November 2023 No. 29 $10.95
BEA
I can turn you into a
L I C E C & Y N
Queen of the West
ob B A
DALE EVANS
t t e p m Cla
MUSCLE-MAKER CHARLES ATLAS
! n o oo o -o o o t r ca Straight from the horse’s mouth
Mr. Ed’s check out these machines, mister!
G N OU Y AN L A
’ THE SIXTIES OTS OB WACKIEST R Miami Vice • Super Powers Team – Galactic Guardians • British TV Annuals & more! 1
82658 00507
8
Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury Charles Atlas © Charles Atlas LTD. Beany & Cecil © Bob Clampett. The Jetsons © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Metal Men © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
New from TwoMorrows!
KIRBY COLLECTOR #88
KIRBY COLLECTOR #89
ALTER EGO #184
ALTER EGO #185
BRICKJOURNAL #82
KIRBY CONSPIRACIES! Darkseid’s Foourth World palace intrigue, the too-many attempted overthrows of Odin, why Stan Lee hated Diablo, Kang contradictions, Simon & Kirby swipes, a never-reprinted S&K story, MARK EVANIER’s WonderCon 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel (with MARV WOLFMAN, PAUL S. LEVINE, and JOHN MORROW), an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!
Known as one of the finest inkers in comics history, the late TOM PALMER was also an accomplished penciler and painter, as you’ll see in an-depth interview with Palmer by ALEX GRAND and JIM THOMPSON. Learn his approach to, and thoughts on, working with NEAL ADAMS, GENE COLAN, JOHN BUSCEMA, and others who helped define the Marvel Universe. Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!
Presenting MARK CARLSON-GHOST’s stupendous study of the 1940s NOVELTY COMICS GROUP—with heroes like Blue Bolt, Target and the Targeteers, White Streak, Spacehawk, etc., produced by such Golden Age super-stars as JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY, CARL BURGOS, BILL EVERETT, BASIL WOLVERTON, et al. Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!
Celebrating Disney’s 100th anniversary in LEGO! Disney Castles with MARTIN HARRIS and DISNEYBRICK, magical builds by JOHN RUDY and editor JOE MENO, instructions to build characters, plus: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!
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All characters TM & © their respective owners.
THE COLLECTORS! Fans’ quest for and purchase of Jack’s original art and comics, MARV WOLFMAN shares his (and LEN WEIN’s) interactions with Jack as fans and pros, unseen Kirby memorabilia, an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER moderating the 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International, plus a deluxe wrap-around Kirby cover with foldout back cover flap, inked by MIKE ROYER!
BACK ISSUE #147
BACK ISSUE #148
BACK ISSUE #149
COMIC BOOK CREATOR #32 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #33
Great Hera, it’s the 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BACK ISSUE, featuring a tribute to the late, great GEORGE PÉREZ! Wonder Woman: The George Pérez Years, Pérez’s 20 Greatest Hits of the Bronze Age, Pérez’s fanzine days, a Pérez remembrance by MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more! With a stunning Wonder Woman cover by Pérez!
DC SUPER-STARS OF SPACE! Adam Strange in the Bronze Age (with RICHARD BRUNING & ANDY KUBERT), From Beyond the Unknown, the Fabulous World of Krypton, Vartox, a Mongul history, the Omega Men, and more! Featuring CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, DAN JURGENS, CURT SWAN, PETER J. TOMASI, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by CARMINE INFANTINO & MURPHY ANDERSON!
’80s INDIE HEROES: The American, Aztec Ace, Dynamo Joe, Evangeline, Journey, Megaton Man, Trekker, Whisper, and Zot! Featuring CHUCK DIXON, PHIL FOGLIO, STEVEN GRANT, RICH LARSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS, DOUG MOENCH, RON RANDALL, DON SIMPSON, MARK VERHEIDEN, CHRIS WARNER & more superstar creators. Cover by NORM BREYFOGLE!
WILLIAM STOUT is interviewed about his illustration and comics work, as well as his association with DINOSAURS publisher BYRON PREISS, the visionary packager/ publisher who is also celebrated in this double-header issue. Included is the only comprehensive interview ever conducted with PREISS, plus a huge biographical essay. Also MIKE DEODATO on his early years and FRANK BORTH on Treasure Chest!
STEVE GERBER biographical essay and collaborator insights, MARY SKRENES on co-creating Omega the Unknown, helping develop Howard the Duck, VAL MAYERIK cover and interview, ROY THOMAS reveals STAN LEE’s unseen EXCELSIOR! COMICS line, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of early hardcover super-hero collections), more with MIKE DEODATO, and the concluding segment on FRANK BORTH!
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26
3
The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With
Issue #29 November 2023
Columns and Special Features
43
Departments
2
3
Retrotorial
19
Too Much TV Quiz TV character maiden names
Oddball World of Scott Shaw! Beany and Cecil
35
Retro Television Dale Evans, Queen of the West
16
49
26
19
Retro Brit British TV Annuals
Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Charles Atlas
53
35
RetroFad The DeLorean
Voger’s Vault of Vintage Varieties The Sixties’ Wackiest Robots
78
RetroFanmail
43
49
Retro Interview Mister Ed’s Alan Young
80
ReJECTED
55
55
Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon Miami Vice
65
65
Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Super Powers Team – Galactic Guardians RetroFan™ issue 29, November 2023 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RetroFan, c/o TwoMorrows, 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: $73 Economy US, $111 International, $29 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Charles Atlas © Charles Atlas LTD. Beany & Cecil © Bob Clampett. The Jetsons © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Metal Men © DC Comics. Dale Evans photograph courtesy of Theresa Kaminski. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2023 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury
BY MICHAEL EURY
PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Shaun Clancy Michael Eury Theresa Kaminski Andy Mangels Ian Millsted Will Murray Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw! Mark Voger DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER Eric Nolen-Weathington SPECIAL THANKS Timothy Campbell Randy Clawson DC Comics Mark Evanier Dale Hale Hanna-Barbera Productions Hake’s Auctions Heritage Auctions Jim Korkis NBCUniversal Waterman Entertainment VERY SPECIAL THANKS Ruth Clampett
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2
RETROFAN
Around 15 years ago, when my mother was still alive, I was visiting her at home. In her bedroom I spied a former babysitter. Mom’s bedroom closet door was open, and my erstwhile “nanny” was sitting on the top shelf. It was the box for my Talking Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent doll from Mattel! How I loved that huggable toy when I was small. I don’t recall what Cecil’s phrases were (there were 11 of them!) when I pulled the string and activated his voice box, but I will never forget gleefully snuggling with his green, snaking form. The box had my name scrawled onto it in pink, from a time when the preschool me used Mom’s fingernail polish as an art supply (I similarly defaced my Jan and Dean Meet Batman LP cover with my painted signature). Cecil’s nostalgic siren’s call beckoned me forth. A grown man may have been inching toward the colorful cardboard package, but in my mind I was the little boy who couldn’t wait for a reunion with his Talking Cecil. Imagine my dashed spirits as I discovered the box’s original contents were nowhere to be found! Mom had repurposed Cecil’s box for storing out-of-season clothes. Where was Cecil? I still don’t know. Maybe one day on a visit to my homestead he’ll turn up again. But I share this story to illustrate the power of our childhood caretakers from the make-believe land of television. For my generation of the early Sixties, we had the best TV babysitters a kid could ask for—the Mousketeers, Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis and her puppets, Romper Room, Davey and Goliath, plus a few of this issue’s spotlighted characters: Bob Clampett’s Beany and Cecil, Queen of the West Dale Evans and her singing cowboy husband Roy Rogers, and television’s talking horse, Mister Ed. If you hailed from a later generation, perhaps your preschool TV mentors were Big Bird, or Mister Rogers, or the Muppets, or Fat Albert, or Barney the purple dinosaur. These friends taught and guided us, offering our parents much-needed back-up support. It’s the evocation of those memories that makes my editing of RetroFan a joy. With each issue, RetroFan chisels away the burdens of adulthood and whisks us to a safer time when a quarter could buy an 80-page comic book, when color television was a new innovation, and when “The Bump” was a dance and not a skin tag you really need to get the doc to examine. Judging from the fact that RetroFan is now in its sixth year of publication, I’m not alone in my passions for yesteryear. Each week I receive at least one query from freelance writers interested in contributing to RetroFan—there have been weeks where I received a proposal a day. Which leads me to the topic of real estate. No, not real estate like Floyd’s Barber Shop, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Stately Wayne Manor, or Manhattan’s East Side (where Weezy and George were movin’ on up to), but RetroFan’s “real estate”—our page count. Most of our pages each issue are written by our five regular columnists (six, if you lump this lump in with ’em). The remaining pages feature work contributed by freelance writers. This columnist-driven format limits the availability of assignments to freelancers, but for the record, ye ed welcomes freelance writers. If you are a writer with an idea for a potential article for this magazine, don’t hesitate to email me about it at euryman@gmail.com. A word of warning, however: please be patient. From our commitments to columnists to our healthy backlog of proposed material, there’s a lot in the queue, and it may take me a few weeks to respond. But if you’re a writer with a subject of interest to our readers, I’ll certainly consider it. And don’t forget, you don’t have to be a professional journalist or pop-culture guru to contribute to RetroFan. There’s our “Celebrity Crushes” column, where you can pen a 600-word-max tribute to the retro star who once turned you on. And there’s “Super Collector” (which premiered in June 2018 with our first issue, before MeTV’s Collector’s Call debuted… just sayin’) department, which encourages readers to write about and share photos of the wild and wonderful memorabilia that clutters their homes but warms their hearts. Want to participate? Email me. But let’s focus on the pages that follow, which revel in everything from wacky robots to physical fitness programs sold to kids. So get ready for another groovy grab-bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with!
November 2023
n!’
THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!
