Monday, December 28, 2009

TMZ Gets Humiliated

The gossip website TMZ.com was today touting the scoop of the year, any year: A photo of John F. Kennedy cavorting on a yacht with naked women. Naturally, I had to go take a peek...and I saw this article which explained how thoroughly they had verified the photo's authenticity. I also saw the photo and instantly thought, "Hmm...I think I remember that picture from an issue of Playboy in the sixties."

Sure enough, a couple hours later, TMZ is admitting that the photo ran in a 1967 issue of Playboy. That either means it's a hoax or an even bigger scoop than they thought. The Smoking Gun has a good summary of the story...or rather, the non-story. If you prowl throught the comments at the TMZ website, you'll see an awful lot of people saying, before the fraud was exposed, "I'm an expert and I can tell you it's authentic." Yeah, right.

• Posted at 3:15 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

More than half the time, I think Christopher Hitchens is way off-base, often taking a contrarian view just because it's a contrarian view. But I think he's spot-on when he writes, as he does today, about the follies of airline security. The TSA puts us through a lot of rituals and inconveniences that are supposed to make air travel safer...but they really don't. They just make some think the problem is well in hand.

• Posted at 11:07 AM · LINK

Name That Artist!

Yesterday in this space, we asked if the comic/animation experts out there could guess the identity of the artist who drew a certain C.B. Bears coloring book. I received over 150 guesses which included Mike Sekowsky, Wallace Wood, Neal Adams, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, John Buscema, Ernie Colon, John Romita, Dan Spiegle, Gil Kane, Tex Avery, C.C. Beck, Mike Royer, Jerry Eisenberg, Bob Singer, Alfredo Alcala, Doug Wildey, Don Martin, Russ Heath, Ric Estrada, Sergio Aragonés, Stan Lee, Mike Ploog and Dave Stevens. One person offered to bet his life's savings it was Iwao Takamoto and two separate people guessed it was me, which I guess means they didn't read the question very closely...and also have never seen the way I draw.

And, oh yeah, some got the correct answer. The correct answer is Alex Toth.

I said I'd list the first three folks who named the guy but we had a lot of folks who did send in the right answer also sent in from one to twelve other guesses. So I'm only going to credit the first three who guessed Toth and no one else. Those would be Kevin Nowlan, Douglass Abramson and Carolyn Wallace. There were about ten others who came along later and thought it was Alex.

This was done during a period when Alex was toying with the idea of moving away from his famous adventure style and trying some things in a cartoonier vein. His friend and former employer, Warren Tufts, had done that. Warren had done newspaper strips like Casey Ruggles in a somewhat realistic style but found that (a) it didn't tap into all he could do and (b) it meant a lot of work to earn very little money. So he segued over to drawing things like Pink Panther comic books and Toth had a momentary impulse to try something different.

I was editing comic books for Hanna-Barbera at the time and he asked me for a job on Yogi Bear or something of the sort. I gulped and said, unconvincingly, "Uh, okay...just as soon as I have an open assignment." Before that happened, Iraj Paran — who was in charge of graphics and merchandise art for the studio — had a sudden and urgent need to have a batch of coloring books drawn, practically overnight. Alex grabbed the job of drawing the C.B. Bears one and batted it out over a weekend. I don't think he enjoyed working on that kind of material. At least, he never mentioned anything to me ever again about drawing Yogi Bear.

Also, Paul Dushkind didn't have a guess but wondered why the bears all had five fingers on each hand when cartoon animals are supposed to have four. Answer: Alex didn't draw a lot of cartoon animals so he kept forgetting.

• Posted at 11:00 AM · LINK

Correction

In the post before last, I mistyped the time Turner Classic Movies is airing You're in the Army Now on January 4. It's 12:30 PM, not 12:30 AM. Thanks to Ken Kahn for the catch.

• Posted at 10:49 AM · LINK

Today's Question

Question: What's the difference between these two men?

Answer: One is an awe-inspiring leader who is beloved by millions and who has made the world a better place. The other one is George W. Bush.

Happy Birthday, Stan Lee!

• Posted at 12:19 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

In 1941, after Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made a smash in Buck Privates, every movie studio had to try and copy the formula, which was a team of wacky new servicemen in the Army, a romantic subplot and maybe some flashy musical numbers. Buck Privates was made for Universal. Over at Twentieth-Century Fox, they signed up Laurel and Hardy and filmed Great Guns. Warner Brothers, meanwhile, tried to create their own comedy team. They took Jimmy Durante, who hadn't clicked as Buster Keaton's partner years before, and paried him with newcomer Phil Silvers for You're in the Army Now. You can see the results on Turner Classic Movies on January 4 at, in most time zones, 12:30 PM.

How good is it? Not very, I'm afraid. It's always fun to watch Durante and Silvers but they have no particular chemistry and the jokes feel like the kind of stuff Bud and Lou threw away. Still, it may well be where Nat Hiken got the idea to cast Mr. Silvers in an army comedy...and it may be the reason Mr. Silvers resisted the whole idea.

In his autobiography, Silvers told how he made a deal with CBS to do a situation comedy and Hiken was signed to create it. Hiken's first idea was to make him a sergeant and Silvers rejected it, thinking it would all be "Abbott and Costello nonsense," with soldiers bumping into each other and losing their pants. Obviously, he had at least in the back of his mind that it would turn out like You're in the Army Now. Anyway, Hiken then spent the next few months suggesting other ideas for a series and neither he nor Phil liked any of them. Finally one day, Silvers said, approximately, "Hey, let's go back to that army idea." And that's how M/Sgt. Ernie T. Bilko was born.

Below is the trailer for You're in the Army Now and it's obviously from a reissue. How do we know this? Well, it says so on the trailer but even if it didn't, they mention Mr. Silvers being in Top Banana, which didn't even come along until 1951, ten years after this movie was made. On the other hand, they don't mention Sgt. Bilko, which went on in 1955 so that helps us narrow down the dates of the re-release.

And speaking of Top Banana, which we did a lot here in this post and this post and this post, the movie version of it follows You're in the Army Now on TCM that morning. It's a sloppily-produced version of the Broadway hit but Phil Silvers gives an irresistible performance. You might want to set your VCR or TiVo. As flawed as it is, it's still better than this movie...

• Posted at 12:15 AM · LINK