In the premiere episode of Dennis the Menace, which aired on Sunday, October 4, 1959, the title urchin was only trying to help when he caused the contents of a kitchen table to crash onto the floor, or a neighbor to step into a bucket of paint.
Children of the period could relate. Dennis was mischievous, like us, but most of the time he was a reasonably okay kid.
We followed the misadventures of rambunctious Dennis Mitchell, based on the syndicated comic strip by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, for four seasons. Some of us idealized the young actor who played him, Jay North. He was a star. He was famous. He was lucky.
But North—who played blond, precocious, slingshot-carrying Dennis from age seven to eleven—didn’t always feel so lucky.
In the ’90s, when North was in his forties, he went public with the sad, shocking truth about the price he paid for fame. Throughout the run of Dennis the Menace, North was physically and emotionally abused by his on-set caretaker, who happened to be his aunt.
“I’ve always been a very quiet guy, and I always kept my pain very quiet,” North (born in 1951 in Los Angeles) told me during a 2000 interview.
“I didn’t do anything in a public way. I didn’t go out and beat people up, or drive my car drunk into a tree, or hit a cop, or shoot drugs, or beat up women, or anything like that. I was a very quiet kind of guy. I just pretty much hid my pain inside of myself.”
“I’ve become very happy and fulfilled by merely achieving the ordinary—by living an ordinary life like an ordinary person in an ordinary house in an ordinary town. It’s nice
to have that. And the good thing is, I’m anonymous. Nobody recognizes me on the street.”
(LEFT) Jay North rides his trike into a world of trouble in Dennis the Menace (1959–1963).
We’ll delve further into North’s ordeal, but first, let’s revisit the happier aspect of the period that yet remains: the classic kidcom itself.
CATTLE CALL
By the time the TV series was greenlit, the country already knew all about Dennis the Menace. In 1951, Ketcham’s comic strip debuted from the Post-Hall Syndicate. In 1952, Rosemary Clooney and Jimmy Boyd dueted on a recording of the same title with some super-square lyrics: “Dennis the menace / He’s a bundle of dynamite / Oh, the things he says and the things he
does / Will make you shake with fright.” In 1953, a Dennis the Menace comic book debuted from Standard Comics, with Fawcett taking over the series in 1959, the year of the TV show’s premiere.
When the show was first announced, there was quite a “cattle call” of child actors vying for the role of Dennis.
“It was about 500 boys,” North recalled. “It was an interesting process. I went in, and the first time I read for Dennis the Menace, I gave a terrible reading. I went in and did a cold reading, and it was just dreadful. What happened was, my uncle, who was a singer-songwriter, had some friends in the casting office at Columbia Pictures. He convinced them to let me come in and read again. Well, I read again and did much better the second time around. They decided to screen-test me. Of course, all of us boys who got screen tests but didn’t have naturally blond hair, we had to get our hair bleached for the screen test. So I got my hair bleached blond.”
Fortunately for North, he tested with three adult actors who ended up in the TV cast.
“I did my screen test with Gloria Henry and Herbert Anderson, who were later to play my parents, and I also did a test with Joseph Kearns, who played Mr. Wilson,” North said.
Anderson was a presence in many films, often in the same getup: haircut, spectacles, suit. Henry starred in a string of low-budget movies in the Forties and Fifties in the western, musical, noir, and comedy genres. Jeannie Russell played Dennis’ bossy playmate Margaret, and Billy Booth was his freckled-faced friend Tommy, lending the show a “Little Rascals” feel.
Rounding out the cast were Kearns as George, the first of two Mr. Wilsons (a role he played until his death at 55 in 1962), and Sylvia Field as his wife, Martha. Kearns was followed by Gale Gordon as George’s brother, John, who was joined by Sara Seeger as his wife, Eloise.
“We started production in 1959,” North recalled. “We were on our way. The series lasted for four years. We did 146 half-hour, black-and-white episodes.”
A downside was the constant hair-bleaching.
“One of the more unpleasant aspects of that, as you can imagine, was having to get my hair bleached blond and keep it that way for the entire four years,” North said. “Then when I outgrew the role years later, of course, I let my hair go back to its natural color.”
North had a particular chemistry with Kearns, who played crotchety to a T. Viewers knew that underneath all that bluster, “good old” Mr. Wilson truly cared for Dennis.
“Joe was wonderful,” North said of working with him. “It was really very
An Impossible Premise, a Surprise Hit... Celebrating 60 Years of
BY CAROL M. FORD
On a cold evening in early Spring 1965, a U.S. World War II veteran, accompanied by his pre-adolescent grandson, entered a theater in his Midwestern hometown. His local American Legion branch had received a special invitation from Hollywood to a closed screening of a 22-minute trailer about a World War II comedy television show. He decided to attend and offer his feedback at the request of Bing Crosby Productions.
The decorated veteran wasn’t sure what to expect from this presentation. His experiences serving in the U.S. Army Air Force, although courageous, were grim: exhaustion, pain, brutality, sadness, fear, and worst of all, witnessing death. He and many of his service buddies ended up in prisoner of war camps in the heart of Nazi Germany. Some didn’t do so well after the war was over and they returned home. Some never made it home at all. This new comedy show was set deep inside Nazi Germany in a prisoner of war camp. How could anyone laugh about Hitler and his Nazis, or their heinous crimes against humanity? How could wicked Nazis translate into a TV comedy? How could this show ever have been approved? Hogan’s Heroes, they were calling it. “World War II with a laugh track,” they
claimed. It wasn’t the first military TV show set during World War II ever produced. Combat!, McHale’s Navy, and Twelve O’Clock High (based on the film of the same name) had been a few of his favorites. But this new program was the first to feature Nazis as main characters.
