who made his filmvarious foster homes, Shaft is a troubled boy Tidyman’s novel, Shaft (1970). Cover directing debut with The Learning Tree, grown up to become a troubled man, prone illustration by Mozelle Thompson. was brought on as director. After a long to bursts of violence and distrustful of nearly © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Courtesy of Heritage. search for a leading man that included everyone. Nearly all of the personal history James Earl Jones, Ron O’Neal, Jim of Shaft was lost when he made the leap to Brown, Bernie Casey, Billy Dee Williams, Raymond St. Jacques, film, making the cinematic iteration far less dimensional than the and Nathan George (who is rumored to have been cast in the film literary one from which he’d grown. But for all the elements of and then fired before production started), a little-known modelthe book missing from the film, John Shaft was still a memorable turned-actor named Richard Roundtree was cast as John Shaft. character. Filming of Shaft began on location in New York City in January Film audiences had never seen a character quite like private 1971. In April of that year, Van Peebles’ independently produced detective John Shaft before—tough, two-fisted, and black. It was Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song opened in theaters, becoming his blackness that differentiated Shaft from other hardboiled a huge financial hit. Gritty, raw, and unapologetic in its black private dicks like Mike Hammer and Sam Spade. These other militancy, Sweetback was unlike any movie ever made, and as it heroes existed in mostly white worlds where black people appealed to a predominantly black audience, it quickly became were few and far between, and never in positions of power or clear that it was serving a largely untapped (or unexploited) importance. In the mean streets of worlds populated by the RetroFan

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RETRO heroes

rent, recycled plots and increasingly inferior production values. By the time the Shaft rip-off The Guy from Harlem was released in 1977, it was clear that blaxploitation as it existed was circling the drain. With diminishing box-office returns, Hollywood began to turn its attention to a new type of film—mega-blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars. By the Eighties it appeared that blaxploitation was dead, and characters like John Shaft had become more of a punchline to a larger joke about Seventies pop culture. But this wasn’t exactly the case, for though blaxploitation as it was known had largely gone away—the notable exception being the awful movies that Fred Williamson continued to make in the Eighties—in reality the black action film and its heroes merely evolved into something else. Richard Pryor transitioned from supporting actor in the early Seventies like The Mack to a leading man in the late Seventies and early Eighties in both comedies (The Toy) and dramas (Some Kind of Hero). This was during the time that blaxploitation was taking on a new appearance. The problem, of course, is that many people didn’t

Publicity still from the Shaft CBS TV show’s episode “The Killing,” with Ed Barth as Lt. Al Rossi and Richard Roundtree as John Shaft. (INSETS) On other networks, viewers could tune in to Tenafly and Get Christie Love. © MGM. Shaft © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Tenafly and Get Christie Love © NBC Universal Television.

make the connection between blaxploitation and hip-hop, or blaxploitation and the career of Eddie Murphy. But the reality is that hip-hop pioneers like RUN DMC embodied the swagger and machismo that grew out of Shaft, Sweetback, and all the films that followed. Likewise, Eddie Murphy’s star-making performance in Walter Hill’s 48 Hours is the love child of blaxploitation. And when Murphy strutted across the stage for his Delirious comedy concert, decked out in a red leather suit, he was following in footsteps first laid by Richard Roundtree in Shaft. For much of the Eighties and Nineties, John Shaft languished in obscurity, relegated to a mishmash of nostalgia and comedic 10

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parody. Films like Action Jackson starring Carl Weathers tried to revitalize the black action hero, while the comedy I’m Gonna Git You Sucka satirized the same heroes. Late-night reruns on television and home video kept Shaft from drifting into oblivion, though Tidyman’s books were out of print, and forgotten by most that remembered the films, but had never bothered to read the novels. That appears to be the case of everyone involved in the 2000 reimagining of Shaft, directed by John Singleton. With actor Samuel L. Jackson cast as the police detective nephew of John Shaft (Roundtree in a small supporting role), the new version of the film had nothing in common with Tidyman’s character and books, and only a tenuous connection to the original films. It was, by most measures, a bad film, which only seemed to get a little better with the 2019 release of yet another Shaft. The most recent film version of Shaft, directed by Tim Story, reinvented Singleton’s movie so that Jackson and Roundtree were now son and father, with a third generation of Shaft being played by Jesse T. Usher. The resulting film was a clumsy mix of comedy and action that not only had close to no connection to Tidyman’s original character, it died a horrible death at the box office, making it one of the lowest-performing films of 2019. Although the last two decades have not been particularly kind to the cinematic incarnation of John Shaft, he has fared slightly better in the world of print. In 2014, I had the opportunity to write the first of two Shaft graphic novels for Dynamite Entertainment (Shaft: A Complicated Man and Shaft: Imitation of Life), as well as the prose novel Shaft’s Revenge in 2015—the first new Shaft stories since 1975. Working with the blessing of Tidyman’s estate (he died in 1984), I stuck to the books as the only source for the character, leaning heavily into the backstory created by the original author in the first seven novels. For me, writing John Shaft was an incredible opportunity, and one I had thought about for many years, after having read Tidyman’s original book in the Nineties. There will no doubt be some other version of Shaft in the future—the character is too rich, iconic, and badass to fade away. Maybe there will be another graphic novel, or perhaps yet another film, which hopefully will go back to Tidyman’s books for inspiration. But no matter how the character makes his return, there’s no denying the lasting impact the private detective had on pop culture. As one of the first brand-name black action heroes to conquer multiple mediums, John Shaft helped break down the door that would lead to the action films of everyone from Wesley Snipes to Will Smith to Michael B. Jordan. Although the line from Shaft to Marvel’s Black Panther can be difficult for some people to trace, it is there all the same. DAVID F. WALKER is a journalist, filmmaker, and comic-book writer. He is the co-writer and co-creator of Bitter Root (Image Comics) and Naomi (DC Comics).

SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

Running for Laughs: Pat Paulsen and Other Comic Candidates for President by Scott Saavedra If I could eat hot dogs every night for dinner and eat Cap’n Crunch sugar cereal every morning and sit around reading comic books and MAD magazine and watch reruns all day and watch my favorite shows at night and watch Warner Bros. cartoons on Saturday, then my life would be perfect. As a kid. That was my perfect kid life. I should have mentioned that straightaway. Also, I didn’t want to ever go to school. I wasn’t interested in the Math number-making or the English word writing-stuff (clearly). I was eight years old. It was 1968. Except for everything I didn’t want to be doing (school), I would end up having a pretty good year. That was me. America… well, she was having a tough go of it. Various sources peg 1968 as a uniquely turbulent time. “Turbulent” is very much the required adjective. The year began with North Korea capturing the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo, claiming that the ship was in their territorial waters (the U.S. said, “Uh, no”). The war in Vietnam continued to be unpopular and the “national dialog” about it was more shouting match than conversation. The North Vietnamese “Tet Offensive” surprised U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, a negative turning point for the conflict. More than one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans were past done being treated as secondclass citizens and the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4th only made tensions worse. Oh, and it was an election year. A really rough one. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to run for another term. Candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, nearly five years after his older brother, President John F. (ABOVE) Pat Paulsen campaign poster detail, 1968. Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (INSET) The President I Almost Was

by Jeanne Abel writing as Mrs. Yetta Bronstein. Reports of Yetta’s campaign may have doubted her chances of winning but didn’t dig deeper and uncover the hoax cooked up by her husband Alan.

Kennedy, was killed. That was soon followed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that was a violent, chaotic mess. It was, in short, a welcome time for some laughs by way of amusing candidates for president.

She’s a Man, Baby!