‘A Bob Clampett (Puppet Show and) Cartoo-oooo
The
Seasick Story of
Beany and
Cecil BY SCOTT SHAW! I consider myself to have been a very lucky kid for many reasons, most of which are the subjects of my RetroFan columns. One of them was an animated series I grew up with during the birth of made-for-television cartoons. With The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, and a fleet of others that were mostly funny-animal characters, Hanna-Barbera Productions was the powerhouse of the new “limited animation” industry that rapidly replaced all of the cartoons from the Twenties into the Fifties that kids like me had already memorized. Jay Ward Productions’ Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show were very successful as well. But by the early Sixties, two more studios received significant public attention and licensees for their new series. One was Format Films’ The Alvin Show! Created by singer, songwriter, and ArmenianAmerican actor Ross (Rear Window, Stalag 17) Bagdasarian, Alvin
(ABOVE) Animation legend Bob Clampett’s Cap’n Huffenpuff, propeller-capped Beany, and seasicknessprone Cecil (who’s an excellent crooner, by the way) in a 1962 Beany and Cecil promotional cel. © Bob Clampett Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.
was based on novelty records and singing chipmunk puppets, with an insider’s look at show biz and a nutty, fourth-wall-breaking inventor named Clyde Crashcup. [Editor’s note: Oddball World will spotlight The Alvin Show! in RetroFan #31.] The other newcomer was Snowball Studios’ animated revival of a well-received TV puppet show from the previous decade, owned and created by the truly legendary animation director Bob Clampett. It was Beany and Cecil (B&C), presented by its sponsor, Mattel Toys, under the umbrella title Matty’s Funday Funnies (ABC, 1962). I was ten, the right age to add both The Alvin Show! and Beany and Cecil to my ever-expanding list of cartoon favorites. Their contemporary scheduling is where both shows’ similarities ended. Alvin was set in the music industry and therefore as hip as kids’ cartoons got in 1962. B&C, crawling with puns, was both hip and corny, with parodies and references to current events. Plus, one of the central cast of Beany and Cecil was a “dirty guy” who dressed all in black, a theatrical fink named Dishonest John. His signature catchphrase was simply a sneering, snarky, self-satisfied laugh that slithered down the tongue: “Nyah-ha-ha!” He became the breakout villain most of the kids I knew liked to imitate. I particularly leaned into the addiction once I realized that “Nyah-ha-ha!” was the perfect reply to deflect any of my parents’ observations, questions, RETROFAN
November 2023
3
The oddball world of scott shaw!
disliked Bob’s wild material and process. Others have said that while Friz Freleng’s and Chuck Jones’ animated shorts were becoming more sophisticated, by comparison, Clampett’s humor was too wacky for Selzer. Whatever the reason for his leaving Warner Bros., Bob first sought similar work at other studios. In 1946, Bob briefly worked for Columbia’s cartoon division, Screen Gems, as a scriptwriter and gagman. Then, in 1947, Republic Pictures launched an animation department and hired Bob to make It’s a Grand Old Nag, a cartoon short that starred Charlie Horse. Unfortunately, due to financial issues, Republic’s management cancelled the series and the cartoon department itself. Bob’s response was to insist that the cartoon’s director would listed only as “Kilroy,” referencing the easy-to-draw WWII character, always seen with his nose hanging over the rim of a foxhole or a fence. Approved by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bob also worked on animated pitches to MGM for theatrical cartoon shorts that would separately star ERB’s John Carter of Barsoom and later, Tarzan of the Apes, both intended to match the gravitas of Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons. MGM asked for so many ludicrous creative changes in both concepts that Burroughs and Clampett walked away without any further development. Bob also worked with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen on a pitch for a Charlie McCarthy TV series, but like the majority of Hollywood projects, that never came to fruition, either.
(LEFT) Clampett’s short-lived Charlie Horse cartoon star. © Columbia/Screen Gems. (RIGHT) Sketch of Tarzan for a proposed animated short for MGM. © ERB, Inc. (BELOW) Satirist and voice actor Stan Freberg at work articulating and providing the voice for the Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppet on Time for Beany. © Bob Clampett Productions.
ENTER CECIL AND HIS PALS
So, what was next for Bob Clampett? Clampett was ready to embrace new methods to entertain the public. He had already endured the frustration of the studio system and he’d already mastered a style of animation that no longer seemed appreciated, so Bob concentrated on one of his other boyhood obsessions: puppetry. More importantly, Bob would own the puppet characters and stories they would appear in. Bob’s crude dinosaur puppet that he created as a kid was allegedly inspired by viewing the stop-motion brontosaurus swimming out to sea at the end of the 1925 movie The Lost World. Bob was 12 at the time. Pondering the potential of his reptilian puppet, Bob created a character that had a long neck like that brontosaurus, but didn’t share a scientific species. Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent owed his existence to legends that mariners told. Of course, Cecil needed a friend to share his conversations and adventures. Considering the audience that Bob hoped to reach, a brave little boy with a face full of freckles and a cap sporting a propeller on top fit the bill. His name was Beany. And to make those adventures happen, how about an uncle for Beany, a lovable but incompetent sea captain with his own boat? Meet Uncle Cap’n Horatio K. Huffenpuff and his vessel, The Leakin’ Lena. The primary cast was set. 6
RETROFAN
November 2023
Who did Bob Clampett have in mind to not only perform the voices of Cecil, Beany, and Cap’n Huffenpuff, but also write their scripts and operate their puppets? Did those talents even exist? Stan Freberg (August 7, 1926–April 7, 2015) was born in Pasadena, California. Fresh out of high school, he was hired as a voice actor for Warner Bros.’ cartoons in 1944, which launched his 70-year career in entertainment and advertising. For Warner Bros., Stan performed the voices of the characters Junyer Bear, Beaky Buzzard, Pete Puma, and many others. He did the voices of all of the characters and sang the title song for Friz Freleng’s Three Little Bops (1957). For Disney, he was the voice of Lady and the Tramp’s Mr. Busy the Beaver, as well as roles in Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and Alice in Wonderland. Stan also had two radio shows, a sitcom titled That’s Rich (1954), and The Stan Freberg Show
The oddball world of scott shaw!
on CBS radio, which replaced Jack Benny’s show in 1957. These assignments directly led to on-screen roles in feature films such as Callaway Went Thataway (1951), Geraldine (1954), and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Stan gained more attention for his comedy 45s and albums for Capitol Records. Some of his most famous 45s were “John and Marsha” (1951), “St. George and the Dragonet” (1953), “The Great Pretender” (1956), “Banana Boat (Day-O)” (1957), and “Green Chri$tma$” (1958). Among Stan’s most popular LPs were Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume One: The Early Years (1961), Freberg Underground (1966), and Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume Two: The Middle Years (1996). Stan was also seen on television, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Monkees, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Roseanne, and The Weird Al Show. He also had his own special on ABC in 1962: Stan Freberg Presents the Chun King Chow Mein Hour: Salute to the Chinese New Year. Stan revolutionized the advertising industry by creating ad campaigns for radio and television that caught on with the public due their clever satirical content. After founding the Los Angeles–based ad agency, Freberg Limited, his clients included Butternut coffee, General Motors, Contadina tomato paste, Jeno’s pizza rolls, Sunsweet pitted prunes, Heinz Great American Soups, Encyclopedia Britannica, Kaiser Aluminum, and Chun King Chinese food, among many others.
Charles Dawson, a.k.a. “Daws” Butler (November 16, 1916–May 18, 1988), was born in Toledo, Ohio. As a young man, he had a fascination with imitating his friends, his teachers, and various celebrities. In 1935, he became a professional impressionist, performing in vaudeville theaters. Daws’ first animation voiceover job was for Screen Gems in 1948, but he was soon working on Tex Avery’s shorts for MGM, beginning with Little Rural Riding Hood (1949). He became a favorite of Tex’s, contributing to MGM’s Out-Foxed, The Cuckoo Clock, The Peachy Cobbler, Droopy’s Double-Trouble, Magical Maestro, One Cab’s Family, Little Johnny Jet, Three Little Pups, Sheep Wrecked, Billy Boy, and Walter Lantz’s The Legend of Rockabye Point. After Daws Butler began writing and voicing TV commercials, Stan Freberg asked him to collaborate on writing material for Stan’s records for Capitol. The result was “St. George and the Dragonet.” The duo continued to work together on Stan’s songs, especially co-writing dialogue routines. Daws also was part of the Stan Freberg Show on CBS radio. Daws expanded his list of animation studios that were casting him. For UPA, he provided the voice of Waldo, the nephew of Mr. Magoo. For Walter Lantz Productions’ theatrical shorts, he put words in the mouths of Chilly Willy; his laid-back canine co-star, Smedley; Gabby Gator; and Ali Gator. But in 1957, the newly formed Hanna-Barbera Productions, run by MGM’s Tom and Jerry creators/ producers/directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, would soon occupy a major percentage of Daws’ career. Starting with the voice of Reddy on The Ruff and Reddy Show, the studio’s first series, Daws quickly became one of H-B’s most relied-upon voice talents. Among many others, here are some of Daws’ most recognizable voices for the studio’s cast of characters: Augie Doggie; Barney Rubble (subbing for Mel Blanc); Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey; The Jetsons’ Elroy,
(ABOVE) Surrounding the Beany doll are (LEFT TO RIGHT): Daws Butler, Stan Freberg, Bob Clampett, and Jack Benny. (LEFT) A TV Guide (Aug. 8, 1954) spread about Time for Beany. © Bob Clampett Productions. TV Guide © TV Guide Magazine, LLC. Courtesy of the Prelinger Archives via the Internet Archive.
RETROFAN
November 2023
7
BRITMANIA
by MARK VOGER
Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon — and their parents go crazy? BRITMANIA plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, HAVING A WILD WEEKEND), TV (THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR), collectibles (TOYS, GAMES, TRADING CARDS, LUNCH BOXES), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and MARVEL UNIVERSES) and, of course, the music! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, GROOVY, HOLLY JOLLY), BRITMANIA features interviews with members of THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, THE KINKS, HERMAN’S HERMITS, THE YARDBIRDS, THE ANIMALS, THE HOLLIES & more. It’s a gas, gas, gas! (192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-115-8 • NOW SHIPPING!
GROOVY also by MARK VOGER
From Woodstock, “The Banana Splits,” and “Sgt. Pepper” to “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Altamont, and “The Partridge Family,” 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.” Revisit the era’s rock festivals, movies, art, comics and cartoons in this color-saturated pop-culture history! (192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-080-9
CHARLTON COMPANION
TEAM-UP COMPANION OUR ARTISTS AT WAR AMERICAN TV COMICS (1940s-1980s)
THE LIFE & ART OF
DAVE COCKRUM
JON B. COOKE’s all-new history of the notorious all-in-one comics company, from the 1940s to the ’70s, with GIORDANO, DITKO, STATON, BYRNE and more!
MICHAEL EURY examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes!
Examines US War comics from EC, DC COMICS, WARREN PUBLISHING, CHARLTON, and more! Featuring KURTZMAN, SEVERIN, DAVIS, WOOD, KUBERT, GLANZMAN, KIRBY, and others!
History of over 300 TV shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations, from well-known series (STAR TREK, PARTRIDGE FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS) to lesser-known shows.
GLEN CADIGAN’s bio of the artist who redesigned the Legion of Super-Heroes and introduced X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Logan!