Despite all the horrors of war, the veteran had formed lifelong bonds and friendships with his fellow servicemen. He figured whatever this show was, it was worth checking out—if nothing else, to stop it from seeing the light of day if it proved offensive.
Comedian
Bob Crane was also a talented drummer and often practiced in his Hogan’s Heroes’ dressing room.
The veteran need not have worried. Not only did he enjoy the antics of Hogan and his heroes, but he laughed. It was funny, albeit far-fetched with an impossible plot. In addition, the accurate portrayal of camaraderie among the Allies, the seriousness of the prisoner of war camp situation, and the underlying suspense of danger sold him. This was good. It was silly, true, but it also captured the realism of their situation. Completing the survey, he included a note on the sheet of paper, “Had it not been for humor, we never would have survived the war.”
His feedback, along with that of countless other veterans and former prisoners of war across the country, was submitted to Bing Crosby Productions and relayed to the show’s star. Bob Crane was no stranger to the horrors of war, and it was at his insistence to ask U.S. veterans what they thought of Hogan’s Heroes. If they had been the least bit offended, Crane wanted no part of it. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt those who had already sacrificed so much.
After watching the trailer—what eventually became the pilot episode, “The Informer”—veterans had weighed in, and their response was overwhelmingly positive. With this encouraging news, Bob Crane agreed to star as Colonel Robert E. Hogan. All they needed now was for Hogan’s Heroes to be picked up by a major television network. But it was well on its way to success and infamy.
UNLIKELY HIT
Hogan’s Heroes. An impossible premise. An unlikely hit. When the series premiered on September 17, 1965, it was an almost instant success, landing at number seven in the Nielsen Ratings in its first week. It was further hailed as “TV’s Top New Show” during the week of October 12, 1965, when it ranked number one of all shows debuting during the 1965 fall season and fifth overall—behind Bonanza, Bewitched, Gomer Pyle, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, respectively (Conjure up RetroFan #31 for more on Bewitched and RetroFan #7 for The Dick Van Dyke Show – RetroEd). By December 1965, Hogan’s Heroes was still in the top ten, closing out the year as seventh out of ninety-five shows on television.
The series ran for six years and a total of 168 episodes, with its final episode, “Rockets or Romance,” airing on April 4, 1971. During its tenure, the show’s formula never changed, even if a few cast members did. The backdrop of war and serious undertones gave viewers a heightened level of tension that offset the comedic overtures. We watch with
both joy and trepidation as our imprisoned heroes tackle each mission, confuse the enemy, help Allied soldiers escape, assist underground agents, and ultimately, help lead the Allies to victory. Many veterans and former prisoners of war became great fans of the series, with some even providing anecdotes from their own experiences that were used in episodes. For example, the episode “Cuisine a La Stalag 13” was based on a story a former prisoner of war relayed to Bob Crane.
During its entire run, Hogan’s Heroes was nominated for twelve Emmy Awards, and of those, it won twice. Both wins were for Werner Klemperer as Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy for his role as Colonel Klink (1968 and 1969). Klemperer was also nominated in 1966, 1967, and 1970 for the same category. Hogan’s Heroes was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1966, 1967 and 1968; Bob Crane for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series in 1966 and 1967; Nita Talbot (as Russian spy Marya) for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy in 1968; and Gordon Avil for cinematography in 1968.
To this day, Hogan’s Heroes is a beloved nostalgic sitcom, a hilarious trip that provides fans with an escape into an alternate reality. Stalag 13 is a cloak-and-dagger world of espionage and bravery, where laughter dances with a sense of foreboding, and the stark contrasts of good versus evil are ever-present. Hogan and his ragtag unit are tough yet lovable. Beneath the laugh track, Hogan’s Heroes shows us the definition of courage. Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz may be bumbling idiots, but they are still dangerous. The “bad guys from Berlin”—the Nazis—are always just one step away from discovering Hogan’s secret operation. The lives of our heroes are always in peril.
Contemporary merchandise (trading cards, toys, comic books, and the highly coveted lunch box), constant press, and promotional events featuring the cast, especially Bob Crane in his Hogan garb, helped propel the series to great heights. The cast also cut two LP records: Hogan’s Heroes Sing the Best of World War II and Bob Crane, His Drums and Orchestra Play the Funny Side of TV But Hogan’s Heroes is not without controversy. Resentment and even disgust continue for those who do not find anything related to Nazi Germany funny.
Hogan’s Heroes is satire. In it, humor walks hand-in-hand with danger. And for fans, it is comedic genius.
THE PITCH
Hogan and his men were not always supposed to be held captive in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. Initially, the series was set in an American penitentiary located in the Pacific Northwest.
Long before he achieved critical acclaim as producer of The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, Albert S. Ruddy and his close friend, writer and actor Bernard Fein, wrote the first draft of their pilot script on a whim. They had Phil Silvers in mind, notably because Fein had appeared in The Phil Silvers Show as Private Gomez, and Silvers’ character in that series was a sneaky con artist. The two writers envisioned a leading character
“Hey, Hey, He Trained Monkeys!”
