Here's a treasure of comic book history. Mike Towry, who was one of the founders of the urban sprawl we now know as the Comic-Con International, has posted audio from the very first one. They called it San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con back then and it was held in 1970 at the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego. There are speeches there from Shel Dorf, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kirby and others.
I was there for much of this, hanging out for a time with a friend of mine named Mark Hanerfeld, who was then functioning as kind of an unpaid (pretty much) representative of DC Comics. Mark later went on staff there as an assistant editor for a time but in 1970, he was just a fan who was friends with the editors there — Joe Orlando, mainly — and they let him hang around the office and suggest or do things in a kind of informal internship. Once in a while, they'd pay him to compose a letter column or to write advertising pieces. Here's a photo I took of him at a New York Con a few years later...
If his face looks familiar, it may be because Mark was the model for a character named Abel who was the host of a comic called House of Secrets. I was also with him once when he was approached for an autograph by a lady who thought he was the great trumpet player, Al Hirt.
Anyway, Mark was the spokesperson at that con for DC Comics — the only person present at all connected with the company apart from Mr. Kirby, who had just become an editor there and whose new books had yet to be published. Everyone assumed the firm had sent Mark out to the con but, in fact, Mark had come out on his own initiative and paid his own way there because...well, Hanerfeld just did things like that. He did a great selling and cheerleading job for DC in San Diego, then went back to New York and talked up the con to everyone there. The following year, others from DC Comics began to make the trek to San Diego...and of course now, most of the comic book industry journeys out for the convention. I thought someone should note that Mark Hanerfeld was the guy who started that among East Coast people.
There's a recording there of him introducing Jack Kirby. That was supposed to be me. Jack told Shel, "Mark's going to introduce me" and Shel got his Marks confused and before I knew it, Hanerfeld was doing the honors. That was surprising but kind of a relief 'cause I had (then) a lot of jitters about speaking in front of people, even a small group for a few seconds. Jack did, too. He never got to be truly comfortable in such situations and as you'll hear, he's awkward and nervous and his mind wanders a bit.
Mark Hanerfeld passed away in January of 2000. He was a guy with a large but defective heart that kept failing him the last decade or so of his life. Our last few phone calls were very sad and it was a special joy to me to hear the voice of the old, healthy Mark...the one I'd prefer to remember. And now I'll shut up and let you go click your way over to that page — here's the link again — and listen to some of it.
More than twenty folks have sent me screen grabs of this moment in Casablanca, all presuming that the gent in the background is the one alleged to be Jack Benny. Clearly, it ain't him. Brent McKee writes...
Jack Benny was at Warner Brothers during the time that Casablanca was being shot, doing George Washington Slept Here. Production on the movie ended in June 1942 after which Benny went on an extended USO tour which included visits to Egypt, British Palestine and Iran. Production on Casablanca started on May 25, 1942 and lasted until August. So it is possible that Jack Benny could have done that brief scene at Rick's — but to me it just doesn't look like him.
Doesn't look like him to me, either. But amazingly, I find that I don't have a copy of Casablanca on DVD. I have it on Laserdisc but my Laserdisc player isn't hooked up and I don't have the time to do the major rearranging that would be necessary to get it running. So maybe Mr. Benny is elsewhere in the movie...or maybe that ad that said he was in the film was a hoax. What does anyone think?
(By the way: I'm not sure whose screen grab I posted above but I think it's the one from Andrew Leal. Thanks to everyone who sent one in.)
Did you know Jack Benny was in the movie Casablanca? I didn't know Jack Benny was in the movie Casablanca. But apparently, Jack Benny was in the movie Casablanca. He's sitting at a table just behind the piano player about seven minutes into the film and is seen for a few brief glances if you look real fast. Scott Edelman found some confirmation. (Thanks, Scott. And thanks to Anthony Tollin for telling me about this. Would someone with a good DVD of the movie like to do a screen grab I can post here?)
Here's a fun video clip but I'll save you the trouble of watching it. The first part is a montage of Republican leaders saying that the problem with Barack Obama is that he never uses the words "war" or "terrorism" or especially "war on terrorism." And then, as you might imagine, the rest of the video is excerpts from Obama speeches in which he uses those terms about eighty million times.
You kinda wish someone in the so-called Liberal Media, when a G.O.P. guy says, "Obama never uses the word 'terrorism,' would say, "We have a little video here we'd like you to watch and comment on." But that never happens. Heck, this morning on Good Morning America, Rudy Giuliani actually said, "We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama," and interviewer George Stephanopoulos didn't ask him about the shoe bomber or the anthrax attacks or that incident you may vaguely remember when some buildings in New York kinda fell down.
It's a shame he said it on a Friday since Jon Stewart doesn't tape on Fridays. But it's probably good enough to wait 'til Monday's Daily Show.
A fellow in Chicago pleaded guilty Tuesday to bilking hundreds of folks by selling bogus artwork on eBay. The guy netted more than a million clams by claiming they were the works of Pablo Picasso and other famous contemporary artists. Great. Now someone oughta investigate some of the phony pieces that have been sold on that site as if they were actually by Charles Schulz, Jack Kirby, Garry Trudeau and other greats in the world of comics. And even that area probably has less fraud than the sales of "vintage" animation art.
Dozens of photographers turn as the San Diego Zoo's five-month-old giant panda cub, Yun Zi, makes his official public debut. There were almost as many people taking pictures of me when I was that age and that cute. Here's a minute and a half of news footage complete with a punchline at the end...
Nikki Finke says "On tonight's monologue, Jay Leno sounds upset, even going so far to say he has 'trust' issues with NBC right now." I watched it and he didn't sound upset to me. He sounded like a comic who was happy he had some good lines about a bad situation. The "trust" line was one of them. It's called a joke.
She says the new configuration — Jay for a half-hour at 11:35 followed by The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien for an hour at 12:05 — is not a done deal; that both Jay and Conan are resisting. That's probably true but I suspect they're resisting to try and get better terms and concessions, and that neither has a strong hope of keeping their current time slots. They may also want to see if any interesting offers come their way from other networks or syndicators. NBC was probably hoping to get all this nailed down before those offers had a chance to trickle in.
I'd say there's about a 90% chance that Jay and Conan get long-term guarantees and then line up at 11:35 and 12:05, respectively. Jay knows that with affiliates poised to defect, he can't hold onto 10 PM for much longer. Conan doesn't want to be the guy who got fired as host of The Tonight Show after seven months, especially since they moved much of his staff out here to do the program. The set-up NBC is proposing would let each man keep a large part of what he has now. The 10% possibility would probably involve one of them jumping to another channel and I don't think either is eager to be in that position.
As I said earlier, the key to whether the rumors of Jay's 10 PM show ending were true would be if NBC was asking suppliers to pitch replacement shows for that time slot. That's apparently happening...so there you have it: The end of the big prime time experiment. Those who were hoping it would flop so they could sell shows in that time slot or find jobs on those shows may now rejoice. And let's all see what happens tomorrow. This is fun.
January 9, 2010
