Thursday, November 23, 2006

Jerry Bails, R.I.P.

And it's even worse when you have to post three in one day...

Dr. Jerry Bails, sometimes known as "The Father of Comic Book Fandom," died in his sleep last night from an apparent heart attack. He was 73 years old.

He was one of the first people (some say The First) to attempt to document and chronicle the history of the medium. In 1961, he published Alter Ego #1, one of the first fanzines to ever put comic buffs in contact with one another. You can read a lot about it and about Jerry in this article by Bill Schelly.

Those of us who loved super-hero comics in the sixties owe a tremendous debt to Jerry. He was a strong cheerleader for the revivals that constituted what we call "The Silver Age of Comics." Almost all of the checklists and databases that exist today of what's been published and who wrote and drew it began with Jerry's work.

Jerry handed Alter Ego off to his friend Roy Thomas in the early sixties. It ended when Roy went off to become one of the top guys at Marvel Comics...and by then, there were hundreds of similar homemade magazines. A few years ago, Roy revived it and it's now one of the best magazines out there about comic book history. I'm sure future issues will tell more about Dr. Bails and his massive contribution to comics. On a personal note, I feel an enormous sense of loss. I never met Jerry in person but I've subscribed to his publications and projects since the mid-sixties and aided him with research whenever possible. We corresponded from time to time — by mail and later by e-mail — and you could tell that he'd managed to channel his passion for the medium into constructive, non-nerdy purposes. The art form is a lot better for having had him as a champion.

• Posted at 8:34 PM · LINK

Betty Comden, R.I.P.

Boy, I hate having to do two of these in one day...

Playwright-lyricist (and occasional performer) Betty Comden has died at the age of 89. Working together with her partner, the late Adolph Green, she gave us a stunning array of stage musicals and motion pictures. The list includes On the Town, Wonderful Town, Peter Pan, Bells Are Ringing, Applause, Do-Re-Mi, Subways Are For Sleeping, The Will Rogers Follies, On the Twentieth Century, Good News, The Band Wagon and Singin' in the Rain. Any three of those alone would get you into the history books and that's only a partial list. The New York Times has a good, long obit.

• Posted at 6:43 PM · LINK

Gobble Gobble

Three people in the last half hour have written to ask if I was going to post a link to the climax of the famous Thanksgiving Day episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. Okay, here's a link to the link I posted last month here.

• Posted at 12:30 PM · LINK

Chris Hayward, R.I.P.

A truly funny writer named Chris Hayward died last Monday at age 81 following, as they say, "a long illness." Hayward had a long history in both animated and live-action television, the former including scripts for Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Fractured Flickers and other Jay Ward programs. Even while he was working on those, he branched out into non-cartoons with scripts for 77 Sunset Strip and several other detective shows of the day, then segued into variety shows (writing mainly for Steve Allen) and situation comedies with Get Smart, The Governor and J.J. and My Mother, the Car. He and fellow Ward writer Allan Burns created The Munsters and later, Hayward was one of the main writers on Barney Miller.

I met Chris only once...the way a lot of writers meet other writers: On the picket line. We were traipsing around ABC Studios with our signs in '81 when someone introduced us. Chris was quite pleased that I knew of his work for Jay Ward, though quick to credit Bill Scott for making funny work possible there. And I'm afraid I don't recall anything else that was said that day. I'm just pleased I got to tell the man what a powerful influence his work was on a lot of us.

• Posted at 12:08 PM · LINK

High in the Middle, Round on Both Ends

Just to remind me, if not you: I will be showing my face in Columbus, Ohio this weekend at the annual Mid-Ohio Con, which is run every year there by Roger Price. I don't go to a lot of cons these days because, frankly, I've been to too many boring, generic ones. But every time I can make it back to one of Roger's gatherings, I do. The others I've attended have all been enormous fun with a fine, friendly atmosphere and enough stuff to see and do that you never get bored.

I'm hosting two panels there. On Saturday afternoon at 2:30, my pal of many decades, Tony Isabella, and I will be interviewing Gary Friedrich, Dick Ayers and Herb Trimpe — three men who did an awful lot of comics for Marvel, teamed and apart, in the sixties and seventies.

Then on Sunday morning at 11:30, I'll be interviewing Al Feldstein. I may ask Al about his stint as writer-editor of EC Comics, creating things like Tales from the Crypt and Weird Fantasy. Or I may ask Al about his longer, more lucrative stint as editor of Mad Magazine, turning it into the best-selling humor publication in the history of Mankind. Or I may ask him about both.

The rest of the time, I'll be wandering around. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, come on by. See the panels. Check out the Dealers Room. Heckle Tony Isabella. And say howdy.

• Posted at 9:28 AM · LINK

Today's Political Comment

TV producer-pundit Lawrence O'Donnell is turning up on a lot of shows lately, mostly on MSNBC, arguing the idea that if one thinks the fighting should continue in Iraq, one has a moral obligation to enlist or to enlist one's family. Here's a snippet from one transcript...

I've reached a Rangel-like breaking point with my TV pundit colleagues who championed the Iraq war and now say we can't leave even if we went there for the wrong reasons. For every one of them, I have a simple question: Why aren't you in Iraq? Or why did you avoid combat in your generation's war? The one unifying characteristic that all of us men in make-up on political chat shows share is fear of combat. Every one of us has done everything we can to avoid combat or even being fitted for a military uniform. Just like George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney, we are all combat cowards. It takes a very special kind of combat coward to advocate combat for others.

That's all true, of course. None of these guys served and some of them used every possible trick to avoid serving. (Some of us were spared having to resort to that because we had high-enough numbers in the draft lottery.)