“It’s big, it’s colossal, it’s the best show on earth, the circus will be in town today, You’ll wanna have a lemonade, You’ll wanna see the big parade, You’ll wanna hear the calliope play!
“It’s great, it’s terrific, it’s the best show on earth, nothing could top it anywhere, You’ll get a chance to laugh and play, You’ll have a heart that’s young and gay, And you’ll have a happy holiday!
“It’s great to make believe that you’re the daredevil fellow on the high trapeze, As far above the crowd, you’ll catch your high flyin’ partner with the greatest of ease.
“Or you can be a clown, a happy face Pagliacci happy circus clown, dressed up in those silly clothes, with a big red funny nose, When the mighty circus comes to town!
“It’s grand, it’s tremendous, it’s the best show on earth, so go buy a ticket right away, You’ll get a chance to laugh and play, You’ll have a heart that’s young and gay, And you’ll have a happy holiday!”
“Circus Boy Theme Song” Composers: Harold S. (“Hal”) Hopper, with lyrics by Victor McLeod
I was born in the first generation of television kids. My first memory is watching Ernie Kovacs on my parents’ B&W TV through the bars of my crib while living on New York’s Long Island in 1952. By the time I was five years old, I primarily watched cartoons (for self-education as well as entertainment) from Terrytoons’ Farmer Alfalfa to Max Fleischer’s Popeye the Sailor and MGM’s Tom and Jerry to Hanna-Barbera’s The Ruff and Reddy Show and Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends I also loved puppet shows, especially The Howdy Doody Show, and The Shari Lewis Show, and just about any program about exotic animals. (By that time, I had also taught myself how to read, thanks to the bane of Dr. Fredric Wertham, “funnybooks,” which also helped me learn how to draw.) Then, in 1956, along came a live-action TV series that still impresses me, Circus Boy, which starred a blond kid named Mickey Braddock and more acrobats, clowns, and trained animals than I’d ever seen in a half-hour TV series. There were even three Circus Boy comic books!
Ten years later, I was wild about a hip musical sitcom, The Monkees. It took a while, until during the second season of that show, when a clue was dropped that clicked in my brain to finally realize that Mickey Braddock and Micky Dolenz... were the same person!
But first, in the center ring, it’s Circus Boy!
Circus Boy was a Western TV series about a kid who’s been adopted by a traveling circus, set in the late 1890s. It was produced by Norman Blackburn and Herbert B. Leonard. Blackburn began his career with Walt Disney as an animator. He later joined NBC in New York and was one of its first National Program Directors. He redesigned the Howdy Doody puppet and had his design refined by some of his cronies at Disney. He moved back to Hollywood and joined the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, and eventually became the talent buyer for such radio shows as The Lux Radio Playhouse and The Elgin Watch Shower of Stars. His other television credits include Celebrity Golf, one of the first golf shows on TV. Leonard (October 8, 1922–October 14, 2006) was an American producer and writer. Leonard was a production manager at Screen Gems for many years. Leonard produced and was the production manager for many of the television shows produced for Screen Gems which also included The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Naked City, and Route 66.
The 30-minute episodes of Circus Boy, primarily directed by Robert G. Walker, began airing 36 episodes of the show on September 23, 1956 to June 23, 1957 at 7:30-8:00 P.M. on Sunday nights on NBC. The second season, Circus Boy aired on ABC, from September 19, 1957 to December 12, 1957, adding thirteen more episodes. Then it was rerun in syndication from 1958 to 1960.
According to Micky, “One day, my mother came to me and said, ‘Your father’s agent has asked if you want to go on an interview for a TV series.’ ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I have a baseball game I want to go to.’ ‘All right, honey,’ replied my mom as she went off to apply another coat of wax to the carpet.’ But the baseball game kind of fell apart, so I decided to go to the interview after all. The interview was for the TV series Circus Boy. And that decision, that day, changed everything. For better, or for worse, my life was never to be quite the same.”
Micky, a pupil at Eunice Knight Saunders School and a collector of stray cats, was the son of actor George Dolenz, who appeared in My Cousin Rachel (1952), Scared Stiff (1953), The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), and Sign of the Pagan (1954), among many other films and TV shows. George’s agent, Mitch Hamilburg, urged Micky to try out for Circus Boy.
“I had been on other interviews before the one for Circus Boy. There were a number of adventure shows around the time, such as Fury and My Friend Flicka and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. I had even been up for Lassie, but they cast a collie instead. I was very disappointed. The interview itself was held in the heart of Hollywood at Columbia Pictures in Frank Capra’s old office. As a matter of fact, the office wasn’t far from where I had a similar interview for The Monkees show some ten years later! What a coinkeydink.”
“The interview was fairly typical as interviews go. I walked into a drab, sparsely furnished office, and was introduced to a drab, balding casting
director who asked me some drab, boring questions about my hobbies and experience in the business. He gave me a few scenes from a script I took back into the lobby and rehearsed with my mom, then I did a ‘cold reading’ in front of the producers. They smiled. I smiled, and I said goodbye.”
“That was it. I didn’t think about it again until some weeks later when my parents informed me that I had a call-back
for a screen-test! Well, this was certainly getting interesting. I had already done a screen test for a movie, so I got rather excited and prayed that the government wouldn’t fall before the show was made. The screen test went well. I spent a whole day doing different scenes with different actors. Crying scenes, laughing scenes, and ‘Look out! The lion has escaped!’ scenes. Then I took off my makeup, went home, and proceeded to accidentally set my sister’s hair on fire.
