Wednesday, January 21, 2004

The Lizard King

My chum Earl Kress — and I know enough not to doubt him about this kind of thing — says both I and most reference books are wrong. Frank Milano, he says, was not the voice of Mr. Wizard the Lizard on the "Tooter Turtle" cartoons seen on the 1960 King Leonardo cartoon show. Earl is certain that voice was supplied by Sandy Becker, the famed New York kid show host. I think Allen Swift played Tooter, so I don't know what voice on that series might have been done by Mr. Milano, if he even did a regular character at all. But his name appeared in the credits.

Interesting Note: The company that produced King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, as the show was originally called, was Total Television. Total later produced a number of other shows including Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963), Underdog (1964), The Beagles (1966) and Go-Go Gophers (1968) that featured new cartoons wrapped around reruns from their previous shows. As a result, Frank Milano, who passed away in '62, was credited as a voice actor (and presumably paid decent residuals) on shows produced years after his death. Nice work if you can get it...

• Posted at 11:24 PM · LINK

Mile-High Producers

David McLallen went to see The Producers and here's what he sent me...

Saw the current touring cast in Denver last night and I must say I was surprised & impressed. Not so much by Lewis Stadlen, although he was really good. I expected that. He is, after all, an old Broadway hand. But "Max" had the show stolen right out from under him...by Leo. Alan Ruck, who for so many years played the slimy, smarmy Stuart on Spin City, can sing! His voice, his acting, made him a perfect Leo Bloom! I was pleasantly stunned!

Ths show, of course, was precisely what one would expect — hilarious, side-splitting, laugh-out loud funny. But hey, it's Mel Brooks, the man who turned farting into an art form in Blazing Saddles. Charley Izabella King was a really good Ulla, (the tour's former Ulla moved to the Broadway company) although there were a few times when her "Swedish" accent got so thick that she was hard to understand. Lee Roy Reams as Roger, and especially Josh Prince as Carmen Ghia were fantastic. I know Reams is no kid, but he more than kept up with a very demanding role. (His bio on imdb indicates that he's actually 61!)

I came away with a stomach ache from laughing so hard, and the very appreciative audience awarded the show an instant standing "o" the moment that Ruck & Stadlen appeared in the curtain call. What a great show!

It is, and I wish I could see it with Lewis J. Stadlen, who is one of my favorite Broadway performers. If you ever get to see the DVD of the recent production of The Man Who Came to Dinner with Nathan Lane, watch for Stadlen. He doesn't show up until the third act but when he does, he proceeds to walk off with the entire play and most of the scenery.

And I wonder how many folks know that Stadlen is the son of Allen Swift, the great cartoon voice actor I mentioned in the previous posting. Swift was a New York kids' show host and also the voice of many a character on Howdy Doody. Anyway, thanks, David! Wish I could have been there.

• Posted at 7:50 PM · LINK

More Sandpipers Info

Coming soon to my bookshelf and probably yours is a book called The Walt Disney Records Story, detailing the history of Disney record albums. It's by Tim Hollis and Gregory Ehrbar, and I am delighted to reprint this e-mail from Gregory telling me more in my eternal quest to find out about the Sandpipers...

As it happens, I can add to the Sandpipers story. Bob McGrath is a friend of mine and he said Mike Stewart was not the Broadway librettist, but a vocalist and vocal contractor who was responsible for getting him early work. Mitch Miller directed the early Golden Records with a group called The Sandpipers or the The Sandpiper Quartet. Mitch also played oboe occasionally on them. Jimmy Carroll was the arranger for Golden Records and Miller's Columbia sing along LP's.

The singers' names you have listed are accurate. Sally Sweetland, by the way, is now in her 90's and along with her husband Lee, still teaches and sings in California. Tim Hollis and I contacted her for our Disneyland Records book.

I think many of the Bugs Bunny vocals were done in NY also by Gil Mack, who was a frequent actor on the CBS Mystery Theater radio show. Frank Milano (Odie Colognie on King Leonardo) did a couple of Yogi Bear LPs too.

