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March 2024 No. 31 $10.95

Say, kids, what time is it? IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!

Magic Memories of

This… is… the… ALVIN SHOW

ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY By Herbie J Pilato

Saturday morning’s K-9 crusader… RUN, JOE, RUN

Behind the scenes of the classic thriller

A Bewitched 60th Anniversary Celebration!

with NICHOLAS MEYER, MALCOLM McDOWELL & DAVID WARNER

Visit Camp Crystal Lake (if you dare!) • Peter Gunn • Girder and Panel Building Sets & more! Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury

Elizabeth Montgomery photograph courtesy of the Classic TV Preservation Society. The Alvin Show © Ross Bagdasarian. Run, Joe, Run © William P. D’Angelo Productions. Time Af ter Time © Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.

New from TwoMorrows!

ALTER EGO #187

ALTER EGO #189

BRICKJOURNAL #84

KIRBY COLLECTOR #89

KIRBY COLLECTOR #90

JOHN ROMITA tribute issue! Podcast recollections recorded shortly after the Jazzy One’s passing by JOHN ROMITA JR., JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, BRIAN PULIDO, ROY THOMAS, JAIMIE JAMESON, JOHN CIMINO, STEVE HOUSTON, & NILE SCALA; DAVID ARMSTRONG’s mini-interview with Romita; John Romita’s ten greatest hits; plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, & more!

STEFAN FORMENTANO masterminds the enormous LEGO city NEW HASHIMA, one of the biggest LEGO Fan community builds ever done! Plus builds by SIMON LIU, BLAKE FOSTER, and others! Also: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

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!

WHAT IF KIRBY... hadn’t been stopped by his rejected Spider-Man presentation? DC’s abandonment of the Fourth World? The ill-fated Speak-Out Series? FREDRIC WERTHAM’s anti-comics crusade? The CIA’s involvement with the Lord of Light? Plus a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other columnists, a classic Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, & more! Cover inks by DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO!

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Focuses on great early science-fiction author EDMUND HAMILTON, who went on to an illustrious career at DC Comics, writing Superman, Batman, and especially The Legion of Super-Heroes! Learn all about his encounters with RAY BRADBURY, MORT WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, et al—a panoply of titans! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

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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The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

Issue #31 March 2024

Columns and Special Features

Departments

Retrotorial

Retro Television Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery

Voger’s Vault of Vintage Varieties It’s Howdy Doody Time!

Too Much TV Quiz TV characters’ hairstyles

Retro Fad Hula Hoops

Oddball World of Scott Shaw! The Alvin Show

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Girder and Panel Building Sets

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon Peter Gunn

RetroFanmail

ReJECTED

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning D’Angelo Productions

Retro Sci-Fi Time After Time’s Nicholas Meyer, Malcolm McDowell, and David Warner

RetroFan™ issue 31, March/April 2024 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage 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 Only. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Elizabeth Montgomery photograph courtesy of the Classic TV Preservation Society. The Alvin Show © Ross Bagdasarian. Run, Joe, Run © William P. D’Angelo Productions. Time After Time © Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2024 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

BY MICHAEL EURY

Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Michael Eury Kellie Gormly Andy Mangels Will Murray Herbie J Pilato Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw! Anthony Taylor Mark Voger DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER Eric Nolen-Weathington SPECIAL THANKS Mark Arnold Andrew Bullock Hake’s Auctions Heritage Auctions Tanya Jones VERY SPECIAL THANKS Malcolm McDowell Nicholas Meyer David Warner (In Memoriam)

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RETROFAN

Publisher John Morrow and I, when developing this magazine some six years ago, originally planned to anchor RetroFan to Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties pop culture. That decision was predicated both upon the eras of our mutual childhood and adolescent years and our imagined target audience of readers who were similarly saying goodbye to middle age but were interested in “the crazy, cool culture we grew up with.” But we’ve since discovered we can’t ignore the Fabulous Fifties, the decade whose innovations— particularly the evolution of television into mass-media omnipresence and the emergence of rock ’n’ roll—shaped what was to follow. At first I hesitated when I started receiving pitches from writers wanting to cover material from the Fifties in RetroFan. But I soon gave in. And I’m glad I did. What little I experienced firsthand of the Fifties was while I was in diapers. So the stories behind the TV, toys, films, fashions, and music of that decade are new to me, as they no doubt are to most of you. Just about everyone reading this magazine has heard of Howdy Doody, the long-running children’s show from the earliest days of television. But most of us grew up with Captain Kangaroo and Shari Lewis, or Mister Rogers and Big Bird, so this issue’s coverage of one of the first kids’ shows is remarkably fresh to us. Same with Peter Gunn, Blake Edwards’ jazzy, noirish P.I. drama, which most RetroFan’s readers know only through reruns or streaming, if at all. Even my own “RetroFad” column this issue involves the Fifties, when the Hula Hoop craze started (although that topic was inspired by another of this issue’s features, on The Alvin Show—and if you don’t already know the connection between the two, you will after reading the articles). Yet we’re not examining pop culture only through black-and-white lenses this issue, as you’ll find lots of colorful Sixties and Seventies material ahead, as well as a visit to Camp Crystal Lake, ground zero for the Eighties’ slasher film Friday the 13th. Who needs a time machine when you’ve got RetroFan? Amid this issue’s contents I confess my admiration of the cover-featured star of the beloved sitcom Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery. I grew up watching her as TV housewifewitch Samantha Stephens, and was enchanted by her earnestness and beauty. “Samantha” was one of my first TV crushes, the one I never quite got over (sorry, Ellie May Clampett). I recall feeling personally saddened when NEXT ISSUE Ms. Montgomery passed, as if I’d lost a friend. Many of you felt the same way. And I’ve also been told by several of my 60-ish male friends that they also never got over their childhood crushes on this amazing woman. Elizabeth Montgomery also put a spell on Hollywood journalist and producer Herbie J Pilato, a guest to our pages this issue. His portrait of the late actress is intimate and inviting—you’ll feel as if you were sitting next to him during his encounters with the star of Bewitched. This issue RetroFan is proud to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bewitched, as the enduring sitcom premiered on September 17, 1964. “Sixty years?” you shrug, or maybe sigh? Yes, you are getting old. But you’re getting old among friends, your fellow RetroFans. So get ready for another groovy grab-bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with!

March 2024

RETRO TELEVISION

60th Anniversary Celebration PART ONE

What It Was Like to Meet ‘Samantha’

(BACKGROUND) The eternally bewitching Elizabeth Montgomery.

I’ll never forget the day I first heard Elizabeth Montgomery’s voice on my “Big ’80s” answering machine, trailing off and on tape, in bits and pieces, with a chipper, near stuttering rhythm. For months, I was attempting to contact the iconic star of Bewitched, which originally aired on ABC-TV from 1964 to 1972. William Asher, her former husband and the show’s core producer/director, had been playing matchmaker for us, recommending that she speak with me. “You really should talk to Herbie,” Asher told Elizabeth on more than one occasion. “He is sincerely concerned with this entity known as Bewitched.” “He never tells me that I should talk to anyone,” Elizabeth would later tell me upon our first meeting. But she talked with me. Elizabeth welcomed me into her hushed world. I was enamored with the rise, demise, and rebirth of Bewitched, and she was intrigued. She marveled at my appreciation of not only her most famous show, but her

Classic TV Preservation Society (CTVPS).

My Magical Encounters with Bewitched Star Elizabeth Montgomery BY HERBIE J PILATO RETROFAN RETROFAN

March March 2024

retro television

varied accomplishments, talents, and charitable ways. Initially reticent then unrestrained, she, for the first time in 20 years, offered in-depth conversations about her life and career. She explained during the first of what would become four interviews in the spring and summer of 1989: “It’s a strange thing... I loathe to chat away about me. I’ve never liked it. I always hate interviews. I just want to act, and do the best job I can. Hopefully, people will appreciate it. That’s what my job is. It isn’t sitting down and talking about me. If I were a gardener [which she fancied herself as around her home in Beverly Hills], I would be out there trying to make gardens as pretty as I could, and not expect people to come up to me and ask a lot of questions. What it boils down to is this: It’s always easier for me to talk about other things than it is to talk about me.” Elizabeth described our conversations as “cathartic.” She spoke of performing her legendary Bewitched role as Samantha Stephens, the witch-with-a-twitch; her famous father, film and TV idol Robert Montgomery; her childhood; years of education; early motion pictures, stage, and television appearances. She addressed what it meant to be an actress; her friendships with President John F. Kennedy (who was assassinated on November 22, 1963—the day rehearsals began for Bewitched) and Carol Burnett (her co-star in the 1963 movie Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed? and her frequent opponent on games shows like TV’s Password, which Elizabeth loved to play). Elizabeth also discussed her Bewitched co-stars, including Dick York and Dick Sargent (who shared the role of Darrin Stephens, Samantha’s mortal husband), Agnes Moorehead (who played Endora, Samantha’s feisty supernatural mother), and David White (who played Darrin’s selfabsorbed but lovable ad-man boss Larry Tate). She talked about being “Queen of the Witches” on Bewitched, and her post-Bewitched small-screen films (for which she was deemed Queen of the TV Movies, long before Jane Seymour, Jaclyn Smith, Lindsay Wagner, or Valerie Bertinelli). Elizabeth addressed all she did and did not understand about herself and her massive following; all she gave, all she became, all she hoped to be, all she was: a wife, a mother, a friend, a TV legend, a pop-culture icon, a courageously bold endorser of human rights.

THE FIRST TIME

Bewitched’s Samantha Stephens, one of TV’s first independent women, takes a stand. CTVPS.

My initial interview with Elizabeth transpired on April 18, 1989, three days after her 56th birthday, following months of leaving messages with her answering service, and never receiving a response. But then one day, upon noticing the flashing light on my answering machine, I pressed play and heard: “Hi. It’s Lizzie Montgomery. We’ve been missing each other. Well—you’ve been missing me. I’m finally back for a while. I will give you a call again. You call me. I’ll call you. Hopefully, we’ll be in touch. [pause] This is crazy. [pause, with a smile in her voice, then adding] Okay. Bye-bye.” Firstly, it was astonishing to me she referred to herself as “Lizzie” in such a casual, familiar way, as if we had known each other for years—which, in a way, we did. But the crazy reference was a nod to the mere fact that I wanted to write about Bewitched and, that upon phoning me, she

retro television

heard on my machine the Bewitched theme, punctuated by the nose-twitch xylophone sound from the show’s opening credits, pristinely timed with the phone beeper signal instruction to leave a message. Because this transpired in the pre-high-tech, non-smartphone days, it was quite a challenge to coordinate and record that audible welcome. At the time, I was living in Santa Monica, California, in a tiny studio apartment. The moment Elizabeth had phoned, I was doing my laundry in the shared utility room of my apartment building. After folding my clothes, I returned to my apartment, called her back, and simply said, “I’m so very sorry that I missed your call. I was doing my laundry.” To which she replied, “As well you should.” We both chuckled, and from that moment on, we became friends. Elizabeth was simply “terrific,” a word that both she and Samantha frequently used. She was a wonderful person; down to earth, and unaffected by the Hollywood machine. I made that observation from the moment I drove up to her gated mansion in Beverly Hills, reached over to the guestannouncement speaker, rang the bell, and heard her say, “Hello.” “Hi,” I replied. “It’s Herbie J Pilato.” “Oh, yes. Come on,” was her response (which later became, “Oh, goody,” whenever she heard it was I in the driveway). I then continued up the long private road to her front door with four new tires on my 1981 Buick Regal, because I wanted the car to look nice. I passed a large tennis court, and a well-manicured garden, and closed in on a somewhat disheveled garage that housed a new Rolls Royce with a license plate that read, Bent Liz (as in Bentley). “How funny,” I thought. That was so in tune with the amiable personality that I had come to know by then, if only through watching Bewitched and talking with just a few of Elizabeth’s former Bewitched co-stars (some of whom refused to talk with me until she said, but we’ll get to that later). I soon approached her front door, rang the bell, and there she was: Elizabeth Montgomery, the love of my TV life—and of my magical dreams. I was simply stunned upon seeing this simply stunning woman. There’s just no other way to say it. But then she said, “Hi,” forthrightly, and in placing her hand out in kind, added, “…pleased to meet you.”