“One evening, a few weeks later, my parents took me out to the Marquis for dinner. I don’t remember what the pretense was, but I went along. When I got there I noticed that Norman Blackburn, one of the producers of the series was there. Unbeknownst to me, Circus Boy had been sold to NBC and I had been chosen to play the part of ‘Corky, the Circus Boy!’ Sometime toward the end of the meal, the waiters brought out a big cake, complete with candles and decorated with a candy big-top tent. Mr. Blackburn pulled out a hand-drawn scroll, adorned with little cartoon elephants. It read something like this:
And let it be known that MICKY DOLENZ shall from this day forth be known as the one and only CIRCUS BOY!
“Well, I was no fool. I’d been around. Even at the tender age of ten, I was well aware of what starring in your own television series could mean. Just think of all the baseball gloves I could buy. Why, I’d be knee-deep in Popsicles!”
One of Micky Dolenz’s competitors for his role in Circus Boy was singer-songwriter Paul Williams. Ten years later, Williams competed with Dolenz again, for a role in The Monkees TV series. Williams didn’t resent Dolenz for beating him out twice, and the Monkees later recorded one of his songs, “Someday Man.”
“Not long after that I started working on the preproduction for the show. First came the wardrobe fittings, the photo shoots, the interviews, more wardrobe fittings, then the makeup test, more photos, more interviews, more wardrobe fittings, and then they broke the news to me that they were going to bleach my brown hair blond! Needless to say, I was not too crazy about this idea. And what was worse, I had to go to the hairdressing department to get it done. Yuck! Only girls went to a hairdresser! They sat me down in a barber’s chair, put an apron over my head, and started combing hydrogen peroxide into my scalp—and then pinned it back with curlers! I was mortified.
“It was also told at this time that the powersthat-be decided to give me a stage name. Originally, they wanted it to be Rock Hudson, but that was already taken, so they settled on ‘Mickey Braddock.’ (Braddock was a name they’d dredged up from my mother’s side of the family. It seems that somewhere in the dim and distant past I am related to one General Braddock who lost some famous battle in some famous war.) The reasons the producers gave for changing my name were strange, if not inane. First of all, they said, my father was already well-known as the Count of Monte Cristo, and they figured that the television viewing audience might get confused. And second of all, they thought ‘Braddock’ was just more ‘American’ than ‘Dolenz.’
“Whatever the reasons, Mickey Braddock I became. A blond Mickey Braddock. (Did they think blond hair was more ‘American’ than brown?)”
SECRET ORIGIN
Here’s Circus Boy’s “secret origin”: When young Corky Foster’s (billed as Mickey Braddock) acrobatic parents—“The Flying Falcons”—were killed in a trapeze accident during a performance, he immediately became an orphan. Fortunately, poor Corky was adopted by Joey the Clown
Just hearing that phrase instantly evokes memories of the iconic robot from Irwin Allen’s classic sci-fi series Lost in Space. Like many children following the Robinsons’ adventures, I dreamed of someday owning my very own “Mechanical Misfit,” as Dr. Smith famously called him. In 1966, Remco Toys made that dream a reality with the release of the Motorized Lost in Space Robot — the very first toy ever made of the lovable Robot character.
I received my first Remco Lost in Space Robot on Christmas morning in 1971, and from the moment I took it out of the box and popped in two big D-cell batteries, I knew it was going to become my new favorite toy. We did everything together: I ate dinner with it, brought it to school for Show and Tell, and, of course, never missed an episode of Lost in Space without my bubble-headed buddy sitting right by my side. We were inseparable—and kind of still are.
Unlike so many of my other childhood favorites, my appreciation for this particular toy has only grown over time. I’ve developed a special fascination—okay, a full-blown obsession—with it, and I’m not even entirely sure why. As toy robots go, it’s not exactly a head-turner. Standing 12″ tall, it’s big and clunky. It’s all the wrong colors, and when compared to Robert Kinoshita’s original Robot design, it looks downright cartoonish. But that’s what I love about it! There’s something in its toyetic simplicity that I find utterly irresistible.
I still have that original Remco Robot I received on Christmas morning more than 50 years ago, along with a few others I’ve gathered over my 30+ years of collecting these robots, their packaging, and any other ephemera I could find. Join me now on a spacewalk through time as I share my collection, some fun trivia, and explore the history behind one of the most iconic TV character toys of my childhood: the 1966 Remco Motorized Lost in Space Robot!
FROM NJ TO ALPHA CENTAURI
Remco Industries was founded in 1949 in Newark, New Jersey, by cousins Ike Heller and Saul Robbins. Remco, short for “Remote Control,” started out by making toy walkie-talkies designed for kids. Later, as the company recognized the power of licensing, it began producing innovative toys based on popular TV franchises such as Star Trek, Batman, Land of the Giants, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
FROM TV TO TOYLINE
When Lost in Space debuted on CBS in 1965, Remco was among the first to secure a licensing deal. The company produced several toys based on the series, including the Lost in Space Official Helmet, Signal Ray Gun, Lost in Space 3D Action Fun Game, and the most popular item in the line, the Motorized Lost in Space Robot.