Mrs. Yetta Bronstein was a write-in “The Best Party” candidate for president in both 1964 and 1968. Her slogan was “Vote for Yetta and things will get betta.” She was a no-nonsense but kindly mother of one (a young budding musician of limited skill). At least, that’s what people paying attention were supposed to think. The first anyone had ever heard of Mrs. Bronstein was on a radio program called Table Talk out of the Chicago Playboy Club. She felt it was time for a “housewife” (her words) to run for the highest office in the land. She promised National Bingo and to put a Suggestion Box in front of the White House. Clearly, Mrs. Bronstein wasn’t a serious contender. New York Times reporter Ben A. Franklin (who—and this is a true fun fact—stayed at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel when in Philadelphia) wrote at the time that not only was there no urgent desire for National Bingo but that this “housewife” (his words) might “fail to carry a single district.” Mr. Franklin was both correct and incorrect. It was true that Mrs. Yetta Bronstein had a zero-to-none chance at capturing the White House, but Franklin failed to realize that Yetta wasn’t a housewife. She wasn’t a person at all. She was three people: a hoaxer named Alan Abel and his wife Jeanne performed as Yetta for phone interviews (Mrs. Yetta Bronstein didn’t make any personal appearances), and a photo of Alan Abel’s mother provided the face on campaign posters. RetroFan

August 2020

MONSTER MASH

The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America, 1957-1972 Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream! Once Frankenstein and fiends infiltrated TV in 1957, an avalanche of monster magazines, toys, games, trading cards, and comic books crashed upon an unsuspecting public. This profusely illustrated full-color hardcover covers that creepy, kooky Monster Craze through features on FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine, the #1 hit “Monster Mash,” Aurora’s model kits, TV shows (SHOCK THEATRE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS, and DARK SHADOWS), “MARS ATTACKS” trading cards, EERIE PUBLICATIONS, PLANET OF THE APES, and more! It features interviews with JAMES WARREN (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines), FORREST J ACKERMAN (Famous Monsters of Filmland), JOHN ASTIN (The Addams Family), AL LEWIS (The Munsters), JONATHAN FRID (Dark Shadows), GEORGE BARRIS (monster car customizer), ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH (Rat Fink), BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT (Monster Mash singer/songwriter) and others, with a Foreword by TV horror host ZACHERLEY, the “Cool Ghoul.” Written by MARK VOGER (author of “The Dark Age”). (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-064-9 • Diamond Order Code: MAR151564

GROOVY

When Flower Power Bloomed In Pop Culture

GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated HARDCOVER BOOK, in PSYCHEDELIC COLOR, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like THE MONKEES, LAUGH-IN and THE BRADY BUNCH. By MARK VOGER. (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-080-9 • Digital Edition: $13.99 Diamond Order Code: JUL172227

HOLLY JOLLY

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CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS PAST IN POP CULTURE Break out the candy canes! HOLLY JOLLY is a colorful sleigh ride through the history of Christmas, from

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its religious origins to its emergence as a multimedia phenomenon. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER explores movies (Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life), music (White Christmas, Little St. Nick), TV (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), books (Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol), decor (1950s silver aluminum trees), comics (super-heroes meet Santa), and more! Featuring interviews with CHARLES M. SCHULZ (A Charlie Brown Christmas), ANDY WILLIAMS (TV’s “Mr. Christmas”) and others, the story behind DARLENE LOVE’s perennial hit song Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), and even more holiday memories! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (author of the TwoMorrows’ books MONSTER MASH and GROOVY), the profusely illustrated HOLLY JOLLY takes readers on a time-trip to Christmases past that you will cherish all year long! SHIPS NOVEMBER 2020! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-097-7

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History.

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

From Family Affair, Firestar, and Beyond

An Interview with

Kathy Garver by Shaun Clancy As a kid growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, my exposure to Kathy Garver’s TV work was probably the same as many of you. I would occasionally see a rerun of the popular sitcom Family Affair (1966–1971) on various channels (although I would develop a deeper appreciation of the show later, as an adult). Family Affair was about an engineer, Bill Davis (Brian Keith), a bachelor with an active social life living in New York City who takes on the unexpected role of raising his orphaned nephew (Johnny Whitaker as Jody) and two nieces (Anissa Jones as Jody’s pigtailed twin Buffy, known for carrying her doll Mrs. Beasley, and Garver as teenaged Cissy) who showed up one day at his doorstep. With the help of his valet (Sebastian Cabot), “Uncle Bill” and his newly formed family had five seasons of warm-hearted adventures with lighthearted humor aimed at adults. During its first three seasons, Family Affair was nominated for three Emmys. The TV show featuring Kathy Garver that really grabbed my attention was the animated Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981–1983), which aired Saturday mornings on NBC. This cartoon introduced a female character that I wasn’t familiar with in my Marvel Comics collection

(although she was soon introduced into comics)—Firestar, voiced by Garver, who interacted very well with her co-stars Iceman and Spider-Man, which made for a nice balance. The viewers apparently agreed, as it ran three seasons! “SpiderFriends, go for it!,” Kathy reminisces. Kathy Garver started her long and versatile career as a child actress and has since amassed credits in radio, stage, television, films, cartoons, and voiceovers. Her early movie roles include The Ten Commandments and The Bad Seed, with more recent film appearances in Mom, Murder & Me and The Princess Diaries. Her voice characterizations have appeared in many cartoons, commercials, audio books, and film voiceovers. And for decades she’s been a familiar face on television, from her pre-Family Affair childhood and teenaged roles on Our Miss Brooks, The Millionaire, Dr. Kildare, and The Patty Duke Show to more recent TV roles including a guest spot on the 2002 remake of Family Affair on The WB to starring in the newly developed Travis Hunt production, the series Aunt Cissy, announced in the summer of 2019 as “a new family comedy that is not exactly a sequel to Family Affair… but it has elements of the premise of that classic TV series, plus a few surprises.” She’s also

(TOP) Kathy Garver on the set of Family Affair. (ABOVE) The actress’ memoir, Surviving Cissy: My Family Affair of Life in Hollywood (2015). © Kathy Garver. Family Affair © Don Fedderson Productions.

an accomplished author, with several books to her credit including Surviving Cissy: My Family Affair of Life in Hollywood (2015), X-Child Stars: Where Are They Now RetroFan

August 2020

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

The Secret Origin of

SPIDER-MAN by Will Murray In interview after interview, the late Stan Lee related how his publisher initially refused to print Spider-Man. Lee recalled: “My publisher said, in his ultimate wisdom–– ‘Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. First of all, people hate spiders, so you can’t call a book Spider-Man. Secondly, he can’t be a teenager—teenagers can only be sidekicks. And third, he can’t have personal problems if he’s supposed to be a superhero—don’t you know what a super-hero is?’” Martin Goodman’s objections usually killed any Marvel project. But Lee had an ace––or should I say, an arachnid––up his sleeve:

Does whatever a… well, you know. (LEFT) The Master of Men debuts in The Spider vol. 1 #1 (Oct. 1933), a pulp magazine series that inspired young Stan Lee. Cover painting by Walter M. Baumhofer. (RIGHT) Spidey’s first appearance, in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Sept. 1962). Cover by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The Spider TM & © Argosy Communications, Inc. SpiderMan © Marvel. Courtesy of Heritage.

