Category Archives: To Be Filed

There are certain questions I receive over and over even after I've written about them on this blog.  Here's one from Robert Rowe…

I saw your name mentioned as having been featured as a character in a story in The Flash #195 from 1970.

What are your recollections of the event? Was it only editor Julie Schwartz having some fun with the fans of the time? Were you notified that you would appear or were you surprised to see yourself in an issue of The Flash? Maybe most importantly, did it change your opinion of the book?

I wrote about this but it was some time ago some of this is me quoting myself. We used to buy our comic books at newsstands or at racks in mini-markets or drugstores. They came out Tuesday and Thursday in most areas and if you were a devout fan (as was I), you hurried to the vendor each of those days to grab up the new releases. On January 20, 1970, I did just that and among my purchases of that day was the new issue of The Flash, #195.

I was at the time working on the fringes of the comic book business. And suddenly, I bought that issue of The Flash, opened it and discovered I was a character in it.

There was a scene of The Flash doing a whirlwind autograph signing at the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon and he was calling out the names of the folks who were receiving these autographs. The comic's editor, Julius Schwartz, had inserted the names of three folks who were frequent contributors to his letter columns: Me, Irene Vartanoff and Peter Sanderson. (All three of us, by the way, wound up working in comics.)

I think "weird" would describe how I felt. I just stopped and stared at it and told myself I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. And I remember looking around at the people passing me and realizing how little this would matter to any of them. But it meant a lot to me just as having letters of mine printed in comic books meant a lot to me. It didn't particularly change my opinion of that comic or any comic. It just broke down (a bit) the barrier I felt between being a reader of comic books and being part of the world that made them.

And then about two weeks later, Jack Kirby asked me to become his assistant and I really felt like I'd crossed over.

Very sad this morning to hear of the unexpected/sudden death of Philippe Vidal-Dumas (aka Philippe Vidal) at the age of 64. He was a giant in the French animation industry and a very nice, talented man who I had the honor of working with on five seasons of The Garfield Show. I was the Supervising Producer and I do not know what that title meant but I wrote most of the episodes, story-edited those by other writers, and cast and directed the American voice tracks.

Philippe was the Director and I know what that meant: He supervised and often drew and designed everything that made it into a TV series after it left me. I was delighted with just about everything that resulted and the few times I wasn't delighted were — I learned — instances where Philippe fought for something and lost. He was very good at his job.

The producers of the show kept trying to get me to fly over to France where all the heavy lifting was done and I kept refusing. But Philippe would come over every year and we'd hook up in Jim Davis's monster of a studio which was then in Muncie, Indiana. The show was done in such harmony that those few hours each year were all we needed. I could suggest something in one sentence and Philippe completely understood and made it work.

The first time we convened there, I had my dear friend Carolyn with me. Philippe was (of course) completely charming towards her and over a dinner meeting, included her in the discussion. Somehow — I forget how — mention of the Disney film Pinocchio came up and he turned to her and said, "I consider that the greatest animated film ever made." To which she replied, "Yes…and my father worked on it." I jumped in to explain that her father was the great Walt Kelly and he'd been one of the key animators on Pinocchio.

To Philippe, that was like hearing that he was in the presence of the daughter of some guy who'd helped Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I will always remember his joy and how he pumped Carolyn for anything she could tell him about her father. Philippe was truly a lover of great cartooning and animation…and you could tell that by the way he approached every single job he did in those art forms. We wanted to work together again on something and I am very, very sorry that will never happen.

Here's Weird Al Yankovic with the definitive cover version of one of Paul Simon's best songs…

Here's the latest installment of this series. Hard to believe the guys who've been assembling these for so long and putting in such effort and passion are just now almost at the halfway mark…

A loyal follower of this blog made a hefty (and much appreciated) donation last night and asked that in return, I rerun this story. Okay, fine. We all have things we're willing to do for money…which, come to think of it, is kind of the theme of this story.