In reply, I went on to explain my Bewitched obsession. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m sure it went something like this: “Well—the show is really much more than just a sitcom about a witch. She’s first and foremost a woman, who happens to be a witch. And she loves this regular guy for who he is, and not for what he could do for her. And together they prove that any marriage can work, despite their differences, or whatever diverse challenges come their way. That’s really what the show is about… prejudice… looking past differences, and concentrating on what makes people the same.” It was Elizabeth who now appeared stunned. She sat back and replied simply with an, “Oh… okay,” and we became friends. My words were earnest, and she knew it. And we went on to have a wonderful two-hour conversation about Bewitched and her early life and career, with three more two-hour sessions to follow.

GIFTED

To ensure that our first encounter was memorable, I had prepared a few gifts for Elizabeth, planning to offer them after our initial discussion had ended. I did not want her to feel overwhelmed. I had heard of her sensitivity to and fear of the press, due to being raised in the public eye as the daughter of famed movie and film star Robert Montgomery. As it turned out, I became the first journalist to whom Elizabeth granted an in-depth interview in over 20 years. So, it was only upon completion of our monumental conference that I turned to Elizabeth and said, simply, “I have something for you.” I proceeded to take out from the black duffel bag I’d brought along a gold-framed inscription of a letter I wrote to her, which I had commissioned a calligrapher to prepare, along with a fine-crystal unicorn (poor William Asher just got brownies) that I had purchased. I knew that Samantha was fond of unicorns. But it wasn’t until speaking with Bewitched writer Richard Baer who

AND THEN IT HAPPENED

Elizabeth welcomed me inside the front door. I followed her into the living room, and then… it happened. I can’t believe it happened. But it happened. I did something really silly. I tripped over her coffee table. Fortunately, I didn’t break anything—the table or my legs. But I at least broke the ice. Elizabeth giggled like a little girl at my gaffe, and we eventually sat down, and the first question she asked me was, “Why are you doing this?” In other words, she was wondering why I had decided to write a book about a TV show that ended its original run some 17 years before; a production that she had long-distanced herself from for as long a time.

Elizabeth’s title set-up cel from Bewitched, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for the show intro. Bewitched © Sony Pictures Television. Courtesy of Heritage. RETROFAN

March 2024

retro television

life as a housewife) on-screen, repetitive themes abounded in Montgomery’s charmed, yet complex life behind the scenes. And while Bewitched would later be replicated by TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie [see RetroFan #18—ed.], Nanny and the Professor, as well as the short-lived late-1970s Bewitched spin-off Tabitha, which featured Lisa Hartman as the grown-up edition of Samantha’s daughter (originally played by twins Erin and Diane Murphy), in retrospect, another one of Montgomery’s early TV guest-star appearances foreshadowed to some extent her role on Bewitched. In a relatively risqué race-oriented episode of 77 Sunset Strip titled “White Lie,” which aired October 25, 1963, Montgomery portrayed Charlotte DeLavalle, the conflicted half-white/half-black granddaughter of a (LEFT) Elizabeth in her Emmy-nominated episode of The character named Celia Jackson, who was played by the Untouchables, which featured her future Bewitched co-star David iconic African-American actress Juanita Moore. White. (RIGHT) Elizabeth in her famed “Two” episode of The Twilight “White Lie” addressed the theme of prejudice, which Zone. CTVPS. Moore had experienced in real life, and had explored with her Oscar-nominated performance as Annie Johnson in the 1959 groundbreaking motion picture Imitation of Life. Besides Johnny Cool, Montgomery’s feature films include 1955’s The theme of prejudice was also at the core of Bewitched: As The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (with Gary Cooper and Jack Lord), a witch in a mortal world, Samantha felt out of place. But at the and 1963’s Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (co-starring Dean Martin same time, she and Darrin loved each other despite their cultural and Carol Burnett). differences and displayed one of television’s first mixed marriages. Beyond her multi-Emmy nominations for Bewitched, MontThe episode “Sisters at Heart,” Elizabeth’s favorite episode gomery also garnered Emmy nods for roles in TV shows such as (which premiered on Christmas Eve, 1970), involved the friendship The Untouchables [see RetroFan #21—ed.], in which she played a between Tabitha (as played by Erin Murphy) and her friend Lisa, prostitute in “The Rusty Heller Story” (alongside future Bewitched co-star David White), and in groundbreaking TV movies A Case of who happened to be African American (as played by Venetta Rape (1974) and The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975). Rogers). Elizabeth was also lauded for mostly-silent-though-strongBewitched began rehearsals on November 22, 1963, the fateful willed roles, such as “The Woman” alongside another pre-superstar day President John F. Kennedy, an advocate for Civil Rights, was Charles Bronson (as “The Man”) in The Twilight Zone Adam-and-Eveassassinated—a horrific incident that occurred approximately one like episode, “Two” (which originally aired on CBS on September 15, year after that 77 Sunset Strip episode premiered. 1951). Moreover, Montgomery and William Asher were good friends Montgomery donned brunette hair as that raven-haired, with JFK, as Asher served as director of the President’s famed fiercely independent “Woman,” which in one sense foreshadowed birthday bash at which Marilyn Monroe sang a breathy “Happy shades of her performance as Samantha’s twin cousin Serena Birthday.” on Bewitched. And It was an increasingly volatile era with race rioting, rampant while both Serena drug abuse, and the Vietnam War, against which Montgomery and Samantha are protested and as a result, received death threats. Into this considered liberated, tumultuous mix were the subsequent assassinations of Robert F. empowered females Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., each of whom, like JFK and (it’s Samantha’s choice Montgomery, were liberal-minded. to live the mortal Shortly before Juanita Moore died in 2012, she offered some perspective on it all by sharing what it was like to work with Elizabeth: (LEFT) Elizabeth with Efrem “She was talented… she was an actress… a fine Zimbalist, Jr. in the “White actress! She left this world too young… she was so Lie” episode of 77 Sunset Strip. gifted… such a divine person… so easygoing. At that (INSET) Oscar®time of 77 Sunset Strip, we [as actresses] had limited nominated actress parts. She told me concerning our parts, ‘Juanita, walk Juanita Moore with it… feel free and walk with it.’ She looked me right played Elizabeth’s in the eye and that’s what she said to me. And I had grandmother in the never had that said to me before—like she said it. And episode. CTVPS. we did just that in that episode—we walked with it.” 10

RETROFAN

March 2024

retro television

Moore, whose additional credits include the Elizabeth Montgomery 1966 feature film The Singing Nun (which also starred with each of her four Bewitched actress Agnes Moorehead), added: husbands. (CLOCKWISE “Everyone said that Elizabeth was stuck-up because FROM TOP LEFT) First of having her own show, but they [were] just jealous husband Fred Cammann. and very envious actors and nay-sayers. I think she Second husband Gig was good [as Samantha], and I think she could have Young. Third husband been better… if they [had] let her loose and allowed William Asher. Fourth her to stretch herself… and you saw that [when she husband Robert played] Serena [Samantha’s brunette twin-cousin]… but Foxworth. CTVPS. [because of] TV you have to tone [things] down. “Elizabeth was learned,” Moorehead concluded. “She was ahead of all of them out there in Hollywood… Plus, In Violence, Elizabeth portrayed yet another non-Samantha-like she was a nice young lady. To me, she was just like my child… it’s a character: a TV news writer whose liberal views sparked a brutal bond we had, ya know. She was a gift!” street gang attack. Other of Elizabeth’s co-stars includes husband and wife actors In an exclusive interview from 2011, Lin Bolen Wendkos, widow William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett [see RetroFan #9—ed.]. They to Paul, explained why she thought Elizabeth took such dramatic had known and worked with Elizabeth and her second husband Gig departures with her post-Bewitched roles: Young on Robert Montgomery Presents. “She earned the opportunity to do so by playing a very commerDaniels, best known for TV stints on St. Elsewhere, Boy Meets cial [character] like Samantha. In her mind, she may have wanted World, and Knight Rider (lending his voice for the KITT supercar), had to give something more of the talent that she was holding back. My also appeared with Elizabeth in A Case of Rape. Bartlett worked with husband worked with a lot of interesting actresses and Elizabeth both Elizabeth and Daniels in The Legend of Lizzie Borden, directed was definitely one of his favorites. She was a magnetic personality by Paul Wendkos, who later guided Elizabeth through the 1979 TV to look at.” movie, Act of Violence. Of the Lizzie Borden part in particular, Bolen said, Elizabeth “captured that character in a way that I don’t think anyone else could have. She became that person she was playing. How many actresses on TV ever did that? Not many. She gave herself to that murderous spirit, and she did not stop until the end. “Paul didn’t just stage a scene and then instruct an actor to walk through it. He let the actor find their moment before he staged the scene and Elizabeth played into that very well.” Bonnie Bartlett described Elizabeth as “an extraordinary actress. She was a major TV star and she could have done almost anything. She was very serious about her work and extraordinarily professional. Every little detail was important to her. (LEFT) Johnny Cool (1963), directed by future Bewitched director William “She was also a very cheerful person. She Asher, who she would fall in love with and marry. (RIGHT) Asher directs came to work with a good attitude, a really good Elizabeth in an early black-and-white Bewitched episode. Both, CTVPS. attitude. She really enjoyed being an actress. RETROFAN

March 2024

retro television

(LEFT) Elizabeth as Samantha and Agnes Moorehead as her meddling mother Endora bedazzled viewers on Bewitched. (CENTER) Elizabeth clowns with Dick York, the first Darrin on Bewitched. (RIGHT). Elizabeth with second Darrin, Dick Sargent, plus Erin Murphy (who played Tabitha) and David Mandell (who played Adam). CTVPS.

Elizabeth relished starring in The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975). CTVPS. The Legend of Lizzie Borden © Paramount Television.

RETROFAN

March 2024

To have viewers accept her in such an un-Samantha role and subsequently respect the theatrical diversity that she would bring to such a part as an accomplished actress was “probably one of her greatest victories in life,” Foxworth said. Robert Montgomery, however, thought the Borden storyline cut a little too close to home. Borden despised her father and stepmother and brutally murdered them while, by the time that movie aired, Elizabeth had still not fully forgiven Robert Montgomery for divorcing her mother, Elizabeth Allen, and marrying her stepmother Elizabeth Harkness. Upon learning Elizabeth Montgomery accepted and then relished her portrayal of the historic true-story role, Robert Montgomery blasted his daughter with a sardonic response. “Oh, you WOULD!” he said. Indeed, she would—and did.