RetroFan

August 2020

“When I was about 10 years old, I used to read a pulp magazine called The Spider and subtitled ‘Master of Men.’ Perhaps it was the Master of Men that got me, but to my impressionable, preteen way of thinking, The Spider was the most dramatic character I had ever encountered. He ranked right up there with Doc Savage and The Shadow. Even better, he wasn’t as well known as the others, which gave me the warm feeling that his fans belonged to an elite club.” Goodman should have known this. He once published a pulp magazine called Ka-Zar the Great. Lee pressed his case: “For my part I told him his logic was incontrovertible, but hear me out. Then I told him about The Spider. Verily, I bared my soul, mentioning how my childish heart would madly pound in breathless anticipation of each new issue. I zealously explained how I hoped that Spider-Man would be a trend-setter, a funky freaky feature in tune with the times.” The year was 1962 when Spider-Man was conceived. Officially, Lee claimed inspiration struck when he spied a housefly climbing his office wall. Another, more complicated version of Spider-Man’s origins had it that artist Jack Kirby brought in the rough concept. Lee planned to have Steve Ditko ink Kirby on the new property. But when Ditko saw the first pages, he recognized a strong resemblance to a superhero called the Fly, which Kirby originated with partner Joe Simon just three years before. In both cases, a young boy was transformed into an adult super-hero via a magic ring. Either way, you could say that a lowly fly inspired Spider-Man. Lee always said that Kirby’s muscular Spider-Man looked too heroic for a character requiring underdog appeal. That was the public explanation. Fearful of a lawsuit from Archie Comics, who published The Adventures of the Fly, Lee huddled with Steve Ditko. Together they formulated a reimagined version. It was published

in Amazing Fantasy #15, which Goodman promptly cancelled, orphaning a follow-up story. That might have been the end of it except for the fan mail. It poured in, demanding more Spider-Man. Reversing course, Goodman instructed Lee take that orphan story and add another, releasing the Amazing Spider-Man in his own magazine six months after he was cancelled. It’s an amazing story. No pun intended. And it parallels how Lee’s favorite pulp hero came into existence. Lee’s recollection of the wall-crawling fly that inspired SpiderMan is eerily similar to the account told by Popular Publications founder, Harry Steeger, who conceived The Spider in 1933. When Steeger saw that The Shadow Magazine was selling like crazy, he wanted to publish something like it: “The Spider (as a title) came about on a tennis court, of all places, where I was playing tennis and noted a large member of the species walking along the edge of the court.” But Steeger, too, feared a lawsuit. So, he huddled with his lawyer. Said lawyer came up with a scheme: Hire an established writer and have him transform an existing character into a rival to The Shadow. R.T.M. Scott owned a fictional wealthy detective named Aurelius Smith, who was aided by a Hindu assistant, Langa Doone. Overnight, he was renamed Richard Wentworth, and his Hindu assistant was given the name of Ram Singh. Thus, Secret Service Smith became the dreaded Spider. Scott wrote two Spider novels, then gave way to newspaperman Norvell Page to continue the series as Grant Stockbridge, a cockeyed tip of the slouch hat to Maxwell Grant, the nominal author of The Shadow. No suit was filed. Over time, The Spider morphed into more and more of an imitation of The Shadow, donning a black cloak, carrying twin .45 automatics, and laughing maniacally as he blazed away at armies of criminals. But armies of criminals do not sustain a monthly magazine. Very soon, The Spider was taking on super-criminals, terrorists, mad scientists, and other sundry forerunners of comic-book super-villains you could imagine. Here is where we start to see the parallels to what Stan Lee did with Spider-Man three decades later. While it’s true that’s The Spider and Spider-Man were very different characters, their paths intersected in ways that are amazing coincidences––if they are coincidences. First, The Spider is wanted by the law, which saw him as a vigilante criminal. But Wentworth believed himself to be a crusader, on a holy mission to eradicate rampant crime. By contrast, poor Peter Parker simply wanted to get by, and found himself hunted by the law, which also misunderstood him. Nothing particularly new here. This was the same formula Stan Lee had been milking with the Marvel Western comic Kid Colt Outlaw. Unlike the Kid, Peter Parker early on learned the burden of responsibility when he achieved his spider-powers. With The Spider, he was driven by duty to a higher calling:

“Richard Wentworth, secretly The Spider, was the champion of oppressed humanity, its shield and protector against the murderous outbreaks of the underworld; wherever crime struck terribly, that way he hastened, taking up the challenge. The police had offered rewards totaling thousands of dollars for his capture ‘dead or alive.’ And the underworld hated him, and plotted his destruction with a fierceness bred of abject terror.” In those days before the advent of Superman, The Spider had no spider-powers. Yet according to Norvell Page, he possessed a forerunner of Spider-Man’s spider-sense, which tingled in the same eerie way: “But through years of ceaseless struggle and hourly danger— not alone from the Underworld but also from the police who considered his brand-marked executions of criminals only murder––he had developed an uncanny feeling like the sixth

The Amazing Spider-Men: (LEFT) Norvell Page. (RIGHT) Stan “The Man” Lee as Spidey, by John Romita, Sr. Both, courtesy of Will Murray.

sense of bats. Flying in the dark, scarcely seeing, the convoluted facial feelers of a bat received, apparently, an impact of airwaves that forewarned the animal of obstacles in its path. So something—thought waves?—warned The Spider of danger.” Actually, this sounds a lot like Daredevil’s radar sense. Either way, you can see where Stan Lee got the idea. Another example: “Had The Spider been spotted? He couldn’t be sure, but there was a tingling along his spine that seemed to warn of danger.” The Spider liked to go around branding the criminals he slew with his red spider-seal. Stan Lee recalled: “He wore a slouch hat and a finger ring with the image of an arachnid—a ring which, when he punched a foe fearlessly in the face, would leave its mark, an impression of a spider. It was The Spider’s calling card, and it sent goose pimples up and down my ten-year-old spine.” Here, Lee was confusing The Spider with Lee Falk’s Phantom. Actually, Wentworth pressed the base of his cigarette lighter to the foreheads of his kills, which imprinted the scarlet seal the underworld dreaded. RetroFan

August 2020

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

Saturday Morning Preview Specials Part Two: 1978–1983 by Andy Mangels Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning. Since 1989, I have been writing columns for magazines in the U.S. and foreign countries, all examining the intersection of comic books and Hollywood, whether animation or live-action. Andy Mangels Backstage, Andy Mangels’ Reel Marvel, Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes, Andy Mangels Behind the Camera… three decades of reporting on animation and live-action—in addition to writing many books and producing around 40 DVD sets—and I’m still enthusiastic. In my RetroFan column, I will examine shows that thrilled us from yesteryear, exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some milk and cereal, sit crosslegged leaning against the couch, and dig in to Retro Saturday Morning! Normally in this column, I have spotlighted one series or set of series, giving you behind-the-scenes stories, cool factoids, and interviews. Starting in my last column and concluding in the next, I’ll instead be giving you the Retro Saturday Morning treatment of one of the most anticipated shows every fall from 1968 forward… the Saturday Morning Preview Special. In the September 26, 2008 issue of TIME magazine, Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane gave his own thoughts on the phenomena:

Celeb sibs Jimmy and Kristy McNichol, plus some of kids’ favorite stars of 1978, from an ad for that year’s ABC All-Star Saturday Preview Special.

