Stan Sakai has done one hundred issues of Usagi Yojimbo...and that's just for Dark Horse, its current publisher. There were other issues and other publishers before that. In an era where a year or two is considered a long run on a comic, Stan has almost single-handedly written, drawn and lettered all those tales of his long-eared warrior, roaming about the world of 17th century Japan, and this is cause for celebration.
A hundred issues would be an impressive achievement even if the comic sucked. That it's one of the best books of its day is a happy bonus. When people ask me what comic book these days I'd recommend, the first one I always recommend is Usagi Yojimbo.
To celebrate the milestone, Stan got a major assist for #100. A bunch of his friends pitched in to create a "roast" of Stan and his bunny. The dais includes Frank Miller, Jeff Smith, Sergio Aragonés, Guy Davis, Jamie S. Rich, Andi Watson, Rick Geary, Scott Shaw!, Yours Truly and Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson, as well as Stan himself. It's on sale now and while I haven't seen a copy yet, I have seen most of the contributions. It's fun, it's silly and it's almost as entertaining as an issue created wholly by Stan without us clowns displacing him in his own book.
David Cook read the previous item about the Aladdin-type movie with Phil Silvers in it and writes to ask...
There's a Fifties Bugs Bunny cartoon with a genie who is more like Phil Silvers than anyone else. Did that tie into this movie?
I don't see any particular connection. Phil Silvers doesn't play the genie in A Thousand and One Nights and I don't recall any plot similarities, although the time frame isn't far off. A Thousand and One Nights came out in 1945 and the Bugs Bunny cartoon you're recalling — A Lad in His Lamp — came out in October of 1948. A very rough rule of thumb on Warner Brothers cartoons of this period is a year lead time from when the gag men were writing the film to when it reached theaters. But I still don't think one had anything to do with the other.
The most interesting thing about A Lad in His Lamp — and here I go veering off on trivial tangents again — is that the voice of the genie was done by Jim Backus. He's not credited, of course, but it's definitely him and it may have been his screen debut. He was a radio actor before then and this was a full year before the first Mr. Magoo cartoon appeared.
What's odd is that Mr. Backus gave this wonderful performance as the genie in that cartoon, and then became a cartoon voice superstar as Magoo...but never really did anything else in cartoons; not until 1974 when Filmation turned Gilligan's Island into the first of two animated series. Backus was constantly doing animation voicing during the interim but only as Magoo. Maybe it was because he was so prolific as a film and television actor...but you'd think Warners would have used him again or Disney would have had him play a role in some movie or something of the sort.
Nope. In a 41-year career doing cartoon voices, Jim Backus seems to have played only four roles: The genie in that Bugs Bunny cartoon, Quincy Magoo in hundreds of cartoons, Thurston Howell III in The New Adventures of Gilligan (1974) and Gilligan's Planet (1982) and Gamun the Rat in a 1984 feature, Enchanted Journey. Backus was the only other actor besides Mel Blanc to regularly receive credit on animated theatrical shorts...but in four decades, he voiced fewer characters than Mel usually did in one cartoon.
Here's a Head's Up for Phil Silvers fans. On Saturday, as John Hall has reminded me, Turner Classic Movies is running A Thousand and One Nights, a 1945 movie that Mr. Silvers manages to elevate from boring fodder to a special treat. The film stars Evelyn Keyes and Cornel Wilde, but it's Phil you want to see. He just makes every scene he's in soar.
This was one of several pictures he made for Columbia in the forties, which meant he crossed paths with the studio's gruff, unpredictable head, Harry Cohn. In fact, this was apparently the film where the following famous anecdote (not involving Silvers) occurred. Cohn summoned to his office, several writers who'd worked on the screenplay. They were all college-educated men and therefore a special thorn in the paw of Cohn, who'd never finished high school and resented folks with degrees. He asked them accusingly when the film, the script of which was before him, took place. They said it was in some year or other, B.C.
Triumphant that he had caught the college boys in a boneheaded error, Cohn demanded to know why everyone was walking around, talking contemporary slang. He said, "I didn't have the kind of education like you jerks but I know that people didn't walk around in those days saying, 'Yessiree,' all the time! All through this script, you've got people saying, 'Yessiree!'"
The writers all exchanged nervous glances. No one wanted to tell Mr. Cohn that the line in question was, "Yes, sire."
Silvers claimed that he devised the end gag of the film...and I'm going to go ahead and tip it so I can tell this anecdote. Am I forgiven if I put a big SPOILER ALERT up here? Fine.
In the end gag as written, the Phil Silvers character gets a wish and winds up fabulously wealthy and surrounded by comely babes. The script called for him to look into camera and exclaim, "I must have had a heart attack!"
Silvers went to Cohn and explained that there was no joke there; that it was actually less than "no joke," because there's nothing really funny about a heart attack. Instead, Phil proposed the following, which they used. In his ending, his wish transforms him into a soundalike of Frank Sinatra, who was then at the peak of his popularity with swooning females. To really make the joke work, Silvers persuaded Sinatra, who was a friend, to come in and spend an afternoon recording a voice track that he [Silvers] could lip-sync to.
After the film came out and did well, Silvers suggested to Cohn that a bonus was in order for saving the picture. Cohn, to the comedian's amazement, told him in rather earthy terms to drop dead, get out, etc. Silvers was stunned...until a few days later when his brother got a big, unearned check from Columbia. That was just Cohn being clever. Silvers was doing the film on a loan-out from MGM and technically, any bonus he received would have to be reported to that studio, which would probably demand it go to them. Because the money was paid to his brother, Silvers didn't have to tell MGM about it.
When he went by to thank Cohn, Silvers reminded him that Sinatra hadn't been paid a cent and suggested that a piano would be a nice thank-you present, as Frank was in need of a new one. The mercurial Cohn blew up at this, threw Silvers out of his office and never sent Sinatra so much as a harmonica. That was Harry Cohn.
Anyway, it's kind of a fun movie if you don't expect a lot. Look closely and you may notice that one of the extras in the harem scenes is Shelley Winters. That is, if you can tear your eyes off Phil Silvers for two seconds. Boy, he was good.
If you grew up in Southern California and you're anywhere near my age (54), you remember watching Tom Hatten, who hosted Popeye cartoons for years on KTLA, Channel 5. He wore a sailor outfit and gave drawing lessons and was a generally genial presence on Los Angeles TV. After that job ended, he hosted movies on Channel 5 for quite some time and can now be heard on KNX radio as an entertainment reporter. All of this is in addition to a nice, ongoing acting career. (For a long time, any time a TV show needed someone to play a cartoonist, they called on Tom. There was a Hawaii Five-O about a demented comic fan who was murdering people because he'd confused the storyline in a newspaper comic strip with reality. Tom Hatten played the guy who drew the newspaper strip.)
What we have here is a recent (2004) interview with Tom. It was done for a show called Marty's Corner that is or was done in La Puente, which is about thirty miles southeast of Los Angeles. The show is telecast live on KCAT, the last three letters standing for Community Access Television. I've never seen it except in YouTube clips but Marty's apparently had his corner going out there for thirteen years, which is impressive. Even more impressive is that he somehow gets guests to drive out to La Puente. Anyway, the interview with Tom Hatten is in two parts. Here's Part One...
And now, if you want to watch Part Two, click here.
February 8, 2007