(272-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $43.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-111-0
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REED CRANDALL
Illustrator of the Comics
MIKE GRELL
LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT AN ERASER
JOHN SEVERIN
HERO-A-GO-GO!
Documents the life and career of the master Golden Age artist of Captain Marvel Jr. and other classic characters! (160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8
History of Crandall’s life and career, from Golden Age Quality Comics, to Warren war and horror, Flash Gordon, and beyond!
Career-spanning tribute to the Legion of Super-Heroes & Warlord comics art legend!
Biography of the EC, MARVEL and MAD mainstay, co-creator of American Eagle, and 40+ year CRACKED magazine contributor.
Looks at comics' 1960s CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, and TV's Batman shook a mean cape!
(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-102-8
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RETRO TELEVISION
How
Dale Evans,
the Queen of the West, Conquered Television BY THERESA KAMINSKI In the Sixties, Saturday morning television was for children. That’s how I, a Baby Boom tot, came across reruns of The Roy Rogers Show. My siblings and I woke up as early as we could on Saturday, careful not to wake our parents so they wouldn’t tell us to turn off the TV and go do something useful. We poured bowls of Cap’n Crunch or Cocoa Krispies, settled onto the family room floor, and tuned in to the cartoons that dominated the era: Beany and Cecil, Tennessee Tuxedo, Mighty Mouse, and Underdog. But sometimes I convinced my siblings to watch The Roy Rogers Show instead. I was fascinated by the Dale Evans character, owner of the Eureka Café in Mineral City, California. A cook worked for her, a man named Pat Brady, who split his time with the Double R Bar ranch where he served as foreman. There, the boss was Roy Rogers, who spent a lot of his time tracking down the bad guys in pursuit of justice in the entire Paradise Valley. Brady was the “comical sidekick” always doing goofy things. Dale Evans, though, saddled up with Roy Rogers—she on Buttermilk, he on Trigger, often energetically followed by Roy’s “wonder dog,” the German Shepherd, Bullet—to fight crime. I didn’t give a second thought to the incongruities of life in Paradise Valley. Dale and Roy, along with nearly all the supporting characters, rode horses and/or used horse-drawn wagons, the streets in Mineral City looked unpaved and were bordered by wooden sidewalks, with buildings made of stucco or wood, all imitating life in a mythical Old West. Yet modern technology existed as well: Pat Brady’s jeep called Nellybelle, indoor electricity, telephones, kitchen appliances. Dale’s clothes also gave a nod to the Old West, from the sensible skirt that swished along the tops of the sturdy, well-worn boots to the turned-up brimmed hat
Dale Evans and Roy Rogers in 1951, the year The Roy Rogers Show debuted. IMDb. kept anchored on her head by a leather chin strap. She also wore a holster as casually as a belt. And there was Dale’s voice—strong and assertive, with a slight Texas twang. Throughout the episodes, she spoke with confidence, often tinged with kindness, but sometimes with sternness if she was talking to someone who’d done something wrong. Then, at the end of each episode, Dale sang. Sitting astride Buttermilk, next to Roy Rogers on Trigger, they warbled the soothing and hopeful “Happy Trails.” Despite my childhood fascination with Dale Evans and The Roy Rogers Show, I didn’t grow up to be a cowgirl. I went to graduate school and studied American history, became a university professor, and wrote books on women’s history. The more I understood about the changing lives of women through the 20th Century, the more I remembered those Saturday mornings and the café-owning Dale Evans. I wondered about the story behind the real-life Dale Evans. How did she become a television star? To find out, I wrote a biography. Dale Evans’ involvement with television pre-dated The Roy Rogers Show by about 20 years. In the very early Thirties, before she took the stage name Dale Evans, she was Frances Johns (nee Smith), a native-born Texan trying to establish herself as a singer in Chicago. The single inroad she made in the Windy City’s entertainment milieu was a brief, part-time job at WIBO, a radio station that RETROFAN
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retro television
provided audio for Chicago’s first television station, WCFL. Frances probably sang and/or played the piano to augment the images projected for television. Frances Johns moved on, changing her name to Dale Evans, finally finding success as a radio and nightclub singer in Memphis, Dallas, and then, to her great satisfaction, in Chicago. After securing a year-long contract at 20th Century-Fox in 1941, she moved to Hollywood. The movie studio gave Dale a few bit parts then declined to renew the agreement, so in 1943 she signed on with Republic Pictures, known for its B-movies. She acted in a string of low-budget musical comedies, starting with Swing Your Partner, but set her sights on starring roles in Republic’s “prestige” feature films. Republic Pictures was where Dale Evans met the studio’s most bankable singing cowboy, Roy Rogers. In early 1944, they began filming The Cowboy and the Senorita, which became a hit with Roy’s legions of fans and expanded Dale’s burgeoning fan base. The two became good friends while working on this production and the next three: The Yellow Rose of Texas, Song of Nevada, and San Fernando Valley. The movies did well at the box office, but Dale worried she’d never become a true movie star by appearing in “horse operas.” She tried to break away from the studio but couldn’t. Dale, who divorced in 1945, and Roy Rogers, who became a widower (with three young children) the following year, became more than friends. As they spent more time together working on movies, Roy’s radio show, and personal appearances, their feelings for each other deepened into love. They married on New Year’s Eve 1947. Herbert Yates, head of Republic, claimed that movie-goers wouldn’t accept a real-life husband-and-wife team as movie costars, so he fired Dale. Outraged fans inundated the studio with letters demanding her reinstatement. Yates held firm, and Dale, always hard-working and ambitious, didn’t wait around for him to change his mind. Understanding her supporters preferred her in Westerns, she concluded a verbal agreement in 1948 with independent producer Louis Lewyn to star in a series of Annie Oakley–style movies, beginning with Two Girls on a Horse. But by early 1949, before the plan went any further, Yates rehired Dale at Republic, putting her opposite Roy in Susanna Pass and Down Dakota Way. An unexpected development then slowed down the 37-year-old cowgirl. As Dale headed into her second year of marriage with Roy, she learned she was pregnant. She bowed out of filming Westerns near the beginning of 1950 because her obstetrician advised against the strenuous physical activity they required. But studio 20
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executives wouldn’t have cast Dale anyway. By the standards of the time, it wasn’t acceptable for a female actor to be on set after she announced a pregnancy. Television, still in its early years of post–World War II broadcasting, proved more flexible. In April, Dale appeared on Rancho Tela Vista, a new, live Western musical variety show that broadcast weekly at 8:00 on Thursday nights over KECA-TV in Los Angeles. She intended to continue “almost up to the birth of the baby.” Still, Dale took care not to flaunt her pregnancy. On set, she stood behind a fence that concealed most of her expanding midsection as she sang and chatted with the audience. Despite Dale’s plan, health issues forced her to quit after about a month. She curtailed her public appearances, increased her bed rest, and spent more time with family until the birth of her daughter, Robin, in August. The baby was frail at birth, diagnosed with a heart murmur and Down syndrome. Dale spent much of her time at home that first month, tending to the baby with the help of a trained baby nurse, then she returned to the radio on The Roy Rogers Show and resumed filming movies. Dale later claimed that Robin inspired her to write what would become her most popular and enduring song (she was an accomplished songwriter as well as singer): “Happy Trails.” Dale thought about the challenges ahead for her baby, and she
(ABOVE) Dale Evans in 1944, the year she began appearing in Roy Rogers’ movies. Courtesy of Theresa Kaminski.
This hat worn on screen by the Queen of the West netted $836.50 at an April 2007 Heritage auction. Courtesy of Heritage.
retro television
Dale and Roy continued to charm fans as the couple aged from film and radio stars of the Forties to television stars of the Fifties. Blackand-white photo and autographs courtesy of Shaun Clancy. Color photo courtesy of Theresa Kaminski.
thought about the current theme song for Roy’s radio show, “Smiles Are Made Out of Sunshine.” She decided “it wasn’t Western enough, and it didn’t say enough about what it means to be a cowboy— especially when the trails you ride aren’t always sunny ones.” Dale wrote a trail song inspired by “The Grand Canyon Suite,” with its trombone slide that sounded to her like “happy trails” echoing in a deep canyon. From there, it took her three hours to come up with “Happy Trails.” It became the theme song for the radio show and soon, for the television program. Dale looked again to TV to enhance her career. In October 1950, when Robin was just two months old, she signed with Fred Levy, Jr., vice president of the newly formed Union Television Corporation, to make thirteen half-hour Westerns for a series called Queen of the West. Dale’s show would be one of the station’s first. She filmed a pilot episode that never aired because the new television station never got off the ground. Roy Rogers faced his own problems with his movie career, which ironically propelled both him and Dale into TV stardom. Herbert Yates refused to negotiate a new contract clause that would allow for television appearances, something Roy very much wanted. And in the late spring of 1950, Yates decided to edit the singing cowboy’s movies, many costarring Dale Evans, to fit a 60-minute television slot. This would bring in for Republic between $30,000 or $50,000 for each picture aired on a network. Not a dime would go to Roy or Dale.