“I was obsessed. Every year, the Friday before the new Saturdaymorning shows would premiere, the networks would do this big preview special, and I was always glued to the TV. As horrible as they were, they were entertaining at the time. There was a lot of showmanship from the networks based around the new lineup.” The problem with nostalgia for the Preview Specials is that they were only ever aired once. They were never rerun, never of fered in syndication, and never released on home video, DVD, or streaming. Because of the cross-platform licensing rights for clips and music, they never can be legally released. Some of them exist in parts and pieces on YouTube—a few of them exist completely there—but by and large, this set of shows is a missing part of television history. Very little has been written about them, and even Wikipedia has many of its crowd-sourced facts wrong. Until now. Now there’s RetroFan to the rescue. Utilizing this author’s amazing resources, here is as much information and material that could be dug up on the astonishing phenomenon of Saturday Morning Preview Specials! Beware, though… proceeding without caution can bring untold emotions, unfettered joy, and quite possibly, madness! RetroFan

August 2020

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

1978 ABC - Kristy and Jimmy McNichol Present The ABC AllStar Saturday Preview Special

Airdate: Friday, September 1, 1978, 8pm, 60 minutes Songs: “Love Will Find a Way” (Donny Osmond), “Here’s Some Love” (Donny Most), “He’s So Fine” (Kristy McNichol), “Girl You Really Got Me Goin’” (Jimmy McNichol), “Boogie Oogie Oogie” and “Last Dance” (Kristy and Jimmy McNichol) Written by Franelle Silver, Steven Adams, George Geiger, Lee Maddux, David Brown, Bruce Kirschbaum, Scott McGibbon Directed by Tim Kiley Produced by the Osmond Brothers, Toby Martin, Dennis Johnson, Bill McPhie Not a lot is known about this special, produced by the Osmonds, except that it was hosted by brothersister duo Kristy McNichol (an Emmy winner from Family) 32

RetroFan

August 2020

and Jimmy McNichol, and it featured appearances and performances by Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Donny Osmond, Joey Travolta, Adam Rich (Eight is Enough), Donny Most (Happy Days), and Haywood Nelson and Danielle Spencer (What’s Happening!!). Also appearing were Benji and the Pink Panther. Promoted on the show in clips were Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Fangface, Challenge of the Super Friends, Scooby’s AllStars, All New Pink Panther Show, and ABC Weekend Specials. Kids who didn’t want to watch that could view a rerun of Wonder Woman over on CBS instead. The special was taped in mid-August in Orem, Utah, at the Osmond Entertainment Center production complex. (ABOVE) Hosts Jimmy and Kristy McNichol. (INSET) Ad for the special. © ABC.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

1978 NBC - The Bay City Rollers Meet the Saturday Superstars

Airdate: Friday, September 8, 1978, 8pm, 60 minutes Songs: “Saturday Night,” “Money Honey” (Bay City Rollers), “Rock and Roll Love Letter” medley (Bay City Rollers with Erik Estrada, Scott Baio, Billy Barty, Sharon Baird), “And I Never Dreamed” (Kaptain Kool and the Kongs) Written by Mark Evanier, Lorne Froman, Rowby Goren Directed by Jack Regas Produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, Bonny Dore, Craig Martin, Albert J. Tenzer A screaming horde of preteens greeted the limousine arrival of Scottish pop-rock band Bay City Rollers (Stuart Wood, Derek Longmuir, Alan Longmuir, Eric Faulkner, Leslie McKeown) as this special started, and the quintet sang a song, then introduced themselves and their special guests for the show: Erik Estrada (CHiPs), Scott Baio (Who’s Watching The Kids?), and Joe Namath (The Waverly Wonders)… though the latter is at first impersonated by little person Billy Barty. Baio tried to teach the Rollers how to talk to American women, starting with a Cher impersonator (Louise DuArt), but struck out. Good thing the Rollers had another song up their glitter sleeves. Nashville (also DuArt) and Turkey (Mickey McMeel) from Kroffts’ Kaptain Kool and the Kongs popped over to join the Rollers to read the reviews on the first half of their show, followed by a Kongs song. Next, Joe Namath was a guest at Witchiepoo’s (Billy Hayes) Horror Hotel—a segment with The Lost Island and the Bay City Rollers as part of the new Krofft Superstar Hour—incurring the wrath of Dracula (Jay Robinson). Other appearances at the hotel included Hoo Doo (Paul Gale), Stupid Bat (Sharon Baird, voiced by Lennie Weinrib), Dr. Blinky (Louise DuArt, voiced by Walker Edmiston), Seymour Spider (Billy Barty, voiced by Walker Edmiston), and other characters from various Krofft series. Clips were shown from The Godzilla Power Hour (with Jana of the Jungle) and The Fantastic Four (with H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot!). A Fifties rock-and-roll medley followed with song and dance from not only the Rollers, but also Estrada, Baio, and a song and dance with Barty and fellow little performer Patty Maloney, who often played Barty’s wife on other shows. As with many Krofft specials, the musical finale was capped with a stage-obscuring balloon drop. One of the oddest things about this special when compared with others of its kind is the amount of sex appeal

the show was selling. Many of the males had bare chests or revealing shirts and jackets, the female dancers wore tiny short shorts, and there was much caressing between characters and talk of getting “together with” female fans after the show… it may have been appropriate for the swinging Seventies, but it seems almost PG-13 rated for today’s television shows. Bernie Harrison, a TV listings writer for the Washington Star, stated of the as-yetunaired special, “See mommy and daddy throw up.” This was the first of five preview specials that would be written or co-written by Mark Evanier, a comic-book scribe for Walt Disney’s overseas publications and Gold Key Comics from 1972 to 1976. Beginning in 1974, Evanier would write for sitcoms and variety shows, story editing on Welcome Back, Kotter, running Hanna-Barbera’s comic-book line, and scripting animated fare such as Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Garfield and Friends/The Garfield Show. Today, he still scripts comics—notably Groo the Wanderer—and both live-action and animated television series, as well as chairing half-a-bajillion panels at Comic-Con International each year. Evanier notes that this job came from his first job with the Kroffts, writing for the new Krofft Superstar Hour. “At the end of the season, the producers called up and said, ‘Can you do one more episode for primetime?’ So we did. We were supposed to make 13 episodes and we made 14. Everybody who worked on the regular show—they extended everybody’s contract.” The cast members seen in the special were all regulars on the series, which had already finished taping its first season when this went into production. Regarding the Bay City Rollers, Evanier says, “The Bay City Rollers were terrific guys who came over to do the Krofft Superstar Hour after our first, second, and third choices couldn’t make a deal. The first choice was ABBA, believe it or not. The Bay City Rollers had technically disbanded by that time, so they reformed it to do this show because as with the Marx Brothers and Chico, they needed the money. They were in the process of going through legal problems. They were great guys, but there were legal problems and I tried to stay away from that. “We got them on the downside. I think Alan had actually left the group. He came back because we needed five. The guys who had been in the group at the end of it could not be in it, so he came back to his old position to play guitar. On the show, they were lip-syncing to a record they had done and occasionally Alan was lip-syncing to a song he had not done.” (ABOVE) Title card featuring the Bay City Rollers. And their hair. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

RetroFan

August 2020

Fake Jan Gets Real An Interview with The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s Geri Reischl

Brady Bunch Variety Hour promotional still, signed by Geri Reischl to RetroFan’s super-groovy editor, Michael Eury. Courtesy of Geri Reischl. © Paramount Television/Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

RetroFan

August 2020

by Michael Eury H. R. Pufnstuf is considered by many to be the trippiest TV show from kid-vid producers Sid and Marty Krofft. You sure about that? Have you seen the Kroffts’ singing and dancing Bradys? Sure, the musical Brady Kids kept on movin’ through their share of sunshine days during The Brady Bunch’s original run, and oldest bro Greg even went out on his own as Johnny Bravo. The Brady parents didn’t shun the spotlight, either, from mom Carol’s miraculous Christmas morning solo to dad Mike’s turn (in green leotards) as Prince Charming in a backyard production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But the Kroffts’ The Brady Bunch Hour—also known as The Brady Bunch Variety Hour—defied categorization during its nine-episode run that began on November 28, 1976. Those hoping to see more sitcom antics from America’s grooviest family instead got a lot of stageshow slapstick… and songs… and dance numbers… and sparkling bellbottoms. Plus the shakin’, quakin’ Krofftettes! The show’s set-up was, the Bradys were chosen to star in their own variety show, prompting architect Mike Brady to spend more time with open-collared ruffled shirts and choreographed vocalizations than his T-square and blueprints. Gone was the split-level Brady home (recently the star of HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation), replaced by new beachfront digs. Also gone was Eve Plumb as Jan Brady, and that’s where our story begins… Enter Geri Reischl, now branded by many—especially herself—as “Fake Jan.” A veteran of numerous television commercials, Geri fit the part: lovely, with hair of gold (like her mother). Like previous TV cast changes (Darrin Stevens and Chris Partridge, anyone?), the new Jan replaced the old, and sure, diehard fans noticed. But they also noticed that… this girl could sing! Those who might have wanted to reject Geri as Fake Jan couldn’t help but be enticed by her fantastic voice. And it’s no wonder—she’s been singing since childhood, and over the years has performed on stage and screen with everyone from Red Skelton to Sammy Davis, Jr., from Marty Robbins to Donny and Marie. As a young actress,

