Monthly Archives: October 2006

What killed George "Superman" Reeves? Maybe it was eating too many boxes of Kellogg's Sugar Smacks.

Here's a one minute "in-show" commercial…a very common relic of TV shows of the past. The cast of the program would often appear in the final commercial spot…or in one occasion that you've seen, the star's relatives would do it. That commercial I linked to last week of Harpo and Chico Marx was an in-show spot done for brother Groucho's You Bet Your Life.

The thing to watch here: John Hamilton, who played Perry White, always had a lot of trouble remembering his lines. It was excusable in a way since these Superman shows were shot so rapidly and out of sequence. They'd set up for the afternoon in Perry White's office and do scenes for a half-dozen different episodes, one right after another. (This is why Clark, Perry, Lois and Jimmy almost always wore the same clothes from week to week…the same reason Dean Martin always wore a tux on his later variety show. When you shoot segments for different weeks at the same time, it's easier to not have the performers need to change wardrobe.)

Anyway, in many episodes, the director would have Hamilton seated at his desk and they'd put the script right in front of him. You can often see him glancing down to check on his next line. If you look carefully, you can see him doing it in this commercial.

Last February, I posted here that veteran newsman Christopher Glenn was retiring. Among his other credits, he was the voice and producer for many years of the "In the News" segments that CBS ran for many years amidst their Saturday morning kid shows. He did a great job there with a tough assignment.

I'm sorry to report that Mr. Glenn didn't get to enjoy much of his retirement. CBS News is reporting his sudden death.

I thought someone had uploaded some "In the News" segments to YouTube and I could embed one here…but my searching has been fruitless. You'll just have to imagine a concisely told news item, presented without sensationalism or any hyping of certain facts, told in a calm and assured voice. That was Christopher Glenn.

I'm not sure if I agree with all or any of this piece by Jonathan Alter but I think there's an interesting discussion lurking in there somewhere. He's right that the word "values" has become a kind of lazy shorthand for something a bit more complex. Still, I think there are voters out there who go to the polls with the intent of voting for the "right" kind of person. He may be incompetent. He may even be a criminal in some areas, preferably those unrelated to sex. But those factors are less important to some folks than the kind of man they believe him to be.

The story of the lady who won the Stephen Colbert Green Screen Challenge…and your opportunity to download the winning video. It all happens right here, courtesy of Quick Stop Entertainment.

This runs less than a minute and a half. It's the footage Winsor McCay produced in 1921 for a sequel to Gertie the Dinosaur, the film featured yesterday in this space. Nice stuff. Shame he never got around to finishing it.

Any list of "The Nicest People in Comics" would have to include Joe Sinnott in the top three or so. Joe is a gentleman in every sense of that oft-misapplied noun and to everyone who admires his work — a very large group of human beings — enormously generous with his time and talents.

And should you make up a list of "The Best Inkers Ever in Comics," you can start with Joe and go on from there. Inking is a peculiar institution that in the early days of comics was often the job description for those of lesser talent. You have some good artists and some not-so-good artists and what you did to maximize production was to have the good artists draw the comic in pencil and then have the not-so-good ones inscribe those pencil lines in ink. It may have harmed the work of the good artists but, hey, it got more pages out of them each month. Quantity over quality: That's how the publishers thought. It was only the devotion and pride of some artists that made any comics better than they absolutely had to be.

That was the original idea behind having one guy pencil and another guy ink…and it must be admitted that even before Sinnott, there were some inkers who were turning their job description into a true craft, elevating and truly embellishing others' pencil art so that the sum of the parts was greater than individual efforts might have been. Still, when Joe Sinnott moved from complete art to inking in the late fifties and early sixties, he took the job to a whole new level. All across the business, others gasped and said, "Oh, that's how it should be done." Good artists had inked others before but they usually either turned off their drawing skills and just traced or they kept thinking like pencillers and submerged what the first guy had done. Joe did a little of that before he figured out inking like no one before him. He got into what the penciller was attempting, understood it and then enhanced and finished the pencil art instead of either redrawing it or just making it reproduceable.