It took place years ago when I was in Las Vegas — a town I no longer visit. Much has changed in that town including the fact that the hotel which was then called Bally's has now been renamed The Horseshoe. Also, everything around costs eleven times as much. Here's the requested tale…

Wednesday night of last week, my plane got in around 9:15. By the time I was checked into the hotel, unpacked and done with e-mails I had to send, it was 11:15 PM and I decided I needed some dinner. I went online to the website of Giordano's, a Chicago-based chain that makes terrific deep dish pizzas and — lucky me! — has an outlet in Vegas, right in front of Bally's Hotel and Casino. I ordered an individual-size pie which, their website told me, would be ready at Midnight.

At 11:30, I left my hotel and began the hike over to pick up my order. On the way, I passed a lot of those folks in colorful costumes who line the streets in touristy areas, hoping you'll tip them for posing with you for a photo. There was a homemade Mickey Mouse and a homemade Minnie. There were shirtless body builders. There were almost-shirtless showgirls. There was a guy made up as Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. Characters like that.

There were also guys trying to corral tourists — mostly male but some boy/girl couples — into agreeing to be whisked off to some strip club. I heard one of the salesguys say, "While you're there, every third drink is free." I don't drink but if I did, that offer would make me decide, "My, the drinks there must be very overpriced." And if two drinks are your limit, the club is now trapping you into a third which, among its other impacts on you, might cause you to spend a lot more money on the ladies than you intend.

One notch down the food chain from the strip club barkers, you had a couple of hustlers offering to fix single guys like me up on a "date." Having once been a teenage boy, I kinda understand the willingness to pay money for sex. I've never done it but I understand the feeling of necessity. What I don't get is committing to it without seeing the person you're going to be having sex with. What if Ernest Borgnine has a surviving twin sister who's turned to prostitution? Think about that but not for too long.

When I passed one of those fellows without showing interest, he yelled after me, "Don't like girls, huh? Then how about some pot? Everybody likes pot!" Always nice to see an entrepreneur who knows how to diversify his business.

And then there were the dates themselves who had cut out the middle-men: Women who couldn't have looked more like hookers if they were holding "Will hump for money" signs. A couple of them struck me as ladies who could only make that sale to men who hadn't seen them. But a couple of them looked like if you were in the market for that service, you couldn't have done much better.

I navigated past all of these individuals and thoughts to get to the intersection of W. Flamingo Rd. and Las Vegas Boulevard. There are elevated pedestrian walkways connecting these corners. You do not cross on street level. You take an escalator, elevator or stairs up to the walkway, cross up there, then take an escalator, elevator or stairs back down to street level. A trek like that would take me to my pizza.

The escalators were all outta commission and so was my knee which didn't like the whole concept of stairs just then, causing me to head for the elevator. The elevators don't get a lot of usage because they're out of the way and many people don't know they're there or that they don't double as urinals. This one seemed clean so I got in, pressed "2" and just before the doors closed, another man slipped in with me. He was ragged with zombie eyes…probably homeless, possibly crazy.

As we rode up, he was talking to someone — maybe even me — about killing someone — maybe even me. I wasn't particularly worried about him doing that between the first floor and the second but you don't want to engage with a being like that.

I got out on 2, relatively unkilled and walked across the pedestrian bridge to the elevator that would take me down. When it came, I noticed my unsavory elevator mate coming towards it so I stepped back and let him get in by himself. I figured I'd take the next ride down or maybe the one after.

Just then, a short black lady — obviously marketing her body that evening — started to board the elevator. I stopped her with a whispered "Don't get in."

She didn't get in but asked me, "Why not?"

I nodded at the guy and just then, as the elevator doors closed, he pointed at her and yelled, "I'm gonna fuckin' kill you, bitch!" And then the doors shut tight.

She thanked me and said, "You saved my life!" I said I didn't think so but maybe we both oughta wait a few minutes before the ride down. "Let's give him time to wander back to his penthouse suite," I said. So that's how I wound up talking to a Vegas streetwalker for about five minutes. It was an interesting five minutes.

She was very young and quite attractive and it was all I could do to not say, "What the hell are you doing in this profession?" She asked me where I was from — I suspect they all ask that — and when I said Los Angeles, she said, "We have something in common! I'm from San Diego!"

That's right: We had something in common! We were both from Southern California! Just us and 23.8 million other people.