Photo: Dan Holm.

“And I do know that Paul adored her, and loved working with her. He had that same kind of enthusiastic spirit that she had. The [Lizzie Borden] movie was one his favorite things that he had ever done.” In another exclusive interview from 2011, acclaimed actor Ronny Cox, who costarred with Elizabeth in A Case of Rape, once said, “Elizabeth didn’t want to walk around for the rest of her life being Samantha.” That definitely would have changed had Elizabeth not passed away so young. She had found a new regular TV role playing reallife crime-story reporter Edna Buchanan in a series of TV movies for CBS: Deadline for Murder (which aired posthumously in 1995) and The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1994). The Buchanon films were so popular, CBS was planning more, potentially transforming them into a weekly series. Those plans never came into fruition due to Elizabeth’s untimely demise. But as Robert Foxworth, her fourth and final husband, once said, “Elizabeth never wanted to get old.” So, she didn’t. However, Foxworth also once noted, specifically on A&E’s Biography of Elizabeth, that she was “thrilled” that she was able to surprise her fans and detractors with Emmy-nominated dramatic performances like that of Lizzie Borden.

Writer/producer HERBIE J PILATO is the author of the original Bewitched Book, which was published by Dell in 1992, revised by Summit Publishing in 1996 as Bewitched Forever, and revised yet again in 2004 by Tapestry Press. In 2012, Taylor Trade released Twitch Upon A Star, Pilato’s biography of Montgomery, and one year later, The Essential Elizabeth Montgomery, his encyclopedia of her life and career. Pilato is also the author of several other media tie-in books, and produces television shows, including Then Again with Herbie J Pilato, his classic TV talk show that began streaming on Amazon Prime in 2019. When Pilato met Elizabeth Montgomery in 1989, William Asher had been developing a new Bewitched spin-off series titled Bewitched Again. A few months before that meeting, Pilato had written a script for an intended TV reunion movie about the original Bewitched series. Elizabeth chose not to reprise her role as Samantha Stephens in that potential film, but she did agree to do so in just the pilot episode for Asher’s proposed new series. In Bewitched Again, Elizabeth would have introduced a new witch who fell in love with a new mortal husband. But as opposed to Darrin on the original series, the male spouse on the new show would have welcomed and encouraged his wife to do magic. Unfortunately, Bewitched Again, which was to be produced in the United Kingdom, lost its financing, and never materialized.

Y D O O D Y D TIME! W HO

VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES

IT’S

re e w l l e arab oneers l C d n ob a e-show pi B o l a f BY MARK VOGER Buf kiddi

When television was just a baby, it was often called a “visual medium.” (Back then, this was a novelty. Nowadays, everything is visual.) But the same could be said about radio, in the sense that we visualize what we hear with our “mind’s eye.” In the late Forties, as young listeners heard a bumpkin character they called Howdy Doody on a children’s radio show titled The Triple B Ranch, they each formed a mental picture of what this Howdy looked like. So when certain lucky children were privileged to witness Triple B Ranch broadcasts in person at the studio, they were in for a letdown. Where was Howdy? “This was radio, so we didn’t have a dummy or a puppet or anything,” said the show’s host, Robert Emil Schmidt (1917–1998), better known as Buffalo Bob Smith. “So the kids would see the show and they’d say, ‘Gee, we’re disappointed. We wanted to see Howdy Doody!’” One day soon, they would. Buffalo Bob and Howdy made the transition from radio to television with The Howdy Doody Show (1947–1960), a Western-themed kiddie program that may seem quaint and old-fashioned to modern audiences, but was immensely popular, and pioneering, in its day. Among the many precedents set by The Howdy Doody Show, it was television’s firstever network children’s program. Smith, Howdy’s straight man and human buddy, earned a place in the hearts of millions of children of the Fifties as host of the show, which aired live on NBC. Howdy was visually realized as a gap-toothed, freckle-faced puppet whose name supplied the answer to the question Smith would ask his “Peanut Gallery” of young fans at the start of more than 2,000 episodes: “Hey, kids, what time is it?” Populating the fictional town of Doodyville were characters both human and puppet: Clarabell the Clown, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, Phineas T. Bluster, Dilly Dally, Chief Thunderthud, Trapper John, Flub-a-Dub, Zippy the Chimp, and many others.

RADIO DAYS

Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody entertained a generation of children. © NBC Television.

Like so many pioneers of early television, Smith launched his career in the medium of radio. “I came to New York, to NBC, in 1946 to do an early morning radio show,” Smith told me in 1993. (I spoke with the entertainer on two occasions that year, once in person and once by telephone.) “I was on every morning, Monday through Saturday, from 6 to 9. In March of ’47, the boss said he wanted to clear the entire Saturday morning radio time—9 AM to 12 noon — for kids. This was radio, now. Frank Weaver did a half-hour. Weaver made a lot of great albums for kids. Ed Herlihy did a show for Horn and Hardart. Paul RETROFAN

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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

According to Anderson, he was able to shine as the mute clown—Clarabell honked a horn, à la Harpo Marx—by following Smith’s lead. “He and I got along very well,” Anderson said, “because he had a predominantly musical background, and I did too. That’s all I’d been doing before. So we took to each other. It was easy for us to do appearances and so forth. He had a way of charming people. He was good at remembering people’s names the first time he met ’em. If he saw ’em two years later, he remembered their names! People appreciated that. “He was interested in the scripts and the songs. We did a lot of music on the show. He wasn’t a boor about it or hard-nosed or anything. Nobody ever got mad on the show or yelled or screamed or any of that stuff, because we’d say, ‘Come on, now. Stop that.’ The whole show was very easy to work, from the production people to the cast.” The shows were broadcast live, so yes, bloopers happened. “There were things that went wrong,” Anderson said. “We were live as the devil all the time, so some things were bound to happen. They usually did. Or we got laughing so hard that we couldn’t go on. But we always managed to pull it off. “Our rehearsals were something else. All the people at NBC used to come down just to watch our rehearsals, because they were usually a little off the wall. Bob and Ray”— the comedy team of Bob

Elliott and Ray Goulding—“and whoever else was working there with the network would watch the Howdy show rehearse.” The immense popularity of The Howdy Doody Show became apparent to Anderson when he “stumped”—that is, traveled for personal appearances—on behalf of the network. “I never realized the power of our show or the importance of the show to certain people until I started going out for NBC,” he said. “They were opening a lot of new stations at that stage in television, you know, along the network line. So once in a while, I went out to see people in different cities that were opening stations. “That’s when I found out. We were just mobbed! They came to see Howdy and Clarabell more than the other big stars. So that’s when we first found out the impact the show had on kids.”

DOODY SWAG

The mass marketing of children’s entertainment goes back to Jackie Coogan paper dolls in the Twenties. But the trend really came to the fore during the Fabulous Fifties. A concurrent craze was built around the Disney series Davy Crockett starring Fess Parker. (Coonskin cap, anyone?) It’s no coincidence that Davy and Howdy were both Western-themed; the old-timey genre still ruled children’s entertainment, before the anything-goes Sixties came along and everything went kablooey. If a buck could be made, Howdy was there. His speckled face appeared on Welch’s Grape Juice, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, Royal

(LEFT) Howdy, Clarabell, and Flub-a-Dub grace the box of Milton Bradley’s Howdy Doody’s T.V. Game (1950). (RIGHT) Howdy grins at players on the spinner from game. © Milton Bradley.

(ABOVE) There were at least ten Howdy Doody Little Golden Books throughout the Fifties. Other formats included (CENTER) a Big Golden Book and (RIGHT) at least two Tell-A-Tale Books. 16

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(ABOVE) The mouth was moveable on this plastic Howdy Doody puppet from Tee-Vee Toys (1950s). (RIGHT) Peter Puppet’s Howdy Doody marionette (1950s) was close in form to the real Howdy.

Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

A REAL PRINCESS At 96 episodes, Judy Tyler (1932–1957) was the longest-running actress in the role of Princess Summerfall Winterspring on The Howdy Doody Show. Milwaukee native Tyler left the show to pursue a film career, and judging from some early achievements, she was well on her way. In 1957, Tyler landed two starring movie roles. She played the titular heroine in Howard W. Koch’s Bop Girl Goes Calypso—now, that’s a promising title—and was Elvis Presley’s leading lady (if not exactly a love interest) in Jailhouse Rock. But Tyler never lived to see the latter film’s release. Filming for Jailhouse Rock ended on June 14, 1957. On July 3, Tyler and her husband Gregory Lafayette were driving along Highway 30 in Wyoming when Lafayette swerved to avoid one car and collided with another. Tyler was killed instantly; Lafayette died the following day. A passenger in the other vehicle also perished. On the Elvis History Blog, Presley’s friend, disc jockey George Klein, is quoted: “He took it pretty tough.” Presley told a reporter for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis: “Nothing has hurt me as bad in my life. … I don’t believe I can stand to see the movie we made together now, just don’t believe I can.”

(ABOVE) Kagran Corporation’s Howdy Doody Puppet Show (1952). (ABOVE RIGHT) Hey, kids, eat lots of ice cream! Relax, Nutrition Police. Howdy also sold carrots. (CENTER) Howdy picnics with Princess Summerfall Winterspring on Adco’s lunch box (1955). (RIGHT) In Fifties television, it was not unusual to see a given show’s host do double duty as a pitchman. Here, Smith hawks Nabisco’s Wheat Honeys and Rice Honeys. © NBC Television.

(LEFT) Elvis Presley snuggles with Judy Tyler in Jailhouse Rock (1957). © Paramount Pictures. (RIGHT) Tyler played the title bopper in Bop Girl, also known as Bop Girl Goes Calypso (1957). © United Artists. Chocolate Pudding, Blue Bonnet Margarine, Hostess Cupcakes, Little Chief Apples, Burry’s Cookies, King Cone Corp.’s TV Popcorn, and, fittingly, Wonder Bread. From Doughnut Corp. of America alone there was Howdy Doody ice cream, twin pops, fudge bars, and something called Clarabell Banana Bars. Howdy’s face was plastered on things you’d never expect, such as adhesive bandage strips, Kunkel’s shoe polish, California carrots, and Kagran’s slipper socks. Many of these tie-in products were noted in a mailing to potential commercial partners bearing the slogan “Meet Howdy Doody, the super-popular salesman on strings.” A chilling sentence from that mailing: “It is even conceivable that your TV-tutored 2-year-old clearly enunciated ‘Howdy Doody’ before learning to say ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy.’” Yikes! But the forms in which Howdy and his fellow Doodyville denizens were most at home were toys, dolls, puppets, and games like Milton Bradley’s Howdy Doody’s T.V. Game and puppet sets from Tee-Vee Toys, Kagran, and Peter Puppet Playthings. There were Howdy Doody crayons, puzzles, coloring books, Shura-Tone “phonographs” (a.k.a. record players), Kohner Bros. cast figures, Model Headware Co.’s “novelty” hats, Rushton’s plush toys, cardboard masks, Howdy Doody’s Electric Doodler, and records such as Howdy Doody and the Air-O-Doodle and Howdy Doody’s Christmas Party. Howdy did exceptionally well in print. Dell Comics put out 38 issues of the Howdy Doody comic book (1950–1956), while Western Publishing put out at least ten Little Golden Books. There was also a Sunday comic strip from United Feature Syndicate (1950–1953). When this kind of money is involved, legal challenges will happen. There was a skirmish RETROFAN

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TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

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BACK ISSUE #153

ALTER EGO #190

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MITCH MAGLIO examines vintage jungle comics heroes (Kaänga, Ka-Zar, Sheena, Rulah, Jo-Jo/Congo King, Thun’da, Tarzan) with art by LOU FINE, WILL EISNER, FRANK FRAZETTA, MATT BAKER, BOB POWELL, ALEX SCHOMBURG, and others! Plus: the comicbook career of reallife jungle explorers MARTIN AND OSA JOHNSON, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

#191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and other surprises!

