The 'net is loaded today with remembrances and hosannas for Mort Drucker. The must-read is the one from Tom Richmond, who succeeded Mort drawing movie and TV parodies for MAD. And Tom makes a good point that I made to a couple of reporters today…
For years, the most popular thing in MAD was probably those movie and TV parodies…but though they'd done occasional spoofs of films and teevee programs before, they didn't become a regular part of the magazine until Mort blossomed as a caricaturist. Once the MAD editors realized what they had in Mort, they were just about obligated to do satires of hit movies and TV shows. Didn't matter who was in them. Mort could draw them.
And he didn't just draw one caricature of each actor and copy them over and over, which is what you got in some of the lesser MAD imitations. In every panel, he drew stars of the film or show from different angles and he drew them the way they were in that particular project. When he drew John Wayne in MAD's version of True Grit, he didn't just draw John Wayne. He drew John Wayne in True Grit. From every angle. MAD staffer Jerry DeFuccio, who was sometimes in charge of digging up the photos Mort would use for reference once said, "Only I know how good Mort is because only I know how few photos we could sometimes get for him to use for reference." Just an amazing talent.