If the distinction I'm trying to make here is a bit fuzzy, try this example: Wally Wood was a great artist, one of the best ever in comics. When he inked Jack Kirby in the fifties, excellent art resulted but a lot of that was a matter of him overpowering what Jack drew, even to the point of losing some elements of the pencil art where it would have been better to have more Kirby and less Wood. A few years later, when Sinnott began inking Jack's work, he retained just about everything Jack did well and enriched it. Joe in particular had a way of separating the planes of a composition, inking the foreground layers with bolder strokes so they "popped" and the backgrounds with thinner lines that caused them to recede. You got a sensation of 3-D without having to wear those stupid glasses and get a headache. The art had more depth in many ways, for Joe also captured every expression Jack had intended. Plus, he trued up the perspective when Kirby cheated a bit for effect and he never once, not for one panel, took the quick and easy way out. If Jack drew thirty figures in a panel, Joe inked thirty figures, plus he put nice patterns and textures on their outfits.

And like I said, all across the industry, every other inker said, "Oh, that's how it should be done." Even Wally Wood said it. At the 1970 New York Comic Convention, I interviewed him and he said — this is an approximate quote — "Someone showed me what Joe Sinnott was doing and I realized that's it. That's how Kirby should be inked. It was so much better than what I'd done." (Joe was at that convention. I went up to him later and said, "Congratulations. Earlier today, you received the biggest compliment a guy in your line of work can receive.")

If all this sounds gushy, I'm sorry but Joe Sinnott is one of the great treasures in the field of comic art, both personally and professionally. He's eighty years old today and I sure hope that means he's middle-aged now. Because we need at least another eighty years of this man. Happy birthday, Joe. And it just dawns on me I should tell you this directly, so as soon as I post this, your phone will be a'ringing.

I took along my camera but somehow never got around to taking any pictures yesterday afternoon at the Hollywood Collectors Show in Burbank. This, for those of you who are naïve and ignorant of the important things in life, is a quarterly event where all sorts of stars sit around and sell autographs and autographed photos and autographed books and autographed anything. And by "stars," I mean people who are stars or were stars or — in some wonderful cases — are stars to some of us who know and love(d) their work, There are old-timers, new-timers and a lot of folks you just always wanted to meet. It's enormous fun. Here, in no particular order, is a partial rundown of folks I talked to…

I bought Marni Nixon's new autobiography, had her sign it and spent a delightful time talking with one of the great singers of our day. Ms. Nixon, of course, is famous for dubbing the singing voices of many non-singing actresses who for some screwy reason were cast in musicals…like Audrey Hepburn in the movie of My Fair Lady or Deborah Kerr in The King and I. She's performing next weekend here in Los Angeles (details here) and though my schedule is booked, I may make time to go.

I also apologized to her for what occurred a few years ago when I attended a production of Follies with her in the cast at a theater in the Broadway district of New York. At a perfectly awful time for it to happen — not that there's ever a good time for this — my cell phone went off. I'd turned it off before the show but somehow, it turned itself back on. After that, until I got a newer phone that couldn't be turned on with an accidental bump, I adopted the following policy when I was at a show of any kind: I didn't just turn the phone off. I removed the danged battery. Anyway, Ms. Nixon graciously accepted my apology even though she wasn't on stage at the moment it happened. (She said something about hearing it backstage and figuring it was probably me.) There were 28 people in that cast and I apologized to Betty Garrett a few weeks ago so I now only have 26 more to go.

Eddie Carroll was there and I hectored him about not doing his superb Jack Benny Tribute Show in a venue closer to Los Angeles. That is, I wish he would so I would. His schedule is available on his website and if he's going to be in your neck of the woods, go see him. As I've mentioned here, I'm not usually a fan of impersonator shows but Eddie is almost channeling J.B., he's so good. About ten minutes in, you forget and it might as well be Benny. We also talked about Eddie's work as an animation voice (he currently plays Jiminy Cricket for Disney) and his days as a writer at Hanna-Barbera. His partner then was Jamie Farr — and yes, it's the guy from M*A*S*H.