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES! A who’s who of artists of NEIL GAIMAN’s The Sandman plus a GAIMAN interview, Sandman Mystery Theatre’s MATT WAGNER and STEVEN T. SEAGLE, Dr. Strange’s nemesis Nightmare, Marvel’s Sleepwalker, Casper’s horse Nightmare, with SHELLY BOND, BOB BUDIANSKY, STEVE ENGLEHART, ALISA KWITNEY, and others! KELLEY JONES cover.

MARVELMANIA ISSUE! SAL BUSCEMA’s Avengers, FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain America, and KURT BUSIEK and ALEX ROSS’s Marvels turns 30! Plus: Marvelmania International, Marvel Age, Marvel Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Marvel Novels, and Marvel Value Stamps. Featuring JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE, ROY THOMAS, and more! SAL BUSCEMA cover.

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BACK ISSUE #154

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #91

BIG BABY ISSUE! X-Babies, the last days of Sugar and Spike, FF’s Franklin Richards, Superbaby vs. Luthor, Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine, Baby Snoots, Marvel and Harvey kid humor comics, & more! With ARTHUR ADAMS, CARY BATES, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, SCOTT LOBDELL, SHELDON MAYER, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and other grownup creators. Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS.

BRONZE AGE NOT-READY-FORPRIMETIME DC HEROES! Black Canary, Elongated Man, Lilith, Metamorpho, Nubia, Odd Man, Ultraa of Earth-Prime, Vartox, and Jimmy Olsen as Mr. Action! Plus: Jason’s Quest! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE DITKO, BOB HANEY, DENNY O’NEIL, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MARK WAID, and more ready-for-primetime talent. Retro cover by NICK CARDY.

THIS ISSUE IS HAUNTED! House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected, Marvel’s failed horror anthologies, Haunted Tank, Eerie Publications, House II adaptation, Elvira’s House of Mystery, and more wth NEAL ADAMS, MIKE W. BARR, DICK GIORDANO, SAM GLANZMAN, ROBERT KANIGHER, JOE ORLANDO, STERANKO, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and others. Unused cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ & WRIGHTSON.

BRONZE AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS! 1980s GNs from Marvel, DC, and First Comics, Conan GNs, and DC’s Sci-Fi GN series! With BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, JACK KIRBY, DON MCGREGOR, BOB McLEOD, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. WRIGHTSON cover.

30th Anniversary issue, with KIRBY’S GREATEST VICTORIES! Jack gets the girl (wife ROZ), early hits Captain America and Boy Commandos, surviving WWII, romance comics, Captain Victory and the direct market, his original art battle with Marvel, and finally winning credit! Plus MARK EVANIER, a colossal gallery of Kirby’s winningest pencil art, a never-reprinted SIMON & KIRBY story, and more!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #34 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #35 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #36

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DAN JURGENS talks about Superman, Sun Devils, creating Booster Gold, developing the “Doomsday scenario” with the demise of the Man of Steel, and more! Traverse DON GLUT’s “Glutverse” continuity across Gold Key, Marvel, and DC! Plus RICK ALTERGOTT, we conclude our profiles of MIKE DEODATO, JR. and FRANK BORTH, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of DC/Marvel hardcover super-hero collections), & more!

An in-depth look at the life and career of writer/editor DENNY O’NEIL, and part one of a career-spanning interview with ARNOLD DRAKE, co-creator of The Doom Patrol and Deadman! Plus the story behind Studio Zero, the ’70s collective of JIM STARLIN, FRANK BRUNNER, ALAN WEISS, and others! Warren horror mag writer/ historian JACK BUTTERWORTH, alternative cartoonist TIM HENSLEY, & more!

TOM PALMER retrospective, career-spanning interview, and tributes compiled by GREG BIGA. LEE MARRS chats about assisting on Little Orphan Annie, work for DC’s Plop! and underground Pudge, Girl Blimp! The start of a multi-part look at the life and career of DAN DIDIO, part two of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview, public service comics produced by students at the CENTER FOR CARTOON STUDIES, & more!

Take a ride with CHiPs’ ERIK ESTRADA and LARRY WILCOX! Plus: an interview with movie Hercules STEVE REEVES, WeirdOhs cartoonist BILL CAMPBELL, Plastic Man on Saturday mornings, TINY TIM, Remo Williams, the search for a Disney artist, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost, plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and other real rockers in animation! Also: The Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Witch Doctors, Chipmunks, an d Crashcups

BY SCOTT SHAW! By the time I was ten years old, I not only owned a healthy “funnybook” collection, I’d convinced myself that I definitely was going to become a professional cartoonist. I also considered myself to be the Roger Ebert of animated cartoons, with annoyingly specific opinions of the “best” and “worst.” I kept track of the storylines on Rocky and His Friends. I drove everyone I knew crazy by obsessively imitating the “Nyah-hah-hah!” laugh of Beany and Cecil’s “Dishonest John.” I even determined the specific color scheme of The Flintstones (which I’d only watched in B&W!). Due to my father being a Pearl Harbor survivor, I had a rough approximation of the history of animation, thanks to all of the WWII cartoons that were being shown on TV. My first favorite cartoons were classic theatrical Max Fleischer’s Popeye (possibly because my dad was by then a Navy officer) and MGM’s Tom and Jerry. (Every time I watch one of the classic T&J shorts of the Forties and Fifties, I get emotional because I worked for their creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, my boyhood heroes.) But by 1957, I had already memorized almost all of the theatrical shorts on the air, almost all of which were created in the Twenties through the Forties. I was starving for some new cartoons that represented the present, therefore Bill and Joe’s The Ruff and Reddy Show immediately became one of my first TV favorite cartoons, as did Gene Deitch’s Tom Terrific on Captain Kangaroo and Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends. The live-action how-cartoons-are-made

A commissioned illustration of Alvin the Chipmunk by— whaddaya know—Scott Shaw! © Ross Bagdasarian. Alvin Show logo courtesy of Fandom.com.

segments with Walter Lantz on The Woody Woodpecker Show were even better than the “other” Walt’s similar presentations on Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. Then came H-B’s Huckleberry Hound Show, The Flintstones, The Quick Draw McGraw Show, and Bob Clampett’s Beany and Cecil, and... well, y’know. As a kid, they were my animated textbooks. I loved them all and still do. But after finally becoming an equally irritating cartoonist with extremely hard-to-please standards, there’s one other made-for-television cartoon series that made a mark on me. Unlike most of the cartoons I grew up watching, its characters are still quite familiar with children and generations of adults. In many ways, its characters and their designs, clever voiceovers, scripts, and animation, as well as a somewhat “insider” vibe due to the built-in celebrity of the show’s three stars, made it the hippest and most experimental cartoon series of its time. It was The Alvin Show, which aired on CBS in the early evening from October 4, 1961 to March 28, 1962. I was ten years old. And I’d already realized that this show was special.

COME ON-A ROSS BAGDASARIAN’S HOUSE

Ross Bagdasarian (January 27, 1919–January 16, 1972), full name Rostom Sipan Bagdasarian, was born into an Armenian-American family in Fresno, California. His family owned a vineyard and his first cousin was the prolific novelist, playwright, and short story writer William Saroyan, who received the Pulitzer Prize for “Drama” in 1940 and an Academy Award for “Best Story,” both for early iterations of his book, The Human Comedy (1943). After graduating from Fresno High School in 1937, he visited his cousin William in New York City to seek work as an actor. Ross RETROFAN

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

The start of something big: The Chipmunk Song 45 (1959) from Liberty Records. “Alvin’s Harmonica” is the B-side. © Ross Bagdasarian. Courtesy of Worthpoint.

reindeer or elephants and he was driving along near the Sequoias and one day a chipmunk actually jumped out on the road and dared he and his 4,000 pound car to drive by and as he picked himself out of the road after laughing hysterically at this little chipmunk, he figured it’s going to be three singing chipmunks.” (That’s a cute run-on story, as were the “official” origins of Mickey Mouse and Woody Woodpecker, but having worked in entertainment for decades, I suggest that we take these corporatized stories with a healthy pinch of salt.) Here’s how Ross explained it: “In September of 1958, I decided to try for a Christmas novelty song. I thought of a melody on my way to work, and I went right to the studio and whistled it into a tape machine, so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. Since I can’t read or write music, I whistle into tape machines.

and was nominated for the year’s Grammy for Best Children’s Recording. Ross performed “The Witch Doctor” live on CBS’ The Ed Sullivan Show on May 4, 1958, the first of six appearances on the variety program. Due to a few tech glitches, the presentation was somewhat flawed but still a lot of fun. Finally, Ross Bagdasarian/David Seville was/were established as a songwriter. Using a similar process to control a voice’s speed, David Seville had a minor hit with Liberty Records’ “The Bird On My Head”; it reached No. 34 in June 1958. Ross appeared on The Dick Clark Beech-Nut Show to perform it and “The Witch Doctor,” with puppets designed and operated by Morey Bunin. David had two more releases from Liberty, “Little Brass Band”/”Take Five” and “The Mountain”/”Mr. Grape,” most of which appeared in David Seville and His Friends’ The Witch Doctor LP record (Liberty, 1958).

‘THEY SOUNDED LIKE CHIPMUNKS’

By that time, David Seville’s material was one of Liberty Records’ top moneymakers. In the summer of 1958, the brass at Liberty contacted Ross to ask him to come up with another novelty song for the upcoming holiday season. But what to do in an industry that was already swollen with Christmas music? Fortunately, his youngest child unintentionally sparked Ross’ imagination. Little Adam was driving his family crazy, constantly asking if it was Christmas yet because he knew that meant a lot of presents were on the way. That was a refreshingly honest theme that even impatient and greedy kids could relate to. ♪♪ “Christmas, Christmas time is near Time for toys and time for cheer We’ve been good, but we can’t last Hurry Christmas, hurry fast.” ♪♪ Now that he had a theme and some lyrics, Ross was scouring his mind for the perfect characters to sing them. According to his son Ross, Jr., “...He wanted to use that sped-up sound for some characters and didn’t know whether they should be singing alligators or 26

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When reader Scott Foltz heard that Alvin and the Chipmunks were going to be a topic of an article this issue, he generously offered to share photos from his biggerthan-a-chipmunk-sized collection. We begin with items from the pre–Alvin Show merchandise, with more neat stuff to follow. Thanks, Scott. © Ross Bagdasarian.

The oddball world of scott shaw!

More early Chipmunks merchandise courtesy of super Alvin fan, Scott Foltz. © Ross Bagdasarian.