Roy filed suit against the studio, arguing that a clause in his contract gave him the rights to the Roy Rogers name, voice, and likenesses for all commercial purposes. He also requested and received a temporary restraining order to prevent Republic from releasing the movies until the case went before a judge. Dale Evans wasn’t included in the lawsuit, but as Roy’s wife and costar, her career and financial well-being depended on its outcome. Now they both knew television represented their best shot at continued celebrity. Anticipating a favorable court ruling, the couple created Frontier Productions, Inc., through which they produced “television films” to fit a 30-minute time slot. After years of making movies with Republic, Roy and Dale knew the formula, and they had a stable of actors and crew willing to work with them, including Jack English, who signed on as director, and Jack Lacey, formerly an assistant director, now the production manager. The televised version The Roy Rogers Show drew heavily from the radio program of the same name that aired on Mutual. It took place in the fictional Mineral City, in Paradise Valley, California. It was set in contemporary times but with an Old West look. Roy played a rancher owner who fights a variety of “bad guys” in pursuit of justice. Café owner Dale portrayed something of a “lady Robin Hood.” Pat Brady, who had appeared in some of Roy’s films and in Dale’s failed pilot, was a new sidekick addition. Unlike the radio show, this action/adventure program contained little music. RETROFAN
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SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM
BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA
If you read comic books in the Seventies, you likely saw Charles Atlas ads, including the most familiar of the bunch, “The Insult That Made a Man out of Mac.” The centerpiece of the ad was a comic strip that showed a slender 97-pound weakling with a young woman at the beach getting sand kicked in his face by a larger, more muscular bully. Humiliated, he kicks a chair and vows to improve himself. He does so with the help of Charles Atlas’ mail-order course. Atlas would claim that this story was true and happened while on a date to Coney Island when he was 16. The chair being kicked in frustration has never been verified and, sadly, the part of the ad where the now-muscular Mac re-encounters the bully and punches him hard in the face did not happen in real life. This classic Charles Atlas ad appeared in the first comic book to feature all-new material, New Fun #1 (Feb. 1935). Charles Atlas was too perfect a name to be true, and it wasn’t. He was born Angelo Siciliano near Acri, Cosenza, Italy, on October 30, 1892. To those who knew him before his fame, he was Angelino or Angie or Charley. Angelo immigrated to America with his mother in 1904. His father appears to have either returned to or stayed in Italy and was not an active part of Angelo’s life. Young Angelo’s time in Brooklyn, New York, was rough. Among those who beat up on the slight young man (apart from the bully at the beach) was a local street punk and an uncle. Angelo was determined to improve his physique. Unable to pay for membership to the local YMCA (a.k.a. the Young Men’s Christian Association or more simply “the Y”), he studiously watched exercises in action and then repeated them at home. He would watch strongmen perform at 26
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Atlas on the cusp of fame, circa 1920. © Charles Atlas, Ltd. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Coney Island and ask questions about their muscle-making methods and diet. He read an early bodybuilding magazine, Physical Culture. Part of his legend is a trip to the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn, New York, where he saw a muscular lion. How did the lion (which Atlas referred to as “this old gentleman”) develop his body without weights or other gadgets? Angelo surmised, incorrectly it turns out, that the King of Beasts had developed his muscles by pitting one muscle against the other. This false epiphany would form the basis of his personal exercise regime and his later mail-order courses. Angelo dropped out of school after the eighth grade and learned leatherworking so he could help support his family. His muscular transformation stunned his friends, who compared him to a statue of Atlas. It wasn’t long before Angelo, now a bodybuilder at a time when that was not only rare but also a distinct oddity, began to call himself Charles Atlas. So, the question for Atlas now was, What’s a bodybuilder to do?
VAUDEVILLE PERFORMER & ARTIST’S MODEL
It was not uncommon in the days of sideshows and circuses to have muscle men perform feats of strength. Young Atlas spent time bending railroad spikes and tearing phone books in half in sideshows.
Charles Atlas was the model for “The Dawn of Glory” (1924) by sculptor Pietro Montana. It still resides in Highland Park, Brooklyn. Photo by Janine and Jim Eden. Courtesy of Wikimedia.
(RIGHT) Charles Atlas, owner of the World’s Most Perfectly Developed Body, in this advertisement detail circa 1936. (TITLE BACKGROUND) Images from promotional material. © Charles Atlas, Ltd. He earned five dollars a week for his effort but also had to sweep up after himself. A sculptor discovered Atlas after seeing him perform around 1915, and soon other artists used him as a model as well. For one particular statue, “The Dawn of Glory” (1924) by Pietro Montana located in Highland Park, Brooklyn, Atlas’ body is quite identifiable. Concurrently with his modeling, Atlas was one half of a vaudeville act with another bodybuilder. Back in his YMCA days, Atlas met a fellow physical-culture enthusiast, Earle E. Liederman, who was just a few years older. Like Atlas he was a former scrawny kid, but was a bit ahead of Atlas in body improvement. Liederman was also a physique model for artists and previously was a wrestler and a boxer. Together, Liederman and Atlas traveled to small venues with their vaudeville act for roughly eight years beginning in 1910. They would eventually perform as a Coney Island sideshow act, the very place where Atlas first tasted sand. Very briefly, the two opened a shop selling fitness equipment. The vaudeville act was apparently less than memorable. So the young men went their separate ways. The modeling work paid well, the vaudeville act The King of Mail Order Muscle in the didn’t. The Twenties Twenties, Earle E. Liederman as was were a real heyday seen in his many ads (circa 1924).
of mail-order businesses, and many bodybuilders would promote themselves and their body improvement systems though cheap magazine advertising. Liederman and Atlas would both get into the mail-order business. One of these men would become the “King of mail-order muscle” while the other’s business would be on the brink of collapse as the clouds of the Great Depression loomed.
KING OF MAIL ORDER MUSCLE
While the Twenties were a busy time for the muscle-by-mail business, it wasn’t a new concept. The first attempts date to the late 19th Century. Eugen Sandow, a German bodybuilder usually referred to by only his last name, was a major success in promoting physical culture (what we now basically just call fitness) via advertising in the early years of the 20th Century. Liederman admired Sandow, and while Liederman was unable to capture the same amount of fame of his idol, he did establish himself as the “King of Mail Order Muscle.” Liederman’s success with his business was quite notable given the sheer number of competing hustlers. And it was a hustle. There was virtually zero oversight of the many claims made in these muscular-improvement ads. Photos of successful students along RETROFAN
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scott saavedra’s secret sanctum
advertising for Atlas’ mail-order course. Instead of promising big muscles, he focused on how the Atlas course could make you more of a man, someone who could be in charge of his own destiny. It was Roman who gave a proper name to the resistance musclebuilding technique that Atlas developed. He called it Dynamic Tension. That it required no equipment only added to the appeal of the Atlas method, especially during the Great Depression. And it was Charles Roman who created the comic-strip-style “the Insult that made a man out of Mac” ad campaign. The success of the new advertising approach was quick. The course, in its entirety, cost $29.95 then (close to $160 today) and remained at that price for decades. Still, it was a lot of money to spend on a quest to become more of a He-Man or, in the words of 30
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(ABOVE AND OPPOSITE) Even though the “Insult That Made a Man out of Mac” was an instant classic, ad writer Charles Roman continued to try variations that might be more effective. (INSET) Atlas was always ready to show his physique. © Charles Atlas, Ltd. Atlas’ most famous ad, “Hero of the Beach!” during such a bad financial downturn. Adding to his success, competitors started to fall away, opening up the field thereby allowing Atlas to dominate. Strength magazine folded in 1930 (though Physical Culture hung on for years longer), but Atlas found plenty of other magazines directed to boys and men with cheap advertising in which to push his positive message. But it was when comic books emerged in the Thirties that Roman soon saw them as a perfect location for Atlas ads, where they became iconic mainstays. Charles Atlas, Ltd. was a huge success. So what does a bodybuilder with lots of money do? He gets into a fight.
scott saavedra’s secret sanctum
A NEW BULLY
In 1936, Bob Hoffman, owner of the York Barbell Company and publisher of Strength & Health magazine, sued Charles Atlas, Ltd., calling Atlas’ training methods “Dynamic-Hooey.” He said that it was impossible to achieve the muscular results claimed in Atlas’ advertising with just the course’s exercises. The FTC investigated and found that Atlas had made no outrageous claims, that Atlas had improved himself with his own techniques, and that Hoffman was to cease and desist from making any further disparaging statements about Atlas or his methods. To Hoffman, a World War I vet, multi-award-winning athlete, and successful businessman, the lawsuit against a competitor was simply good business. And maybe it would have been had he been successful, but Atlas’ reputation had only been burnished by the episode. John D. Fair, the author of Muscletown USA: Bob Hoffman and the Manly Culture of York Barbell (Penn State University Press, 1999), revealed that Hoffman actually admired Atlas. Atlas was a hard man to not like. He was more than just a pleasing physique. Atlas did have an open secret, however. He, in fact, enhanced his musculature by occasionally working with weights. No one really seemed to hold this against him. Not even Bob Hoffman. Atlas was now Hero of the Courtroom.
SUCCESS
Charles Atlas loved his success. He would pull off his shirt without hesitation for anyone who asked. Not because he was a showoff, but because he simply wanted to promote physical development.
The Atlas course cost a whopping $29.95 during the Great Depression. Seen here is the cover to Everlasting Health and Strength by Charles Atlas, an introduction to his Dynamic Tension musclebuilding course. There were many editions, this one has a 1941 copyright. © Charles Atlas, Ltd. Collection of the author. RETROFAN
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TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com
THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S
MAINLINE COMICS
by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY Introduction by JOHN MORROW
In 1954, industry legends JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY founded MAINLINE PUBLICATIONS to publish their own comics during that turbulent era in comics history. The four titles—BULLSEYE, FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE—looked to build off their reputation as hit makers in the Western, War, Crime, and Romance genres, but the 1950s backlash against comics killed any chance at success, and Mainline closed its doors just two years later. For the first time, TwoMorrows Publishing is compiling the best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline comics work, including all of the stories with S&K art, as well as key tales with contributions by MORT MESKIN and others. After the company’s dissolution, their partnership ended with Simon leaving comics for advertising, and Kirby taking unused Mainline concepts to both DC and Marvel. This collection bridges the gap between Simon & Kirby’s peak with their 1950s romance comics, and the lows that led to Kirby’s resurgence with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN and the early MARVEL UNIVERSE. With loving art restoration by CHRIS FAMA, and an historical overview by JOHN MORROW to put it all into perspective, the BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S MAINLINE COMICS presents some of the final, and finest, work Joe and Jack ever produced. NOW SHIPPING! (256-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9
All characters TM & © their respective owners.
DESTROYER DUCK GRAPHITE EDITION
by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER Introduction by MARK EVANIER
In the 1980s, writer STEVE GERBER was embroiled in a lawsuit against MARVEL COMICS over ownership of his creation HOWARD THE DUCK. To raise funds for legal fees, Gerber asked JACK KIRBY to contribute to a benefit comic titled DESTROYER DUCK. Without hesitation, Kirby (who was in his own dispute with Marvel at the time) donated his services for the first issue, and the duo took aim at their former employer in an outrageous five-issue run. With biting satire and guns blazing, Duke “Destroyer” Duck battled the thinly veiled Godcorp (whose infamous credo was “Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!”), its evil leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn, Medea (a parody of Daredevil’s Elektra), and more! Now, all five Gerber/Kirby issues are collected—but relettered and reproduced from JACK’S UNBRIDLED, UNINKED PENCIL ART! Also included are select examples of ALFREDO ALCALA’s unique inking style over Kirby on the original issues, Gerber’s script pages, an historical Introduction by MARK EVANIER (co-editor of the original 1980s issues), and an Afterword by BUZZ DIXON (who continued the series after Gerber)! Discover all the hidden jabs you missed when DESTROYER DUCK was first published, and experience page after page of Kirby’s raw pencil art! NOW SHIPPING! (128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-117-2
ALTER EGO COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS
By overwhelming demand, editor ROY THOMAS has compiled all the material on the founders of the Marvel Bullpen from three SOLD-OUT ALTER EGO ISSUES—plus OVER 30 NEW PAGES OF CONTENT! There’s the STEVE DITKO ISSUE (#160 with a rare ’60s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL, biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO, and Ditko tributes)! The STAN LEE ISSUE (#161 with ROY THOMAS on his 50+ year relationship with Stan, art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT, SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans)! And the JACK KIRBY ISSUE (#170 with WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s contributions to Iron Man’s creation, Jack’s Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work, Kirby in 1960s fanzines, plus STAN LEE and ROY THOMAS on Jack)! Whether you missed these issues, or can’t live without the extensive NEW MATERIAL on DITKO, LEE, and KIRBY, it’s sure to be an AMAZING, ASTONISHING, FANTASTIC tribute to the main men who made Marvel! NOW SHIPPING! (256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $35.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-116-5
CLIFFHANGER!
CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE SERIALS: 1941–1952 by CHRISTOPHER IRVING
Hold on tight as historian CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the origins of the first on-screen superheroes and the comic creators and film-makers who brought them to life. CLIFFHANGER! touches on the early days of the film serial, to its explosion as a juvenile medium of the 1930s and ‘40s. See how the creation of characters like SUPERMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPY SMASHER, and CAPTAIN MARVEL dovetailed with the early film adaptations. Along the way, you’ll meet the stuntmen, directors (SPENCER BENNETT, WILLIAM WITNEY, producer SAM KATZMAN), comic book creators (SIEGEL & SHUSTER, SIMON & KIRBY, BOB KANE, C.C. BECK, FRANK FRAZETTA, WILL EISNER), and actors (BUSTER CRABBE, GEORGE REEVES, LORNA GRAY, KANE RICHMOND, KIRK ALYN, DAVE O’BRIEN) who brought them to the silver screen—and how that resonates with today’s cinematic superhero universe. NOW SHIPPING! (160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-119-6
VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES
Wacky, Wild, and Weird
Without having heard of the But it illustrates shifting attitudes about term “thought provoking,” robots that were emerging in popular seven-year-old me was culture by the Sixties. Heretofore, when thinkin’ up a storm while robots were presented in a story, watching a rerun of The the fact itself was a Twilight Zone. Rod Serling’s source of marvel. 1959–1964 anthology series A robot?! But by often presented deep-dive the Sixties, their reflections on the human presence was so condition disguised as fantasy and sci-fi. commonplace—in The episode I beheld was the one with Inger movies and televiStevens, the one with the robots. You know sion, I mean—that the one. comedy, irony, “thinky” In 1960’s “The Lateness of the Hour,” stuff and even glamour Jana (Stevens) feels isolated and generally crept in. creeped out while cooped up in a wellRobots infiltrated appointed mansion with her elderly parents, prime-time TV series (My Living Doll, as uniformed servants dish out cocktails and Lost in Space); movies (Creation of the massages. Jana’s mom (Irene Tedrow) really digs Humanoids, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini the massages—her incessant moaning makes this Machine); animation (Rosie in The Jetsons, clear. Jana can’t take another minute of this. She Gigantor); comic books (Metal Men, insists that her father (John Hoyt), a wealthy Magnus: Robot Fighter); and toys inventor, dismiss the staff. She has her reasons. (Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots). It Though the servants easily pass as regular was kind of a golden age. Or at BY MARK VOGER humans, they are... robots. least a transistor age. When Dad orders the servants to “go downstairs Three generations later, and wait for me,” they know exactly what this means: robots are all around us in real dismantlement. They all protest. Says the butler: “But I’ve been an life, here on Earth-Prime. But none of them look like the metallic excellent butler, sir.” Says the maid: “There isn’t a more efficient one from Lost in Space, and especially not the sexy one from My maid in the entire country.” Living Doll. Alexa and Siri answer trivia questions, give us weather This moment punched me in the stomach. I felt so sorry for reports, and remind us to check the roast. “Autonomous” vacuum the robots! One minute, they’re serving martinis, the next, they’re cleaners patrol our carpets like Bop-a-Bears. headed for the scrap pile. This Twilight Zone episode went through a twist or two before reaching its climax, none of which I wish to spoil here despite its being more than 60 years old. (That’s what the internet is for.)
Robots of the Sixties
The nuts and bolts of those awesome automatons
(LEFT) A wealthy inventor (John Hoyt) attempts to comfort his daughter Jana (Inger Stevens) in the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “The Lateness of the Hour.” (RIGHT) Hoyt tells his robot staff to report to his workshop—not a good omen. © Cayuga Productions.
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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
Drones take spectacular vacation videos… and kill people. (Talk about a wide range of usage.) We used to drive cars. Now cars drive us.
REAL (AND REEL) ROBOTS
Real-life phenoms such as the Industrial Revolution in America (beginning in the 1870s) and Henry Ford’s implementation of the “assembly line” (beginning in 1913) found humans using machinery to do the heavy lifting, both actual and metaphorical. Perhaps a few less bodies would be required, but it was all for the greater good, right? Eh, eh, eh... The classic humanoid robot, as initially envisioned, was popularized in science fiction on the stage, in print, and on film. The word “robot” is said to be a derivative of “robota,” a Slavonic term translated as “forced labor.” The word was introduced in the 1920 dystopian play R.U.R. by Czech writer Karel Čapek. These earliest ’bots were living beings made with synthetic flesh and blood who could pass as humans. Robots of every stripe were described in stories published in the sci-fi “pulps”—that is, pulp-fiction digests which sold for a dime in the pre-everything age. (Without sophisticated portable devices with which to entertain themselves, people used to read.) Artists like Earle K. Bergey, Frank R. Paul, and Frank Kelly Freas delineated robots on the covers of such pulp-fiction magazines as Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Astonishing Stories, Astounding Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Fantastic Adventures. One of the earliest robots on film was the shiny, sleek female Maschinemensch in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece of German Expressionism, Metropolis (1927). “She” was played by Brigitte Helm, also seen in human form as Maria. In these prescient dual roles, Helm struck a blow for womankind and machinekind—and did some far-out dancing. Maschinemensch was an Art Deco marvel of design and execution, but robots in the movies would not always be so exquisitely rendered. Crank-’em-out movie serials depicted robots as plodding, boxy automatons that were destructive but easily outrun. Movie cowboy Gene Autry fought an army of such
(LEFT) Gort demonstrates his tank-melting ray in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). © Twentieth Century Fox. (RIGHT) Anne Francis gets a hug from Robby the Robot—um, OK—in Forbidden Planet (1956). © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 36
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(ABOVE) Brigitte Helm as the Maschinemensch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). © Universum Film. (INSET) Exciting art by Earle K. Bergey on the cover of the sci-fi pulp Startling Stories (1950). © Thrilling. machines in the 1935 serial The Phantom Empire. Bela Lugosi was clearly between major film roles as a goateed mad scientist who commanded an eight-foot robot (Ed Wolff) in another serial, The Phantom Creeps (1939). Robots continued to be refined into the Forties and Fifties. In his sci-fi short story “Runaround” (1942), Isaac Asimov conceived the “Three Laws of Robotics,” a sort of declaration of principles. It wouldn’t be long before the first such law was disregarded by robots in subsequent fiction: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” When Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerged from his flying saucer to wag his finger at we destructive humans in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), his traveling companion was Gort, a mysterious giant robot with a tank-melting ray. Robby the Robot in Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956) couldn’t provide meaningful companionship for wild child Altaira Morbius (Anne Francis), which may explain why she canoodled with Earthling interlopers. Many times over the past century, science fiction has become science fact. During the post–World War II boom, crude robots
Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
were being assembled and promoted—we saw the clunky things in newsreels and industrial films—but these seemed more like publicity stunts than valid, sustainable technological advancements.
ENTER THE SIXTIES
As the world entered the Sixties, a kind of ironic whimsy infused the zeitgeist. (What was behind it? The Beatles? Color TV? Miniskirts?) Robots—no longer presented or perceived as futuristic anomalies—were everywhere in movies, television, and other forms of entertainment. Several TV series presented robots as regular characters. My Living Doll (1964–1965) co-starred Bob Cummings as a psychiatrist and Julie Newmar as his drop-dead-sexy charge, a robot named Rhoda. The results were hot and cold. (Alas, Cummings’ style didn’t quite jibe with an emerging sitcom subgenre spotlighting fanciful characters who were “other,” to say the least, like Bewitched and My Favorite Martian.) A robot was added to Mel Brooks and Buck Henry’s superspy spoof Get Smart (1965–1970). Dick Gautier, Broadway’s original
Conrad Birdie, played stone-faced Hymie the Robot, a technological asset developed by C.O.N.T.R.O.L., the sitcom’s answer to U.N.C.L.E. It was an open question whether Hymie was more of a help or a hindrance to operatives Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon). Sample gag: Once when Max asked Hymie to “lend me a hand,” the robot began rotating one of his hands in order to remove it, like a G.I. Joe doll. Irwin Allen’s sci-fi series Lost in Space (1965–1968) followed the exploits of the Space Family Robinson, an Earthling clan stranded in outer space for three seasons after being sabotaged by the conniving Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris). Their spaceship’s robot— manned by Bob May and voiced by Dick Tufeld—had catchphrases that are legion: “It does not compute” and, as if you didn’t know, “Danger, Will Robinson!” When the man who sweated it out inside that hot, constricting “costume”—more like a torture chamber on wheels—auditioned for Allen, he was recognized by the producer. As May told me in 2001: “Irwin said, ‘You worked for me on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, didn’t you? Well, Bob, I have a new series called Lost in Space. There’s the part of a robot. Now, we don’t know what the robot can do or will do, but would you like the part?’ And I said, ‘I’d love it.’ “Coming from Olsen and Johnson, you don’t turn down anything,” added May, whose grandfather was comedian Chic Johnson of the old-timey comedy team Olsen and Johnson. (No one living remembers them.) “Anyway, Irwin said, ‘There’s one problem. You have to fit into the suit, which is almost completed.’ He took me down to the mill at 20th Century Fox—the prop shop—and I had to get into the costume. That’s when I met Bob Kinoshita.” (Art director Kinoshita previously designed two famous movie robots: Tobor in 1954’s Tobor the Great and Robby in Forbidden Planet.) “I got into the suit, and Kinoshita gave Irwin the thumb’s up. Irwin said to me, ‘Well, you’ve got the job, Bob. I just want you to do me one
(LEFT) Bob May and an old friend pose in May’s official autograph photo. © Legend Pictures, LLC. (RIGHT) Dick Gautier wore the deadpan as Hymie the robot in six episodes of Get Smart. © CBS Television Network.
