One of the most-accessed articles on this website has been my piece on Rod Hull, a comedian who was popular in Australia and Great Britain. Rod, who died in 1999, worked with a grotesque but very popular bird puppet named Emu.
I'm happy to learn that Emu is back in business, now operated by the arm of Rod's son Toby. Here are the details with a thank you to Rob Rose for letting me know about this.
George Kashdan, who worked as an editor and writer at DC Comics from around 1946 until 1968, died last Saturday, apparently from complications relating to a stroke. He had been depressed for some time because of his failing health and that afternoon, he laid down for a nap and never woke up from it.
Kashdan was born May 17, 1928 in The Bronx. He got a B.A. at the University of Chicago and promptly secured a staff editorial position at DC Comics where his brother Bernard was among the most important people in the business division. DC put George to work editing, writing and rewriting scripts, mostly for back-up features (Congo Bill, Captain Compass, Green Arrow, Johnny Quick) but he got an occasional shot at Superman and Batman. Through the early sixties, he worked under editor Jack Schiff (and sometimes, Mort Weisinger). In a book like Action Comics, which featured Superman in the front and strips like Congorilla and Tommy Tomorrow in the back, it was not uncommon for Kashdan to edit the back-up features while Weisinger took care of the cover and lead story.
In 1961, one of the back-up strips he'd long helmed, Aquaman, graduated to his own comic and Kashdan became a full editor, soon taking on House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected and several others, including a strip that was a particular favorite of his — Rip Hunter, Time Master. Later in the sixties, he presided over the launch of Metamorpho and Teen Titans, and began the "team-up" format in The Brave and the Bold. Other comics he edited at times during the sixties include Blackhawk, Sea Devils, Bomba the Jungle Boy and Hawkman. He also found time to write several scripts for animated shows produced out of New York such as The Mighty Hercules (1963) and for DC's television projects, including The Superman-Aquaman Hour which was produced by Filmation in Southern California and which aired on CBS's Saturday morning schedule.
In 1968, as part of a program of editorial restructuring, Kashdan was let go by DC. Several people who worked with him said it was because he was "too nice" and had occasionally clashed with management in arguing that freelancers should be paid and treated better. Others suggested that his tenure was ended because of upper-level dissatisfaction with his work. Either way, he was let go and Dick Giordano was hired to take over most of his books.
Kashdan returned primarily to writing, most of it for the New York office of Western Publishing Company. He wrote dozens of stories for Gold Key Comics like The Twilight Zone and Grimm's Ghost Stories. He did extended stints for them writing Flash Gordon and Star Trek, and also penned several childrens' books for Western's non-comic divisions, along with freelancing for other publishers (comics and otherwise) and even doing a couple of scripts for DC. In the eighties, his freelancing slowed due to failing health and several personal tragedies. He relocated to Los Angeles to be near his remaining family.
I have to insert a personal note here. When I was a kid, I would often buy the new comics at a little store called Parnin's Pharmacy located on Westwood Boulevard near Olympic in West Los Angeles. One day in 1966, while waiting in line with my purchases, I paged through the new Aquaman I was about to buy and saw — to a numb amazement I can recall to this day — that the editor had published a note from me in the letter column. I was 14 years old and it was the first time I'd ever seen anything I'd written in print with my name attached.
This sounds very trivial but anyone reading this who's ever made a buck as a professional writer can probably relate to that thrilling moment. The editor who printed it was George Kashdan, who was then far off in New York City. But — and I swear this is true — Mr. Kashdan lived his declining days in a retirement home located in West L.A. on Westwood near Olympic...directly across the street from where Parnin's used to be.
A number of us historian-type people found him there a few years ago and he was extensively interviewed by phone. I talked to him at length...and for a man who was recovering from a stroke, he had an amazing memory for most things, though not the passage of time. Every time we spoke, I had to run over a list with him of who among his old associates was still alive. He kept hoping to recover enough to get to a Comic-Con International some day and see some of them, especially his old pal Arnold Drake, who remained in touch. My friend Jim Amash taped several more extensive talks with him and they'll be turning up soon in Roy Thomas's fine publication, Alter Ego. (Thanks to Jim for helping me with this obit, by the way.) Even though I drive by that retirement home two or three times a week, I never got to go in and visit Mr. Kashdan in person. He just never felt up to receiving visitors that way.