“Then I wrote the words and decided that the singers should be animals or maybe even insects. I don’t know why, but that’s what I decided. I recorded the song with the half-speed little voices (my own) and sang an introduction in my normal-speed voice. When I finished the first recording, the voices sounded like butterflies—or mice—or rabbits, but most of all, they sounded like chipmunks. The brass of Liberty Records listened with me and we all agreed that something was missing. Everybody liked the melody, so I wrote some new lyrics and called the song ‘In

a Village Park,’ the more I could hear the chipmunks singing ‘Christmas, Christmas time is near, time for toys and time for cheer.’ So I recorded it again, this time with no words, as an instrumental. This, too, was nowhere. “I decided against doing anything further and gave up the whole project, but the project wouldn’t give me up. By the end of November, the chipmunks in my head were driving me crazy, so I decided to try it again, but this time to give the chipmunks some kind of identity, I gave them names and had a conversation with them. The record was finally finished after three months and four versions. All I can say is that I love Witch Doctors, Chipmunks, and—most of all—tape machines.” (That sounds much more like the creative process to me.)

SECRETS OF THE SINGING CHIPMUNKS

Alvin and David ’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1958) was a knock-out. © Ross Bagdasarian.

One thing is certain: Ross based the names of those three singing chipmunks on the names of the executives who ran Liberty Records. “Alvin” was named after Liberty Records’ president/director/”music business wizard” Alvin “Al” Bennett; “Simon” was named after Liberty Records’ founder/chairman Simon “Si” Waronker; and “Theodore” was named after audio engineer/record producer/ Liberty Records co-founder Theodore “Ted” Keep. The tune originally titled “Christmas, Don’t Be Late” became “The Chipmunk Song” and was completed on November 7, 1958. An amazing 4,500,000 copies of the Liberty 45 RPM record were sold over the first seven weeks. It was also awarded three Grammys: “Best Selling Children’s Record,” “Best Comedy Performance,” and “Best RETROFAN

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

(LEFT) Alvin and the Chipmunks, released in 2007, was the boys’ first live-action film adventure. It starred CGI chipmunks and an actual Jason Lee. (BELOW) New Alvin (LEFT) meets old Alvin (RIGHT) in a 1987 episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks, “Back to Dave’s Future.” © Ross Bagdasarian.

Two final factoids: 1) Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. was best friends with fellow Armenian actor Mike Conners, the popular star of the CBS series Mannix (1967–1975). Ross appeared (without credit) on an episode of the detective show, as did his daughter Carol, five different times in all. 2) During the production of The Chipmunk Adventure, Bagdasarian Productions’ offices were located in the same two-story building in North Hollywood as a small animation company, Cornell-Abood, as well as Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon studio, which at the time was in production of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (1987–1988). If you’ve ever wondered where Mighty Mouse’s “Elvy and the Tree Weasels” came from, well... now you know! Children or chipmunks? A more human version of the beloved characters was seen in Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks series (2015), featuring the Chipettes. (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) Simon, Theodore, Alvin, Brittany, Eleanor, and Jeanette. © Ross Bagdasarian. So, why are Ross Jr. and Janice sitting on the cartoon that led to their incredible success? Do they consider The Alvin Show to be embarrassing? That makes no sense; animation fans have been pleading for the opportunity to own the entire series for decades. However, considering that most people who grew up with The Alvin Show still consider it to be one of the funniest TV cartoons of all time, are Ross Jr. and Janice worried that if the original iteration of “their” characters were available to the public, by comparison, the current product might be considered mediocre at best? (In their most-recent CG series, Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks, the Chipmunks resemble human children with triangular noses, not anthropomorphic rodents!) Or maybe it’s merely another case of music ownership. Let’s all hope that someday Ross Sr.’s grandchildren Vanessa and Michael will release the original ’munks to the wild. Even Mrs. Frumpington would approve! 36

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Thanks to Mark Arnold for his valuable book, AAAAALLLVIIINNN! The Story of Ross Bagdasarian Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show (Bear Manor, 2019). For 50 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW! has written and drawn underground comix, mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and video games. He has worked on such characters as Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew (which he co-created with Roy Thomas), Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Comic-Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He can be reached at shawcartoons.com.

RETROFAD

BY MIC HAE Alvin wasn’t alone. The cartoon character’s “Me, I want a hula hoop” entreaties peppered “The Chipmunk Song” (a.k.a. “Christmas, Don’t Be Late”), to the listener’s amusement and David Seville’s annoyance. But you really can’t blame the bucktoothed li’l fella for his obsession. When manufacturer Wham-O released its first hula hoop—officially branded Hula Hoop®, herewith Hula Hoop, minus the registration mark—in the summer of 1958, 25 million units were sold in just the first four months. That’s a whole lotta (hip) shakin’ goin’ on! For a contemporary toy, the Hula Hoop was actually an updated historical relic. Hoops forged of vines, grasses, bamboo, and other vegetation had for centuries been employed across the globe in ceremonial dances. Metal and wooden hoops from barrels, wagon wheels, and other sources had been used for everything from rolling knickknacks for children to medical aids and muscle-toning devices for adults. It was a recreational fad of 1957 that ultimately whirled into the public eye what we now call the Hula Hoop. That year, the European press took note of a budding trend among Norwegian and Australian girls who were swinging cane rings around their bodies in what was dubbed “rock ring” or “wiggle rock” mania. Once an Australian

(TOP) Wham-O Hula Hoop promotional graphics from the product’s 1958 debut year, with its company mascot, the witch doctor “Whambo.” Hula Hoop® is TM & © Intersport Corp., DBA Wham-O (herewith Wham-O). (CENTER AND BOTTOM) Record players spun along with Hula Hoops as a variety of performers released hoop-inspired songs in 1958.

L E U RY

physical education teacher started using bamboo rings to encourage movement among her students, more than pelvises began rotating. Tim Walsh, author of The Playmakers: Amazing Origins of Timeless Toys (2004, Keys Publishing), writes that an observant Australian department store, Coles, began selling bamboo hoops but couldn’t keep them in stock due to mushrooming demand. Coles tapped Alex Tolmer, founder of the legendary manufacturing company Toltoys, to begin mass production of hoops. Tolmer, says Walsh, found the durable plastic Polyethylene to be the perfect hoop material and rushed these “exercise hoops” into production, selling 400,000 units in Australia that year. Here’s where the Hula Hoop story began to spin faster. An American named Joan Alexander, while on holiday visiting family in Australia, caught wind of this new fancy and shipped one of the exercise rings from the Land from Down Under to her home. Once back in the States she showed the hoop to the folks at Wham-O. Wham-O, as most RetroFans know, is the toy company that introduced a range of perennial playthings, most famously the Frisbee® (which we tossed at you in RetroFan #13), but also the Slip ’n Slide, Super-Ball, Hacky Sack, and Silly String. Co-founders Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin launched the company in 1948, originally operating out of Knerr’s garage before growing into a Carson, California–based business that’s still going strong today. RETROFAN

March 2024

The Best in POP Culture! THE

TEAM-UP COMPANION by RetroFan’s MICHAEL EURY

THE TEAM-UP COMPANION examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics—DC’s THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and DC COMICS PRESENTS, Marvel’s MARVEL TEAM-UP and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, plus other team-up titles, treasuries, and treats—in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes. Go behind the scenes of your favorite team-up comic books with specially curated and all-new creator recollections from NEAL ADAMS, JIM APARO, MIKE W. BARR, ELIOT R. BROWN, NICK CARDY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE GERBER, STEVEN GRANT, BOB HANEY, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, PAUL LEVITZ, RALPH MACCHIO, DENNIS O’NEIL, MARTIN PASKO, JOE RUBINSTEIN, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other all-star writers and artists who produced the team-up tales that so captivated readers during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s. By BACK ISSUE and RETROFAN editor MICHAEL EURY. (272-page SOFTCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-112-7 • NOW SHIPPING!

CLIFFHANGER!

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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

HERO-A-GO-GO! by RetroFan’s MICHAEL EURY

HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties! RETROFAN magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY authors this lively collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like Captain Action, Herbie the Fat Fury, Captain Nice, Atom Ant, Scooter, ACG’s Nemesis, Dell’s super-Frankenstein and Dracula, the “split!” Captain Marvel, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, Spider-Man), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more! (272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1 • NOW SHIPPING!

IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB

Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets again, FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics) digs up more tomes of terror from the century past. IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB (the second “Best of” collection) uncovers atomic comics lost to the Cold War, rarely seen (and censored) British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, GOOD GIRLS of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ Alien Worlds, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and a myriad of terrors from beyond the stars and the shadows of our own world! It features comics they tried to ban, from ATLAS, CHARLTON, COMIC MEDIA, DC, EC, HARVEY, HOUSE OF HAMMER, KITCHEN SINK, LAST GASP, PACIFIC, SKYWALD, WARREN, and more from the darkest of the horror genre’s finest creators! (192-page Trade Paperback) $29.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-081-6 • DIGITAL EDITION: $10.95 NOW SHIPPING!

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SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

Girder and Panel Building Sets BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA

In the Plaything category of Stuff I Really, Really Liked As A Kid, building toys (also known as construction or engineering toys) were the Best (BEST!). I was especially drawn to stuff you could do on your own (Me Time was important when you’re a bookish kid with six siblings). Building toys really fit the bill, and I played with plenty. And LEGO bricks (invented in 1949)… well, who hasn’t encountered them? They kept me busy into adulthood and parenthood. [We’ve got a LEGO history coming up in the next issue of RetroFan, #32—and LEGOmanics are also invited to check out TwoMorrows’ Brick Journal mag!—ed.] While structures could be made with any number of construction toys, there was only one during the RetroYears that attempted to replicate the actual construction process itself and create something that actually looked like a modern structure: Girder and Panel building sets. Girder and Panel building sets came out of Kenner Products (best known as just Kenner). Kenner was a toy company founded in 1946 by three brothers: Albert, Phillip, and Joseph Steiner. Albert was the president of the company, with Kenner being the

name of the Cincinnati, Detail of art from an early Ohio, street on which their Girder and Panel Building offices were located. The Set planning book. Collection of first big hit for the young the author. toy company was 1949’s Captain Space Bub-LRocket. Captain Space is seen on the package blowing into the tip of the Bub-L-Rocket, creating “galaxies of bubbles—without refueling!” Captain Space brags on the back of the package that he himself designed the bubble gun “as a precision toy.” But you can’t rest on any laurels in the toy business, and new concepts are constantly needed. For the company’s 1957 Spring line, Kenner was introducing the Jungle Blow-Gun set, Squirt Beanies, and something called the Squirt Write. Fortunately, Kenner had something even more exciting in the pipeline. Company president Albert Steiner had a lucky epiphany while observing an office tower slowly rising up in the city. He felt that the skeletal girder construction process, finished off with exterior glass and steel, RETROFAN

March 2024

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

erMatic Building Sets (1965), which added the ability to make amusement park rides like a Ferris wheel and new parts to allow for a greater range of engineering play with less focus on modern structures. Kenner had a pretty solid run as a toymaker. Most RetroFans likely recall the aforementioned Easy-Bake Oven, the Spirograph (1966), Stretch Armstrong (1976), and if you haven’t heard of the Death Star-sized popularity of the original Star Wars action figures (1978), then you probably live in a galaxy far, far away (just not the one with Darth Vader in it). All of these toys have been available to one degree or another decades beyond their introduction, the Girder and Panel Building Set included. But it was a bit of a rocky road. In 1967, General Mills (yeah, the breakfast cereal company) bought Kenner. Rainbow Crafts, home of Play-Doh, was a division of General Mills, having been purchased in 1965. Rainbow Crafts was folded into Kenner, which in 1985 was merged into the Parker Brothers division (bought by General Mills in 1968) 44

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(TOP) Examples of the possibilities when combining multiple Girder and Panel Building Sets from planning book included with each box. Collection of the author. (ABOVE) Girder and Panel Build-A-Home & Subdivision Set. TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Courtesy of Worthpoint.