My longtime pal Jewel Shepard was present, signing copies of one of her books, as well as photos from the classic horror film, Return of the Living Dead. I was very lucky Jewel was in town for reasons I'll explain in a post later today, assuming I get the time to write it.

I wanted to purchase Noel Neill's new book (a substantial upgrade on her old one) but every time I went by the table, the lady who played Lois Lane on the Superman TV series was mobbed with admirers. Finally spotting her without customers mobbed about, I rushed over and whipped out my wallet only to find…she'd sold out of the book. That'll teach me to wait. Next time, I'm just going to barge up and shove everyone smaller than me aside.

I spoke with voice actor Wally Wingert, who was so good on one of our panels at the last Comic-Con International in San Diego. Wally helped assemble the forthcoming DVD release of the old Filmation cartoon series, The Groovy Goolies, and it looks outstanding. You can order a copy here.

Also spoke with Billy Mumy, who I've known since he was on Lost in Space and coming to me for news of the comic book industry. And with the lovely model Lynda Wiesmeier. And with Marla Gibbs, who's only one of the classiest ladies in Hollywood. And with the great animator Ray Harryhausen. And with superagent Fred Wostbrock. And with Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island who looked pretty darned terrific for a lady who was shipwrecked forty years ago. And with all sorts of other people I'm forgetting at the moment.

These shows are a lot of fun and not just because of the celebs who are announced to appear. I encounter people just as interesting in the aisles, walking around the room. The next Hollywood Collectors Show is February 16 and 17. I'll try and remind you as we get closer to the date.

The folks behind Deal or No Deal have a new show with some of the same spirit. It's called 1 Vs. 100 and the first episode debuted last Friday night. Four more have been taped and they run the next four Fridays.

I haven't set the TiVo for a Season Pass to grab them because I didn't particularly enjoy the first broadcast. First of all, I'm getting a little tired of the unrelenting sameness of Deal or No Deal so the last thing I need in my week is another show with a similar look 'n' feel.

Second, one of the reasons that Deal or No Deal can be a frustrating thing to watch is that so many contestants fall so far short of the million dollar prize, some of them very early on in games that continue for 40 minutes after the top prizes are eliminated. 1 Vs. 100 has a million buck top cash award but it's hard to believe anyone will get near it. After each question, you have to risk everything to go on, which is not how these shows usually work — and for a good reason. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is configured so you can see the next question, decide not to answer it and then walk away richer than when you arrived…and even if you get one of the top money questions wrong, you don't leave with zero. Some of the other shows that materialized in the wake of Millionaire's success let you know the category of the next question before you had to decide if you were going to risk everything and go for it. Even on Deal or No Deal, deciding to gamble is usually to chance that, if you pick wrong, your next bank offer might drop from six figures to five.

This all encourages risk-taking. But on 1 Vs. 100, one wrong answer and you go home with bupkis. They probably don't even have a copy of a home game to give you as a lovely parting gift. So let's say you're doing great and you crank it up to half a million dollars. Are you going to risk it all to hope that the next question won't be about a movie that you didn't see or a sport you've never followed? Remember that in order to win the million, you not only have to get every question right but everyone else in the "mob" of 100 has to get one wrong. To further drive home how unlikely this is, they keep showing shots of Ken Jennings, who's one of those hundred, and reminding you how much money he won on Jeopardy!

So all that's the second of my reasons why the show didn't grab me. The third would involve the lighting effects and all the little "suspenseful" music stings, which are becoming a real cliché on shows like this. The ones on 1 Vs. 100 sounded to me like the ones on every other show of this kind. It's like the producers of The Weakest Link had a big yard sale and the people behind this new show stopped off and picked up their audio tracks real cheap, plus some pieces for their set.

Lastly, Bob Saget is a very funny comedian, especially if you like filth. Really, he is. But he did the first episode with that "I'm too hip to be doing a show like this" attitude that has killed almost every Dennis Miller TV venture for me. He didn't seem to care about the game and if he doesn't, I certainly don't. Someone let me know if it gets any better in succeeding weeks…but I have a hunch it won't.

