Thursday, January 29, 2004

More Paar Stuff

Dick Cavett, who worked for Jack Paar, writes about his one-time employer.

• Posted at 10:47 PM · LINK

Unbiased Observer

Over at Animation Blast (where there are great news items about the cartoon field but alas, no permalinks so scroll down a little) Amid Amidi notes that the makers of the recent Spider-Man cartoon show have picked up an amazing endorsement of their show which they are promoting in the hopes of getting an Annie Award. The endorsement is from one of the guys who created the character and who is still on the payroll of the company that produced it.

• Posted at 4:43 PM · LINK

More on Dave Cockrum

As I mentioned earlier, a benefit book is being prepared to help Dave Cockrum, a wonderfully-gifted comic book artist who is presently in dreadful health. You can order this book here but Dave's friends know it will not be nearly enough. Some of them are mounting a campaign to get Marvel Comics, which has made millions off Dave's character designs, to kick in with a tiny share of those millions. Here's Clifford Meth, who's publishing the benefit book and leading the charge, telling about Dave's background and his current plight. We're going to hear a lot more about this.

• Posted at 3:40 PM · LINK

Primo Paar Piece

Over on Slate, Timothy Noah has a short but good article on one of Jack Paar's more dubious achievements: He helped finish off the career of the gossip-monger (and occasional tyrant-in-print) Walter Winchell.

In the essay, Noah makes reference to an anti-Winchell book published by Lyle Stuart. Stuart later became a wealthy (but still controversial) publisher with an empire that was financed in part by his profits from a libel suit against Winchell. At the time he published the book Noah mentions, his other line of work was serving as Business Manager for Bill Gaines at EC Comics. One of the many reasons EC was targeted by law enforcement officials and distributors was that Winchell was using his considerable influence to get them to go after Stuart. New York Police even once raided the EC offices, apparently at the incitement of Winchell, and arrested Stuart for selling what they termed pornography but what we would term great horror comics. (The reason they arrested Stuart and not Gaines was that Stuart, being of stronger stuff than Gaines, deliberately took the heat...a very heroic gesture. The case was soon thrown out of court.)

Paar had other feuds but the one with Winchell seems to have been the only one that proved fatal to his opponent. As Noah points out, Winchell was already in decline but Paar's evisceration of the man was much-welcomed within the show business community. And it was as good a piece of evidence as any that television had outpowered the power of the press.