Saturday, April 11, 2009

From the E-Mailbag...

My longtime friend (30+ years) Tom Stern writes about that photo I posted of the Flesh Gordon premiere, and also about the one I took of Harvey Kurtzman...

There is a very simple reason you don't remember taking that picture at the premiere of Flesh Gordon: you didn't take it. I did. We had both gone that day to Westwood; you to write about the movie, and me to take photos for you.

And while I don't have a photo of the young lady who wanted to play Little Annie Fanny, I do have some of the woman who decided to get her body autographed. I still remember Harvey's reaction, which was to yell "Whoopee!" flip the marker in the air, catch it in mid-spin, and write (starting on her hip) "Best of Luck from Harvey Kurtzman and Little Annie..." (pulling down the back of her shorts) "...Fanny."

I remember that. Harvey looked like it was the high point of his life...and I believe that woman's ass is up for bids in the next Heritage Auction. Anyway, my apologies for thinking I took that photo. I was there and I had a slide of it amidst hundreds I did recall taking at other locales so I assumed what anyone would assume.

Then: You all might recall a discussion here of a man named Lionel Ziprin, whose obits said he wrote Dell Comics. We were wondering which ones he'd written and I just received this from J. Reed...

I knew Lionel Ziprin and spoke with him about his comic writing for Dell. He never told me about any of the WW II titles he worked on. He did tell me that he wrote several issues of Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle but was uncredited. One issue that he told me about featured a creature that could pull itself apart into 22 pieces and be reformed as something else. This was an allusion— for Lionel anyway, probably not to the readers of Kona — to the kabala and the formation of words from the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Does that ring a bell?

No, but I haven't read a Kona in twenty-some-odd years. I'll bet I hear from someone who knows which issue, though.

In any case, this would indicate that Ziprin worked for Dell in the mid-sixties, so the bio of him had events somewhat out of sequence. The war comics he wrote were probably for Dell's titles of the same period like Combat...so some of those books which have usually been credited to Paul S. Newman were probably written by Mr. Ziprin.

And since he worked for Dell then, he had to have been misremembering or exaggerating when he said he got ten dollars a page for his scripts. Dell paid around half that in the sixties. He was also far from reality when he said, "...I was America’s best-selling writer of comic books, my comic books sold in the millions of copies." Dell, back in the fifties, did have a few comics that sold in the millions — mainly Disney titles — and it's unlikely but possible that he worked on a few of them. Dell of the sixties was an entirely different company (see explanation here) and it never had a comic that sold above around 300,000 — and even that was rare. Kona sold about half that.

Thanks for the info, though. These people never received the credit they deserved. Sorry Mr. Ziprin didn't get more before he left us.

• Posted at 9:33 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Two brief excerpts from The David Frost Show, which ran on American TV around 1970, give or take a few years. Two old Jew comics with cigars tell funny stories.

• Posted at 12:16 PM · LINK

Saturday Morn

I'm still awaiting a verdict in the Phil Spector trial...waiting to see if he's acquitted and I go on my long-discussed killing spree. Illness has befallen the jury and in the last eight days, they've only deliberated about 30 hours. That's about 29 hours and fifty minutes more than seems necessary to me but maybe they're padding their parts, playing Old Maid in there while they make it look like they're giving Spector the benefit of every possible doubt. Or maybe they just want more of those big $5-a-day checks. The way the economy's going these days, you never know.

Actually, even if Spector is found Not Guilty, he's already consigned to a certain kind of prison. For years, he's been notorious in his field as a dangerous maniac...but he was a dangerous maniac who was tolerated and accepted because he had money. More effectively, he was involved in projects that could make you a lot of money if you were around him. Folks in most businesses (not just show biz) will tolerate a lot of insanity in their midst if it comes with fame and/or fortune, especially fortune. News reports say Spector has spent just about every nickel he had on his defense. As a producer, his career was already on the downslide and, I dunno...I have the feeling that today's music superstars will not be rushing to work with him on future projects.

This is, oddly enough, not something that pleases me a lot. Innocent people sometimes wind up on trial and even if they're cleared, their lives and bank accounts are destroyed. I don't think Spector is innocent or anything close to it but the judicial system still shouldn't work that way. If you are acquitted, you ought to get at least most of your life back.

• Posted at 11:12 AM · LINK