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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
Peter Cushing (RIGHT) as the good doctor in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965). © Amicus Productions.
As for those more respectable robots: The Daleks—alien beings encased in colorful cyborg “bodies”—caused a ruckus in England’s first two Dr. Who movies, Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Dalek Invasion 2150 A.D. (1966). Both starred horror icon Peter Cushing, who played Dr. Frankenstein in six films, as the time-tripping whitehaired hero. Then there’s HAL 9000, the passive-aggressive “brain” that controls the big spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), director Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic based on novelist Arthur C. Clarke’s book series. HAL’s name stands for “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer,” an acronym not quite as clear-cut as, say, U.N.C.L.E.
ASIMOV DISOBEYED
I once interviewed Muhammad Ali in his New Jersey home for The Holy Rosary Times, my school newspaper. This was in 1971, when I was in the seventh grade. I will never forget this larger-than-life man’s generosity to a child he’d never before met. I asked Mr. Ali if he had any advice for the children of Holy Rosary School. “Automation’s takin’ over today,” he said in his raspy Louisville drawl. “Get your brains ready and choose your profession while you’re young, and start workin’ towards it.” Little did I know how prescient his words were. Here he was, warning that the innovations and ease of “automation” (as it was still called in the Seventies) will result in lost jobs. Twice in my life, I would be laid off from long-held jobs, and automation played a factor. Ali was warning me of this before I even set foot in the workplace. I remember the moment I realized that robots were really, truly a part of our lives. Ten or so Christmases ago, there was a particularly “hot” toy that every child wanted, and every parent was desperate to purchase. Andrew Cuomo, then the governor of New York, warned consumers that robots were buying these toys in 42
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great numbers, and reselling them at a steep mark-up. It struck me funny how nonchalantly Cuomo used the word “robots.” (He could have said “algorithms” or “digital pirates,” but he said robots.) As I listened to the governor’s warning, I pictured old-school robots like Hymie or Rosie going to the store; buying the toys; putting them up on eBay; toting them to the Post Office; and collecting a tidy profit. To spend on what? Transistors? So, yes—counter to Asimov’s rules—robots work against us, too. Russians used algorithms to spread misinformation via social media during American elections. Face recognition surveillance (FRS) technology has inordinately implicated people of color for crimes they were nowhere near. Our private information is snatched, and traded, every day. And now we have something called ChatGBT, which will write our communications, term papers, even novels and movie scripts. How do you know this very article wasn’t written by ChatGBT? Rest assured, I’m too old and stupid to figure out how to use it. I said I don’t want to drop spoilers from that Twilight Zone episode, the one where Inger Stevens demands that her parents rid their household of robot servants, and I won’t. In English. But in Pig Latin, the secret language of the Three Stooges, I will spill the beans. Here goes: Inger-ay Evens-stay is, erself-hay, ot-nay eally-ray uman-hay. E-shay is… an obot-ray! Oh, Rod Serling, you’ve done it again. MARK VOGER is the author of six books for TwoMorrows Publishing, including Monster Mash (a Rondo Award winner), Groovy, Holly Jolly, and Britmania. At nine, he fell madly in love with Josette du Pres (Kathryn Leigh Scott) from Dark Shadows, and was devastated when she flung herself off of Widow’s Hill. Please visit him at MarkVoger.com
RETRO INTERVIEW
’ ! r u b l l l l l i ‘W
Meet Mister Ed ’s Wilbur Post, Alan Young BY SHAUN CLANCY
Alan Young (1919–2016) was a man of many talents. Born in England, as a teenager in Canada he began working in radio broadcasting. This led him into a long and successful career as an actor, writer, and voice actor in films and television. His comedy-variety program The Alan Young Show was aired on radio and later on television in the Forties and Fifties, earning him a pair of Emmy Awards in 1951. RetroFans may recall him in films such as George Pal’s The Time Machine, or as the voice of Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck, but his most famous role was as the straight man to a talking horse in the popular Sixties sitcom Mister Ed. This interview was conducted with Mr. Young on September 26, 2013, roughly three years before his passing. The interview was transcribed by Randy Clawson and has been edited for presentation in RetroFan. RetroFan: Do you mind telling me a little bit about the beginnings of your career? And how you got into radio?
Look who’s talking now—TV’s favorite talking horse razzes Wilbur Post, played by our interview subject, Alan Young. Detail from the cover of Gold Key Comics’ Mister Ed #5 (Nov. 1963). © Waterman Entertainment. Courtesy of Heritage.
Alan Young: I entered the business in Vancouver, Canada. I did a little entertainment for some group and in the group was a girl who was a singer on a radio station and she said, “How’d you like to be on radio?” And I said, “Sure!” I was only about 14 or 15, I guess. So they took me to a station called CJOR in Vancouver… and I did my little act. From then on I was in Vancouver and did a few variety shows. Then I became a jack-of-all-trades, answering the phones and things of that nature…. stooge, and so on… and that was the beginning of my career.
RF: Were you a Canadian citizen? AY: No, I was British. I was born in Northern England. RF: The radio show you did do in Canada, what was its name? AY: The Bathhouse Review was the Saturday night show I did. RF: Was it a comedy show? AY: Yes, it was a variety show, and I did a lot of imitations of English performers that people liked because many of them [the audience] were probably from England. I wrote little sketches and it started my writing career. RF: How did you learn to do imitations so well? AY: They had a program I’ll never forget called The British Empire Program, and there were recordings of Gracie Fields, and all different British performers, and I began to imitate them. And that’s how I did my dialects. RETROFAN
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retro interview
From a talking Mr. Ed hand puppet to Mr. Ed comic books, television’s mouthy mount kept fans occupied each week between episodes. Mr. Ed © Waterman Entertainment. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions and Hake’s Auctions.
person said, “She’s it!” And she was. She was so pretty. RF: How was Connie around the horse? AY: Yes, she loved the horse. You couldn’t help but love him. He loved people and liked to meet new people. RF: What were the horse’s favorite foods? AY: Oh, he loved apples. He loved anything that was edible. He was great! RF: Did the horse ever cause any accidents on the set? AY: No, no. He didn’t have any tricks. He just rehearsed. The only time I got hurt was on the first show. Ed was trained to come into the office. Now, the phone rang so he went over and picked the phone up, and he came over and nudged me and dropped the phone on the desk. We rehearsed it and rehearsed it. Well, we came to do it, and I forget what happened, something that upset him. So he came in, the phone rang, he tried to pick up my arm and nudge the phone. When
Undated photo of Alan Young signing copies of Dell Comics’ Four Color #1295, a 1962 comic book starring Mister Ed. Photo by Timothy Campbell, courtesy of Shaun Clancy.
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he picked up my arm, boy, it hurt! I let out a yelp and Ed dropped my arm. He couldn’t work the rest of the day and neither could I, ’cause it hurt. He didn’t mean to do that, of course. That was the only mistake he ever made. RF: Was the horse in rehearsals with you? AY: Yes. We rehearsed each scene first. RF: Did you do any pilots for TV shows that never happened? AY: Yes. Right after the Ed show, I did a show as a favor for our agents. Mister Wonderful, it was called. Oh, he was a superman. He did all sorts of wonderful things. RF: Why wasn’t it picked up? AY: I don’t know what happened to it. I was out of the business by then. RF: Are there any shows or roles you auditioned for that you didn’t get that you wish you did? AY: No. I had a bit of a name then, so I didn’t audition. I wanted to do plays, and so I went to Broadway. I did a play—a very successful play—called The Girl in the Freudian Slip. We did very well breaking it in. It was a funny show. We got to New York, and the big critic there didn’t like Hollywood people coming out. We did about five
preview shows and it went over very well with great audiences. We played the Palm Springs Theater, and all of the people came to that. They put up the money for our going into Broadway. After that, the review came out from the Broadway critic and he panned us, which was terrible! I’ll never forget. I sat with the wife of the producer— the money man—we were sitting in Sardi’s Restaurant, reading the review and trying to pick out any word that would be able to be used—careful—wonderful, but he had been so careful not to use any of those words. We couldn’t do a thing. Even the Palm Springs people called up and said they would like to finance the show for the whole summer. ’Cause if that show plays all summer, it’ll be a big hit in New York. And the producer turned it down! He said no, because he wanted to get the money for his next show, somehow and so, unfortunately we had to close. But it’s made more money for the writer in summer theater than any of those other shows. RF: Let’s close with a Mister Ed question: Do you ever catch yourself watching an old episode? AY: Whenever I can. I just love to see them, ’cause it was quite an experience. A devotee of old-time radio, SHAUN CLANCY owns a heating and air conditioning business in the Seattle area and interviews many radio, screen, and comic-book personalities. Join us next issue as Shaun interviews The Gong Show’s Unknown Comic!
RETRO BRIT
The Annuals of Time BY IAN MILLSTED
Where can you find hardback books dedicated to the favorite television shows of your youth? Where can you find previously unseen adventures of the likes of Starsky and Hutch or Magnum P.I. or, even, Inch High Private Eye? Where are there articles about Max, the Bionic Dog, or puzzles and games about Wagon Train? Or, how about Huckleberry Hound playing cricket? All these, and more, were to be found in the hardcover annuals produced in vast quantities by British publishers from the Fifties to the Eighties (and beyond, albeit in diminishing numbers). Retro Brit once more steps into the place where British and American pop culture meet to explore this phenomenon. The annual publication is a long-established tradition and RetroFan readers will probably be aware, for example, that Sherlock Holmes first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. The British children’s annuals were a distinct sub-category of this publishing phenomenon. Unlike the annuals produced by U.S. comic publishers, which have typically been in the form of a higher-page-count version of an ongoing comic book, British annuals were made to look like books rather than magazines. They were anywhere from 60 to 160 pages and usually contained a mix of comic-form stories, text stories with
(ABOVE) The Starship Enterprise’s voyagers, as seen on the front and wacky back covers of the 1976 Star Trek Annual. (RIGHT) The Bionic Dog, from the pages of The Bionic Woman Annual #2 from 1978. Star Trek © CBS. Bionic Woman © NBC Universal. All images accompanying this article are courtesy of Ian Millsted.
