Here's another reminder that "Robby Reed" is currently posting a history of the great letterer and designer of comic book title logos, Ira Schnapp. The handiwork of the late Mr. Schnapp is well known to a couple generations of comic book readers and his influence has bled into advertising design. Whenever anyone does an ad or a magazine graphic that's supposed to look like an old DC Comic, it's likely that they'll emulate the artwork of someone like Curt Swan or Russ Heath...but they'll almost certainly be mimicking Ira Schnapp.
One of the interesting things that happened to DC Comics in the late sixties and early seventies was that the covers got much, much better in terms of artwork and the design of the scenes in them. Carmine Infantino, who may have been the best "designer" of cover scenes that comics have ever had, became Cover Editor — a job he retained throughout his subsequent promotions to Publisher. Previously, DC's covers had been primarily supervised by editors who weren't artists and didn't draw. They could come up with an interesting situation but often, not an interesting, punchy visual. Infantino changed that, aided by the arrival of Neal Adams as DC's most prominent cover artist.
But at the same time, DC was losing the services of Ira Schnapp, who had done all the lettering on those covers for years. And though DC had other excellent letterers, especially Gaspar Saladino, the lettering and logos on those covers took a drastic downturn. They were trying to get away from Schnapp's "old-fashioned" look and that may have been a good idea...but there was no one comparable to invent a new graphic style. The logos of the seventies are pretty undistinguished and I can't think of one that had the enduring power of Schnapp's. In fact, some of the best ones since then have come about because someone took a Schnapp logo and fiddled with it instead of trying to bake from scratch. His lettering styles really became an essential part of some classic characters — the logo for The Flash, for example.
"Robby Reed" has dug up some wonderful info on Mr. Schnapp. Wish we knew more...but you can read what Robby has uncovered over at Dial B for Blog. Here's a direct link to Part One in the series.
The Bugs Bunny Show — the one that began with Bugs and Daffy singing that wonderful "This Is It" tune — debuted on ABC prime-time in 1960 and later segued to Saturday morning. It was a pretty big hit in both venues...and I always thought that glorious opening had a lot to do with it.
In 1964, Warner Brothers took a package of old cartoons that had not been used on The Bugs Bunny Show and assembled them into a 26 episode series than ran on ABC, first on Saturday morning, then on Sunday morn. The cartoons were, of course, fine...but I remember at age 12 being disappointed with its opening titles. The song was forgettable and the animation looked cheap and wrong. Years later, I learned why. The Warner Brothers cartoon studio had just been dismantled so a deal had been made — presumably through ABC — to have the titles done by another company. The Hal Seeger Studio in New York was selected and...well, you can see that Porky, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and the gang don't look or move the way they did in the heyday of Jones, McKimson and Freleng.
Shortly after this, the Seeger studio produced a fun series called Milton the Monster for ABC that was more in their ballpark. Dave Mackey, who's an expert on the company, has speculated that the Porky Pig Show titles represent the work of veteran animator Myron Waldman. I sure hope not — for reasons that will now become evident...
John Dickerson summarizes the juicier parts of the new Bob Woodward book. And Jacob Weisberg notes how the portrait of Donald Rumsfeld has changed from Woodward book to Woodward book.
There was a time when, if I'd told you the number one film comedy star in America would soon be Leslie Nielsen, you'd have had men with nets come and get me. Mr. Nielsen was the serious (too serious) star of TV shows like Bracken's World and The Bold Ones, and movies like Forbidden Planet and Tammy and the Bachelor.
But as it turned out, Mr. Nielsen had a wonderful, largely undisclosed sense of humor. Folks who knew him knew it but the public didn't. As I learned the few times I met him, that sense of humor was vast and rich, though it did have a special flair for fart gags. At the time, he was apparently never without a little plastic cylinder called a Handi-Gas. This is (or was — I don't think they still make them) a noisemaker that could emit the sound one is apt to make after a major feasting on Van Kamp's Pork and Beans followed by a Chili Malted. You kept the Handi-Gas casually concealed in your hand and then you squeezed it at just the right moment, simultaneously making some sort of body movement to suggest that the sound came from your orifice. (It would probably be simpler to just fart but that wouldn't be much of a trick now, would it?) The idea, I guess, was to see how much you could embarrass people around you by making them think you'd embarrassed yourself.
