Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Goodbye, Charlie!

A website called popcereal likes to scan old Gold Key comics and offer them for your downloading pleasure. They're currently featuring The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan #1 from 1972 and I'm going to suggest two reasons why you should not download it. One is that the way they have it set up, it'll take you an awfully long time. Secondly, it's not a very good comic...and I oughta know. I wrote it.

It was, in fact, the first comic book script of mine to see print in this country. Previously, I'd written lots of comics published overseas and about a dozen scripts for Gold Key. As you may know, comics are not always published in the order they're written and if you're working on a book that's in no danger of cancellation, it's not uncommon to try and get way ahead. The first things I did for Gold Key were Disney comics that didn't come out until more than a year after I wrote them.

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan was a TV show that Hanna-Barbera produced for the CBS Saturday morning season that commenced in September of '72. As I later learned when I worked for H-B, there was always at least one "trouble" show that Joe Barbera would sell to one of the networks and then no one, including Joe, could figure out what to do with. Some years, they had way more than one. Chan Clan was about Charlie Chan and his ten (ten!) children solving mysteries that usually involved figuring out how some "impossible" crime had been committed — a kind of plot that was concurrently being featured on the prime-time show Banacek starring George Peppard. Banacek as a series debuted the same week that the Chan Clan debuted but the TV-Movie pilot for Banacek had aired the previous March when H-B was developing Chan Clan, and that's where someone got the idea.

I didn't work on the H-B TV show but heard about it from some who did. Between juggling all those regular characters and making that kind of gimmicky mystery work each week, the writers had a terrible time. One of them was an actor-writer named Jamie Farr who was struggling with a script when he got the call to run over to the Twentieth-Century Fox studio, put on a dress and make what was intended as a one-time appearance on a new show called M*A*S*H. I always figured that he was glad to do that because it meant he didn't have to write The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.

Another problem the show had was with the voice cast. The wonderful actor Keye Luke was signed to play Charlie Chan and then the original idea was to cast all Chinese (or at least, Asian) actors in the other roles. This gave Bill Hanna a fit because it meant hiring performers who were not experienced in voice acting, which usually means long and expensive recording sessions and employing folks who can't "double" (i.e., do multiple roles). With Keye Luke, ten kids and someone to bark for the Chans' dog, that meant twelve regular actors each episode plus two or three more to play the villains, witnesses and other roles in each episode. That's two or three times as many bodies to pay as your average H-B show...and it was actually worse than that. There may well have been good young voice actors around of Asian extraction but the H-B casting people didn't find many. Several members of the cast had to be replaced...in some cases, quietly by Caucasian actors. Among the latter was a then-unknown child actress named Jodie Foster.

So the show was in trouble before it even debuted. Gold Key was then doing the comics based on H-B properties and had first refusal on the new ones. When they were offered The Chan Clan, they refused. The editor there, Chase Craig, was in close touch with writers and artists who worked at H-B and he'd heard about the problems the show was having and how those working on it didn't have much hope for its success. But the studio put some kind of pressure on Gold Key and one day, Chase was ordered to hurriedly get a first issue written and drawn. I got the assignment because I was, he felt, his fastest writer...and I also happened to walk into the office that day.

The show was still a few months from debuting on TV. Chase handed me a pile of storyboards and told me to read them all to get a feel for the property but to write an adaptation of one in particular. I don't think this was an episode by Jamie Farr and his then-partner, Eddie Carroll. My recollection, which may be faulty, is that Norman Maurer wrote it. Anyway, I was assigned to adapt it and later on if the comic continued, there would be original stories conceived fresh for the comics. As Chase explained to me, he preferred to launch a new H-B book in this manner. The studio had approval rights and the people there could get pointlessly picky about the material...but they rarely bothered looking at any issue after the first few. Therefore, it simplified the procedure to do the first issue as an adaptation and maybe the second. They couldn't very well complain that a plot taken from the show was inappropriate.

I wrote the script in one day, as I recall. It was drawn by a wonderful artist named Warren Tufts who is probably best known for his long-ago newspaper strip, Casey Ruggles. Tufts was much admired as an adventure artist but he was a slow, meticulous worker who never felt that the financial rewards matched the hours he put into his art. In the late sixties, he began telling everyone that his goal was to "become Ernie Bushmiller," Bushmiller being the guy who drew Nancy. This was a little like Sir Laurence Olivier announcing that since there was no money in doing Ibsen, he wanted to join the Three Stooges. Warren more or less made good on his goal. He later drew the Pink Panther comic books for several years with a Bushmiller simplicity. Chan Clan represented a transitional period between his adventure work and his more cartoony endeavors. He also dabbled in acting, filmmaking and even the building of airplanes. A few years later, he was killed while test-flying a plane that he built in his garage.

Tufts accepted the assignment without seeing the property because he figured it would go fast. When you drew a Hanna-Barbera comic book, you got a packet of model sheets with key poses of the characters and you could usually trace a lot of drawings right off the model sheets. Wherever possible in Chan Clan, Warren did that. I picked a panel at random to post above next to the cover image, then realized they both have the same pose of the honorable Mr. Chan, certainly copied right off the models. But the comic had so many characters in it and they had to be in so many poses that weren't in the model packet that Warren hated the job...though he did stick with it for all four issues of the comic book. I was luckier: I only did the first issue before Chase decided my services were needed more on Bugs Bunny.