By the time Remco’s Lost in Space toys hit store shelves in 1966, the show was already in its second season. The serious storylines of Season 1 had given way to campy, humordriven plots, which resonated with a younger audience. The Robot, Will, and the now-bumbling Dr. Smith characters were featured more prominently, and it was their on-screen antics that helped make the Remco Robot the number one item on many young viewers’ Christmas lists.
In some ways, the TV show itself acted as an hour-long toy commercial. For the episode “The Mechanical Men,” dozens of Remco Robots were painted silver to match the appearance of the actual TV Robot. In the story, these miniature Robot look-alikes invade the Robinsons’ campsite and make the Robot their king, complete with a royal crown and scepter. One of these surviving screen-used Remco Robots recently surfaced at a 2023 entertainment memorabilia auction, still covered in silver paint with all of the prop department modifications intact.
Interestingly, while Remco was one of the first toy manufacturers to embrace television as a medium for selling toys, they never made a TV commercial for the Motorized Lost in Space Robot. Instead, they relied mostly on the Robot’s popularity in the TV show and on catalog placements with major department stores. From 1966 to 1969, ads featuring the toy appeared in the Christmas catalogs of Montgomery Ward, JCPenney, and Sears, among others.
Though Lost in Space remained popular, the show was unceremoniously canceled in 1968 after its third season due to rising production costs and Irwin Allen’s desire to focus A veritable army of Lost in Space Robots. Lost in Space is a trademark of Legend Pictures, LLC.
BY WILL MURRAY
In 1957, Westerns were ascendant on television. Two former radio writers, Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow, recognizing that dramatic radio broadcasting was dying, teamed up to make a name for themselves in the new medium.
“We wanted to get into TV,” recalled Rolfe, “but we didn’t have an idea for a show. We were intrigued with an old movie title, This Gun for Hire. One day we played around with the variations of the film title, and that made us remember the old vaudeville gag, ‘Have Tux—Will Travel.’
“Well, that did it—we had a gag title, Have Gun Will Travel. Then we wrote a character to fit, but we never really intended to use the title. It was just a gag with us, and even when we filmed the pilot reel, we figured Have Gun was just a working title. We would change it later, we figured.”
Remembered today as one of TV’s most memorable Westerns, Have Gun Will Travel did not start out in that dusty genre.
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
“We had no idea of doing a period Western,” Rolfe explained. “Neither of us was thinking about a Western at all. We did a five-page treatment about a soldier of fortune fellow. He lived in New York, in a penthouse. There was a newsstand in Times Square at that time, which carried newspapers and
magazines from all over the world. Every morning, he would go down to this newsstand, pick up a number of newspapers and magazines, go to Central Park, and read them. He’d read some items that would interest him: somebody in trouble, someone with a problem; somewhere in this country or the world. He would take out a small pair of scissors, cut it out, and put it in an envelope with his card, which read ‘Have Gun, Will Travel. Cable Paladin, New York City.’ He’d airmail it, and when he got a response, you’d see him take a plane, get there, and take care of the situation. That’s what we registered with the Writer‘s Guild, and that’s what we took to CBS.”
Hunt Stromberg, in charge of development at CBS, saw this as a potential vehicle for Columbia cowboy star Randolph Scott. Stromberg said, “Make this a Western and you’ve got a deal.”
Rolfe and Meadow agreed, but asked themselves, “’How the hell do we turn this into a Western?”
As Rolfe later related, “First of all, look at the problems we’ve got. We’re talking 1880. Anything Paladin reads from around the country is going to be anywhere from a week
to three months old. By the time he takes out his card and sends it somewhere, it won’t reach there for another month or two. By the time he gets a reply, and gets out there to help, we can go anywhere from 3 to 8 months before he can help somebody. How do we get around this? I asked Hunt Stromberg that question.”
The CBS executive replied, “That’s easy. Dissolve to….”
“If Hunt was willing to accept that,” Rolfe stated. “I was too. So, we changed the concept to a Western. Then, CBS went back to Randolph Scott, and discovered he was really just blowing smoke. Randolph Scott wasn’t about to give up his movie career. So they started looking around for someone who could play Paladin. They went after all leading men of the period who were getting a little over the hill. Robert Taylor was the first on the list. There were a whole bunch of other people, but they couldn’t get anybody else to really come in with this concept. Finally, someone came up with Richard Boone.”
Years before, Boone has been considered for the part of Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke but was rejected as being “too ugly.”
thing they found that fit him nicely was a black costume. So, they put him in this wardrobe and did the screen test. They liked the test and decided to do a pilot. Then, the CBS art department went to work and designed the card that we used.”
As Boone remembered it, “Suddenly the CBS suits said, ‘He’s the Western type.’ The pilot was shot, sent to New York, and was sold within three hours.”
CBS officials in New York didn’t think the brawny 6-foot-2-inch, 190-pound actor was right for Paladin. After two seasons starring in Medic, Boone was seriously typecast.
When he was working on The Tall T with Randolph Scott, the star turned down the role and allegedly handed the script to Richard Boone.
“Actually, it was Bob Sparks, CBS executive producer, who thought I was the one to play Paladin,” revealed Boone. “He had to do some arguing to get me cast in the pilot episode. The others kept saying, ‘But he’s a doctor.’”
(ABOVE) Richard Boone as Dr. Konrad Styner on Medic (1954–1956).
BOONE SADDLES UP
Meadow and Rolfe’s pilot was titled “Three Bells to Perdido.” The episode opens with Paladin in the lobby of the posh Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. Reading about trouble in New Mexico, he takes out his business card and mails it, along with a letter of introduction, to a troubled rancher.