she made guest appearances on TV series including Gunsmoke and The Bold Ones, and was featured in the horror movies The Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and I Dismember Mama (1972). She’s also known for two Hollywood near-misses: Geri was one of the final contenders for what became Linda Blair’s head-spinning role in The Exorcist, and was cast as Blair in the pilot for the Diff’rent Strokes spin-off Garrett’s Girls (soon retitled The Facts of Life) but had to forfeit that role for contractual reasons. But it’s the offbeat sitcom-variety show mash-up The Brady Bunch Hour for which she’s most adored by fans. I had the pleasure meeting Geri Reischl at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Hunt Valley, Maryland, in mid-September 2019, when we recorded the interview that follows, and was instantly enchanted by just how darn friendly she is. Fake Jan is a real delight… one groovy chick! RetroFan: So, Geri, how old were you when started acting? Geri Reischl: I was six years old. RF: …and singing? GR: I started singing around the same time. My mother noticed I loved to sing, because I would stand up in the booths at restaurants and start singing to everybody when I was two years old. So, I started my whole career when I was six. RF: You were in a lot of commercials as a kid… GR: Yes, I did over 40. I did everything imaginable, from clothes to food to toys,

Mattel’s Heather, of its Rock Flowers doll line, was patterned after Geri Reischl. (INSET) Geri capped off her childhood career as the “Mattel toy girl” with this 1971 commercial for Rock Flowers. Each figure in this line of 6.5-inch bendable dolls, competitors to Topper Toys’ Dawn dolls, included a 45rpm single with music by the Rock Flowers, a girl band created by Partridge Family music producer Wes Farrell. © Mattel.

just about everything, but I was mainly known for my commercials for Mattel Toys. I would say I was their Mattel Toy girl. RF: What were some of the products you promoted? GR: For them, I did Barbie, I did Skediddle Kiddles, I did all kinds of their baby dolls. The very last commercial I did for then was called Rock Flowers. I was 12 and they said I was getting a little bit too old for the toys, so they gave me a going-away commercial, and one of the dolls was Heather. They made her in my likeness. If you see her— my hair was extremely long then—you’ll see the long, blonde hair on the doll. And there were three different dolls. One

had kind of auburn hair, one was African American, so they made Heather look like me. The other ones people remember, I was in commercials for Crispy Wheats ’n Raisins cereal. I did those for three or four years. We had different characters from the Wizard of Oz in our commercials. I was Dorothy for all of those. We had the Good Witch and the Bad Witch, we had the Munchkins, and we had the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. We had everybody there. RF: Did you work doing commercials with other actors and actresses that people would know outside of their commercials? GR: Um… I can’t really remember, but I do know we would always be up for the same commercials. Pamelyn Ferdin, Kathy Richards, who is now Kathy Hilton. I did go out with a lot of them. I don’t remember doing a lot of them with anyone who went on to do things other than commercials. RF: Let’s talk about Jan Brady. Given the era of RetroFan magazine, many of our readers are Brady-o-philes. As we discussed in a preliminary talk, you wear the moniker “Fake Jan” as a badge of honor, which you should. GR: Yes.

Geri Reischl as “Fake Jan.” Courtesy of Geri Reischl. © Paramount Television/Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

RF: Tell me how you got that role on the Brady Bunch variety show, and why wasn’t Eve Plumb returning as Jan? RetroFan

August 2020

RETRO INTERVIEW: GERI REISCHL

Leah Ayres

Rob DiCaterino.

e k a F dys Bra

Each of TV’s original Brady girls took a sabbatical from a spin-off and was substituted by these lovely ladies with hair of gold:

Geri Reischl

@Silver Age Television.

(Fake Marcia, The Bradys)

Rob DiCaterino.

(Fake Jan, The Brady Bunch Hour)

Jennifer Runyon (Fake Cindy, A Very Brady Christmas)

And let’s not forget Fake Sam the Butcher in A Very Brady Christmas, with Lewis Arquette subbing for Allan Melvin!

RetroFan

August 2020

my own fun and make it kind of quirky, because the show was kind of quirky. RF: You came up with it? GR: Somebody else had said it years ago. So, I said, “I’m going to go by Fake Jan,” and made the little buttons [with that slogan, as shown on our cover]. Then Susan Olsen made a holiday called “Fake Jan Day,” and it’s on January 2, because I’m the second Jan. RF: I’ll celebrate it! GR: People all over the world celebrate it and send me pictures. I was at Susan’s [Fake Jan Day] party… You have to celebrate with a cheeseball—the kind with the nuts on top. Susan had one at her party and I wanted it, but nobody had cut into it yet. I ate about half of it. I thought, “Oh, this is my favorite new food. Love the cheeseball.” Susan remembered it, so my Fake Jan’s favorite food is the cheeseball. She goes, “It’s cheesy.” The Fake Jan is cheesy, the variety show is cheesy. I just want to have fun with it and fun being Fake Jan! My Fake Jan super-groovy stickers! Everything is groovy, baby! Groovy. My kids say, “Mom, you going to use that word?” I say, “I don’t care if I’m 90—I’m still going to use my favorite word.” RetroFan editor MICHAEL EURY (here with Geri Reischl on the day this interview was recorded) so loves The Brady Bunch, he once had a Brady man-perm! Michael also edits the Eisner Award-winning BACK ISSUE magazine for TwoMorrows Publishing. Special thanks to Rose Rummel-Eury for transcribing this interview.

THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Kustom Kulture King, Fink-Father, and Automotive Oddity

by Scott Shaw! Even if you’re a “nice kid” who keeps out of trouble and gets good grades, by the time you reach the age of nine or ten, you start to rebel against your parents in subtle ways… and eventually, in obvious ways, too. I was that “nice kid,” although one more interested in reading, drawing, and planning to grow up to be a paleontologist or a cartoonist rather than a cowboy or a policeman. The bullies called me a “weirdo,” an insult I chose to embrace. Then, late in 1957, everyone was suddenly interested in weirdos… in the form of Universal Studios’ classic monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Invisible Man, Mummy, Wolf Man, and other ghoulish guys ’n’ gals. The Universal Monsters were collected in a late-night anthology slot usually known as Shock Theater in the schedules of dozens of TV stations. In its wake, outrageous monster-themed magazines, comic books, trading cards, decals, and other grisly-but-goofy goodies were sucking up schoolboys’ loose change. And those selfsame monsters also offered our first pre-teenage attempt to defy our folks. The monster craze persisted and thrived, like a lizard growing as big as a skyscraper after being exposed to radioactive waste. It was around the time Aurora Plastics launched its first three Universal monster model kits— Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolf Man— and Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “The Monster Mash” Top 40 radio hit for the first of many times (it really was a graveyard smash!) that my junior high school buddies and I started to attend car shows at downtown San Diego’s Community

Concourse, where we first encountered the man who would push the monster theme into weird new areas and with a new wild and wacky vibe, one that would irritate our parents to no end, especially our fathers. Why? Because although that man’s name was Ed Roth (1932–2001), to his fans he was, without a doubt, our “Big Daddy”! “The kids idolize me because I look like someone their parents wouldn’t like,” Ed once said. “…The first monsters I designed had a lot of shock value for kids who wanted to freak out their parents.”