I told her I was going to San Diego next weekend and, well aware she was leading up to offering the rental of any or all of her body parts, I decided to preempt that by saying, "We can't talk long. My girl friend's back in the room starving and I need to get back there with a pizza before she eats the little soaps in the bathroom."

It was a lie — Amber was back home in L.A. — but the lady bought it and the trajectory of the conversation changed. "Are you going there for Comic-Con?" she asked. I told her no; Comic-Con's not 'til July. "Though I have been to Comic-Con a lot." She asked me how many of them I'd been to and I said, "All of them." That was not a lie…and boy, does it impress the ladies.

(Fun Fact: She told me her age and the year she was born, the Guests of Honor at Comic-Con included Ramona Fradon, Neil Gaiman, Gil Kane, Stan Lee, Irv Novick, Harvey Pekar, Stan Sakai, Joe Sinnott and Jeff Smith.)

She told me she loved San Diego but she couldn't find work there that paid decently so a year ago, she moved to Vegas where she also couldn't find a job that paid well enough…until she turned to her current occupation. I asked, "Do you like it?" She said, "Most of the time. Some guys are psycho but so were some guys I waited on when I worked at Sunglass Hut."

I thought but did not say, "Yeah, but I have a hunch there was a lower rate of disease transmission at Sunglass Hut."

About then, it occurred to me that anyone passing us, as lots of people were, would assume she and I were negotiating prices. One time late at night in New York, I got into a conversation with a lady of the same vocation at the corner of W. 56th Street and 7th. Some friends of mine were coming from the Carnegie Deli and they spotted me there and probably still think I was — you should excuse this choice of word — dickering.

That's when I fibbed again to this lady in Vegas whose name I never got. I said, "Listen, I have to really save a woman's life — a woman in dire need of pizza." We took the elevator down and since there was no sign of you-know-who, said our goodbyes. She went her way and I went to Giordano's and got my order.

On my way back with it, I took the walkway again and spotted her back up there, talking with a fellow I guess was a potential customer — or maybe he was on his way to pick up a pizza. She saw me and she waved and yelled, "Thanks again!" I yelled back, "Any time!" And a lot of folks heard that and I knew just what they were thinking.

Happy Anniversary of the day of his birth to Sergio Aragonés Domenech, otherwise known as Sergio Aragonés without the Domenech, otherwise known aa That Guy Who Draws Tiny Cartoons In The Margins Of MAD Magazine, otherwise known as the creator of Groo the Wanderer, otherwise known as My Best Friend (male division) for 50+ Years!

I was trying to think of a really fancy, expensive present to buy him but then I realized that Sergio is the kind of guy who would much prefer to just be mentioned on my blog.

We like just about everything about Audra McDonald…

The next few days, you're not gonna see a ton o' posts here as I deal with a couple o' matters that wouldn't interest any of you in the slightest. There'll be some content but not much and as usual, I'll make up for slacking off by slacking on. If "slacking on" isn't an acceptable term, it should be.

For now, I'd like to thank all of you who've contributed to our little blogathon. We're more than halfway to our goal, our goal being to see that I don't lose money this year posting all this stuff for your websurfing pleasure. Your contributions are most appreciated.

The previous post here — my advice delivered a long, long time ago to a new writer in the comic book world having numerous deadline problems — brought this message from my pal Tom Galloway…

So what happened with him? Did he manage to overcome those first impressions of lateness or did he have to give up and do something else?

The update is, sad to say, not "He got his act together and now has a thriving career in comics." It's that he's now supporting himself with a second (or maybe third, fourth or even ninth) choice career. I think he's making an okay living but not primarily in comics.

In the interest of sheer honesty, that's probably not wholly because of his rep as a guy who couldn't meet deadlines. There were other factors, some beyond his control. Companies downsize or shut down…new talent can edge out someone who's been in the game a little longer…that editor who loves your work is no longer an editor…

There are many reasons why careers cool and some of them have very little to do with the quality of your work or your reliability. That's why I've never put all my proverbial eggs into that one proverbial basket.

In this case, the writer we're talking about is still in the game — but that's what it is for him now: A game. It's what he does for the occasional extra money, not to pay his monthly mortgage. Fortunately, he seems to be getting it paid.

I think I've said here somewhere that Mary Tyler Moore was my first TV crush. On reflection, she wasn't. An extraordinary lady named Shari Lewis was. I was heavy into puppets and ventriloquism in my youth and there on my TV was Shari — an adorable female who could do both. For a time, she had a very clever show for kids on the NBC Saturday morning schedule and I was heartbroken when it went off.

Like anyone who's worked in TV, I've had a number of projects that came close to getting on the air but fell just short. One that I really regret didn't make it was an idea that Shari Lewis had for a new CBS Saturday AM series. CBS optioned it and paired me with her to develop it and write the pilot. It should have gone. It was a good idea and working with her on it was a joy. She was a very smart lady and, once again in this silly life of mine, I found myself working with someone whose work I'd loved when I was a kid. There's a new documentary coming out about her and I'm pissed that my pal Ken Levine got to be in it to tell the world about her and I didn't…

Jay Leno, who lately is looking very weary and old in his recent appearances, made some statements lately about late night TV maybe being too political. Online folks are jumping all over him for these remarks, often suggesting they were his response to the cancelation of Stephen Colbert's show. In fact, they were made before that axing which no one saw coming. A lot of people who've never liked Jay for one reason or another seem to have jumped on the opportunity to attack him.

I kinda feel sorry for the guy who has recently been involved in three major accidents. He suffered major burns (the real kind, not the Larry Linville type) when he caught fire in his garage. He was in a motorcycle accident where he broke his collarbone, two ribs, and cracked both kneecaps. And he fell 60 feet down a hill causing a broken wrist and serious bruising of his face and body. To add to all that pain, he's caring for his wife of 45 years who has developed serious dementia. I guess some people think this is a good time to dump on a person.

Having seen how good a comic this guy could be on a stage when viewed live, I'm still a fan of his comedy. And having met him a few times and passed a few jokes onto him and knowing his rep among those who know him, I still think he's a very nice man with more integrity than a lot of comedians. I've never understood what bad thing some people think he did to Conan O'Brien other than to do a Tonight Show that more people liked.

The criticisms of his recent statements strike me as…well, odd. He's often accused of not maintaining the greatness of Johnny Carson by people who admit that Carson took the same position — never make it obvious how you vote. Sometimes, Leno's critics trot out ridiculous statistics like this study that says Leno went heavier on Democratic presidents than Republican presidents — for example, 4,607 jokes about Bill Clinton as opposed to 3239 about George W. Bush.

Here's why this kind of analysis is silly. First of all, as the survey itself notes, "Democrats occupied the White House in 13 of his 22 years as Tonight Show host." So wouldn't you kind of expect any comedian in that situation would tell more jokes about Democrats than Republicans?

Secondly, Clinton was involved in a sex scandal, "W" wasn't. If George W. Bush had been involved in a sex scandal — or if his pants had fallen down during a State of the Union address or he'd had more embarrassing incidents than he did — there would have been more jokes about him. Leno only told 1,011 jokes about Barack Obama because there really wasn't much to joke about there. You couldn't write about him being fat or horny or clumsy or anything of the sort.

Lastly, all jokes are not equal. A joke calling a politician a war criminal or a pathological liar is not the same as a joke making fun of his tie or his golf game. But the joke counters don't differentiate.

I am all for Freedom of Speech, even when it's speech that says things I don't like. If what we're seeing now is an attempt to silence Stephen Colbert and anyone in the same line of work, I think that's wrong. I also don't think it will work.

But at the risk of sounding like what some people are accusing, I'm not horrified at the suggestion that maybe late night has gotten too political. As readers of this site know, I think Donald Trump is just about the worst thing that ever happened to this country and he oughta be outta office and behind bars, A.S.A.P. Horrible man. Still….

I watch most of my late night TV during daylight hours. I can understand how the kind of person who watches late night TV just before trying to get a good night's sleep might prefer to not hear about Trump and his latest outrages just before going beddy-bye. That doesn't mean they support the guy; just that having him on their minds doesn't make for the sweetest dreams.

A number of interesting things happened in the month of June, 1962. For instance, Marvel brought out Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first appearance of Spider-Man), Journey Into Mystery #83 (the first appearance of Thor) and Tales to Astonish #35 (first Ant-Man). At the time, I think I was more interested in what was happening with Dell Comics and a new company which mysteriously appeared. It was called Gold Key comics and I first saw one at a Von's Market in West L.A.

I was ten years old at the time and I still had great interest in Dell Comics like Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Beep Beep the Road Runner. I had no idea why some of my favorite Dell Comics were turning into Gold Key Comics. I also had no idea that ten years later, almost to the month, I would be writing Gold Key Comics like Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Beep Beep the Road Runner, many of them drawn by the same artists.

As I learned later — and explain in greater detail here — Dell Comics for decades had been printed by a company called Western Printing and Lithography. Not only that but it was editors who worked for Western and freelance writers and artists who freelanced for Western, who created the contents of those comics. And it was Western, not Dell, which held the rights to produce comic books of the Disney properties, the Warner Brothers properties, the Walter Lantz properties, the M.G.M. properties, etc.

I do not have a good photo of that Von's Market back then but I have a not-great one taken a few years later and you can see that Von's in the background. I shall post below just the section which shows the Von's and if you click on it, you can see the entire photo…

The above photo was probably taken in the early eighties, not long before the Von's and every single building on that side of the street was torn down and replaced with a giant mall called The Westside Pavilion. With great insensitivity, they did not erect a little plaque to identify the spot on which I first purchased a Gold Key comic book.

When people who don't know from comic books ask me why they've always mattered to me so, I don't have a great explanation — at least not one that satisfies them. "They just did" ain't much of a reply. I'm thinking maybe I need to drag these people down my personal Memory Lane and point out the impact that comics had on who I was and who I became.

I can remember where I purchased certain comics 60+ years ago — a high percentage of the (approximately) 3,000 comics I owned by the age of twelve. I found my first Marvel Super-Hero comic, Fantastic Four #11, at Bart's Books, a second-hand bookstore in Santa Monica. I bought my first issue of MAD (#70) at Westward Ho, a market at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Ohio Avenue in Westwood Village near UCLA. Memories like that. I wouldn't have those if comics didn't mean a lot to me.

Here we have another episode of The Red Skelton Hour, this one from September 23, 1969. Red's main guest was Peter Graves who, in the years before he appeared in Airplane, was not someone you might have booked for a comedy show. Mr. Graves was then the star of Mission Impossible (also on CBS, of course) and to facilitate the cross-plugging, he brought along Leonard Nimoy and Greg Morris from that show's cast…

…and also on this episode was Walker Edmiston, who had a recurring role on Mission Impossible and was also a frequent sketch player on Skelton's program. Walker was a lovely, versatile talent and I had the pleasure of working with him and knowing him. He did a lot of voice work and puppetry and was another one of those actors who turned up on almost every TV show at one time or another. Skelton used him a lot. If you search this here blog, you'll find a great many mentions of him.

And we have to mention Red's musical guests: In their first network TV appearance, we have the rock group Iron Butterfly performing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" — the perfect music for the kind of folks who'd tune in to watch The Red Skelton Hour.

I'm imagining Donald Trump calling Rudy Giuliani in the hospital and saying, "No, I won't pay you the huge amount of money I owe you for legal fees. But I'll give you your choice of a Trump Bible, a poster of me as Superman or The Presidential Medal of Freedom!"

A follower of this site who shall remain nameless wrote to ask me to explain about the voice credits at the end of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. I've covered some of this before but here's a more detailed explanation…and the first thing you should know is that they were not complete and sometimes not accurate. For instance, here are the only end title voice credits that ever appeared on Quick Draw McGraw…

Three names: Daws Butler, Don Messick and Doug Young. Daws was in every cartoon on that show. In the Quick Draw McGraw cartoons, he voiced Quick Draw and Baba Looey. In the cartoons of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Daws was Augie and Doug Young was Daddy. In the Snooper and Blabber cartoons, Daws was always Snooper and usually Blabber. A gent named Elliot Field was Blabber in the first four Snooper-Blabber cartoons, then Daws took over the part.

But there were other actors on that show besides Mr. Field. While they did the occasional cartoon in which Daws did all the voices, they usually had two actors in them. The other guy in the Quick Draw cartoons was often Don Messick but it was sometimes Doug Young, sometimes Hal Smith, sometimes Vance Colvig, sometimes Peter Leeds, etc. There were very few roles for females but there were some and they were done by Jean Vander Pyl or Julie Bennett. Messick was usually the second voice in Snooper & Blabber cartoons.

And when the little duck turned up in an Augie Doggie cartoon, that was a gent named Red Coffee. As far as I know, Mr. Coffee never got a screen credit on any Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Years ago, my great (and sadly, late) buddy Earl Kress made all our study over the years of H-B cartoons pay…not for us but for the estates of some of the voice actors we admired. We helped the studio identify a lot of actors in shows where the records were missing or incomplete. We helped those families collect some residual cash for streaming and DVD releases.

Now, most of what follows applies to the shows that the studio produced for syndication or Saturday morning time slots. When they got into network prime-time with shows like The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat, they made more of an effort to make the end credits complete and accurate…though as we shall see in a subsequent post that didn't help.

And the second thing you should know — or maybe this is the third; I'm not counting — is that even when the errors and omissions rankled the folks who voiced or even just plain worked on the cartoons, the applicable unions didn't care a lot. This changed to some extent in the eighties. What follows is about the shows produced before the change.

So let's say we're the studio and we have a network order to produce and deliver thirteen episodes of a new show…and the year will be filled by running each episode four times. Because of the timing of how the networks made such an order and when they needed to put shows on the air, it is likely that Show #1 will air before the last few orders of the show are completed.

Some of the people who work on the show will work on every episode. Some will not. But when the time comes to prepare to deliver Show #1, we make up an end title for which we try to list all the major artists and crew members who have worked on that show up to that moment. And we're going to make up one end title sequence which can run on each week's show because it's easier and cheaper than making up credits that are specific to each individual episode.

So we list the main people in the various art departments that worked on the show. Those specific people might not have all worked on the show — or worked on it much — but we can't keep track of who drew what. A layout artist mainly assigned to one show might have helped out for an afternoon or two on another show. So we just kinda approximate who the artists and editors and supervisors were that season.

And then when it comes to the voices, we have the voice department make up a list of all the folks who were paid to do voice work on that show as of that moment.

We might be making this list up to put on Show #1 because it has to air next week. We haven't done the last show or two of three yet but it's time to make up the end credits so we put on all the names to date. Here is the card with the voice credits that aired on every episode of the first season of Dynomutt, which consisted of sixteen episodes that aired weekly beginning on September 11, 1976…

Okay now: First thing we note is that there's no indication of who did what voices or who did regular characters and who did one-time minor characters. Once in a while, an actor's agent might negotiate a special credit for the client…usually when the actor wanted more money but agreed to accept a special credit instead of more money. A special credit costs the studio nothing. More money costs them more money.

No one made such a deal on this series so there's nothing there to tell you who played which characters and who was in every episode. There were four recurring characters: Frank Welker was the voice of Dynomutt, Gary Owens supplied the voice of The Blue Falcon, Ron Feinberg was the Narrator and Larry McCormick gave voice to The Mayor. All four of those men were probably in every episode and all four could then have doubled or tripled performing other minor, one-time roles. Welker — one of the most versatile actors ever in the voice biz — undoubtedly did.

The roles that appear once or infrequently — Cop #1, Man #3, the villain in the episode, etc. — are usually referred to as Incidentals. All of the other folks on this list did incidental roles in the episodes that had been recorded as of the time the end titles were made up. Or at least, that's what Hanna-Barbera's records said. They were not always accurate…and of course, they only covered the shows that had been recorded as of the date the end credits were made up. If that was before Show #12 and Show #13 were recorded, then an actor who only appeared in one or both of those episodes would not receive screen credit.

And as I mentioned, mistakes were made all the time. I'll write about those in some follow-up posts soon.