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

becoming Kenner Parker Toys, Inc. Two years later, Kenner Parker was bought by Tonka (yeah, the giant metal toy trucks company). Hasbro (of G I. Joe fame) bought Tonka, Parker Brothers, and Kenner in 1991. Parker Brothers, as a company, ended in 1998. Tonka vehicles are still being made in metal (METAL!). However, they are not made by Hasbro but licensed from them by Basic Fun! Inc. Sadly, Kenner became defunct in 2000. Happily, that wasn’t the end of Girder and Panel sets. During the General Mills period, Girder and Panel sets reappeared in 1974 under various configurations and names. One set, Little Learners Girder and Panels featuring World Famous Buildings with—a proportionally too big yellow exterior—Working Elevator, was the largest of the lot at 1,226 pieces. For comparison the first Girder and Panel set had 104 pieces. The World Famous Building was Chicago’s Sears Tower (now named the Willis Tower, but locals don’t call it that and neither do I). Having been to the Sears Tower, I can state with complete confidence that there is not (NOT!) a giant yellow elevator running down the side of the building. The completed set was the line’s tallest coming in at a respectable five feet tall. Fun Fact: Back in the early Eighties I was having drinks (you know, adult stuff) on a business trip with two friends I knew from high school at the Sears Tower when a very (VERY!) elegant woman came up to one friend and said that he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. And that was the first time I ever had to call for my own taxi to get back to our shared hotel room to sleep on a cot. I also saw Jim Belushi making a movie and a dead body. Chicago! All right, back to toys… Girder and Panel sets ended their Kenner-branded run in 1979 as KENSTRUCT Building Sets. A full page of Girder and Panel fun from the 1965 Sears Wishbook. TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Courtesy of christmas. musetechnical.com.

(LEFT) Promotion for the Girder-Matic motorized building set (1965). (RIGHT) Girder and Panel Hydro-Dynamic Building Set (1961). TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Catalog page courtesy of christmas.musetechnical.com. Girder-Matic page courtesy of Worthpoint. Hydro-Dynamic box courtesy sciencehistory.org.

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March 2024

19942024 UPDATE #1

TwoMorrows 3

www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB An all-new book written by PETER NORMANTON

Rising from the depths of history comes an ALL-NEW examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, written by PETER NORMANTON (editor of From The Tomb, the UK’s preeminent magazine on the genre). From the pulps and seminal horror comics of the 1940s, through ones they tried to ban in the 1950s, this tome explores how the genre survived the introduction of the Comics Code, before making its terrifying return during the 1960s and 1970s. Come face-to-face with the early days of ACG’s alarming line, every horror comic from June 1953, hypodermic horrors, DC’s Gothic romance comics, Marvel’s Giant-Size terrors, Skywald and Warren’s chillers, and Atlas Seaboard’s shocking magazines. The 192-page full-color opus exhumes BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s darkest constructs, plus artwork by FRANK FRAZETTA, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE KALUTA, STEVE DITKO, MATT FOX, WARREN KREMER, LEE ELIAS, BILL EVERETT, RUSS HEATH, THE GURCH, and many more. Don’t turn your back on this once-in-a-lifetime spine-chiller—it’s so good, it’s frightening! (192-page SOFTCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-123-3 • SHIPS MARCH 2024!

ALTER EGO #188

All characters TM

ve owners.

Double-size 25th Anniversary Edition, edited by ROY THOMAS

A special DOUBLE-SIZE (160-PAGE) ISSUE with twin (flip) covers—one for Marvel, one for DC—celebrating 25 years of ALTER EGO at TwoMorrows! The Marvel side includes DAVID ARMSTRONG’s Comic-Con mini-interviews with JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, JIM MOONEY, & GEORGE TUSKA—plus “STAN LEE’s Dinner with ALAIN RESNAIS,” as annotated by SEAN HOWE! On the DC side: ARMSTRONG’s short talks with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOHN BROOME, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JOE KUBERT, & MURPHY ANDERSON—plus a special photo-feature on GARDNER FOX, featuring his extended family! All this, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and more! SHIPS JUNE 2024! (160-page COLOR magazine) $21.95 (Digital Edition) $9.99 Counts as TWO ISSUES toward your subscription!

BACK ISSUE # 150 Edited by MICHAEL EURY

Back Issue #150 is our oversized 100-Page Super Spectacular sesquicentennial edition, featuring Batmen of the 1970s! Exploring the work of Bronze Age Batman artists Bob Brown, Dick Giordano, Irv Novick, Frank Robbins, Walter Simonson, Alex Toth, & Bernie Wrightson. Plus: revisit Frank Miller’s first Batman story! SHIPS MARCH 2024! (100-page COLOR magazine) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $5.99

Get the WORLD OF TWOMORROWS anniversary book • Just 20 @ www.twomorrows.com $

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

GUNN FOR HIRE BY WILL MURRAY I don’t know what NBC executives were expecting when they launched Peter Gunn in the fall of 1958. That was the TV season in which 37 Westerns aired. Peter Gunn was clearly swimming upstream. Yet the show managed to break out of the stampede of cowboy protagonists and not only survive, but is today remembered as an innovative television program. Blake Edwards was the creator. He had written a 1949–1953 radio show called Richard Diamond, Private Detective that was so successful it crossed over into TV for four seasons. Future Fugitive star David Janssen played the role that Dick Powell had made famous on radio. Such success in two media prompted Edwards to think he could reimagine the cliché private eye for a new series, not a radio retread. He called him Peter Gunn.

HAVE GUNN, WILL SLEUTH

According to Edwards, Gunn was “a present-day soldier of fortune who has found himself a gimmick that pays him a very comfortable living. The gimmick was trouble. People who had major trouble will pay handsomely to get rid of it, and Peter Gunn was a man who will not only accept the pay but do something about it. He knows every element of the city, from cops to crooks. He also, of course, has his soft side and will occasionally take on a charity job for free.” Gunn was an update of Have Gun, Will Travel’s Paladin, to which it was compared when the show was announced. However,

the producer had a problem. Peter Gunn star Craig He couldn’t find an actor who Stevens. (BELOW) Peter might embody his concept of an Gunn creator Blake urbane investigator. Edwards, in 1966. Edwards As the man who ultimately photo: G. K. Austin/Wikimedia. Peter Gunn © Spartan Productions. accepted the role recalled it, Edwards phoned him, saying, “Look, for six months I’ve been planning a TV series. We talked about it, remember? Well, I’ve searched high and low. I’ve tested stars, and I’ve tested unknowns. Nothing. This morning, as my wife was walking out the dressing room, she suddenly said, ‘What about Craig Stevens?’” Stevens knew Blake socially. His wife, Alexis Smith, had worked on Edwards’ comedy, This Happy Feeling. “Craig, I didn’t think of you at the time,” pressed Edwards. “I didn’t parallel you with what I had in mind, but all along you were really my model. Will you do it?” Stevens was reluctant, but Edwards pushed him. “No trench coat, no sloppy hat,” Edwards said. “You are not to be a rough type of guy. You should be more of a Madison Avenue type; calm, correct, impeccable, but able to handle a tough situation when it comes up. I don’t want this to be just another whodunit.” Stevens recounted, “Both Alexis and I really admired this guy, so we waited anxiously for the script to arrive. When it finally came, there was a note attached, ‘Hope you dig this thing. Blake.’” Stevens wired back: “Dig it the most. Peter Gunn.” RETROFAN

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

nightclub, the Big Eye. There’s a knife in Marty’s back. He’s dead. A rival musician named Streetcar Jones is jailed on suspicion of the murder, having threatened Swift, who is disliked in the local music scene due to his habit of lifting other people’s tunes. Much of the action takes place at the Big Eye. Inevitably, Gunn gets beaten up by a couple of thugs when he gets too warm. Without doing much actual detecting, he manages to figure out who the real killer is, and ends up being escorted out of the Big Eye by the two bruisers who had pummeled him earlier in the story. It looks like Peter Gunn is in for worse than a beating. But Lieutenant Jacoby springs up from a corner table, revolver in fist, and follows them out. (RIGHT) Fans would soon Jacoby deals rough justice to the bad be swooning as Lola was guys and the true murderer is arrested in crooning each week on Peter the club. It’s a neater climax, but once again, Gunn. © TV Guide. (BELOW) Lola the hero has to be rescued. Maybe that was Wants You, Ms. Albright’s the point. Maybe this was Blake Edwards’ 1957 album. Courtesy of Heritage. way of pulling the rug out from all the all the old hard-boiled private eye clichés. Gunn was suave, debonair, California cool, worldly, hip, and at home in all strata of society in that era of beatnik coffee houses. He seemed to know everybody, high and low. “It started with his environment,” explained Edwards. “My whole intention was to populate the night world of Peter Gunn with strange, unusual characters.” These ranged from a midget pool hustler played by Billy Barty in the recurring role of Babby to any number of oddballs and ex-cons, most attached to what passed for the counterculture in those pre-hippie days. Many investigations wove through the nightclub scene. Gunn had only to take on a case and he’d know who to talk to in order to develop a lead. This helped since he had only 22 minutes to solve a matter. Edwards partially modeled Gunn after Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, saying, “Chandler was one of my heroes. There’s a lot of Marlowe in Gunn.” The character’s central affectations were Edwards’ own. Edwards smoked Lucky Strikes, so did his hero. “Gunn and I hung out in jazz clubs,” the producer added. “I’d given up booze before the first episode was shot, and I thought that should be reflected in Gunn. After all, I made him in my own image.” Stevens gave all credit to his producer for establishing the Gunn persona. “You see, it was Edwards who remade me to play Gunn the way he thought I 54

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

should. He told me to get the short haircut I have. He insisted upon on the neat, expensive suits I wear. Matter of fact, everything that goes into making Gunn what he is was Edwards’ idea. He gave me a personality. I did the acting.” It was left to Stevens to work up a backstory. “Gunn came from a family of better than average means,” he related. “His father was a professional of some kind. In high school, Gunn distinguished himself without seeming to crack a book, and as the only basketball forward who could play 60 minutes without getting his hair mussed. Then he went to an Ivy League university—Harvard—where he breezed through a liberal arts course, switching from the boxing to the chess team when he ran out of sparring partners and managed to be late for commencement.” The contrast between Gunn and the different social groups he encountered meant that his tailored suits mattered. “The clothes are a detail,” allowed Stevens, “but a fairly important one. Peter Gunn is not the usual private eye. He’s an educated man, who might be taken for a lawyer or a young executive. We’re trying to create a distinctive visual impression of him—a silhouette that’s tall, trim, modern, and yet roomy enough to cover a gun and a hip holster. “We had a top tailor working on it for several months,” he revealed. “You might call the result a cross between Wall Street and Madison Avenue. It makes Peter Gunn stand out from his surroundings when he enters a Skid Row dive or mixes with rough characters. On the other hand, he looks perfectly at home at a concert, or a garden party.”