Congressman John Murtha writes a piece of Democratic campaign propaganda — but in doing so, he also sort of lays out his party's argument against the Iraq War. A couple of my Republican friends cite Murtha's opposition to the war as the moment they knew it was lost, at least in terms of support from the U.S. citizenry. Personally, I think the attempts to smear Murtha as a treasonous, pro-terrorist coward did a lot to make that happen. You can use that kind of attack on some people and get results…but use it against the wrong guy and it backfires.

Here's a short but nice article about Neil Simon, who's about to receive the Mark Twain Award for humor. The piece makes the usual mistake of thinking Woody Allen wrote for Your Show of Shows and Mr. Simon seems incapable of being interviewed without telling everyone that he made a bad financial deal on The Odd Couple, like we're supposed to feel sorry for him. I was especially struck by this sentence…

After some recent health problems — which included the transplant of a kidney donated to him by his former publicist, Bill Evans — Simon and Joyce sold their Bel Air, Calif., home and now live in Manhattan year-round.

Former publicist? Former publicist? The man gave you one of his kidneys, Neil, and now he's your former publicist? What did your current publicist promise you? A leg?

Winsor McCay, as you'll see in today's video, used to bill himself as "The World's Greatest Cartoonist." In 1914, that wasn't as outrageous a claim as it might now seem. In fact, almost everyone who could have challenged him for the title then is also in this clip.

This is the 12 minute version of Gertie the Dinosaur, the film that contains the five minutes he animated for what many would later call — erroneously but with only the best of intentions — the first animated cartoon ever. It wasn't, not by a longshot. It wasn't even McCay's first animated film. But this one got enough attention that it probably seemed like the first to some, and it certainly inspired just about everyone who got into animation for an entire era or two. Its makers (McCay had help but not a lot) also invented a number of techniques that are still, in some fashion, in use today.

Cartoonists back then worked night and day to produce their comic strips. For some reason — fame and money, one supposes — some of them still made time to tour in vaudeville or the lecture circuit with acts that sometimes (not always) involved drawing. McCay started such extracirricular activities around 1906, sketching on stages and incorporating his early animated efforts into the presentation. In February of 1914, he debuted Gertie at the Palace Theater in Chicago and then took her to New York and elsewhere. He had the five minutes of animation and he'd stand on stage as it was shown and interact with it. Later that year, the remainder of the film you're about to see was shot so that Gertie the Dinosaur could be shown in movie houses without McCay or any human participating…and also so that the story of its exhausting production could be immortalized. All the live-action footage was done months after the animation so everything you see of McCay slaving away at the drawing board is a re-creation. In truth, the amount of labor involved was probably not exaggerated except, as is obvious, for comic effect.

Tomorrow, I'll link us to the other Gertie film that McCay made. This one, he started but never finished. Thanks to Jeff Trexler for the suggestion.

The New York Times runs this editorial about the Bush administration entitled, "Science Ignored, Again." The title is almost all you need to know about what it says.

Terry Jones welcomes George W. Bush into the World League of Despots.

The video quality on this one ain't great but it's only a minute. You can bear it. It's a TV commercial for the "Camp Granada" board game that came out in 1965, attempting to cash in on Allan Sherman's hit song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." I don't recall ever owning or playing the game but I think I looked through one once and found its board, cards and instructions to be rather funny to the point where it looked like Mr. Sherman actually had something to do with their creation. Perhaps it wasn't much of a game since it seemed to disappear from the stores (not in a good way) rather rapidly. Anyway, here's the commercial and I'll warn you that it's full of kids who don't sing very well. Not that Allan Sherman himself was Ezio Pinza or anything…

Bill Maher had what I thought was a particularly good closing editorial last night on Real Time. If you're not going to catch one of the replays in the coming week, you might want to read the text of it, which you can do on this page at Salon. If you're not a Salon subscriber, you'll have to watch an online ad or two.

If you do watch the show, you might want to check out the text anyway. What got on the air was slightly rewritten with a number of trims, probably of lines that didn't elicit sufficient laughter at the Dress Rehearsal.

The speech is about the Mark Foley situation but from a different perspective than I've heard elsewhere. Our kids are harmed and threatened by a lot of things much worse than one oversexed Congressman. Why aren't we more concerned about those matters?