Or something like that. I'm not big on fart humor but I found Leslie to be a very funny gent in spite of his ominpresent Handi-Gas. I especially liked the deadpan way he'd carry a joke to extremes in Airplane or the "Naked Gun" movies. And I really enjoyed the short-lived TV series that came between them...Police Squad. I was working on another ABC show at the time and I witnessed a curious occurrence: Everyone at the network — or at least, everyone I knew — was simultaneously saying, "Boy, that's a funny show" and "God, we've got to get rid of that thing as soon as possible." The initial ratings were pretty bad but somehow, I guess because it was so different, there was an inexplicable urgency to terminate the series.
No one seemed to understand why the rush, even as they scurried to expunge it from the schedule. Every network airs some shows that hover at the bottom of the Nielsens. Sometimes, they don't have a replacement ready. Sometimes, it's simply cost-efficient to leave the low-rated show on while you find that suitable replacement. Sometimes, someone even says, "Well, let's give it a little more of a chance...maybe it'll find an audience." There is, after all, a difference between a show that's pulling low ratings because America has tried it and decided to watch something else instead...and a show that no one's even sampled.
The "give it more time" strategy occasionally pays off big and you'd think they would have tried it with Police Squad, since it was in the largely-untasted category and since so many people who did watch it loved it. But no...it had to go and it did. Fortunately, if you blinked and missed it, you can now order the Complete Collection (all six episodes) on a forthcoming DVD loaded with extras. Here's your link. Use it wisely.
Not a lot of posting here yesterday. My fine friend Earl Kress went and got himself hitched to a fine lady named Denise Stanley and I was one of his three Best Men. Amazingly, it was only the second wedding I've ever attended in my life. The first was when Howie Morris married what turned out to be his last of quite a few wives. Earl's wedding had better food than Howie's and as far as I can tell, no one doubting that the marriage would last. On the other hand, Howie's had more people in attendance who'd either worked with Sid Caesar or actually were Sid Caesar.
The bride yesterday was exquisite in an off-white gown and Earl looked pretty sharp in his tux. Matter of fact, everyone looked pretty good although I made the mistake of wearing a dark green shirt with a light green sport coat and earth-tone slacks. The wedding was held in an outdoor garden and the greenskeepers kept trying to water my outfit. My companion, the lovely Carolyn Kelly, was even lovelier than usual in a cranberry-colored dress. When we stood together, we must have looked like a big Christmas decoration.
I don't want to seem to be taking any credit for this happy union but this website played a part in it. Earl and Denise knew each other years ago, having met when they were performing in a local theatrical production of Bells Are Ringing. At some point, they drifted apart and married others. Five years ago, Denise found herself thinking of Earl and she Googled him just to see if there was any news. The Googling led her to my website where he'd been recently mentioned and she sent me an e-mail, asking if I could put them back in touch. I did...and it turned out they were both divorced. You can figure out the rest. (Bells Are Ringing was the underlying theme of the festivities. The score was played throughout, and the invites and program were designed to look like a Playbill for a production of that musical.)
I'd never been a Best Man before. I've never really been a Best Anything so before I went, I did my own Google search to find out what my responsibilities entailed. I found one page on etiquette that said, in so many words, that the job of the Best Man is to not get in the way of the happiness of the event. Hey, even I couldn't muck that up; not with that much happiness in the air.
The other day in a campaign speech for a Republican candidate, George W. Bush characterized a Democratic vote as follows:
One hundred and seventy-seven of the opposition party said, "You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists."
And of course, that's not what they said. What they said was, "We think you should follow this law that even a lot of Republicans supported which says you can listen to the conversations of anyone you suspect of being involved in terrorism but at some point, before or after, you need to go before a judge and get a warrant."
In other recent speeches, Bush has repeated the line...
If you don't think we should be listening in on the terrorist, then you ought to vote for the Democrats. If you want your government to continue listening in when al-Qaeda planners are making phone calls into the United States, then you vote Republican.
This doesn't sound to me like one of those quaint awkward phrasings for which everyone is expected to forgive Bush. It sounds to me like a bunch of G.O.P. leaders got together and decided to deliberately mischaracterize the Democratic position, figuring their hardcore base would buy and spread the misrepresentation.
When Al Gore used some clumsy phrasing to state — correctly — that he was an early and leading supporter of the Internet, his foes did a good job of selling the idea that he was lying by claiming he'd single-handedly created it. In fact, some of them argued that he was a pathological liar, incapable of telling the truth. I don't think Bush is a pathological liar. I just think he has a real low opinion of his supporters' ability to admit when he's deliberately distorting reality.
October 6, 2006