illustrations, features, puzzles, coloring pages, photo features, and anything else the editors thought the readers would like. They were magazine sized in dimensions, rather than comic-book sized and bound between hardcovers rendering an artifact that was made to last. While many of the annuals produced were based on British properties, RetroFan readers may be interested to know how many of these books were based on U.S. TV shows. Kids cared little about the point of origin of TV shows. They just knew what they liked, and if they liked it, then publishers were only too happy to step in to supply spin-off books, if there was a profit to be made. So, how did this work? The annuals were usually published in August or September each year with a cover date for the following year. So, for example, Star Trek Annual 1977 would be in the shops around September 1976. This gave a long lead time for the Christmas market to which they were marketed. Because they were priced as the hardback books they were, the main purchasers were parents and grandparents who bought them as Christmas gifts. One aspect of this was that the adults buying the books liked to think they were buying something like a “proper book” for the kids so the publishers made sure to include a fair proportion of text stories and features. Enough, at least, that once unwrapped on Christmas morning they would keep the recipient busy for the next few days and buy the adults some peace and quiet. Once the holiday season was done the booksellers quickly remaindered the leftover stock. Kids wise to this tactic could take Christmas gift money and buy themselves another few annuals for less than half price, as often as not. One risk of this business model was that the lead time meant the annuals has to be started RETROFAN
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TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com
THE
PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION
by STEPHAN FRIEDT & JON B. COOKE
Author STEPHAN FRIEDT shares the story of the meteoric rise of the Schanes brothers’ California-based imprint PACIFIC COMICS, which published such legends as JACK KIRBY, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, STEVE DITKO, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE GRELL, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and DAVE STEVENS. From its groundbreaking 1981 arrival in the fledgling direct sales market, to a catastrophic, precipitous fall after only four years, THE PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION reveals the inside saga, as told to Friedt by BILL AND STEVE SCHANES, DAVID SCROGGY, and many of the creators themselves. It also focuses on the titles and the amazing array of characters they introduced to an unsuspecting world, including THE ROCKETEER, CAPTAIN VICTORY, MS. MYSTIC, GROO THE WANDERER, STARSLAYER, and many more. Written with the editorial assist of Eisner Award-winning historian JON B. COOKE, this retrospective is the most comprehensive study of an essential publisher in the development of the creator’s rights movement. Main cover illustration by DAVE STEVENS. NOW SHIPPING!
WORKING WITH DITKO by JACK C. HARRIS
WORKING WITH DITKO takes a unique and nostalgic journey through comics’ Bronze Age, as editor and writer JACK C. HARRIS recalls his numerous collaborations with legendary comics master STEVE DITKO! It features never-before-seen preliminary sketches and pencil art from Harris’ tenure working with Ditko on THE CREEPER, SHADE THE CHANGING MAN, THE ODD MAN, THE DEMON, WONDER WOMAN, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, THE FLY, and even Ditko’s unused redesign for BATMAN! Plus, it documents their work on numerous independent properties, and offers glimpses of original characters from Ditko’s drawing board that have never been viewed by even his most avid fans! This illustrated volume is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the creative comic book process by one of the industry’s most revered creators, as seen through the eyes of one of his most frequent collaborators! NOW SHIPPING!
Star Guider TM & © Jack C. Harris.
Shade TM & © DC Comics.
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THE CHILLINGLY WEIRD ART OF
MATT FOX
by ROGER HILL
MATT FOX (1906–1988) first gained notoriety for his jarring cover paintings on the pulp magazine WEIRD TALES from 1943 to 1951. His almost primitive artistry encompassed ghouls, demons, and grotesqueries of all types, evoking a disquieting horror vibe that no one since has ever matched. Fox suffered with chronic pain throughout his life, and that anguish permeated his classic 1950s cover illustrations and his lone story for CHILLING TALES, putting them at the top of all pre-code horror comic enthusiasts’ want lists. He brought his evocative storytelling skills (and an almost BASIL WOLVERTON-esque ink line over other artists) to ATLAS/MARVEL horror comics of the 1950s and ’60s, but since Fox never gave an interview, this unique creator remained largely unheralded—until now! Comic art historian ROGER HILL finally tells Fox’s life story, through an informative biographical essay, augmented with an insightful introduction by FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER also showcases all of the artist’s WEIRD TALES covers and interior illustrations, and a special Atlas Comics gallery with examples of his inking over GIL KANE, LARRY LIEBER, and others. Plus, there’s a wealth of other delightfully disturbing images by this grand master of horror—many previously unpublished and reproduced from his original paintings and art—sure to make an indelible imprint on a new legion of fans. NOW SHIPPING! (128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-120-2
WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON
BY WILL MURRAY I clearly recall the first time I saw a promo for an upcoming NBC TV show. I thought to myself, “Who would watch something called Miami Vice?” As it turned out, I would! I didn’t tune in right away. In those days, I wasn’t watching much TV. Months later, I caught a teaser for an upcoming episode so compelling I decided to check it out. It was a nail-biting hostagerescue piece called “The Maze.” I was hooked.
‘GOLD COAST’ ORIGINS
Miami Vice had its origins in a movie script called Gold Coast written by Anthony Yerkovich of Hill Street Blues fame. The title had to be changed for copyright reasons. But it survived as the name of the Organized Crime Bureau’s cover operation, Gold Coast Shipping Company. About this time, NBC president Brandon Tartikoff penned his now-famous “napkin” memo: “MTV cops.” The video music cable channel MTV was only three years old. “I do think you have to be cognizant that there is a whole generation of younger viewers who are not only watching these videos, but who may have been spoiled by the production values,” Tartikoff explained. “So we’re trying to incorporate these devices (LEFT) NBC wherever possible, without destroying executive the integrity of the show.” Brandon Enter producer-director Michael Tartikoff. IMDb. Mann, whose credits ran from Starsky & (RIGHT) Miami Hutch to Thief. Vice Executive “What they were looking to me to Producer Michael bring to the show was a very contempoMann. Gage Skidmore/ rary, highly stylized look,” he explained. Wikimedia Commons. Yerkovich was fascinated by South Florida’s changing face. The Mariel boatlift brought an influx of Cuban refugees and the drug trade was booming.
Promotional photo and logo for NBC’s Miami Vice, starring Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs. Miami Vice © NBCUniversal.
“I read a statistic that said one-third of the illegal revenues in the United States came out of South Florida,” he noted. “I wanted to explore the changes in a city that used to be a middle-class vacationland. Today Miami is like an American Casablanca, and it’s never really been on television.” Learning of asset seizure forfeiture, where the police confiscated ill-gotten gains and used them for undercover work, Yerkovich realized that justified his stars driving high-end cars and wearing high-fashion clothes and Rolex watches.
CASTING CROCKETT, TUBBS, AND COMPANY
The show was designed to explore the lives of a small undercover Miami anti-vice unit, but the star would be James “Sonny” Crockett, a detective who lived on a sailboat with a pet alligator in his double life as a hard-partying ocean guide of questionable means. His partner would be Ricardo Tubbs, a black New York cop who comes to Miami on a personal vendetta. Casting was critical to the show’s success. Scores of potential Crocketts and Tubbses were auditioned. NBC wanted Nick Nolte or Jeff Bridges. For a time, Larry Wilcox of CHiPs was under serious consideration, as was Mickey Rourke. Countless Black actors were auditioned for the part of Tubbs, Denzel Washington among them; Washington’s career had yet to take off. Surprisingly, Saundra Santiago was the first actor cast for the series, in the role of Gina Calabrese. Originally, she was Sonny’s steady love interest. “I was given third billing as the leading lady,” Santiago recalled. “It was supposed to be a part like Veronica Hamel’s on Hill Street Blues.” Casting Crockett and Tubbs proved tough. A roulette wheel of actors was tested until one pair clicked. RETROFAN
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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
The season ended with “Lombard,” in which former Chicago detective Dennis Farina played the titular mob boss, who had previously appeared. The episode ended with a strong hint that Al Lombard, who was forced to testify against another crime boss, was about to be hit.
A SLOW BURN
Early ratings were lackluster. But Miami Vice took off during the summer rerun season, which is where I came in. Nor was I alone. Not only in becoming a fan but also in being slow off the mark. For a show that became a tremendous hit and a landmark cultural icon, Miami Vice didn’t start catching on until the end of its first season. During that first year, a balance was struck between Crockett and Tubbs, the latter of whom Michael Mann once called “nobody’s Tonto.” Mann later acknowledged, “The equivalency lasted most of the first season, but for reasons that had to do with the two actors and one thing or the other, that eroded a little bit.” The Sonny-Gina relationship soon fell by the wayside under the inevitable necessity of propelling the lead into new romantic entanglements. “I decided to approach Gina in a kind of offbeat way,” Santiago observed. “I mean, here she slept with Crockett and feels kind of guilty about it because they work together. She likes him, she’s attracted to him, but knows she shouldn’t be involved with him.” By the time Miami Vice returned on September 27, 1985, everyone, it seemed, was watching it. “By the beginning of the second season,” recalled Don Johnson, “it had become phenomenally successful. But I didn’t really pay much attention to it. I just sort of kept my head down and kept working. I was the last one to know it was a hit.” Jan Hammer, who composed the synthesized score and incidental music, became hot in his own right, winning a Grammy for his score. The Miami Vice Soundtrack hit #1 on the Billboard Top Pop album chart. It eventually sold four million copies, going quadruple platinum. “It was very intense,” he reminisced. “The thing that made it work is that I was given complete artistic freedom. I was not locked into a ‘Miami Vice’ sound. There were weeks when the music was Afro-Cuban, jazz, then experimental electronic, even flat-out rocking. There was no need to worry about consistency. Every week 58
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Eagle-eyed RetroFans will recognize rocker Glenn Frey with Detectives Tubbs and Crockett in this promo photo from “Smuggler’s Blues,” Miami Vice’s 16th episode, first seen on February 1, 1985. (INSET) Frey’s “Smuggler’s Blues” record. IMDb. Miami Vice © NBCUniversal.
was different. I could respond to the songs that were placed in the show. When the score came out of the song, sometimes they almost blended together.” The producers credited Hammer with saving plot-murky episode 13 with his artful use of incidental music.
Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
Season Two opened with another two-hour episode in which Crockett and Tubbs go to New York to hunt the Revillas brothers, a gang of Colombian criminals who have been murdering Federal agents. Castillo was supposed to accompany them, but Olmos, ever protective of his character, put his foot down. “They wanted Castillo to go,” he revealed. “I told them, ‘Send anybody, but don’t send Castillo. He has to stay on the job in Miami. It’s what he would do.’” In the denouement, the behind-the-scenes villain is revealed, but he is never seen again, owing to the death of the actor playing the part, Poltergeist II’s Julian Beck.