But I did tell him via phone how much I'd enjoyed so many of his comics. I even told him about the one I really didn't like, which was the super-hero revamp of Blackhawk in 1967, and he didn't seem to have liked it much, either. He sounded like a charming and bright man, and even though I never got to drag him out to lunch down the street at Junior's Delicatessen, as we often discussed, I feel like I've lost a buddy.
News from the world of show business falls into two categories. Some new projects are announced because they're actually about to happen. Others are publicized because they aren't. The people behind them have some of the elements necessary to make their new endeavor a reality but not all of them. They're lacking financing or a star or distribution or something...and they hope that the announcement will cause the missing piece(s) to materialize. If you look back at an old Variety, you'll see items about movies that are about to start shooting or which were "already in production" but never, in fact, went in front of any camera...or TV shows that were "a definite go" and which were never heard of again. These are the "partway-there" projects that were presented as if actually happening by someone hoping to find whatever was necessary to make them actually happen.
It's sometimes easy to tell the real announcements from the hopeful ones, sometimes hard. And of course, there are projects in the second category that do eventually manage to become real...but they weren't at the time they were announced. To survive in and around this business, you have to develop a decent sense of what's definite and what's wishful. I've had pretty good luck turning down involvement in things that weren't going to happen. That's because I follow an old Show Biz maxim that I made up: If it's at all doubtful, it's highly doubtful.
Today, it was announced that a musical comedy version of the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor, is "heading for Broadway" with Jer himself directing. Here's the announcement and I'm putting this one in the "wishful" category. It's actually not a bad idea at all for a musical but look at where they are. They have no composer or lyricist. Those are not minor details when you're putting on a musical. They also aren't announcing the name of the book writer(s) yet, which does not suggest Mr. Lewis is working with anyone with any experience at all in doing a musical. They hope to do a tryout at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2007 but apparently, no one's bothered to tell the Old Globe about this. It's a little late to be booking for '07, plus a brand-new musical by new people will probably need more outta-town tryouts than a few weeks in San Diego before it'll be Manhattan-ready.
If this show is ever going to happen — and I'm not saying it can't — it's going to have to take on some heavyweight investors and some producers and other behind-the-scenes people with Broadway chops. Since it seems to have neither yet, I'd say the announcement is intended to perhaps shake some loose, get some interested. It will especially need a director who's done this kind of thing before. Mel Brooks did not direct the stage version of The Producers, after all, and he had more stage experience than Jerry Lewis.
Let's watch how this one develops. It just might...but it's got a long way to go before it gets anywhere near the Great White Way.
Here's a connection to the entire Bill Bennett interview on The Daily Show. I don't like Bennett very much. He's always struck me as a guy who can gin up moral outrage over anything sexual and/or done by minorities or poor people...but apart from the occasional token reference, he seems incapable of seeing anything wrong in anything upper class people do to make money. When the Enron scandal broke, I saw him cornered into talking about it and he seemed to have to force himself through clenched teeth to say there was anything immoral about swindling employees out of their pensions.
I happen to think legal gay marriage is inevitable in this country. It may take quite a while to go nationwide and it may be called something other than "marriage" here and there for a while. But I think Jon Stewart is right in his comments that this kind of thing only evolves in one direction. What's more, I think men like Bennett and Jerry Falwell know that it's inevitable. They just want to see what they can get for themselves in terms of cash and power by manipulating one segment of the population before this particular "hot button" goes cold.
It's another nugget from Your Show of Shows. This one features Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Howie Morris as The Haircuts, a musical group they occasionally played on the series. The Haircuts were pretty popular for about an hour there and actually released a record or two. The clip's a little under six minutes and it demonstrates how the three of them could not only do dialect and talk funny but also move funny. Their songs were written primarily by Head Writer Mel Tolkin, who later claimed he penned most of them in under three minutes. Their moves were perfected by watching kinescopes of "real" groups, especially The Crewcuts, from whence they got their name. Enjoy.
June 9, 2006