THE MUSIC OF ‘PETER GUNN’

Music was an equally huge part of Peter Gunn’s appeal, thanks to composer Henry Mancini, who recalled that when first offered the job, mistakenly assumed he was going to score a Western! Instead, Mancini became the man who introduced jazz into episodic television. “The Peter Gunn theme actually derives more from rock ’n’ roll than jazz,” he admitted. “I use guitar and piano in unison, playing what is known in music as an ostinato, which means obstinate. It was sustained throughout the piece, giving it a sinister effect, with some frightened saxophone sounds, and some shouting brass.” Beyond the pulsating theme, no one had ever fused live jazz with television storylines before.

“Hank Mancini writes all the music, and it’s an integral part of every scene,” explained Lola Albright. “The music adds to the excitement of the stories.” “Blake Edwards has set up an extraordinary combination of moods in Peter Gunn,” praised Mancini. “When you stop to analyze it, you can’t find the boundaries where the music stops and the show takes over.” Edwards worked closely with Mancini, according to Craig Stevens. “In his delineation of the characters in each episode, he tells exactly the style of their clothes and their haircuts. He details the kind of furniture he wants on the set and works out

(CENTER) Autographed publicity photo of “Peter Gunn Theme” composer Henry Mancini. Courtesy of Heritage. (SURROUNDING) The jazzy score from the show inspired several albums. with composer Hank Mancini the type of music he needs to express all the moods he has written—from ‘beat generation’ jazz joint stuff to ‘smoky-smooth’ background scores for love scenes.” When an album of Mancini’s Peter Gunn music was released, it sold millions. Emmys and Grammys followed. “The jazz audience is not a vast one,” acknowledged Mancini. “It’s specific and special. We’ve reached it—and beyond it. We’re onto a larger audience by associating jazz with story and characters.” Not until Miami Vice [see RetroFan #29—ed.] would such a melding of narrative and music be again attempted. “It’s a struggle to stay fresh and original every week,” admitted Mancini, “but as long as the show can go, I can go.” RETROFAN

March 2024

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

“It’s a fascinating thing to find the character of Gunn again,” reflected Stevens. “There are some modifications of the TV personality, but he is essentially the same. His apartment is a little more plush than it was, but he still hangs out at Mother’s, the gin mill, with the pretty girl singer. But instead of Lola Albright, the girl will be Laura Devon in the movie version.” When a mobster who once saved his life is murdered, Peter Gunn investigates with a vengeance, working his way through the Sixties counterculture. “This is not a takeoff on the character,” Stevens promised. “I didn’t just want to use my image, which is what producers wanted of me in the past. This is Peter Gunn, and expanded. The movie gives us a wider range. It is still the same. Low key, but in color. We’ve got our cameraman from the series, Joe Lathrop.” Henry Mancini also returned. But found it a challenge. “I can’t go back and do the same score that I did for the TV series in 1959–60. That has become almost a caricature nowadays. So, except for the theme music and the song called ‘Dreamsviille,’ I’ve been forced to concoct a brand-new score.” “The six years that had passed since the TV Peter Gunn went off the air had seen swelling changes, not only in jazz, but in all phases of the pop music spectrum,” Edwards acknowledged. Mancini had an uncredited role as a piano player. Regrettably, Gunn… Number One!, as it was optimistically announced, flopped. But that was not the end of Peter Gunn. In 1977, radio-turned-TV scriptwriter E. Jack Newman was asked to pen a 90-minute TV movie with Craig Stevens returning to the role. Regrettably, Blake Edwards’ film commitments interfered.

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Another revival was floated in 1984 with Robert Wagner taking the part of Gunn. When the project finally went to camera in 1989, Peter Strauss had replaced him. Peter Jurasik was Jacoby, while Blake Edwards’ daughter, Jennifer, became the new Edie, again back at Mother’s. Edwards both wrote and directed this project. Despite promising reviews and ratings, ABC inexplicably declined to move ahead with the planned TV series. The project marked the end of the long career of Peter Gunn. “It didn’t work,” Edwards later admitted. “The guy who played Peter Gunn just wasn’t Peter Gunn.” Since that time, several attempts to relaunch Peter Gunn were undertaken. None have jelled. Yet, despite its ultimate failure to thrive, Peter Gunn is better remembered than most of its imitators. I imagine someone will one day revive Gunn, but without Craig Stevens, I wouldn’t bet on success. Peter Gunn was a man of his time and his brief era is long gone. “A successful television series, like Peter Gunn, is all a matter of timing and taste,” reflected Craig Stevens in 1973. “The Gunn series had a perfect blend of intrigue, humor, and human drama that so far has not been matched by the recent series along that line. I doubt if Peter Gunn will ever return.” 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

Run, Joe, Run’

William P. D’Angelo

BY ANDY MANGELS Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning, your constant guide to the shows that thrilled us from yesteryear, exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some milk and cereal, sit cross-legged leaning against the couch, and dig into Retro Saturday Morning! This issue, you get a double-dip into two live-action Saturday morning shows with some impressive pedigrees… and I’m not talking just about the dog in Run, Joe, Run! It’s our look a two NBC series from DBA Productions!

WHO WAS DOING BUSINESS AS DBA?

Harvey Bullock

Raymond S. Allen

DBA was better known as D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, and 1974 was D’Angelo’s debut to provide content for Saturday morning television… but not the trio’s debut at enticing kids to watch television! Although the company started as D’Angelo Productions, it eventually morphed into a trio of producers at DBA’s head: William P. D’Angelo, Harvey Bullock, and Raymond S. Allen. • William P. D’Angelo cut his teeth in the Sixties as a writer, director, and producer for such series as No Time for Sergeants; Love, American Style; and Room 222, though his biggest success was as an associate producer for the mammoth hit series, Batman. • Harvey Bullock is the name of one of the Gotham P.D.’s most famous characters in the Batman comics, but it’s also the name of a writer and series creator since 1954, who worked on The Real McCoys, Rango, Gomer Pyle USMC, and many of the same shows that Raymond Allen wrote for. • Raymond S. Allen (born Morris Saffian) had been a writer in Hollywood since 1956, toiling on scripts for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show, a 1964 Archie TV film based on the comics, The Flintstones, Hogan’s Heroes, and Love, American Style. As D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, the trio individually or collectively produced six live-action Saturday morning shows RETROFAN

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andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

The second season of Run, Joe, Run featured a new human co-star, Chad States as Josh McCoy. © D’Angelo Productions. The mouse he was referring to as a gray and yellow mouse Miller kept in a cage, which he would jiggle to perk Heinrich’s ears up. Why were they down? Because Shepherds are friendly, and instinctively let their ears flop back when petted… something the co-stars often needed to do in the scenes. Cast in the lead role of Sgt. William Corey was six-foot-one actor Arch Whiting (real name: Harold Joseph Archambault), whose main role to that point had been as radio engineer Sparks on Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but who had also worked as a producer on The Ed Sullivan Show and cinematographer on feature films. Whiting’s name was brought up to the series’ casting director, who said, “Whiting would be great as Corey, but I think he just left for the Cannes Film Festival and you start shooting on Monday!” In those olden days before cell phones, a quick call to Whiting’s home caught him as he was about to walk out the door to leave; intrigued by the series offer, he unpacked his bags and signed aboard! Whiting was interviewed by talk show host Bobbie Wygant about the series in 1974. Discussing Miller’s training, Whiting said, “I don’t give him any commands myself. They’re all given off-camera by Karl, and the dog responds beautifully.” He also revealed that his personal dog, Ragmop, was a “poolie” (a poodle/ collie cross) that he had found in the street and adopted. Whiting 64

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gave Wygant a more precise history of the series than the show itself gave, saying, “Joe is an attack-trained war dog… He and I spent three years together in Vietnam and we came back to the United States for debriefing. And there was an incident where the trust between the two of us was broken. The love is still there, but the trust has been broken. And I’m just trying to get the trust back. And I keep chasing him. We have confrontations… and he turns and runs because he just doesn’t trust me anymore.” A co-star in one episode was 11-year-old actress Michele Riskas, whom Joe rescued in a forest because she was blind and lost. “Working with Joe was great,” she told the press, “but they made me work with a snake and it was… ugh! It was awful. The snake was frozen and it never moved. But… ooh… I hated it.” Production on Run, Joe, Run began in the Los Angeles area in early June. One episode was shot on the Agoura ranch owned by Governor Ronald Reagan. The cast and crew had to be extra careful because the area they shot in was dense with poison oak. As for the scripts, child psychologist Barbara Mills reviewed each one prior to shooting. Production of the 13-episode first season wrapped in August, with more than enough time to complete it prior to debut. Run, Joe, Run, debuted on NBC on September 7, 1974, alongside two other debut shows: the Krofft live-action series Land of the Lost [see RetroFan #24—ed.] and the Hanna-Barbera animated series Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. In its early time slot, the dog series was up against two animated sitcom spin-offs: ABC’s The New Adventures of Gilligan and CBS’s Partridge Family 2200 A.D. For promotional purposes, on October 13th, “Joe” was the canine Grand Marshal of the 7th Annual Hollywood Dog Parade. Sometime in 1975, Heinrich was also named “German Shepherd Dog-of-the-Year” by the German Shepherd Dog Club. Popular enough to score a second season, Run, Joe, Run was overhauled for the new set of 13 episodes. As the opening narration

FAST FACTS

RUN, JOE, RUN f No. of seasons: Two f No. of episodes: 26 f Original run: September 7, 1974–September 25, 1976 f Created by: Richard H. Landau f Studio: D’Angelo Productions f Network: NBC

PRIMARY CAST f Paul Frees: Narrator f Arch Whiting: Sgt. William Corey (Season One) f Chad States: Josh McCoy (Season Two) (TOP) Ad detail from TV Guide for NBC’s 1974 Saturday line-up. © D’Angelo Productions.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

Chad and Joe have a heart to heart while having a light meal in a diner. Note the illustrations on the upper right of the diner wall of a coyote and a roadrunner (an inside joke, perhaps?). © D’Angelo Productions.

shared, “Before he can prove Joe’s innocence, Sergeant Corey is ordered back to active duty. Then, Joe meets Josh McCoy, a new and permanent friend who doesn’t know about Joe’s past. Together they work their way across the country, finding new friends and adventures wherever they go.” Actor Chad States was cast as Josh McCoy, and although he didn’t appear much past the opening credits, Arch Whiting was given a co-starring credit. States has few Hollywood credits, and appears to have disappeared from the industry after 1978. Run, Joe, Run’s second season debuted on September 6, 1975, and ended on September 25, 1976 (although some markets still showed it until at least December, including NBC stations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota). The series did also air in Australia and Great Britain. It has never been rerun, and may never have even been syndicated, probably due to only having 26 episodes.

