Monthly Archives: July 2005

Over at IGN (a fine site, well worth browsing every day), the eminent scribe and historian Peter Sanderson reports on the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at this year's Comic-Con International.

I need to correct/clarify one thing about the upcoming Marvel book reprinting Fantastic Four #1 in a deluxe, coffee table format. Peter quotes me as saying "I wouldn't buy it if I were you." Perhaps I was misquoted but more likely, I just misspoke. I was explaining that I'd written a commentary piece for it, and I thought I was saying something like, "I wouldn't buy it because of that if I were you." I haven't seen any other part of the book so I have no idea if it will be worth the money. If you're thinking of purchasing a copy, don't let me stop you.

As Peter also mentions, I am nearing the home stretch on my massive biography of Mr. Kirby and will soon be putting it into what I call "beta-testing," meaning that I'll be asking selected folks to read it and rip it apart in search of errors, muddy phrasing, inanity and other elements that fit so perfectly into Groo but belong nowhere in a book about Jack Kirby. Before I get to that, I'll be setting up a little private forum/mailing list where folks who want to help me with research can do so. If you're one of those people who know old comics (especially Marvels of the sixties) better than you know your own family history and wish to volunteer, drop me a note.

Remember my recent problems with PayPal? I received a number of e-mailed apologies from the company and then my postings here got picked up over on Harry McCracken's PC World blog. That prompted someone from PayPal to phone me to apologize…which I suppose is nice but really, apologies from total strangers are pretty worthless. I get them every time something goes wrong with a merchant, and they never make anything better, especially since the person apologizing to me had nothing to do with the screw-up.

I wish companies would realize that when they err, the thing they need to do is to assure the customer that efforts are being taken to make sure it doesn't happen again. A few times when there's been a reason for a business to tell me they're sorry, I hear from someone of sufficient rank to effect change and the person assures me that they understand the problem and are at least attempting to deal with it. That's nice. Even better is when they say something like, "Here's my direct phone number so you never have to languish on hold calling the 800 number again. Call me directly if you ever have another problem." If I were running a big company, I'd hire someone to be the Vice-President in Charge of Mollifying Pissed-Off Customers — though I wouldn't call them that — and have them act as ombudsmen for the victims of screw-ups committed elsewhere in the firm. Refunds and financial considerations are also good.

But I wish they'd stop acting like having a stranger apologize to you means something. I don't want to be stroked, at least not in that way. I want results.

Hey, I liked his music, too. But is it really a good idea to name a post office after a blind guy?

That's Pat McCormick towering over his friend and occasional partner, Paul Williams, in one of the Smokey and the Bandit movies. I think of him mainly as a writer but Pat did an awful lot of on-camera performing, in part because people just liked having him around.

Among his many attributes was that he always had some great, utterly topical joke. No matter what was in the news, Pat had a line about it, sometimes even in good taste. It was among the reasons for Mr. Carson to keep him on the payroll of The Tonight Show for years, regardless of what he handed in. The other writers on Johnny's staff were held to strict production quotas: You had to produce X number of monologue-worthy jokes each week or you were outta there…but the rule didn't apply to Pat. Rumor has it there were long stretches — months, sometimes — when Pat handed in nothing or at least, nothing useable. It was no secret that his life was a flurry of drink and drugs and women. For a time, he was involved with Johnny's "matinee lady," Carol Wayne, and was deeply affected when she died in a boating accident. Johnny reportedly never pressed Pat for material, telling his staff, "When he turns in something good, it'll be worth it."

You had to admire the speed. One day in 1992, I was driving over to a meeting with an agent. On the phone, I heard the sad news that singer-dancer Ben Vereen was in serious condition after having been struck by a car on a beachfront road just north of Los Angeles.

When I walked into the agent's office, Pat was in the waiting room. He walked up to me and said, "Mark, do you know how to get to Malibu?"

It sounded like a straight line so I said, "No, how?"

Pat said, "You go north on Pacific Coast Highway 'til you hit Ben Vereen…"

Interested in game shows? Then you may want to attend Game Show Congress 4, a convention which is being held in Glendale, California on August 19-21. They'll have panels and screenings and games and they're presenting lifetime achievement awards to Monty Hall, Tom Kennedy and Jack Narz. Basically, it's a gathering of folks who love quiz programs and such.

Of special note is that on Saturday, my pal Stuart Shostak is hosting a panel discussion of key production members of the original NBC version of Concentration including the show runner and the all time champion contestant of the show. I'm a little busy that weekend but I may try to get out there for that. I always thought that was a great program.

The folks behind this gala weekend are looking to get as many game show fans there as possible, of course. But they also want to make contact with people who've worked in the game show industry who might be interested in being a part of it all. If you are one such person, you might want to contact them through their website.

Many of you know Don LaFontaine as the husky, haunting voice of about ten million commercials and movie trailers. Alan Light (thanks, Alan) calls my attention to this funny video clip of Don and several other men who do what he does.

One of the gentlemen there is Mark Elliot, who is often referred to as The Voice of Disney. Most Disney trailers and ads are either done by him or by announcers who are told that's the desired sound. A lot of folks have written to ask who that is. It's Mark Elliot.

Some of the best moments at the Comic-Con International this year came with the appearance of broadcasting legend Gary Owens on a couple of panels, including a spotlight conducted by Earl Kress and me. And Gary was quite a trouper to do all those things on Saturday because, as some of you may have heard, his not-inexpensive car was stolen that morning from the hotel where he was staying. I am happy to report that the car has been found, scratched and with some of its contents missing, but reasonably intact. The hotel will be paying for the necessary repairs and replacements…so while I wouldn't say it was a happy ending, it's not as bad as it might have been.

This is a leap but I am reminded of an anecdote I might as well post here. My father's car was stolen in the Summer of 1970. In fact — and there's no connection to the event but one reminds me of the other — it occurred on the Saturday of the first San Diego Comic Convention. I came home from the con to hear the news.

Amazingly, police caught the guy who'd done it and he plea-bargained on an understanding that committed him to only two or three months in jail. After he pled guilty on those terms, thinking he'd made a helluva deal, a U.S. attorney stepped in and charged him with stealing government property. My father worked for the Internal Revenue Service and his briefcase, which was full of paperwork, was in the trunk. Though he never even opened the trunk, the thief wound up serving six or seven years more for stealing something he didn't even know he'd stolen. I have a feeling he wasn't too thrilled with the lawyer who'd advised him to take that first plea-bargain.

I miss Tom Snyder on TV and will soon be missing him on the Internet. He's shutting down his website on August 1, he says. Before he goes, you might want to visit and read the recent commentary posts that are still up there. [Thanks to Jay Huber for letting me know. I hadn't been checking in because Tom said he'd injured his wrist and wouldn't be posting for a while.]

I am almost happy to report that a brilliant, funny man named Pat McCormick has finally died. For the last seven years, his sad and hopeless condition has broken the hearts of so many of us who loved and admired what was once one of the greatest minds in comedy.

Here is the story, and I'm not sure this has been reported anywhere else on the 'net. In 1998, Pat was scheduled to perform with his friend and sometimes partner, Jack Riley, at a live show Merv Griffin was hosting at the Beverly Hilton hotel. They had a routine called "The Smartest Man in the World" in which Jack acted as straight man, peppering Pat with questions. The show was about to start but Pat had not arrived. Suddenly, from the direction of the garage, everyone heard some sort of explosion and they ran out to see what it was.

Pat had driven his car in and…well, he either suffered a stroke which caused him to crash his car into a concrete wall in the parking lot or he crashed his car into the wall and that triggered the stroke. Either way, it was an awful crash that caused the auto to catch fire. Unreported at the time, for some reason, was that Pat's life was saved by a little old lady. Some tiny woman, reportedly in her sixties or seventies, pulled his 6-foot-7 body out of the flaming car and dragged it to safety.

Sadly, there wasn't much of a life left to save. Pat McCormick, one of the wittiest men ever in show business, never spoke another intelligible word.

Those of us who knew him dutifully trucked out to visit what was left of the man at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, and to try not to cry. Most of Pat's shattered bones eventually healed but it was impossible to connect with the human being, such as he was. No matter what you said to him, he'd nod and sometimes giggle a little. You were never sure if he had the slightest idea what you'd said. When I visited, the only thing he did that suggested he might have some brain cells functioning somewhere in there was that he'd point to a guest book on a little music stand and indicate that I should sign it. Once, I wrote — accurately, I think — "To Pat, from whom everyone in the business has stolen…" Me aside, that guest book became a Who's Who of veteran comedians and comedy writers. I recall signing in the first time below the names of Buddy Hackett, Shelley Berman and Jonathan Winters.

Everyone knew Pat not only as a writer (and sometimes performer) of funny material but as a man who was just as colorful and hilarious as any joke he ever authored. A lot of comedy writers are, when you meet them, indistinguishable from guys who sell life insurance for a living. Not Pat. There are hundreds of stories, most of them true, about outrageous Pat McCormick deeds and actions. The ones about him dropping his pants at his mother's funeral or running nude through a Tonight Show taping are among the few that can be told in, as they say, mixed company.

This obit [L.A. Times, registration required] will give you the basics of Pat's career. What it doesn't convey sufficiently is how loved he was by the comedy makers of his generation…and how tragic it was to see that brilliant mind silenced the last seven years, sealed away someplace in a body that the doctors said (correctly) would never get any better. Now that the rest of him is dead, maybe we can put that Pat McCormick out of our minds and remember the real one.

Cathy Rigby is presently on her farewell tour in the musical version of Peter Pan. She's flying all over the nation (here's the website, complete with a tour schedule) and it's been announced that the production will be in New York from November 30 through December 30 at Madison Square Garden. It's not wandering anywhere near where I might easily catch it but if it did, I'd go. I've seen Ms. Rigby three times in the role and I thought she was terrific…yes, even better than Mary Martin was, at least on TV. In fact, I thought the whole new production — though designed as a low-budget "bus-and-truck-tour" venture — was superior to the first and allegedly classic rendition. For one thing, they got rid of the two numbers in the original show that I thought were ridiculous.

One was the "Mysterious Lady" song where Peter Pan disguises himself as a woman and sings opera to entice Captain Hook. It was in the Mary Martin version and even as a kid, I always thought it was silly. You can only ask an audience to accept so much. I was willing to pretend I didn't see the wires that flew the actors about. I could even, just barely, pretend that Mary Martin — who struck me as a very nice grandmother type — was an adolescent lost boy. Where they lost me, even at age eight, was when the lady pretending to be a boy started pretending to be a lady…and Captain Hook, played by an actor who was doing a bad job of pretending to be straight, pretended to be interested in her. (Another nice, more effective aspect of this new production is that Hook is a real villain, instead of the more usual, campy portrayal. I've seen Hooks whose feet touched the stage less than Peter Pan's.)

The other thing they cut which never made any sense to me in the Mary Martin version was the ballet. Apparently, director-choreographer Jerome Robbins was determined to have a ballerina fly and dance in the show and it didn't matter to him that there was no logical place in the plot for it. So even though the magic of Peter Pan is that he can teach kids to fly and take them off to Neverland, Robbins had the maid in the Darlings' nursery (played by a trained ballet dancer) somehow learn to fly on her own and make it to Neverland without Peter's guidance. Then she dances for a bit with these people in bad, clumsy animal costumes and then she flies back home. It's a completely expendable number that stops the plot cold for no good reason, and it isn't even that interesting a dance…the most boring thing I've ever seen in a musical I otherwise like.

Anyway, the Cathy Rigby production cut those numbers and butched-up Hook to better effect…and like I said, I thought she was quite wonderful in the role. So was the whole cast in the last version of it I saw with her, which was a few years back. If you get the opportunity to see her do the role before she turns in her pixie dust, I recommend it. If not, well…there was a DVD but it's out of print and can be expensive to obtain. (The same is true of the Mary Martin version. Here's a link to the Amazon page for it.) If you have kids, take them. But if you don't, don't let that stop you.

I've been lax in linking to a number of places where you can read about or view photos from the Comic-Con in San Diego. Here are a few, some of which even involve me in some way…

• The fine folks who bring you the comic book Supernatural Law also bring you a gallery of Comic-Con photos.
• The IFilm crew has a bevy of videos shot at the con, including their annual rundown of scantily-clad women.
• Tom Spurgeon investigates rumors that the Comic-Con International will soon relocate to Anaheim and finds them to be greatly premature. (I've been hearing that for something like fifteen years now.) It's all in an interview he conducted with David Glanzer, the Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the con.
• Jonah Weiland also interviews David and learns more about the convention, including the attendance figures which — to no one's surprise — topped 100,000. Heck, there were that many people ahead of me in some lines.
• Peter Sanderson begins his annual reports on key convention panels, most of them — like the panel on The Bill Finger Award — hosted by Yours Truly.
• And Lauren Perry reports on that same panel.

Lastly for now: At the Eisner Award Ceremony, Arnold Drake — recipient of one of the first two Bill Finger Awards — brought down the auditorium with a little a cappella song he composed about the convention. I don't have a video of that but the day before, he broke in the material at the Golden/Silver Age Panel. Video wiz Mike Catron captured the moment and you can watch it here. That's me on the left trying to moderate the proceedings.

Elsewhere on this website, I have a couple of articles about how one goes about trying for a career in Cartoon Voicework. The pieces are not too encouraging but I think they are accurate.

As you'll see if you look at them, I pretty clearly ask people not to write me to ask that I help them in additional ways. Nonetheless, two or three times a week, I receive an e-mail from some total stranger who informs me (a) that everyone tells them they do great funny voices, (b) that their dream in life has been to do them professionally and (c) that they're hoping I can help them achieve this goal. I rarely answer these messages but I always wonder: Did this person see my request to not send me this kind of mail? If they did, did they think, "Oh, he'll make an exception for me"? If they didn't, why didn't they?

I always get the impression that the individual desperately wants to get into cartoon voicing but they found one of my pages and couldn't be bothered to spend five more minutes reading all of them. You get this a lot on the 'net when you have a site like this. I receive loads of trivia/research type questions that could be answered in ten seconds on Google but, I guess, the person couldn't be bothered to go there.

Anyway, an odd thing has happened with these "Can you help me get a job voicing cartoons?" messages. Lately, at least one a week comes from someone in another country…and I don't mean Mexico or Canada. Today, I got one from The Ukraine. Last week, there was one from an aspiring Mel Blanc in Portugal. I've received a couple from Australia.

If these folks lived here in Hollywood, there isn't much I could do for them, apart from bestowing the same advice I've posted here. But Portugal? Australia? The Ukraine? Exactly what are they expecting? I sure don't know any agents or casting sessions in their necks of the world. I'm certainly not going to suggest they scurry to Southern California so I can open doors for them, which I can't do even for local friends. What kind of response did they think was possible?

I wrote to a couple to ask and only received one reply, which was along the lines of, "Uh, I just thought you might be able to help me." Yeah, but help you in what way? They not only apparently want me to help them get their dream job, they want me to figure out how this can happen when they're in The Ukraine.

It finally dawned on me, dimwit that I am at times, that I'm dealing here with a smaller, more personalized form of Spam. Elsewhere at this moment, someone is sending out 500,000 e-mails — many of them addressed to moi — offering to enlarge or reduce portions of one's body or bank account. The abiding philosophy is, "Hey, it doesn't cost anything to send and there's maybe a 1% chance I'll get lucky." The vocal wanna-bes are operating on much the same principle.

It's a principle that existed before the Internet and which you may recall from your high school days. Remember the guy whose approach to women was to baldly proposition everyone he met who was even vaguely a potential date? The one in my school was named Rick, and Rick believed that the way to a lady's heart (or certain other body parts that interested him more) was to ask every one of them to have sex with him. No small talk. No getting to know the other person first. He would just ask if they were interested in sex, and he often did it in a manner so crude, he'd have alienated a nymphomaniac.

He offended women. He made them uncomfortable. I know of a few who slapped him, verbally or literally, but it didn't cause him to reconsider his approach. He'd explain to those of us who told him to knock it off, "Hey, if one in a hundred says yes, it'll be worth it." But I didn't see that he even scored that often — I didn't see that he scored at all — and I was sure he drove away a few females who might otherwise have found him interesting.

I never found out what happened to Rick after we graduated but I have two hunches. The more likely of them is that he's sitting somewhere at a computer, sending out millions of e-mails, asking strangers if they want to borrow money or buy generic medicine. The other is that he's living in The Ukraine and wants to do cartoon voices.

Well, the PayPal folks made good on their promise to fix things. What they did was to, with my permission, close down the PayPal account in question and merge its assets to another PayPal account I have. (I am now receiving form letters in my e-mail box that begin, "We're sorry you decided to close down your PayPal account…" but that's another story.) Solving the problem from my end turned out to be a matter of hanging on the line and calling back repeatedly and adopting a patient but exasperated tone with a long line of PayPal staffers who told me nothing could be done. Finally, I reached someone who had the power to do all those things the others told me were impossible. Why this took 4+ hours of my life today is a fine question.

Many of you have sent me your own PayPal Horror Stories, and you'll forgive me if I don't post any here. I have the feeling that if I do, I'll get dozens more and this will turn into a site all about PayPal problems. I would like to forget about the whole ordeal…

…except that I will mention that everything relating to PayPal works here so if you've been thinking of sending a donation to show your appreciation of this site, now would be a wonderful time. I mean, if I'm going to spend this much effort to get PayPal working here, the least you can do is use it.

Fred Kaplan reveals how we can pull out of Iraq by some time in 2007.