Category Archives: To Be Filed

I guess I don't need to write a lot about Richard Sherman and about how though we've lost the man, the music he and his brother Robert wrote will last forever. Everyone will be saying that and everyone will be right. And there are already plenty of obits up like this one which tell of his amazing career, filled with dozens of achievements, any one of which would qualify him as an important part of American music.

So I'll just say it was just a delight and privilege to know this man, to talk with this man, to be in a room where he was performing a song you knew so well and that was so much an underscore (at least) to your life. He was so nice to everyone who wanted to meet him and so encouraging to anyone who tried to venture anywhere near the field in which he made his mark.

And he was so approachable and friendly. I remember being at a party one time and a lady — I have no idea who she was — had brought along her ukulele because she heard he'd be there and she wanted to accompany herself and perform the song "Pineapple Princess," which the Sherman Brothers had written for Annette Funicello. I can neither play nor sing but even if I was a master at both, I don't think I'd have had the nerve to perform a song for its composer.

But she did and I remember the absolute delight on Richard's face. He felt so happy and so honored. The lady was pretty good but you could tell that even if she'd been…well, as lousy as me, he would still have loved every moment of it. Because the lady had cared about it enough to learn it.

You all know his more famous songs, especially the ones in Mary Poppins and the ones scattered around Disneyland. But here's a performance of "Pineapple Princess" that I'm sure Richard would have loved. And if it were my song and ASCAP money was not a factor, I think I'd rather see it done like this than sung by Streisand…

And here's one of my favorite Sherman concoctions played and sung by Richard, joined by his brother Robert and some other guy. I'll let my friend Leonard introduce it…

Tom Luth, hailed by many as "The Hardest-Working Man in Comics," was found dead in his apartment last Thursday. He earned that title for the Herculean task of coloring the work of Sergio Aragonés — for Groo the Wanderer and other publications — for around forty years. It kept him busy but not so busy that he couldn't squeeze in work for others who admired his handiwork and wanted Tom Luth coloring on their comics.

I first met Tom through Alfredo Alcala, from whom he was receiving some mentoring and occasional assistant work, and through cartoonist Phil Yeh, who was a close friend of Tom's. It was Phil and his wife Linda who found Tom last Thursday, struck down by an apparent heart attack. Tom had suffered an attack last year and was scheduled for surgery in the not-too-distant future. He had not been answering his phone for several days and had missed an online music lesson last Monday. The Yehs, being good not-too-distant neighbors, went over to check on their friend and found what they found.  He was 70 years old.

Tom largely retired from the coloring business a few years ago, opting to spend most of his time composing music. He was very good at it. Still, when Sergio and I agreed to contribute a Groo story for the recent Comics for Ukraine benefit book, Tom practically demanded to color it as his contribution to the cause. The last thing he colored for Sergio — and I suspect for anyone — was the cover to a forthcoming collection of our 2000 mini-series, Space Circus. Tom colored the original series back then and he colored a wonderful wrap-around cover that you'll see on the book when it's released later this year.

I think there's still time for me to write something more about him for the book before it goes to press. I won't have to write about how good his work always was. You'll be able to see that for yourself in that volume and in any of the hundreds of comic books to which he lent his great talents. What I will write about is how nice, professional and dedicated he was. There would not have been 120 issues of Groo the Wanderer in 120 months from Marvel's Epic line if Tom hadn't done the impossible over and over and over, month after month, often meeting impossible deadlines. His work was always good and he was a helluva nice man. We're all real shaken-up over this news.

In a recent post here, I mentioned Norman Maurer, a fascinating gent I had the honor of working with. Norman was a very fine comic book artist who among other work, wrote and drew the Three Stooges comic books for St. John's, a small but important publisher. He later went on to become a TV and movie producer…and most but not all of what he produced featured The Three Stooges. He also managed the trio and that connection makes a little more sense when you know that in 1947, he married Moe's daughter Joan.

Norman was responsible for the Stooges' later works. In 1960, he produced a TV pilot called Three Stooges Scrapbook which was a half-hour of them stooging around in both live-action material and an animated sequence. The pilot never sold but in '65, he exec-produced a syndicated show, The New Three Stooges which featured the Old Three Stooges. Well, "Curly" Joe DeRita was kinda new, having joined the troupe in late 1958 but Moe and Larry sure weren't new.

The 1965 series consisted of animated Stooge cartoons, wrapped-around by live-action intros and outros. The animation was done by Cambria Studios whereas the animated cartoon in Three Stooges Scrapbook was produced by a company called TV Spots. We'll get to them.