The scene shifts from Paladin attired in an immaculate Prince Albert coat and beaver hat to his arrival at the ranch, wearing his black gunfighter outfit whose holster sports the trademark silver chess knight emblem seen on his business card.
“It’s a chess piece,” explained Boone, “the most versatile on the board. It can move in eight different directions, over obstacles, and it’s always unexpected.”
This would be the format for virtually every episode that followed.
Named after the loyal knights who guarded King Charlemagne, Paladin was a mysterious figure. A mercenary who
Boone had taken two years off after Medic. “When I read the first script offered me for this series, I knew that Paladin was the character I wanted,” he stated. “I had turned down some 11 offers after Medic. Paladin is a gentleman sort of rogue— but a gutsy type. He has a lot of fun, lives extremely well.”
“They decided to test Boone,” recounted Rolfe, “and they took him down to Western Costume. The only
charged a thousand-dollar fee, he was nevertheless an educated man with a code of honor. A knight errant of the Old West.
“We deliberately set out to create an elegantly deadly character as different as possible from any other Western series,” explained Boone. “The curled mustache was sort of the spice in the stew. But we gave him an education with a knowledge of foreign languages and the classics so he wouldn’t appear to be just another guy who had spent his entire life on the Main Street of Dodge City. He’s not ashamed to take a drink or make a pass at a doll, and even his judgment of right from wrong is based on his own personal ethics. I think he’s quite a character.”
Some 27 Westerns were scheduled to debut in the 1957 Fall television season. Competition was fierce.
“Ours is going to be different,” promised producer Julian Claman. “First of all, Dick is an actor. And our scripts will be void of the typical clichés of Westerns. I won’t say we will never do a story about homesteaders and cattlemen, but if we do, it will be different from anything you’ve ever seen before.”
“Paladin is a strange character with a lot of subtleties,” observed Boone. “I can use all the dramatic training I can get with him. I get a real charge out of playing him. Paladin isn’t a low type. He’s an educated man, a West Pointer, who traveled around the world, knows life, and enjoys it. He has expensive taste, he can wear almost foppish clothes, and get away with it because he’s handy with a gun. He likes women, art—the better things in life. With this character, we have scope, and can work in many directions. I’ve never seen anyone like him on TV.”
Have Gun—Will Travel debuted as the lead-in for Gunsmoke on Saturday, September 14, 1957 at 9:30. Soon, it was number 2 in the ratings.
“We started out and went to second place almost immediately,” Sam Rolfe complained. “The big frustration of my career was that we never did overtake Gunsmoke. We always
were that one-two in the ratings. We got our audience, held it and just took off. It was my first series, and, for me, it was kind of a sleigh ride.”
After the pilot, Meadow moved on, and Rolfe came aboard as associate producer under Julian Claman. This arrangement did not last long.
“Around the 13th or 14th show, Julian and Dick had a blow-up,” Rolfe related. “When it was over, Julian stalked out and pulled me into his office. He said, ‘Look, this is going to be the end, because one of us is going to go and you’re not going to drop Dick. You’re going to be the producer.’
“Julian left, and I became producer overnight. Dick and I had a really terrific relationship. I didn’t understand why, but we did. We were very honest with each other. I found him to be very professional.”
Boone was descended from the legendary Daniel Boone’s brother, which made him a distant relative of singer Pat Boone. “I guess everybody named Boone is,” he quipped.
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 in to “Retro Saturday Morning”! This issue, we’ll take the second of a three-part dive into Marvel Productions’ heroic animation of 1981–1983, continuing with The Incredible Hulk (the third part for Spider-Man will run in a future RetroFan issue).
AN ATOMIC AGE MONSTER
Marvel’s most verdant super-hero would premiere on syndicated television in 1966, less than four years after his comic book debut. The Incredible Hulk was part of a daily animated program called The Marvel Super-Heroes, from the production
company Grantray-Lawrence. That small studio was run by producers Robert Lawrence, Grant Simmons, and Ray Patterson, and they licensed multiple Marvel characters for half-hour adventures (each presented in three chapters): Captain America was Monday, The Incredible Hulk was Tuesday, Iron Man was Wednesday, Mighty Thor was Thursday (naturally), and Sub-Mariner was Friday.
The stories were traced and adapted from comics of the time, especially the first six issues of The Incredible Hulk. The creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Hulk was the result of an accident involving scientist Dr. Bruce Banner. When he attempts to rescue a wayward teenager from a “gamma bomb” blast, Banner is bombarded with gamma rays. As a result—and mostly during times of stress—he transforms into a large muscular green-skinned goliath whose intellect barely allows him one-syllable words, and whose immense strength allows him to smash military tanks or super
villains. Although the origin story for the Hulk is nearly a carbon copy of the 1957 horror film The Amazing Colossal Man, the plots of the stories owed more to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein combined with Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Banner was meek and good, representing the superego, while Hulk was angry and monstrously destructive, acting as pure unchained id.
Although The Incredible Hulk only lasted six initial issues, the character soon guest-starred in other Marvel titles, providing a super-strong adversary that was tragically misunderstood. By 1963, Hulk was even a member of the new super-hero team debuting in Avengers #1, though his membership was short-lived. He soon leapt off to headline his own serialized stories in Tales to Astonish from issues #60–103, at which the title changed to reflect its star, and The Incredible Hulk series was back.