The first time I met Tufts was up in the Gold Key offices, not long after he'd drawn this story. He was just leaving as I arrived and someone introduced us. I told him how much I loved his drawing...and Warren made a curt remark about how he'd hated drawing my script. I said something like, "Gee, I'm sorry you felt that way" and then he left and I went in for my meeting. A half-hour later as I was leaving, Warren was waiting for me in the foyer. He'd gotten to his car, realized I'd probably taken his remarks the wrong way and returned to apologize and clarify. What he'd hated, he explained, was the Amazing Chan Clan and all the characters he'd had to draw for — he felt — insufficient pay. My script was fine, he said...and we wound up going downstairs to the Hamburger Hamlet for a long, late lunch. He was a fascinating man, very passionate about his work, and I guess I'm now happy we had that little misunderstanding because it led to my one chance to spend any amount of time with him. Thereafter when I encountered him, our conversations were brief. He always had to get home and put in more hours on a plane he was building.

Like I said, don't bother downloading the comic. It'll take you forever and you won't see either Tufts or me at our best. But having it online got me to thinking about what went into it. And I also recall the day when I was up in the office and someone handed me a printed copy — the first comic book script of mine to make it to print in English. You never forget your first time...even if it's The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The late Henny Youngman (who I wrote about here) was a funny guy. I tell you he was a funny guy because you'll have no way of knowing this from today's video link. This is a soundie that Youngman made in 1943. Soundies, in case you don't already know, were kind of the music videos of their day. They were short films that were exhibited mainly in little juke box devices that were marketed in candy stores, bars, restaurants and other such establishments.

Youngman became something of a success on Kate Smith's radio show in the late thirties but he had his heart set on movie stardom. As the story is told, when he got an offer to go to Hollywood and make some films, he wanted to grab it but his contract on The Kate Smith Show prevented it. He begged...and the producers said they'd release him only if he helped them find a suitable replacement. He looked around and recommended an act that was then trying to work its way out of burlesque — two comics named Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Kate Smith's producers were skeptical but Youngman convinced them Abbott and Costello could work clean and work on radio...and Henny won his freedom. Of course, it didn't work out the way he'd planned. Just a few years later, Abbott and Costello were the hottest comedians in the movie business and Henny's film career never went anywhere. Today's clip pretty much explains why.

• Posted at 9:52 AM · LINK

Save the Internet!

As mentioned here before, a bill looming before Congress would give communications companies like AT&T and Verizon an increased role in the control of the Internet. Earlier today, I spent some time trying to decipher just what this means. It sure feels like a dangerous change but a lot of folks opposing it are unable to explain just why it will be bad.

Which doesn't mean they're wrong. These days, it is not uncommon for lawmakers and elected officials to cobble up proposals that sound harmless or even beneficial...and they are until you get down to the particulars. George W. Bush has frequently attempted to drum up support for a plan like the privatizing of Social Security while remaining deliberately vague on the specifics. Lack of details is a perfectly valid reason to oppose a proposal...and of course, a seemingly-innocent change can be Step One in a scheme where we'll absolutely hate Steps Two through Ten and wish we hadn't accepted the first phase.

From what I can gather, the most immediate danger is that there will be nothing stopping the big Internet service providers from deciding to manipulate access for their subscribers...for instance, a company like Verizon might decide to block certain websites that espoused views they didn't want people reading. Or down the line, they could start blocking ads for their competition.

Will these and other abuses occur? I dunno. But it seems to me that there is a value to establishing loud and clear that when we go on the Internet, we expect equal access to all sites. Our supplier should just connect us and get out of the way.

I don't particularly believe in online petitions but there's one at Save the Internet, along with more details and facts. Yesterday afternoon, I phoned the office of my Congressguy, Henry Waxman, and told whoever answered the phone that I hoped my representative would represent my feelings on this matter. Whether or not the pending legislation would damage the World Wide Web may be arguable but this much is not: We now have total freedom. Any changes that matter can only result in less.

• Posted at 1:33 AM · LINK

Oh, Happy Day!

As I've mentioned before on this site (here and here and here) a group called the Musical Theatre Guild does staged readings of great old musicals several times a year and does a very fine job with them. These are not easy to do. There are no sets, a bit of basic costuming and very little time for rehearsals...all to present a show that was designed to be presented with vastly more budget and prep time. That they can do it at all is impressive...and sometimes, the results are just as entertaining as a more elaborate, polished version would have been.

Last night, MTG presented one of my favorite shows, Li'l Abner. The Alex Theater was packed with my friends and we all seemed to enjoy the show tremendously. They did it without sets (not even a statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone) and a cast of 21, which is about twelve actors shy of the Broadway configuration. Still, it worked just fine. Damon Kirsche was great in the title role, Melissa Fahn was an adorable Daisy Mae, Joe Hart stopped the show as Marryin' Sam and then Michael Kostroff stopped it again as General Bullmoose. Eydie Alyson was a terrific Mammy Yokum and...well, take it from me: Everyone was good. It's really a funny show and the cast got darn near every laugh in the script by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. (If you'd like to read up on the history of the show, I wrote about it here and about the movie version here.)

This is a show that needs to be revived for Broadway. A few years ago, I was talking about this with Elliott Caplin, who was Al Capp's brother and the manager of his estate. There was a deal looming to bring the show back — it's never had a real revival — and I was going to be involved in revamping the material. Elliott warned me that the deal might fall through and he knew this because it was about the eleventh deal in twenty years to revive the show and they'd all fallen through. I don't recall if this one fell apart before or after Elliott died but it definitely fell apart. Some day though, someone will do it and I sure hope they do it right. They could have learned a lot about how to do that by seeing what the Musical Theater Guild did last night.

There are two more performances, by the way. One is April 30 at the Scherr Forum in Thousand Oaks. The other is May 8 at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach. I'm almost tempted to go again.

• Posted at 12:36 AM · LINK