Monday, October 13, 2003

M*A*S*H Unsmashed

As others have noted, The Hallmark Channel is now running episodes of M*A*S*H uncut. Each night starting at 10 PM (7 PM for those of us on the West Coast with satellite dishes), four shows are run and in order to accommodate the usual cable channel number of commercials, the shows run longer than a half hour. The first starts at 10:00, the second at 10:36, the third at 11:12 and the fourth at 11:48.

Interestingly, though TiVo and most of the online guides seem to know about this, the Hallmark Channel's website seems utterly unaware. It presently has the shows starting at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 and 11:30...and then the show after starts at 12:30, which is also wrong. Actually, the show following starts at 12:25 and runs for two hours and four minutes, ending so that the show after that (usually a Rifleman rerun) which is listed as starting at 2:30 starts at 2:29.

To further confuse people, the same four M*A*S*H episodes are run twice a day and in the earlier airing, they are cut. Tomorrow at Noon, you can tune in and see "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (that's the one about a cold snap making everyone in camp miserable) in a half-hour slot, which means that they'll cut four and a half minutes to accommodate more commercials. Then later that evening, you can tune in and see "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in a 36-minute slot with nothing cut.

You wonder where all this is heading. Is this a test to see if uncut episodes will draw a larger audience? If the response shows that people really like the shows without the trims, will Hallmark or some cable channel experiment with reducing the number of commercials (and charging more for the ones they do run) and putting the shows in half-hour slots? Or might we be heading towards a day when they'll run everything uncut and let shows start and end whenever they start and end?

In the meantime, Game Show Network is going the other way with this. They used to run three old black-and-white game shows early in the A.M., uncut but each in a 40 minute slot. Starting next week, those two hours will be filled with four shows, so there will presumably be some cutting. I don't know what the thinking is behind this but if it's because the ratings on those shows have been going down, I think I know the reason. Both the I've Got A Secret and What's My Line? shows have gotten a bit stale from being rerun over and over, and the few commercials, which repeat ad nauseam during the two-hour block, have long since passed the saturation level. During them, I'm now tempted to grab up the phone, call the 800 number and offer to buy a dozen of those damn dog grooming brushes if they will just limit the commercial to two runs per night. And I don't even have a dog.

• Posted at 11:51 PM · LINK

More on Pete Morisi

Here's a link to an obit for Pete Morisi in the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance.

• Posted at 10:22 PM · LINK

Pete Morisi, R.I.P.

Pete Morisi, known to fans of Charlton comics as "P.A.M.," died yesterday at Staten Island University Hospital. So far, we've heard nothing about a cause of death but I'll tell you what I can about his life and times. Peter A. Morisi was born in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn in 1928 and grew up there, dreaming of being either a policeman or a comic book artist. He opted for the latter and wound up studying, like about half the comic artists of his generation, at the School of Industrial Arts in New York. He occasionally assisted on newspaper strips (Dickie Dare, The Saint and the Dan Barry Flash Gordon) but devoted most of his career to comic books and another, unrelated occupation, which we'll get to. His first comic book work appears to have been for Fox Comics in 1948, where he sold a few stories before being drafted into the Army.

While stationed in Colorado, he wrote a number of scripts for that company's romance and crime comics, and even managed to draw a few stories, including a short-lived strip called "Lionus the Cruel." Upon his return to New York in 1950, he worked for Quality Comics, Timely (now Marvel), Harvey, Lev Gleason, Fiction House and several other companies. In 1953, he wrote and drew a detective strip called "Johnny Dynamite" for Comic Media. It failed to click with readers but attracted a strong following among professionals and the admiration of his fellow artists.

Morisi's early work in comics showed a lot of Alex Raymond influence but one day, he made a sharp turn. Reportedly, an editor told him to try and draw more like George Tuska, who was then the "star" artist in the field of crime comics. Morisi liked Tuska's work and saw that others were emulating the man, but felt it was wrong to simply appropriate someone else's style. So, the story goes, he phoned up Tuska, asked if he could imitate his approach and offered to pay a small royalty for the privilege. Tuska was so amazed that anyone had asked that he gave Morisi permission to draw like him and waived the fee. Thereafter, some of Morisi's work was so close to Tuska's in style that when they worked for the same firm, the editor got them confused.