Three Stooges Scrapbook is one of those films that Stooges fans long to see. I have no idea if it's possible to view the entire show anywhere but the cartoon segment and its live-action intro and outro have surfaced…and no, I'm not going to embed it so you can watch it here. I'm instead posting this link to where you can watch it on YouTube.

It was put there by a YouTuber named Curly's Grandson who is apparently Curly's Grandson. Since he apparently spent good money to preserve and transfer the film, I want to give him every possible chance to monetize its presence on YouTube…ergo, a link but no embed here.

TV Spots was an animation studio that mainly did commercials. It was founded by Bob Wickersham, who among his many credits directed the first Fox & Crow cartoons for Columbia and also wrote and drew comic books — of the Fox and Crow for DC and some other creations for other companies. At some point, he was squeezed out of the company he started but before TV Spots closed down in (I think) the late sixties, it was involved in a number of TV shows you may have heard of including Crusader Rabbit, King Leonardo, Calvin and the Colonel and some occasional sub-contracting work for Jay Ward.

If you go watch the Stooges cartoon, you'll see Moe Howard, Larry Fine and "Curly" Joe DeRita intro it and provide their voices for the animation. I'm pretty sure the announcer in the cartoon was Don Lamond and all the other voices were done by Mel Blanc. The credits at the end are for the entire half-hour show.

I don't know what year this is from but it was a long time ago. Billy Joel and Marlee Matlin visit Sesame Street…

P.S. ADDED LATER: Bill Mullins, a follower of this site, identifies the clip as from Christmas of 1988. Thanks, Bill.

There is zero chance of me buying a bag of Rudy Giuliani's new coffee. I don't like Rudy Giuliani and I don't like coffee…and even if I did like one or both, I would see no reason to presume that Rudy knows anything — I mean anything! — about coffee. Maybe if he were endorsing a line of guaranteed-to-fail legal maneuvers and I needed some guaranteed-to-fail legal maneuvers…

I know, I know: You don't care about this man and in some ways, neither do I. I just have this strange fascination with people who seem determined to destroy their lives and careers by doing wrong thing after wrong thing.

It's like when you read that some entertainer who once had $30 million bucks is now broke and declaring bankruptcy. If you ran through $30 million smackers, it means that one day, you were suddenly worth $29 million and a little later, you were worth $28 million and still later, you were worth $27 million and so on. Around about the time you hit the $15 million mark, I would think you'd pause and think, "Hmmm…maybe I'm doing something wrong here" and change Business Managers or strategies or something. But in most of those stories, the former thirty-millionaire waited until he got down to chicken feed before he tried to stanch the bleeding.

I'm going to guess that the man it says on the coffee bag is "America's Mayor" never had any thoughts about being in the coffee business before someone who was in that biz approached him. It was probably someone who shared Rudy's politics who thought, "There are a lot of people out there like me and they'll buy this coffee to show their support for him." After all, Trump hasn't done badly selling sneakers and over-priced, badly-printed Bibles…and it's not like there's any reason to think Trump knows anything about sneakers or God.

And Rudy, of course, is in no position to turn down anything that'll put money in his pocket. He'd probably dress up in drag like he always has enjoyed doing, and make a kinky film with Stormy Daniels if someone offered cash in advance. And it would probably sell way better than coffee with his face on it.

And now, here's the PaleyFest interview with Seth Meyers, who happens to be my current fave late night host if you don't count people named Jon or John…

Michael Ryan wrote to ask…

I recently picked the new soft cover collections of Kamandi and, as I was when I bought the original issues off the newsstand, I'm struck by the Joe Kubert covers on the last seven issues (#34 to #40) of Jack's run on the book.

While Joe's art can be quite loose, these covers seem to me to be overly sloppy or at least rushed. Joe's covers start with Gerry Conway taking over the editorial and eventual writing duties on the book. Joe certainly knew how to draw powerful covers and did hundreds, if not thousands, for DC and they trusted him to produce images that would sell books, but his Kamandi covers are not his finest work, IMO.

Perhaps I'm just being overly critical, but is there a story behind this that I've missed you telling before?

Here's my answer but first, I should answer another question. A lot of folks have written to ask why Joe Kubert was suddenly doing the covers on Jack Kirby comics. The answer is that back then at DC, all covers started with either a rough sketch by Head Honcho Carmine Infantino or with a rough sketch by someone else and that sketch was approved, perhaps after modification, by Infantino. Sometimes, as I've explained here, the cover was designed before the insides of the book were drawn or even written. Sometimes, it was done after. I believe these were all done after.