A Weirdo is Born

Ed Roth was born in Beverly Hills, California, on March 4, 1942. His own big daddy, Henry, a strict cabinetmaker who moonlighted as the chauffeur of silent film star Mary Pickford, and his mother, Marie, were immigrants from Germany. Ed grew up in Bell, California, with his younger brother, Gordon, in a German-speaking household. Although he had to learn English in elementary school, Ed was a good student at Bell High School who (unsurprisingly) enjoyed his auto shop and art classes, and like most budding cartoonists, spent most of his free time drawing monsters, hot rods, and airplanes, which his mother encouraged. Henry taught both sons how to use the tools in his workshop; that’s where Ed learned how to make wooden molds to create fiberglass components for his custom show cars. At 14, Ed bought a 1933 Ford Coupe in 1946, his first car. After graduating high school in 1949, he attended East Los Angeles College with a major in engineering to further his understanding of automotive design. But Cover to 1964’s Big Daddy Roth Magazine #1. Cover art attributed to Pete Millar. TM © Ed

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August 2020

The oddball world of scott shaw!

Then came the final blow. His wife, Sally, filed for divorce, moved to Cudahy, California, and took Ed’s sons with her. (Ed would marry three more times.)

Big Daddy is Somptin Else!

In recent years, there have been a number of licensed (and bootleg) toys, garage kits, and collectibles featuring Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Rat Fink and other monstrous characters. There was Spin-outs even a set of skateboarding Rat Finks Desperate for a stable income, in 1970 in a rainbow of colors for collectors in Roth took the first “normal” job of his Japan. life. For the next five years, Ed worked Roth was active in counterculture for Jim Brucker’s Cars of the Stars auto art and hot-rodding his entire adult museum in Buena Park, California, life. At the time of his death in 2001, spending much of his time driving a he was working on a hot-rod project large car carrier cross-country, picking involving a compact car planned as a up and delivering vintage autos for the departure from the dominant tuner collection. Ed’s boss, Jim Brucker, said performance modification style. Roth was loyal and a very hard worker, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth died of a heart even though he was not making much attack in his Manti, Utah, workshop Album cover for the Birthday Party’s 1982 at age 69 on April 4, 2001. Revell money. Roth’s Druid Princess and album Junkyard, penciled by Ed Roth and finished by Dave Christensen. Rat Fink TM & © Ed continues to reissue Roth’s finks and California Cruiser were two of the many Roth, Inc. Junkyard © 1982 Missing Link Records. custom car kits. unusual vehicles on display there. Tales of the Rat Fink, a documentary Big Daddy’s next job was working about “the life and times of famed hot as a designer and artist for Orange County’s “other” theme park, Knott’s Berry Farm. He worked there rod and custom car designer Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth” by Ron Mann, for about five years, until 1980. Ed’s hand-painted work on Knott’s starring John Goodman as the voice of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, was theatrically released in 2006. Berry Wagon was featured on the cover of the January 1979 issue of Hot Rodding magazine. There is no question that the legacy of Big Daddy permeates In December 1977, Robert and Suzanne Williams, with Skip Barrett, organized the first Rat Fink Reunion, an annual event to modern culture. People may not know the names “Ed Roth” or celebrate the legacy of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. There are small fink“Rat Fink,” but they certainly think “hot rod” the instant that they fan conventions with unique fun such as contests in pinstriping see any of his images… or for that matter, those of his imitators. toilets, beer kegs, and other unlikely objects. Rat Fink Reunions Roth once said, “I have always enjoyed working with my are still held to this day at the site of Roth’s final residence in hands. I have also had a great respect for the talent that I have Manti, Utah, and at the Moon Equipment Company (the home of been given and have tried to exercise it with at the greatest Mooneyes auto parts) in Santa Fe Springs, California. discernment possible. The finished machine has never turned me Ed penciled the cover art for Junkyard, a record album by the on as much as the process of getting it together. I love grinders, Australian post-punk band the Birthday Party, released in 1982 by lathes, drill presses, and the unlimited things that are possible to Missing Link Records. The art was finished by Dave Christensen. do with them. The limit is our minds.” In January 1986, Roth contributed a Santa Rat Fink cover to Fink—er, think that over, parents of America! The Rocket magazine. The image was taken from a T-shirt Roth For 48 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW! has sent to the publishers, who combined drawings on the front and written and drawn underground comix, back of the shirt to create a Christmas-themed cover. mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic In 1986, Ed Roth pitched the concept of an animated Rat Fink novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and video cartoon TV series to Marvel Productions’ Stan Lee and Margaret games. He has worked on such characters as Loesch. Ed didn’t seem to appreciate or understand Hollywood’s Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew process of creative and financial development. There were no (which he co-created with Roy Thomas), Sonic further meetings. From 1987 to 1992, ten comic books starring Ed’s Rat Fink were the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, published. and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four In 1993, a major exhibition was held at the Julie Rico Gallery Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is in Santa Monica shortly after the Laguna Museum show Kustom Kulture. It was at this time that the lowbrow art movement began also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the to take on steam. Featured in the exhibition titled “Rat Fink Meets craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also Fred Flypogger Meets Cootchy Cooty” were Roth, Williams, and one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Mouse! and their creations. The L.A. Times placed Roth’s Rat Fink Comic-Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan on the cover of the Culture section December 20, 1993, with an event. He can be reached at shawcartoons.com. article about the exhibition. 60

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August 2020

ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA

A Fistful of Pasta The Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone

by Ernest Farino

RetroFan

August 2020

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Intermission. What—already? Not in-between features; this was back in 1968 when longer movies stopped in the middle for a break. And on one Saturday afternoon in 1968 at the Irving Theater in Irving, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), my friends Roger and Bill and I staggered out into the lobby after the first half of the movie. And we were speechless (and to those who know me, that’s really something). I wandered over to the water fountain and had a drink. That’s all I can remember. The movie was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And what we didn’t know—yet—was that, as stunned as we were by what we had just seen in the first half, the best was yet to come… Being primarily focused on monster movies and Ray Harryhausen and Toho’s Godzilla movies, we hadn’t paid much attention to “oaters” (as Variety called them) and had heard only vague rumors about these “Italian Westerns.” One of them, something with the word “Dollars” in the title, involved an old guy who was a coffin-maker, and… well, the information kind of dried up after that. Of course, the first two films in what later became known as “The Dollars Trilogy” were A Fistful of 62

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Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. And the man who made them was someone named Sergio Leone (pronounced Lee-O-nay, incidentally, not Lee-own). I soon learned more about Leone and his films. Prior to the Westerns, he had worked as an assistant director of some 50odd films, including William Wyler’s 1959 epic Ben-Hur, for which Leone was one of the assistant directors on the famous chariot race sequence. His first feature as a director was The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seemingly endless stream of “sword and sandal” epics of the early Sixties. That film demonstrated little of what would become Leone’s distinctive visual style, but was clearly a great opportunity (even though the film itself is rather dull). And then Leone convinced producer Alberto Grimaldi to back a Western, and in making A Fistful of Dollars, Leone reinvented an entire genre. He cast a tall, good-looking novice actor named Clint Eastwood after having seen him on the American TV series Rawhide. Leone later remarked that it was more about Eastwood’s presence than anything—he “moved like a cat”—which fit right into Leone’s concept of the laconic loner, a cowboy anti-hero who

(TOP) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly graphic. Images of (LEFT TO RIGHT) Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach taken from the main title of the movie itself. (LEFT) The U.S. three-sheet poster for A Fistful of Dollars. Since United Artists bought the first two films together, they knew what was coming, so they came up with the slogan “It’s the first motion picture of its kind. It won’t be the last!” (ABOVE) Sergio Leone directing Clint Eastwood and Margarita Lozano (as Consuelo Baxter) in a scene from A Fistful of Dollars (1964). © United Artists.