TWO ACTORS—ONE ROLE

While D’Angelo Productions produced the first two Saturday shows solo—Run, Joe, Run, and Westwind—the third series was produced by the newly formed D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions. It was Big John, Little John, another live-action series, this time with a bit of a magical twist. DBA hired writer/producer Sherwood Schwartz—the creative force and Emmy-winner behind The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island—and his son, Lloyd Schwartz, to

Lloyd Schwartz

Sherwood Schwartz create the new series, and he conceived of a storyline in which a 40-year-old schoolteacher on vacation in Florida accidentally takes a sip from the fabled Fountain of Youth. The effect it has on him is to cause him to occasionally and unexpectedly transform into the 12-year-old version of himself within seconds! This is tough as not only does he have a wife, he has a 14-year-old son who loves to tease his new younger father. Cast in the lead role of Big John Martin was Herb Edelman, a 42-year-old Broadway actor who had come to Hollywood and RETROFAN

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RETRO SCI-FI

n r u t i e B R nn e m i T n dn

Revisiting Time After Time with Writer-Director Nicholas Meyer and Actors Malcolm McDowell and David Warner

BY ANTHONY TAYLOR

my novel in which Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, was the number one bestseller in the United States (much to everybody’s surprise, including mine). “Karl contacted me and said that he was writing a novel,” Meyer continues, “which in his words was ‘loosely inspired’ by The SevenThe tagline for Nicholas Meyer’s fantastic film Time After Time Per-Cent Solution. He said, ‘I have 65 pages and an outline, could you barely hints at the humor, action, pathos, romance, and drama read it and tell me what you think?’ In those days I had time to do within. The author of the bestselling Sherlock Homes pastiche, that sort of thing, so I read his 65 pages and I gave him notes and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer had aspired to direct motion told him what I thought, omitting my headline pictures since he was a boy after seeing Michael thought, which was that the idea—which I never Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days. The young would have had in a trillion years, by the way— auteur indeed directed a nearly shot-for-shot was much more a cinematic, a visual idea, than remake of the movie on Super 8mm film over it was a literary one. The idea being two guys a five-year period, with the help of family and in Victorian outfits running around a modern friends. A meeting with a future collaborator world, which I just thought was irresistible. while at the University of Iowa led to the genesis “I told him all the ‘book things’ that he might of the beloved 1979 film about H. G. Wells and want to think about, and then I went on about Jack the Ripper at odds in then-modern day San whatever my business was at the time, except Francisco. that I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. As Meyer recalls, “I was an undergraduate at I say, I would have never thought of it myself, the University of Iowa in the department of but I couldn’t stop thinking about it now that theater and film, and I kind of wandered into the I’d heard it. Sometimes it takes me a while to writers’ workshop via the playwriting program. figure things out. Maybe three months later Karl Alexander was, I think, in the graduate I woke up at four o’clock in the morning and student part of it, and he had a play produced thought, ‘You’re an idiot! Why don’t you simply there that I saw. I didn’t know him at the time option his book, write your own screenplay, and as Karl Alexander, I knew him as Karl Tunberg, Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven- try to get it made?’” which was his actual name. He was named for Per-Cent Solution published Meyer’s realization of the appeal of two his uncle, who was a big mucky-muck in the in 1974 by E. P. Dutton. Unless men from another time experiencing a society Writers’ Guild [of America] in Hollywood. He had otherwise noted, all images accompanying that they lived outside of presented endless written the screenplay for Old Yeller, and received this article are courtesy of Anthony Taylor. opportunities for humor, drama, and social the final screen credit for Ben-Hur, for which he commentary, and informed the collaboration was not the final author… but he got around, Mr. between the two writers. As they developed the story, Meyer Tunberg. One of his requests to his nephew was that he change his contributed ideas that Alexander incorporated into the novel name, so that there would be no chance for being confused for his and vice-versa. At the end of the process, Meyer knew that the uncle in whose honor he had been named. So I knew Karl glancscreenplay was his opportunity to jumpstart his directing career, ingly from the theater department at the University of Iowa, and I hadn’t heard from him in quite a while. I left Iowa in 1968, and I and only made it available for sale to the studios on the basis that heard from him sometime in 1974 when The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, he would direct the film. His gamble paid off. “A brilliant scientist. A criminal genius. A delightful romance. And a daring chase across time — the most exciting, mysterious, and challenging dimension of all!”

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(LEFT) The iconic poster to Time After Time. (RIGHT) David Warner as Jack the Ripper in modern day San Francisco. © Warner Bros. Poster courtesy of Heritage.

With the movie green-lighted by Warner Bros., to be produced by Orion Pictures, Meyer turned his attention to pre-production duties and casting. He had several people in mind for the leads. His first task was to find the perfect Herbert Wells. “My original idea was for an actor named Derek Jacobi,” Meyer recalls. “I had seen and loved him in I, Claudius, which I thought was one of the most amazing things ever to air on television. But of course, nobody at Warner Bros. had ever watched anything on public television, so they’d never seen I, Claudius, so Derek Jacobi didn’t count. “I don’t know where the idea for Malcolm [McDowell as H. G. Wells] came from, but I do know that when I suggested him they said, ‘But he always plays the bad guy.’ So I said, ‘Yes… and now he’ll play the good guy. And don’t we call that acting?’ I actually knew Malcolm in another context besides A Clockwork Orange. When I started out in the business in the very early Seventies, I was in the publicity department of Paramount Pictures in New York. We were publicizing a movie that Paramount was releasing called If, starring Malcolm. That was his American film debut, so I saw

(ABOVE) Time After Time, the novel by Karl Alexander, published by Delacorte Press, preceded the film. (LEFT) Screen capture of Malcolm McDowell as H. G. Wells. © Warner Bros.

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retro sci-fi

Newly arrived in his “future,” the time-traveler discovers a museum exhibit in his honor. Similarly, the movie Time After Time earned audience respect after its initial release. © Warner Bros.

For H. G. Wells’ love interest Amy Robbins, one actress blew everyone else who auditioned out of the water: Mary Steenburgen. She also blew co-star McDowell out of the water, so to speak. Malcolm recalls, “Time After Time means different things to me, of course. Because I did the movie, I got two children from that because I married Mary Steenburgen, who was brilliant in the movie and beautiful. Listen, I think it’s very evident from the movie how my relationship with Mary was continuing nicely. But we had a really nice time shooting it.” McDowell and Steenburgen divorced in 1990. Once everything was in place, shooting began. Reflecting on his experience as a first-time director, Meyer recalls approaching the job humbly. “It was a complete learning experience for me, trying to figure this out, so when I interviewed people to shoot the movie, to edit the movie, to do the props or anything else, I always had the same speech; ‘I know nothing. You’ll have to teach me. You’ll have to not mind teaching me. And then you’ll have to not go crazy if I still want to try it my way at the end of it.’ And anybody who could withstand the catechism, I said, ‘Fine—we’ll make you a member.’ And I was very lucky because not only did I surround myself with capable people, starting with the actors—everybody—but they were all out to help me. My more egregious mistakes didn’t wind up in the movie, and the ones that didn’t work, I could cut them, and so forth and so on. I came out of the theater. I had tried to be an actor, I wasn’t a good actor. I’d been a theater director. I had directed a play a week on the radio, so I was good with actors. I was a good writer… but while I was playing with a Smith/Corona portable electric 74

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[typewriter], Steven Spielberg was playing with a camera, and the difference is obvious. Steven Spielberg is a real filmmaker—maybe the realest—and I was just fumbling my way hoping that the thing would stay in focus and that I was pointing the camera at the people who were talking. That was about the best that I could do. Learning the value of words versus pictures is very important. The movie would certainly be a lot better, or a lot more professional, let’s say, if it had been directed by somebody with more camera savvy than I had.” David Warner and Malcolm McDowell shared nothing but praise for Nicholas Meyer. “We did have great fun. I think it was Nick’s first film as a director, and he did a great job,” recalls Malcolm. According to David, “I remember on the very first day of shooting, Nick said to the crew and us, ‘Look, guys, I’ve never made a movie before, this is my first directorial effort. So if there’s anything you can help me with or want to advise me to do, please do so.’ Which I thought was a great way of relaxing everybody and saying that if he makes a mistake, he doesn’t mind someone telling him. There are some first-time directors who think they know it all and sometimes make great mistakes. At least Nick did that, say, ‘Please give me ideas,’ which I admired him for.” Principal photography took place around the city of San Francisco, California, which became nearly a character in its own right due to the use of distinctive locations. This is not an altogether unknown phenomenon, as the city has had a similar effect on other films such as Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Bullitt, and even So I Married An Axe Murderer. “I put all things in San Francisco that I loved into the script,” says Meyer.

retro sci-fi

Time After Time is a movie of many moods: (TOP) Wells’ attempts to understand contemporary life are comical. (CENTER) Jack the Ripper threatening Steenburgen’s character Amy Robbins is in the thriller mode. (BOTTOM) And, of course, there is the romance between Wells and Robbins in the film (and the behind-the-scenes romance between Steenburgen and McDowell). © Warner Bros.

“We had this great chase sequence,” recalls McDowell, “and we shot for a whole night outside the rotunda at the fine arts building, the Palace of Fine Arts. So we were running around all over the place. I was running all over the place after Mary as I remember, but that’s a different story. I’ve always loved San Francisco since. If we made a few more Time After Times, we’d have sparkling careers,” laughs Malcolm. David agreed. “Yes, well, it was all downhill after that. No, seriously! You can make a film like Time After Time, of which I am really, really proud to have been in and also working with Malcolm, and Nick Meyer and Mary and everyone, and I think it is rather a special movie. But at the time, it didn’t really take off, did it? I mean, it’s a cult movie now, but at the time it didn’t really hit…” The film was the darling of the critics for sure, but it failed to set the box office on fire. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote,

“A movie that’s as sweet as it is clever, and never so clever that it forgets to be entertaining. There’s a lot to be said for an adult’s movie with the shimmer of a child’s new toy.” Daily Variety said, “A delightful, entertaining trifle of a film that shows both the possibilities and limitations of taking liberties with literature and history. Nicholas Meyer has deftly juxtaposed Victorian England and contemporary America in a clever story, irresistible due to the competence of its cast.” So why didn’t the film connect as tightly with paying moviegoers? McDowell has a theory. “I asked to see the studio questionnaires that they put out for their marketing, because I thought that they marketed the film very badly because they made it a sort of chase movie about Jack the Ripper being chased, which I thought was a misrepresentation of the film,” McDowell says. “So when I read these things that the studio prepared for the public to fill in, they said things like, ‘Have you ever heard of H. G. Wells?’ ‘NO.’ ‘Have you ever heard of Jack the Ripper?’ ‘YES.’ Right. So this is a Jack the Ripper movie. Now, this is insane, because of course, Jack the Ripper is a very important element, but the whole film is not a chase movie, and it’s not a gory movie in any way, so Jack the Ripper fans would go see the movie and be disappointed. It’s a love story, and that’s how they should have sold the movie, and because they didn’t do that it fell flat on its face. And it was really sad, because I saw it with a couple of audiences at the time, the theaters were jam-packed and the audiences absolutely loved that movie. When it didn’t take off, I was absolutely amazed that they’d screwed it up, but you know they do it all the time, so… what else is new?” Meyer disagrees. “Here’s what I saw happen. Before the first preview it was well understood by everyone including me that Warner Bros. hated the movie. My editor, Donn Cambern, had been on a plane with another Warner Bros. editor and in conversation he was asked what he was working on and he said Time After Time. The other fellow said, ‘Oh! That’s the one they hate.’ They hated it so much that they RETROFAN

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RetroFan #31