CELEBRITY APPEARANCES
Dropped threads of continuity continued to be an issue with the series. In “Payback,” an imprisoned drug dealer commits suicide and blames Crockett for stealing some missing money. The episode ends with Crockett’s cover as Sonny Burnett exposed, and the money lost, with its owner, Mario Fuentes, still looking to reclaim it. But the sticky issues were never again addressed because singer Frank Zappa declined to reprise his role. It was one of many episodes where top musicians and sports figures played significant roles. Automaker Lee Iacocca and Watergate’s G. Gordon Liddy also played parts. Some could act, but a few couldn’t. Singer Jimmy Buffet wrote an episode that never went to camera. The role of a madam was written for Tina Turner, but that didn’t work out either.
In addition to their personal sex appeal, Sonny and Ricardo’s fabulous Eighties fashions helped make Miami Vice “must-see TV.” NBC publicity photo from the episode “Hit List,” originally aired on October 19, 1984. © NBCUniversal. Courtesy of Heritage.
(LEFT) Tubbs’ police badge prop, once used by Thomas on the series. (RIGHT) A jacket—with Sonny’s trademarked rolled-up sleeves—worn by Johnson on Miami Vice. Both, courtesy of Heritage.
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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
The series finale was titled “Freefall.” Over the course of the season, beginning with the death of Caitlin, Sonny Crockett has been increasingly burning out. Now, the issue comes to a head when he and Tubbs are assigned to protect South American dictator Manuel Borbon, who has inside information about major drug cartels. But the politics of the situation are complicated, and the two detectives end up in a shoot-out that mirrors the one in which they failed to bring down Calderone’s escaping seaplane in the series pilot. This time they succeed, but at the cost of their thankless jobs. Crockett and Tubbs quit, and in a farewell scene with a twist, Crockett is about to drive south of the border to seek work when Tubbs shows up and is invited along. The two partners are last seen hitting the road. In a callback to Anthony Yerkovich’s original vision for the series, the finale was written with three different endings. In one, both Crockett and Tubbs were killed. In another, only Tubbs loses his life. In the end, the producers went with the third option, a happy ending—of sorts. Johnson had no regrets. “It’s time to move on to other things,” he stated. “To this point, we’ve told all the Vice stories our writers back in Hollywood can come up with.” One episode, “Too Much, Too Late,” was never aired by NBC over content issues. Another script, “The Edge,” went unfilmed. In later years, Don Johnson claimed that NBC had begged him to continue playing Sonny Crockett in any format he wished, such as TV movies, but he just couldn’t continue being the character. After
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five years of playing the hottest guy on TV, he was burnt out—just like Sonny himself. Some 20 years later, Michael Mann directed a Miami Vice theatrical movie, which unfortunately bombed. Like many fans of the TV show, I went to see it but the film left me cold. However, on subsequent revisits, I have warmed up to the 2006 version, which starred Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as Crockett and Tubbs and recycled the classic episode, “Smuggler’s Blues.” Mann wanted Edward James Olmos back as Lieutenant Castillo to oversee two young new vice detectives. When Olmos declined, the filmmaker elected to do a strict remake, recasting the original characters. Rumors of TV revivals have abounded in recent years, with Vin Diesel and Don Johnson, separately headlining. All have fizzled out. As much as I’d like to see a new incarnation of Miami Vice, we’ll have to settle for the original. And that’s not a bad thing at all. Amazingly, nearly 40 years later, the unshaven look popularized by Don Johnson is still with us. Even Superman sports it in the person of Tyler Hoechlin on the CW. WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze. com) series of novels, which stars Doc Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider, and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary artist Steve Ditko.
ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING
PART 4
BY ANDY MANGELS From 1973 to 1983 on ABC-TV Saturday mornings, the Super Friends series had gone through numerous title changes, two cancellations, and tonal changes that seemed multiversal—not to mention having an entire season animated but never aired in the United States! DC’s pantheon of Justice League members—Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, aided by the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna, with their space monkey, Gleek— seemed as if retirement might be coming for them as they exited the air in Fall 1983. But DC Comics and Hanna-Barbera Productions weren’t quite ready to let their super-heroic cash cow go, and with the help of a toy company, 1984 looked promising for a fresh new look at the venerable series… In the previous three issues, we examined the first decade of Super Friends (SuperFriends in some incarnations), ABC’s 13-year Saturday morning hit. And now read on as Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning wraps up your guide to the longest-running animated super-hero series ever!
THEY ALSO HAD ‘THE POWER’
In 1982, toy company Mattel introduced a line of musclebound action heroes that combined barbarian action with sciencefiction and magic. The Masters of the Universe line saw the adventures of He-Man and his fellow heroes fighting against Skeletor and his evil cronies, for control of Eternia. The toy line was a massive hit, jolted into the stratosphere with Filmation’s He-Man and the
Masters of the Universe animated series, which debuted in the fall of 1983 with a five-day-a-week schedule. [Editor’s note: See RetroFan #22 for a Masters of the Universe history.] Suddenly, every toy company was looking for its own franchise that could turn kids into piggy banks, leading to toy lines and syndicated series for Inspector Gadget, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Transformers, and eventually Thundercats, She-Ra: Princess of Power, Care Bears, My Little Pony, Jem, and dozens of others. Kenner Products was still producing the popular Star Wars line of action figures, but with no new movies on the horizon, that line was dying. In 1982, they approached DC with a pitch to get the master toy license. Mego Corporation had been producing DC character eight-inch dolls for most of the Seventies, but they closed their offices and declared bankruptcy in 1982. Kenner competed against Mattel for the DC master license—except for DC’s barbarian figures Warlord, Arak, and Hercules, concurrently being produced by Remco—but Kenner did a massive presentation, utilizing DC Style Guide art by José Luis García-López and pitching at least three years’ of figures, as well as playsets and action vehicles.
Cover to Kenner’s pitch for a DC character master toy license (competing against Mattel) which was ultimately successful. TM & © DC Comics. RETROFAN
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Kenner repainted a Star Wars figure as Captain Marvel (Shazam!) and attached him to a rod device to simulate flying, repainted some of their Glamour Gals dolls to resemble Wonder Woman and Supergirl, and added a wheel in a Mego Pocket Heroes Batman that allowed him to punch. This latter was crucial to Kenner’s presentation as they wanted the emphasis on the line to be that each hero had a “Super Powers Feature” that would enhance kids’ play. A line of girls’ 12-inch fashion dolls was also planned, as well as a line of “Super Jrs.” baby toys and a “Micro Collection” with die-cast features, as Kenner had done with Star Wars. Kenner was awarded the license, but the new line—titled “Super Powers Collection”—wouldn’t be ready until Spring 1984. This gave DC time to go to Hanna-Barbera with the news, and for the animation company to pitch their old pals at ABC. In quick succession, a new SuperFriends series was ordered to tie in with the toys.
‘SUPERFRIENDS: THE LEGENDARY SUPER POWERS SHOW’
(ABOVE) Title card to Hanna-Barbera’s SuperFriends: The For this season of SuperFriends, a secondary title was added, to Legendary Super Powers Show. (BELOW) The fearsome and tie in to the toy line. Thus was born SuperFriends: The Legendary power-mad Darkseid (LEFT) and his cruel, brutish son Super Powers Show. The opening titles featured new music by Hoyt Kalibak stand before a “Star Gate” encircled by sparkly Curtin, with an announcer only repeating the title at the end. The lights. TM & © DC Comics. sequence featured an animated short of the various DC heroes fighting a giant robot and the evils of Darkseid, Brainiac, Luthor, DeSaad, and Kalibak. The sequence also featured the introduction of new hero character Firestorm (who had appeared in the comics since 1978), as well as showcasing Wonder Woman’s new bodice, emblazoned with a WW symbol (which she had adopted in 1982). Oddly, although both were featured in the opening, Aquaman and the Flash never appeared in this season at all, and the opening featured old designs for Lex Luthor and Brainiac that didn’t correspond to their new toy looks (based on new comic designs by George Pérez and Ed Hannigan). SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show debuted on September 8, 1984, with a two-part story called “The Bride of Darkseid.” In it, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World villain and his grotesque son Kalibak used their “Star Gates” (known in comics as Boom Tubes) to teleport from Apokolips to Earth to capture Transmuted from Wonder Woman, upon whom Darkseid the comics page to developed a crush. The Justice Leaguers, television, Firestorm meanwhile, met Firestorm, a young hero could change the who could transmute matter, and who was components of any really a teen boy named Ronnie Raymond, inorganic matter. He fused with the mind of Professor Raymond was secretly student Stein. Ronnie Raymond, with “Darkseid was a difficult character to the mind of Professor get past Broadcast Standards at that time,” Martin Stein linked in! said writer Alan Burnett. “When they saw TM & © DC Comics. 66
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Writer Alan Burnett.
Darkseid (LEFT) encounters the more fearsomelooking new style Brainiac. (INSET) Animation model sheet of the old style Brainiac. TM & © DC Comics.
the initial drawings of him they were, ‘Oh, this is much too scary for our audience’... The biggest fight we had was getting his name accepted… Darkseid, with the spelling being S-E-I-D… they thought it was going to offend their German viewers! So they refused to allow us to use the name… I am told that that question about the spelling of his name actually went to the President of ABC to decide!” Fellow writer John Semper stressed the frustration with Standards. “From the moment you had an idea for a cartoon, the entire process in a way was just a giant beatdown. It was, ‘Let’s see how many ways we can find to take the life out of what it is you’re writing and trying to bring to the screen.’” Viewers of the season saw changes all throughout: Although the episode title cards still featured Wonder Woman’s eagle bodice, they also now featured writer’s credits; the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna—with Gleek—were in only a trio of stories; and the so-called “ethnic” heroes of color—Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, Samurai, and El Dorado—featured far more regularly. Green Lantern got one cameo appearance, but previous teammates such as Atom,
Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Rima the Jungle Girl were nowhere to be seen. Semper talked about the ethnic characters on the DVD set. “Everything the network did was very ham-fisted. There was nothing subtle about anything they did. So consequently, just as you got ham-fisted plots and kind of ham-fisted handling of super-heroes, you got this sort of brute force injection of ethnic characters into SuperFriends… Are the characters sort of ludicrous and ridiculous? Yes. Are they at a disadvantage because we don’t know their backstory, they don’t have backstories? Of course. Really all that they were, were cartoon character versions of ethnicities.” More DC villains did appear, including Flash villain Mirror Master and Superman foe Mr. Mxyzptlk, and clear stand-ins for
(INSET) Writer John Semper. (RIGHT) (LEFT TO RIGHT) Batman, Superman, and Firestorm with two heroes of color: El Dorado and Black Vulcan. TM & © DC Comics.
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