When Miller went on to great success at Columbia, Jim Timmens conducted most of the early 60's Golden records with a group either called the Sandpipers, the Glow-Tones, or the Golden Singers/Chorus. They are distinctive by the Timmens sound he used for Terrytoons and some Lantz TV stuff. Listen for lots of woodwinds and a mellower tone. One of his frequent singers was Rose Marie Jun, whose Broadway demos for some huge shows are now on CDs called Broadway First Takes. She was also in Needles and Pins with Streisand.

Speaking of CDs, your readers will be delighted to learn that many Golden Records were reissued on CD. Drive Entertainment bought the library and worked with them on compiling discs and writing notes. They actually did about two dozen, but only a handful were released initially. You can find an my amazon listmania list at this address.

When Drive Entertainment folded, Image Entertainment / Liberty International got the masters and released even more Golden LP's, but were not told about my involvement (that's showbiz), so their CDs were retitled and contain little clue about which Golden Records were their sources. They're on amazon and towerrecords.com too, almost all under confusing and inaccurate names.

All interesting...but I was under the impression that Allen Swift was the voice of Odie Colognie and that Frank Milano was Mr. Wizard the Lizard in the "Tooter Turtle" cartoons on the King Leonardo show. I do own at least one Yogi Bear record from the Golden folks that credits Milano for voices. Anyway, thanks to Gregory for the info and when his Disneyland records book is available, I'll sure plug the hell out of it here.

• Posted at 5:20 PM · LINK

George Woodbridge, R.I.P.

Sorry I have to report the death of George Woodbridge, whose presence in Mad Magazine dated back to the March, 1957 issue. George was in almost every issue until just a few years ago...never flashy but always dependable, and much-loved by his colleagues. It was an odd venue for his artwork as no matter how many issues of the world's leading humor magazine he appeared in, he always considered himself a historical illustrator. He was a funny, charming gentleman but as he told me when I interviewed him for Mad Art, "I regard myself as an illustrator of historical subjects. When I'm not working for Mad, that's the field in which I work, though I'm damned proud to be part of Mad. I don't consider one field superior to the other and, in fact, the challenges are altogether different. In historical illustration, the goal is to be accurate. In Mad, the goal is to be funny." George was usually very funny.

He was born in 1930 in Flushing, New York and grew up in a house full of art and illustration books, which helped nudge him in that direction. He attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, figuring he'd follow in the footsteps of great illustrators like Robert Fawcett and Tom Lovell. But at that school, he began hanging around with folks who'd become great comic artists...guys like Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta. Another in that circle was Nick Meglin, who would soon become Assistant Editor of Mad and later its editor. Nick arranged for his friend George to audition for the magazine's then-editor, Al Feldstein, who liked what he saw...and George found a home. "George's strong points were many," Feldstein says. "He was especially adept at delineating amusing street scenes with crowds and signs and outlandish going-ons, as well as depicting humorous interpretations of just plain people in comedic human situations. The articles he was assigned to illustrate were chosen with those superb talents in mind." One of those articles, and perhaps George's best-remembered assignment, was a story called "43-Man Squamish" that ran in a 1965 issue and is still hailed as one of the magazine's crowning works.

Throughout his Mad years, George also drew historical illustrations, often of the Civil War, for books and magazines of a more serious nature. He had amassed a huge reference library and was considered a great authority on certain periods. It amused him that when he dealt with scholarly editors and authors, one of them would occasionally, almost apologetically, ask if he was the same George Woodbridge who drew "43-Man Squamish." You can view some of George's illustration work at this site, where they refer to him as "America's Dean of Uniform Illustration."

His long-time friend and co-worker Sergio Aragonés said, "He was such a good friend. He knew everything about history and he knew everything about artwork. When I was starting out and they gave me assignments that had to be in color, George was the one who helped me. Even though he was color-blind, he did the most remarkable work in color. He was a wonderful man and I will miss him very much."

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

The Lizard King

• Posted at 11:24 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 9:04 PM · LINK