Returning to those GrantrayLawrence stories though, Hulk was given equal star billing to the others. Each show had their own theme song by Jack Urbont, with the Hulk’s being sung as follows:
Doc Bruce Banner
Belted by gamma rays
Turned into the Hulk
Ain’t he unglamo-rays!
Wreckin’ the town
With the power of a bull
Ain’t no monster clown
Who is as lovable
As ever-lovin’ Hulk! Hulk! Hulk!
The episodes themselves adapted stories from early Hulk issues, as well
as Tales to Astonish, with art traced—using a process called Xerography—mostly from Jack Kirby or Bob Powell. The “Green Goliath”—a nickname Hulk was given—waged havoc against such familiar villains as the Chameleon, the Leader, the Toadmen, Tyrannus, the Metal Master, Ringmaster, and the Space Phantom!
The Marvel Super-Heroes only ran for one season, though it remained in syndication for years to come. Hulk retreated into the shadows until the mid-1970s, when producer/writer Kenneth Johnson pitched a live-action Incredible Hulk series to Universal. They booked two pilot films, to air in 1977 on CBS. Due to budgetary restraints, Hulk’s power and stories were scaled back. He was now only mildly super-strong— enough that a green-painted bodybuilder could convincingly portray him—and he no longer faced super-villains, extraterrestrials, or military threats. Bill Bixby was cast as Dr. David Bruce Banner (his name was changed because nervous TV executives felt “Bruce” sounded too
Lou Ferrigno was cast as the Hulk. Jack Colvin appeared as reporter Jack McGee, a relentless reporter out to expose the truth behind the Hulk.
The Incredible Hulk premiered on November 4, 1977 to great ratings. Bixby’s Banner was a tragic and lonely figure who was cursed with a dark side. His travels across America led him into the hands of endless bullies, cartels, and street criminals. Ferrigno’s Hulk was a nearly wordless brute with a soft heart and confused look, using his superstrength to fight the bad guys and save ordinary people in trouble. CBS gave an almost immediate green-light to the series, which would become one of the most successful super-hero shows ever on TV, even winning an Emmy Award. It also added a popular catchphrase to the English lexicon: Banner’s admonishment, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” The Incredible Hulk ran for five seasons before wrapping up in the spring of 1982.
Marvel Productions was a subsidiary of the New Yorkbased Marvel Entertainment Group—itself a subsidiary of Cadence Industries—which was the publisher and licensor of Marvel Comics and its characters. By owning their own animation studio, Marvel hoped to be able to successfully break into Hollywood in a big way; until that time, nothing they had done had lasted more than one season except for CBS’s live action The Incredible Hulk.
But the Greenskin Goliath wasn’t off the air for long…
SPIDER-MAN BIRTHS THE HULK
As detailed in RetroFan #38, animation production company DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (also known as DFE), sold its company and its assets to Marvel Comics on June 19, 1980. The firm was rechristened Marvel Productions, and quickly launched development on commercials and twenty developmental presentations for Saturday morning cartoons,
Marvel figurehead and past publisher Stan Lee, who had the ebullient personality and skills of a carnival huckster, moved to Los Angeles specifically to pitch Marvel shows. By day, Lee went to Marvel Productions’ new office in Van Nuys, where as “Vice President, Creative Affairs,” his main responsibilities were to get some films and TV series going based on both existing Marvel characters or on any new characters Marvel Productions created.
While deals were made for live-action films and TV pilots—the majority of which never came to fruition—Marvel
The publisher of that book was Whitman Publishing, a division of Western Printing and Lithographing Company. Whitman was, oh boy, where to start? If you liked to read (hi) and your parents were on a tight budget (meet my folks), there were Whitman books in your house. Whitman published lots of stuff for kids, but as far as older collector’s are concerned, the best were the Big Little Books. Western (partnered with Simon & Schuster until 1958) published Little Golden Books which are also beloved and collected.
WILD WESTERN
A quick bit of history: Founded in 1907, Western (also known as Western Publishing) was a commercial printer. One of their clients, the Hamming-Whitman Publishing
Company couldn’t pay its bills. In 1916, the Hamming name was removed and Whitman became a subsidiary of Western. One of Whitman’s first salesmen, Samuel Lowe, suggested producing inexpensive books for children all year long (rather than, say, just concentrating on gift volumes during the holidays). Big Little Books (BLB) would arise out of that thinking.
Big Little Books were thick hardcover books first published in 1932 for a dime, and ranged anywhere from 212 to 432 pages of text and art on small pages (3 5/8 inches by 4 1/2 inches) printed on cheap paper. Typically, the text would appear on the lefthand pages, and a simple black and white illustration appeared on the right with a short caption. Later BLB volumes, such as those discussed here, would initially be hardcover with, for the first time, color illustrations. Later re-issues would be softcover with color or black and white illustrations depending on the edition.
The first BLB was The Adventures of Dick Tracy (December 1932) based on the then new comic strip character. There would be many volumes in the BLB series featuring comic strip stars well before comic books emerged, operating from a similar playbook (strip reprints at ten cents a pop).
In addition to comic strip characters, Western would tell stories in the BLB format about animation stars (Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck), radio shows (Bobby Benson on the H-Bar-O Ranch and Eddie Cantor in “An Hour With You”), Western stars (Roy Rogers and Gene Autry), and movie stars (Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland). Technically, the Rooney and Garland book was published as a Better Little Book, but it’s lumped together in all the BLB lists I’ve looked over. Honestly, if I dug deep into all of the re-printings and different titles that Western put out, we’d be here for a week.