If O'Donnell's point is that you can't or shouldn't advocate for war unless you're prepared to pick up a gun, I'd disagree with that. Every election day, each of us Good Citizens is expected to mark a ballot covering a great many issues that will never impact us directly. The premise of Democracy is that we, the people, are qualified to collectively make decisions even when we have no skin in the game.

But I think it's a good thing that O'Donnell is making that argument, just as I'm glad Charles Rangel is out there, talking semi-seriously about reinstating the draft. Actions have consequences and you can't keep calling for more troops to be sent into combat without confronting that issue. Some (not all) of those who want us to be escalating and invading sure sound like they don't place too high a value on the life of an American soldier. At the very least, they seem to think there's an easy and endless supply, and we don't have to think about where they'll come from. It's vital that we not view our troops as an inexhaustible and discardable resource...and that even if we aren't sending our own kids or ourselves over to fight, we make that decision as if we were.

• Posted at 9:14 AM · LINK

Superman on Stage

I've received two dozen e-mails about the Superman Broadway show and only 23 of them have reminded or asked me about the TV version that ran on ABC in 1975 as a late night special. ABC was then airing this odd anthology series opposite Johnny Carson called ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. One week a month, it was The Dick Cavett Show. One week a month, it was Jack Paar Tonite, featuring Mr. Paar's ill-considered return to the talk show business. And the other weeks, it was odd specials and pilots and shows that made you scratch your head and wonder what, if anything, was on someone's mind.

Their version of It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman! featured David Wilson as Superman/Clark Kent, Lesley Warren as Lois Lane, Kenneth Mars as Max Mencken (the Jack Cassidy role), David Wayne as the mad scientist, Loretta Swit as the lady who got to sing, "You've Got Possibilities" and Allen Ludden, the host of Password, as Perry White. A gent named Romeo Muller, who otherwise wrote most of the Rankin-Bass TV specials, adapted the script and made it campier and more politically correct. (The Flying Lings, who were crooked Chinese stereotype bad guys in the original became Mafioso types with Al Molinaro playing their leader.) Videotapes of this one are making the rounds but trust me. You don't want to see it.

Now, then. I asked if anyone could name a successful Broadway musical where all the protagonists are pretty much unchanged at the end. Brad Walker thought of one — You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown — so it's possible. It's just not likely. Brad also wrote the following to me...

I never saw it on stage but I did get the Original Cast album out of the library. The standout number, as you say, is "You've Got Possibilities" sung by the pre-Alice Linda Lavin. But I do have affection for "We Don't Matter At All," if only because I've come across the attitude so often: "Baby, you and I / We're just about as special / As a walnut or a fly / We don't matter at all." Existential angst has never been so bouncy.

One song that never made it into the album was, "Everything's Easy When You Know How." The gossip columnist and the mad scientist recruit a team of Chinese acrobats as henchmen. The acrobats are anxious to get back at Superman because no one will pay to watch acrobats fly when they can see Superman fly for nothing. (I'd move to Gotham.) Judging by their few lines in other numbers, the Chinese acrobats are severely stereotyped which accounts for their number being cut. When the show was broadcast on TV the acrobats were replaced by mafiosi, including Al Molinaro. I met Mr. Molinaro not long after that and he expressed surprise at the non-Midas touch of the Birdie creators.

Speaking of the TV show...they upped the camp value, took out Lois's spunk, replaced the gossip columnist with an ex-jock sportwriter (not Steve Lombard, but might as well have been) — none of which helped. The only addition I liked was when Superman is at his lowest, he gets his faith rekindled by a couple of youngsters named Jerry and Joe.

A few years ago, they released a new album with previously cut songs, like the dreary "A Woman Alone" (which was replaced by the more hopeful "What I've Always Wanted"), And then there was "Dot Dot Dot," a faux Winchell column set to music. Cassidy's character, Max Mencken, is a pencil-thin caricature of Winchell. "Dot Dot Dot" was dropped in tryouts, I imagine, because it skewed the proceedings even more Max-ward. I wish they had left in "Didjuhseeit?", a paean to fanboys: "Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Boy, he really is the Man of Steel! / Didjuhseeit? / Didjuhseeit? / Now I can tell that he really is for real!"

I heard from a couple of folks who saw the show on Broadway and enjoyed it. Here's a message from Steve Winer...

I saw the original show too, and I remember having a great time. Then again, I was twelve and probably one of a handful of audience members with an equal interest in comic books and musicals.

Don't underestimate the power of that original cast. Linda Lavin, young and fresh off The Mad Show, was charming and funny, and Jack Cassidy was, as always, a scene stealer in the best sense of the term.

I do remember finding the villain story a bit lame, but on the whole it was a fun show that might just have fallen in a strange crack between possible audiences — too hip for kids, not hip enough for adults. Then again, people are still performing it and talking about it forty years later, and that's not a bad legacy for a flop.

No, not bad at all. And I'm sure Jack Cassidy was wonderful in it. He was a terrific performer in everything he did, even if he was completely out of his mind. It's sad that he was never in a really big hit because he sure deserved one.

Lastly: I mentioned that Lee Adams and Charles Strouse had also done the songs for Annie. I was half right. Strouse did the music but the lyrics were by Martin Charnin. Sorry.

• Posted at 8:37 AM · LINK

Big Pussy

The above photo from the Macy's Parade preparations ran in this morning's New York Times. I know just how that man feels.

• Posted at 12:19 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here, in honor of Thanksgiving, is Jerky Turkey, a 1945 cartoon directed by the great Tex Avery. I linked to this one once before but that's now a dead link...so here it is again. If you'd like the background info on the film, it's all over at the original posting. Have a nice Turkey Day...and if you don't want to cook today, learn a lesson from this cartoon: Never, under any circumstances, eat at Joe's. This film will show you why...

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK

November 25, 2006 • Current • November 22, 2006