Here's another photo that I found and didn't recall I'd taken. This is at the 1977 San Diego Comic Convention — or whatever they were calling it that year. It changed names but it was the annual event we now know as Comic-Con International. This was taken by the pool at the El Cortez Hotel, back when congoers had the opposite problem: You could get a hotel room. If you ever stayed at the El Cortez, you know why that was not a good thing.
The gentleman at the left is Don Rico, a Golden Age comic book writer-editor who went on to quite a career as a novelist and screenwriter. Don was a good friend of mine and he's a person I still miss a lot. The gent at right is Harvey Kurtzman who was, as any fool can tell you, the founding editor/creator of MAD and of many fine comics that didn't use the word, "Potrzebie."
As you can see, this was taken by the pool. Shortly after I snapped it, a young lady in brief swimwear ran up to Kurtzman, thrust her chest in his face and asked if he didn't think she'd be perfect to play his character Little Annie Fanny in a movie. If you went solely by the chest, she was probably qualified. As much as I loved Don Rico, I wish I had a photo of Harvey with the woman instead of with him. Maybe there's one in the slide boxes I haven't opened yet.
Are you familiar with the famous Soupy Sales Naked Lady incident? It's one of the more famous things to happen on a kid's show on live TV. Ed Golick, who seems to be the world's foremost authority on All Things Soupy, has written a little article about it and put up a clip of the famous footage.
Do you know the name of Robie Lester? Probably not. But if you're anywhere near my age and you ever listened to Disney records, you heard her. Here's an article that will tell you all about this fine actress.
Up until the day I got my first digital camera, I used the kind that affixed images to this thing called film. When I was shooting black-and-white, I used the kind of film that yielded negatives that could be turned into prints. And when I was shooting color, I sometimes used the kind that easily converted to prints but more often used the kind that you'd turn into slides. As a result, I have thousands of slides of friends, conventions, friends at conventions, family members, events I attended, etc.
My last slide projector died some time in the late eighties and I never got around to replacing it. As a result, my slides sat in boxes in a closet, generally neglected and forgotten. Isn't that how we all wind up, sooner of later? Sitting in a box in the closet, generally neglected and forgotten?
Recently though, I hauled them out, shuffled through the stacks to select a few hundred that seemed to warrant preservation and took them to a place that converts slides to digital images. Some came out not so great but some are terrific...and there are images in there that I even forgot I took.
The above pic totally surprised me. It's from one of the funniest moments I ever witnessed, a scene I described in this column. In case you're all clicked-out for the day and don't want to go read that piece, I'll summarize...
It took place at the world premiere for the movie, Flesh Gordon. This is around July of 1974 and I am there, covering the event for The Monster Times, a tabloid with at least as much dignity as The New York Post. Buster Crabbe, who played Flash ("Flash" with an "a") Gordon is present...for reasons no one in the audience can fathom. Mr. Crabbe does not seem able to fathom them, either. Equally inexplicable is the decision to delay running the movie and to have famed "psychic detective" Peter Hurkos come up and give a reading to Mr. Crabbe and to actor Jason Williams who has the misfortune to be starring in the film we are about to see.
To find out what happened next, you'll have to read my article. Basically, Mr. Hurkos did not convince anyone in the room that he had any psychic powers. I don't happen to believe anyone does...and was very pleased, by the way, when this article got a fan letter from James Randi, and a request to reprint it on his site. But that night, watching Hurkos stammer and perspire and get every single thing he "saw" wrong, would have convinced Sylvia Browne that E.S.P. is a fraud and a half.
I recall laughing my ass off at the "psychic reading" but I didn't remember taking the photo. As you can see, Mr. Crabbe doesn't look too thrilled with any of it and neither does Mr. Williams.
Anyway, I wanted to share the picture with you and I'll be sharing more as I dig through my new library of pix.
April 8, 2009