TELEVISION COMES TO BIG LITTLE BOOKS
Let’s start with a controversy.
Whitman may have published the first TV tie-in book, Gene Autry and the Badmen of Broken Bow (1951). There is not universal agreement on this. Autry did star in the Gene Autry Show (1950–1955) but by then he had appeared in a number of Big Little Books, and there was really nothing in the story to specifically connect the events in Badmen of Broken Bow to Autry’s television program. But since we’re on the subject of BLBs, it seems worth mentioning.
For more on the subject of TV tie-in books I suggest starting with Robert Jay’s Television Obscurities (www. tvobscurities.com/2010/09/ bookshelf-the-very-first-tvtie-in/).
Whitman’s first organized collection of television
related books was called the Big Little Book TV Series. It was devoted to new stories based on then-current shows, all adventure themed. Despite being identified as Big Little Books, these editions were 4 3/8 inches by 5 1/2 inches—taller than the standard BLB—with 280 pages. There were only six titles published in 1958. Data courtesy of the now defunct biglittlebooks.com:
✽ Wyatt Earp (No. 1644) Writer: Davis Lott. Artist: John Ushler.
✽ Andy Burnett on Trial (No. 1645) Writer: Charles I. Coombs. Artist: Henry Luhrs.
✽ The Buccaneers (No. 1646) Writer: Alice Sankey. Artist: Russ Manning (there’s your reason right there to pick this one up).
✽ Gunsmoke (No. 1647) Writer: Doris Schroder. Artist: John Ushler.
✽ The Adventures of Jim Bowie (No. 1648) Writer: Lewis B. Patten. Artist: Tony Sgroi.
✽ Sir Lancelot (No. 1649) Writer: Dorothy Haas. Artist: John Ushler.
I wanted to mention these books because they are called Big Little Books and feature television programs. However, they are not in the classic BLB format, which is square-ish, and they’re maybe a tad more text heavy. But for a closer look at RetroFan-era television adventure BLBs, we’re focusing on what are known as the 2000 series due to Whitman’s product numbering system.
BIG LITTLE BOOKS OF THE SMALL SCREEN (2000 SERIES)
After a break in production, Big Little Books returned in 1967 (under the slightly different imprint “A Big Little Book”) with 12 titles put out that year. These were hardcover editions as previous BLBs had been but this time they featured full-color art. They were all 256 pages long (24 pages fewer pages than the Big Little Book TV Series).
The subject matter included popular animated characters (Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Woody Woodpecker) and television shows as we’ll see below. There are also super-hero titles too (like Batman and The Fantastic Four), but that’s an article for another time. Chitty Chitty Bang
A One-way Trip to the Village A Pilgrimage to Portmerion
BY JOEL MEADOWS
The Prisoner is the ultimate cult TV show. Running a mere 17 episodes from 1967 to 1968, no other TV series has been so associated with a place. Shot in the idiosyncratic location of Portmerion in north Wales, The Prisoner, produced by veteran British producer Lew Grade for UK television, has attracted a massive worldwide following in its 48 year history.
Portmerion is a unique spot: designed by eccentric Welsh architect Sir Clough William-Ellis over a fifty year period from 1925 to 1975, it was intended as a recreation of an Italian village in the heart of north Wales, just west of the northwest of England and cities like Liverpool and Chester. It is such a bizarrely incongruous location, as it is surrounded by typically Welsh towns and villages like Porthmadog and Penrhyndeudraeth. It gets around 300,000 visitors each year.
Prisoner star and its creator, Patrick McGoohan, had shot a couple of episodes there of his previous show Danger Man, also made by ITC, and he fell in love with the place. To refresh people’s memories of what the series is about, the show tells the tale of an unnamed British spy who finds himself, after resigning from his job, in the mysterious Village, where he is known simply as Number Six. Over 17 increasingly bizarre and paranoid episodes,
Number Six finds himself battling against a range of surreal threats.
The Prisoner was such a groundbreaking series, offering an approach that viewers hadn’t seen before on mainstream television. That is a major reason why, almost fifty years on, it is still such a revered show that continues to attract fans from around the world.
It isn’t just The Prisoner series that was shot in the village either: such a weird and unusual spot has hosted a range of very different TV shows like Doctor Who, Brideshead Revisited, Top Gear, and Cold Feet, to name just a few.
Unless otherwise mentioned, all photographs of Portmerion are by and courtesy of Joel Meadows.
Its creator McGoohan recalled the genesis of the show in a Canadian TV interview he did with host Warner Troyer back in 1977. “I was doing a series was an adequate amount. So I went to the gentleman, Lew Grade, who was the financier, and said that I’d like to cease making it and do something else. So he didn’t like that idea. He’d prefer that I’d gone on forever doing it. But anyway, I said I was going to quit.”
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RETROFAN #40
Here comes TV’s Dennis the Menace, with stars JAY NORTH, GLORIA HENRY, and JEANNIE RUSSELL! Plus: Hogan’s Heroes turns 60, TV Western Have Gun–Will Travel, Big Little Books, The Incredible Hulk in animation, MICKY DOLENZ as Circus Boy, and more! Featuring columns by ED CATTO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER