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

U.S. three-sheet poster of For a Few Dollars More. Continuing its advertising strategy, United Artists warns us that “The Man With No Name is Back!” In the original films, the Clint Eastwood character actually had several names: in A Fistful of Dollars it was “Joe,” in For a Few Dollars More, “Manco,” and in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, “Blondie.” Since restored for DVD, mention of the name “Manco” to Lee Van Cleef by a sheriff at the very end of a scene was physically trimmed from the original release prints in order to maintain the illusion of “The Man With No Name.” © United Artists. (RIGHT) In the studio during the filming of For a Few Dollars More, (LEFT TO RIGHT): Unidentified staffer, Sergio Leone, Lee Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood, unidentified woman.

spoke more clearly with his six-guns than with words. To that end, Eastwood himself trimmed a lot of dialog from the original, wordy script. Side note: It was United Artists’ publicity department that came up with the concept of “The Man With No Name.” They had picked up the first two films, based on the success of Fistful in Europe, and tooled their ad campaign to tease with “It’s the First Motion Picture of Its Kind… It Won’t Be the Last” and released the first two films eight or nine months apart. In the original versions, now restored on DVD, Eastwood’s character is named “Joe” in Fistful and “Manco” in For a Few Dollars More, but original prints often had visible splices and jumps where the names had been cut out in order to feed the “No Name” concept. Superb Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté played the villain in the first two films (though different characters). Volonté was reportedly not terribly enthused about the films, regarding them as common exploitation entertainment. He was more interested

Lee Van Cleef draws a bead on his bounty, “Guy Callaway,” in the opening sequence of For a Few Dollars More (1965). (RIGHT) Leone fine-tunes Van Cleef’s shooting stance for a scene in For a Few Dollars More. © United Artists.

in serious films and was very focused on projects with a political message. For a Few Dollars More also saw the first appearance of Lee Van Cleef as a “good guy” and rival bounty hunter to Eastwood’s “Manco.” Van Cleef had already appeared in many American films and TV episodes, often in Westerns. As one of Frank Miller’s (Ian MacDonald) gang, he has the distinction of being first on screen in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952). Van Cleef was also sharpshooter Corporal Stone who fired the atomic isotope that killed Ray Harryhausen’s “Rhedosaurus” in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in 1953 (when asked if he could handle the highpowered rifle, Van Cleef casually replies, “Pick my teeth with it…”). All excellent on-the-job training for one of the great stars of Italian Westerns in years to come (by the mid-Sixties Van Cleef’s career was on the wane and he had pretty much retired and was immersed in his hobby of oil painting when the call came from Leone and his career took off like never before). And then came The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an epic Civil War-era adventure. This time Eastwood and Van Cleef (now playing bad guy “Angel Eyes”) are joined by Eli Wallach as the Mexican bandito “Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez” (“Known as the rat,” Eastwood smirks at one point). Wallach embraced the role with gusto, injecting much humor and nuance and creating a character that is most often first remembered by fans of these films. The “roots” of Tuco can be seen in previous Wallach performances such as “Calvera” in John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (1960) RetroFan

August 2020

RETRO TOYS

in the Good Ol’ U.S.A.

by Robert V. Conte In the fantastic genre of “movie monsters,” few iconic characters have reigned supreme at 65-years-young. Sure, Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and King Kong are considerably older, but few horrific characters can surpass the immense success of one of the most merchandised monsters in the world—GODZILLA! The King of the Monsters (KOTM) first appeared on screen in 1954’s Gojira in Japan (released two years later in the United States as an edited, repurposed version starring Raymond Burr). The fire-breathing, radioactive beast—reawakened from mankind’s nuclear testing to wreak havoc upon the world—would outperform other B-movie behemoths from the era. Films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms quaked in comparison to the might of Godzilla’s box-office success worldwide. To date, 35 movies (including three animated features) have been made—the most films in motion-picture history to feature the same character!

There are two known variants of Ideal’s 1963 Godzilla Game. Some have play instructions printed on the inside box, while others include a separate printed sheet inside it. There is ongoing debate among collectors over which version was available first, but both are extremely hard-to-find in complete and good condition. © Toho Co., Ltd.

Godzilla is owned and licensed by Toho Company, Ltd. and, throughout the last six decades, thousands of toys, apparel, and other collectibles have been produced. Kaiju (meaning “Japanese monsters”) collectors are intimately familiar with the vast magnitude of products sold in Japan. To chronicle and discuss them at length would result in a book as mammoth as Godzilla himself! This article specifically focuses on Godzilla’s history in the United States, including the first official items in the early 68

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Sixties through the end of Toho’s arrangement with UPA in the mid-Nineties.

The Golden Age of Godzilla Licensing…

Godzilla did not have domestically licensed consumer products until 1963—nine years after the character’s debut. Arguably, there are two reasons: First, the original film was not intended to become a platform to sell tchotchkes to children; it was meant to be an allegory on the ravages of nuclear weapons (Japan suffered greatly from the real-life bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II). Second, the first sequel, 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again, was initially released in America as Gigantis, the Fire Monster in 1959. Its U.S. producers and distributor, Warner Bros., either was not permitted to—or elected not to—use the name “Godzilla,” instead opting for its own moniker. For over 25 years, Gigantis would be the least-known KOTM film until it appeared on cable television and released on home video in the Eighties. Ironically, the first-ever U.S. item featuring Godzilla— though not licensed from Toho—was a 1961 Horror Monsters trading card featuring a publicity still showing “Gigantis” and his first nemesis, “the Angurus Monster.” Godzilla’s first U.S. licensing agent was the Weston Merchandising Company, founded in 1960 by G.I. Joe co-creator Stanley Weston (1933–2017). Weston was a pioneer who saw the potential of teaming intellectual properties (IPs) owned by multiple companies, as he famously did in 1966 with Captain Action [see RetroFan #7], the super-hero action figure that could also change into myriad licensed characters (if only the Captain had a Godzilla outfit…!). He was encouraged to represent Godzilla after learning one of his key clients, Universal Pictures, would distribute 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla in the United States. Reportedly, Weston seized this opportunity under the condition he would also sell King Kong licenses on behalf of RKO Pictures. Godzilla’s first licensed product was a board game. Ideal Toys, one of the most iconic makers of family entertainment including Betsy Wetsy dolls, Mouse Trap, and Rubik’s Cube, produced the Godzilla Game in 1963. A companion to the company’s

Although Weston Merchandise Corp. had been instrumental in licensing Godzilla products domestically in the Sixties, it would eventually discontinue this role in favor of more lucrative opportunities. Reportedly, the last Weston-era official Godzilla item is a scarce bicycle license plate by Marx, circa 1967.

Calm Before the Storm…

The box art for the first issue of Aurora’s 1964 Godzilla model kit was illustrated by the legendary James Bama; its original plastic pieces were molded in the unusual color of fuchsia. Aurora re-released the model kit in 1972 with “glow-inthe-dark” parts (RIGHT); the body was now molded in green for model builders who did not wish to paint theirs. © Toho Co., Ltd.

simultaneously released King Kong Game (featuring the character’s original 1933 incarnation), this virtual tie-in utilized artwork based upon King Kong vs. Godzilla on the box and the playing board. The theatrical run of KOTM’s third movie—the first filmed in full-color and depicting both adversaries in a campy context—appealed to audiences of all ages and helped spark the next big product category: Monsters! With Toho and RKO’s separate blessings, Weston was able to co-package Godzilla and Kong—with the entire roster of Universal Monsters—for product licensing including Count Dracula, the Creature, and the Bride of Frankenstein. Aurora Plastics Company, widely known for its vast line of injectionmolded model kits, launched its “Monsters from the Movies” series introducing the first-ever Godzilla Model Kit in 1964. Loosely based on the design from King Kong vs. Godzilla, its sales soared when Godzilla vs. the Thing (a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Mothra) hit movie theaters that same year. In 1969, Aurora reintroduced the kit with glowin-the-dark enhancements, and then rereleased it again in 1972. In 1966, a Godzilla Go-Cart model kit debuted as part of another Monster series. Unassembled, inside-the-box Go-Carts with original instructions are considered among the rarest American Godzilla collectibles today!

United Productions of America (better known as UPA) started as a movie-and-television animation studio known for its Academy Award®-winning cartoons featuring the Nearsighted Mister Magoo and Dr. Seuss’ Gerald McBoing Boing. Film producer Henry “Hank” G. Saperstein (1918–1998), who had previous experience licensing IPs (including Elvis Presley and the Lone Ranger), became the driving force that would eventually turn his company into a licensing juggernaut. His collaborations with Toho resulted in several of its Kaiju films becoming international successes including Monster Zero (1965/1970), Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965/1966), and War of the Gargantuas (1966/1970). [Editor’s note: Throughout this article, theatrical release dates are noted first by their debut date in Japan, followed by their U.S. openings where applicable.] To help increase worldwide appeal, these titles were released in the United States (sometimes years after their initial Japanese openings), with additional footage featuring American actors. As UPA’s relationship with Toho blossomed, Saperstein’s role excelled beyond co-producing and dubbing films for the studio. Soon he became Godzilla’s exclusive licensing agent in the Western hemisphere and, as the Seventies began, campaigned for an unprecedented explosion of KOTM success! After the theatrical release of Monster Zero (a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Monster Zero) in 1970, Saperstein moved away from coproducing films for Toho. He focused upon the growing market of syndicated television. Before the days of home video and streaming services, one could only get a monster-movie fix by being in front of a TV on the designated day and time a program would air. Watching Godzilla films were special events not to be taken lightly! Saperstein increased Godzilla’s exposure in American homes by strategically airing films in multiple time slots on television. From the mid-Seventies through early Eighties, Godzilla led the pack of giant movie monsters over the airwaves, helping build a devout fanbase for Godzilla and company!

All-Out Attack!

Saperstein’s efforts to keep Godzilla in Americans’ public consciousness would also be realized by theatrical releases of films that had been only released in Japan. Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973/1976), Godzilla vs. Cosmic Monster, a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974/1977), and Godzilla on Monster Island, a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972/1977), were edited to be granted A Sixties publicity photo of the late Henry G. Saperstein, owner of UPA animation studios and Godzilla’s North American licensing agent for Toho Co., Ltd. Courtesy of Robert V. Conte.

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August 2020

RETRO TRAVEL W. S. Stuckey’s original building was a simple roadside stand, but by the time of this color postcard, it had been replaced by a much larger complex on U.S. 341, on the outskirts of Eastman, Georgia. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

by Tim Hollis

If you grew up going on long family road trips during the Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies, most likely you remember pulling over at one of the more than 300 Stuckey’s stores that lined the major highways. Now, that is not to imply that those three decades were the beginning and the end, or that Stuckey’s is no longer around—on the contrary, those yummy treats and kitschy souvenirs can still be found. But those were the years when the chain was at its peak, and had its market practically all to itself. Oh, there were imitators, but even most of those had their roots in Stuckey’s own corporate structure. Especially in the days when the nation’s interstate highway system was in its infancy, travelers would have to drive for miles and miles before finding a business where they could “eat and get gas,” as the old gag put it. Stuckey’s was a pioneer of building on the interstates, and until bigger fish such as McDonald’s, Exxon, and Holiday Inn took the bait, often Stuckey’s was the only choice. A legend has circulated for so many years that even the Stuckey family is unsure how much of it is true. It claims that the way Williamson Sylvester Stuckey would pick out the spots for his stores was to set out from a major starting point such as Atlanta 76

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or Nashville. Stuckey would have his chauffeur drive until he felt the need for a restroom. The story goes that wherever that urge occurred, that is where the next Stuckey’s store would open. Whether the locations were chosen by Stuckey’s bladder or more scientific research, it proved to be a successful formula. (Lending credence to the more formal research idea, it is significant that many Stuckey’s that were located on older U.S. highways also happened to be where future interstates were going to form interchanges by crossing those routes. Obviously, someone was studying maps of things that did not yet exist.) From the scant research that was done while the major players were still alive, we can learn that W. S. Stuckey first went into business during the Great Depression, when he began buying and selling pecans in the region around his hometown of Eastman, Georgia. His profit was a grand one cent per pound, but it was a start. In one interview, Stuckey recalled, “We By the early Sixties, ads such as this one were appearing in a variety of national magazines. Stuckey’s was well on its way from being merely a chain of Southern roadside stands to becoming a tourism institution. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

would work so hard and so late loading cars, we’d just go to sleep on top of the bags.” Much information was already hazy when early attempts at documenting Stuckey’s history was being done, but it seems that by either 1935 or 1936, Stuckey was selling his pecans from a roadside stand. Apparently, the only photo of this stand was taken years later, when it was recreated for publicity photos. It was while running this stand that Stuckey had the idea of adding pecan candy to the nuts he was already selling, and he talked his wife Ethel into making goodies—even though she had never done anything similar before. The roadside stand was soon replaced by a more permanent store in Eastman, which grew into a chain of three stores spread across middle and southern Georgia before World War II. After the war, when tourists took to the highways in unprecedented numbers, a large percentage of them were headed for America’s concept of paradise: Florida and its beaches and palm trees. The first decade or more of the Stuckey’s success story is inextricably linked to Florida tourism, as those were the routes where most of the early promotion was found. In fact, just as with his later rumored method of picking locations, Stuckey had a philosophy when placing his stores along the old two-lane U.S. highways. His ideal spot was on the righthand side as the highway led north, or away from Florida. Why? He firmly believed that people were most likely to buy candy or souvenirs at the end of their vacation, rather than carrying such non-essentials around with them as they visited Silver Springs or Parrot Jungle. While most people considered Stuckey’s a Southern chain, and indeed that was where it was based, by the Fifties it had crossed the Mason-Dixon line and had at least one location only two miles south of the battlefield at Gettysburg. That must have been particularly delicious to Georgia-bred W. S. Stuckey, who was once quoted as observing, “Thank God the North won the war. It would have been awful if there hadn’t been any Yankees to sell to.” (Similar sentiments were expressed by a Georgia congressman who went on record saying, “A Yankee tourist is worth a bale of cotton, and they’re twice as easy to pick.”) Throughout most of the Fifties, a Stuckey’s could be readily identified by not only its bright yellow signage with red letters,

This impressive double-page magazine layout from the early Fifties demonstrates not only how rapidly Stuckey’s reputation was growing and spreading, but how many different styles the buildings could take in those pre-standardization days. The chain now numbered 16 stores, primarily located along main tourist routes in Georgia and Florida, but also beginning to creep further afield, into Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

but by its pink buildings adorned with murals advertising its ice-cold Florida orange juice. If you are old enough to remember when most cars did not have air conditioning, you can well imagine what a welcome thought that was. Those on long trips were also glad to find a dependable source for that other great necessity, clean restrooms. Every Stuckey’s store was laid out in a pattern by which the restrooms were located at the farthest back corner, necessitating that visitors wend their way through all the merchandise on the counters to get there. Now, about those restrooms: their cleanliness was only one aspect in which the company takes justifiable pride today. In an era when segregated facilities were the norm, Stuckey’s restrooms were always open to everyone, regardless of where the stores were located. This admittedly might have caused problems in townships where racial segregation was, in fact, the law rather than mere local custom, but most Stuckey’s stores sat

Throughout the Fifties, most Stuckey’s locations were built in the style of this store on U.S. 301 at Statesboro, Georgia. Their target audience of Florida tourists was quite obvious in the tropical-themed murals that adorned the pink exterior walls. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

RetroFan

August 2020

RetroFan #10