Monday, April 9, 2007

More TiVo Tricks

My friend Marv Wolfman has been watching his TiVo. What's so remarkable about that?, you may wonder. Well, the TiVo is in Marv's home in Southern California and Marv is in Australia. That's kind of remarkable. If you don't know about the Slingbox — the only piece of video, audio or computer equipment on this planet that I do not own yet — read this weblog posting to find out how it works for Marv.

• Posted at 9:51 PM · LINK

me on the radio

Here's another chance to hear Yours Truly talk about Yours Truly. I'll be the guest this coming Friday on Time Travel, a fine radio program hosted by Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle, and heard on WRNJ, which is an oldies station. The program airs at 4 PM East Coast Time and you can find out more about it over on this website. [Warning: Music that plays automatically.]

Listen online at the WRNJ site or you can wait until they archive the show and make it available for downloading on their Archive Page [Same Warning!]. While you're waiting for it to show up there, you might like to enjoy some of the past programs, which have included interviews with Lee Mendelson, Marty Krofft and other people who've been foolish enough to hire me.

• Posted at 6:53 PM · LINK

Life is a Weblog

A lot of people on the web today are posting their favorite B.C. and Wizard of Id gags in honor of Johnny Hart. Here's mine and it wasn't in a strip. It was the ever-changing title of one of his many paperback collections. In 1975, Fawcett Books brought out Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback.

A few years later when it was reprinted, the series had gone up to 95 cents per book so they changed the title to Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and in tiny text at the bottom of the cover, it said "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback."

A year or three after that, the books were up to a buck and a quarter each so when they reissued this same volume, it was Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and the text at the bottom said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback."

That was the last one but you just know that if the paperbacks had kept going, we'd eventually have seen Life is a Nine Dollar Paperback and at the bottom, it would have said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two and a Half Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar and Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Three Dollar and a Twenty Cent Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar and Thirty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Five Dollar and Fifty Cent Paperback and Life is a Six Dollar Paperback and Life is a Seven Dollar Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and No Cent Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and Sixty Cent Paperback."

You also know that he planned it that way. Notice how he left plenty of space in that word balloon.

He also did this with the British edition. Somewhere here, I have a copy of Life is a Fifty Pence Paperback. Funny man, that Johnny Hart...especially when he wasn't telling my people that we'd burn in Hell for all eternity. Although come to think of it, that's not a bad gag, either.

• Posted at 4:30 PM · LINK

Mystery Man

Johnny Achiziger and Alan Kupperberg both say that the unidentified person in the photo I just posted is comic book writer-artist Jim Starlin. They must know.

• Posted at 1:54 PM · LINK

Famous Folks

As most of you know, I'm currently assembling a big art book and bio of Jack Kirby which will be out later this year from the Harry N. Abrams Company. (If you don't know about it, here are some details.) I'm spending today going over a file of hundreds of photographs from Jack's personal files and collection, selecting some to be included in the book.

I came across the above pic and decided to share it with you all here. It's from the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con's award ceremony and if the above version of it is too small for you, you can see or download a much, much larger version of it here. Let me see if I can identify all the talented folks in this photograph for you because you may never see an assemblage like this anywhere else. I'm going to go right to left...

At far right, partially cut off, is Russell Myers, creator of the wonderful comic strip, Broom Hilda. To the left of Russell is Dick Moores, famed Disney artist who took over the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip. To the left of Dick is Bob Clampett, the great director of Warner Brothers cartoons and the man behind Beany and Cecil.

The man holding an award to the left of Bob is Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman. To the left of Jerry is Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit. The gentleman in the flowery shirt to the left of Jerry is the popular comic innovator, Jim Steranko. Right behind Steranko is the guru of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee. Immediately to the left of Steranko is Jack Kirby and right behind Jack, towering over him in fact, is comic artist Gil Kane.

Helluva photo, right? Wait. We're not through yet...

To the left of Jack is the brilliant cartoon voice actor, Daws Butler. To the right of Daws is the brilliant cartoon voice actress, June Foray. I thought I'd taken the only photo ever with Daws and Bob Clampett in it after their 1954 "parting of the ways" but here's another one, even if they aren't together in it.

Standing right behind June is...uh, I don't know. Anyone have any idea who that is?

To the left of June and holding an award is Richard Butner, who was one of the main operators of the convention in its first decade or so of existence. I can't see who's standing behind Richard but I think the gentleman to the left of him is Brad Anderson, who did the comic strip, Marmaduke.

Nothing much to add to this. The photo kinda speaks for itself and when it does, it says something about how you rarely see so many talented human beings on one stage.

• Posted at 12:19 PM · LINK

Can You Hear Me Now?

Why is the use of cell phones banned on airplanes while in flight? If this article is correct — and I'd be interested in hearing if it isn't — it's not for the reasons you might think.

• Posted at 9:59 AM · LINK

More on Johnny Hart

Here's a nice obit in The Los Angeles Times on Mr. Hart. It quotes him as saying, "The end of the world is approaching, maybe by the year 2010." If he's right, then he's only missing out on about three years.

And here's the Associated Press obituary, which says that both his strips will continue. According to the article, "Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart's drawings to work with." If they said that about some strips, I'd be skeptical. But Hart often reused old drawings and just altered the lettering on them. So B.C. may not change much without him.

Lastly, this obit from the Gannett Service is the longest I've seen and it covers many of Hart's more admirable, unheralded deeds. If you only read one of the three, read this one.

• Posted at 1:34 AM · LINK

Millionaire Mackey

You've occasionally seen me mention the name of Dave Mackey, who among his many skills is an authority on some animation studios of the past. He also, for some reason, knows facts that are not about old cartoons and recently proved it by being a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. When you do the show, you're sworn to secrecy about how you fared and even about how other games you witnessed at the taping came out. But Dave's episode ran last week so he is now free to discuss the experience. Here's Part One of his story and here's Part Two.

• Posted at 1:04 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This is Part Two of our two-part series on the startling displacement of Little Lulu with Little Audrey. In Part One (which you can read here), we learned that Famous Studios was making very popular cartoons featuring Little Lulu, a character created by cartoonist Marjorie Henderson Buell. Lulu went from appearing weekly in The Saturday Evening Post to appearing in ads for Pepsi-Cola and Kleenex, as well as these animated cartoons that ran from 1943 to 1948.

Famous Studios watched Lulu become a very profitable and merchandised property during that period and decided that the character's popularity flowed from their animated cartoons, not the magazine cartoons. When their license to make the films neared its expiration date, Paramount approached Buell about a renewal...but instead of offering more money or even the same amount, they said in effect, "Give us part ownership of the character or we won't make the cartoons any longer." Buell refused and Paramount went about creating their own mischievious little girl character...and that was Little Audrey.

They made her look quite different but otherwise followed the same template, including a not-dissimilar theme song and pretty much the same kind of stories. In fact, the first few Little Audrey cartoons, it is said, were originally written for Little Lulu and switched. The last Little Lulu cartoon, The Dog Show-Off, was released January 30, 1948. Little Audrey appeared briefly in a 1947 Christmas cartoon for Paramount (Santa's Surprise) and then they put her in a Popeye cartoon, Olive Oyl for President, which came out the same day as that last Little Lulu short. The first official Little Audrey cartoon, Butterscotch and Soda, was released in June of 1948.

The one that's our video link today is called Tarts and Flowers and it came out May 26, 1950. The voices are by Mae Questel and Jackson Beck, who seem to have been in well over half of all the cartoon shorts made in New York. What you'll see when you click in a TV print released by a company called U.M. & M., which was a partnership of three companies — United Film Service, MTA TV of New Orleans, and Minot T.V. The combine was formed in the fifties to buy up the rights to old movies (cheaply, they hoped) and to syndicate them to the then-new television stations that were popping up around the country.

In the mid-fifties, someone at Paramount decided to unload much of their library to television in a sale they later regretted. Various films were purchased by different companies but U.M. & M. got a lot of it, including many of the studio's live-action shorts and most of the cartoons released before June 30, 1950 with the exception of the Popeye and Superman films. A condition of the sale was that all references to Paramount had to be removed from the films so the titles were replaced with the bland, generic ones you see here.

Audrey was fairly popular. Paramount made cartoons of her until 1959 and she also starred in a couple of comic books published by the Harvey company. In 1961 when Paramount's cartoon studio fell on hard times, they reached back to their past and made another deal with Marge to do Little Lulu cartoons again. One came out that year and one the following year but no one cared by that time.

Here's Little Audrey in one of her better starring performances...

• Posted at 12:25 AM · LINK

April 10, 2007 • Current • April 8, 2007