In the mid-fifties, there was a recession in the comic book field and publishers began closing. Morisi saw where it was all headed and decided he needed another line of work. Fulfilling his other childhood dream, he studied for and joined the New York Police Department in 1956. He put in twenty years on the force, most of it spent working in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. But he didn't stop working for comics. He just stopped signing his work...or he'd sign it "P.A.M.," so that the N.Y.P.D. wouldn't know of his moonlighting. Except for one brief job for Classics Illustrated and a few jobs for DC in the early seventies, all of his comic book work was done for Charlton, primarily on westerns. These included Billy the Kid, Gunmaster, Wyatt Earp and Kid Montana. Though Charlton paid rock-bottom wages, the company was willing to allow him to work without deadlines. He'd write and draw his own stories (or accept a script which he would only draw) at his own pace in whatever time he had away from the police beat. Whenever he got one done, they'd accept it and pay him. It worked out well for both sides and Morisi was one of their more talented contributors.

His most memorable work, however, came during a brief period in the sixties when editor Dick Giordano attempted to launch an "action hero" line and asked Morisi to come up with one. Morisi created Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt — an uncommonly thoughtful super-hero comic which delved into Eastern philosophies and martial arts at a time when such areas were relatively new to American media. The first issue appeared in January of 1966 and made a huge hit with fans. Unfortunately, Morisi was unable to produce material on the kind of deadline necessary for a recurring feature. Others had to fill-in for him and after only eight issues, he had to abandon his creation and return to non-series stories, mostly for westerns or ghost comics such as The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves. He did not attempt another regular strip until 1975 as he neared retirement from the N.Y.P.D. Then, he created, wrote and drew Vengeance Squad, which dealt with a crew of private detectives who used fisticuffs and high-tech means (though rarely firearms) to solve crimes and catch criminals that stymied the police. The book only lasted six issues — and Charlton didn't last much longer. Had readers known the comic was the work of a cop with twenty years on the force, it might have meant more.

Morisi retired from police work in 1976 but did very little in comics after that. His wife of 53 years passed away last May so he is survived by three sons (Steven, Russ and Val), a brother, a sister and five grandchildren. Services are Thursday at the Richmond Funeral Home in Grant City.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Morisi in person but we spoke several times on the phone. He was a modest man who cared deeply about a select group of artist friends. He was always calling to check on them and see if he could assist with advice or work referrals, or even to loan them money. One time we spoke, I asked him if during all his years as a cop, he ever had to arrest anyone he knew from the comic book business. He chuckled and replied, "No...but I can think of a few guys who should have been doing hard time."

• Posted at 7:26 PM · LINK

Lazlo's Back!

Don Novello is better known to most folks as Father Guido Sarducci but he's also known to many of us as the bizarre Lazlo Toth, author of several books of silly letters to famous people. He appeared this afternoon on Crossfire to plug it and I laughed out loud when he said the following with regard to George W. Bush...

First he said Saddam, he can run but he can't hide. He's running good. Couldn't find Saddam. Couldn't find Osama. Couldn't find Saddam. Can't find weapons of mass destruction. Can't find anthrax. Couldn't find Chandra Levy. Only person these people have found is Tommy Chong.

Novello's new Lazlo Toth book is called From Bush to Bush and I just ordered a copy from Amazon...as you can do by clicking on the underlined name. I'll let you know how it is when I receive it but if it's even a third as wonderful as his first two books, it'll be well worth the purchase. The first two are still in print, by the way.

• Posted at 4:01 PM · LINK

Still Wallowing

If (like me) you're fascinated by the set of presidential scandals that went under the general heading of Watergate, you'll want to visit this new site that gives a good overview of it all. There are also some great links to audio clips, including the infamous "Smoking Gun" tape that caused most of Nixon's defenders on the Judiciary Committee to turn on him.

• Posted at 3:34 PM · LINK