Jack was working for DC on a contract that called for him to finish one issue of something and then immediately start on something else. So as he neared the end of one story, he'd call up Carmine's office and ask "What do you want me to do next?" Carmine would check the schedules or have someone else check the schedules and Jack would be told to next do an issue of this or that.

Near the end of his contract, they had him backlogging issues of Kamandi. And when that contract expired and he stopped working for DC, there were many issues for which Carmine had never gotten around to designing covers for or having Jack design something. So they had Kubert do them.

I have nothing but admiration for Joe Kubert as an artist but I would agree with you that those covers were not his best work. And I think if you look over all the covers on all the DC books from that period, you would find a lot of very talented artists doing not their best work. The firm no longer had the services of Neal Adams or Nick Cardy as cover artists and Infantino seemed to have forgotten all he'd learned over the years about designing attractive covers. They'd also adopted a new cover format with an ugly banner across the top and…

Well, I just think DC was putting out a lot of weak comics then with a lot of weaker covers. Kubert was pretty unhappy that his Tarzan series was failing and a lot of other comics in the line weren't doing so well. Infantino knew that his bosses weren't too happy with him. He was fired not long after. It was not a good time for the company and I think it showed in their comics.

Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone discusses the legalities (or lack thereof) of protests on college campuses. This ties in with something we were discussing earlier on this blog — how some people somehow forget that the First Amendment is only about government restrictions on free speech. One of these days, I may write a blog post here about my experiences on both sides of the protests over the Vietnam War when I was attending U.C.L.A.. I was one of those rare animals — a person who actually had their mind changed…

If anyone doubts my claim that Rudy Giuliani is in a ridiculous amount of trouble, read this.

Longtime readers of this site long ago got sick of me plugging my pal Frank Ferrante and his wonderful Groucho show. He does it all over the country but rarely in Los Angeles. But here's some news: Frank will be Grouchoing for one show only on Sunday afternoon, September 29 at the El Portal Theater out in North Hollywood. Details and tix are available on this page. Don't miss this opportunity! The theater only holds 360 people so a sellout is pretty certain.

The Paley Center for Media houses the world's largest collection of old TV shows and stages events to study and celebrate the form. It's probably best known these days for its annual Paley Fests which used to honor programs that had withstood some real test of time but now are devoted mainly to what's hot at the moment. They recently had events for, among other current shows with big, ticket-buying fan followings, Young Sheldon, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Loki, The Morning Show and Family Guy.

Today and tomorrow, I'm posting the videos of two of these programs about programs. Here's the PaleyFest interview of Stephen Colbert and tomorrow, I'll post the one with Seth Meyers…

Here at this blog, we are very interested in the great writer-singer of very clever songs, Tom Lehrer. So Mark Crowther (a reader of this blog) sent me this link to this article about…well, it's not all about Tom Lehrer. It's by and about a fan of his who cobbled up a live show of Lehrer material and who wonders excessively why Mr. Lehrer, instead of writing and performing more, retreated to a life outside the public eye and show biz.

I dunno why either. I doubt we'll ever know. All I know is that whenever Tom Lehrer leaves us, he'll have left us a lot of wonderful songs for which we should be grateful.

A few days ago, Jordan Williams wrote to ask — well, here: I'll let you read it for yourself…

In your blog post today, you mentioned dining at the Russian Tea Room in New York in 1983. What was it like? I ask because for years and years, I heard about that place and how it was the greatest place to eat in the world and all the famous people ate there. I was dying to go but it wasn't until years later that I finally managed it and I was so disappointed. Was it wonderful in 1983?

I'm not the guy to ask, Jordan. Between my food allergies and my very limited palate, I try to avoid fancy restaurants that other folks may love. I was out that evening with a bunch of executives from the Group W Television company and since they were on expense accounts, they wanted to go to someplace expensive and trendy. I will admit it was an interesting outing, though not because of the food.

The maître d' who seated us made a point of telling us he was putting us in the "Tootsie booth," so-dubbed because a key scene in the movie Tootsie was filmed there with Dustin Hoffman and Sydney Pollack sitting where we were seated. In the booth next to us, Walter Cronkite was dining and across from us was one in which Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was eating a very rare, expensive caviar.

I know that because someone in our party pointed to Ms. Onassis and told our server, "I'll have what she's having." That lady in our party was considerably surprised at what she got and further surprised — "horrified" would be a better word — at what it cost. As she ate food she didn't enjoy very much, she told us she was worried that her employers would berate her for spending so much on dinner. (I don't know if they ever did.)

Me? I ordered the chicken kiev and sat there, eating it Famous Person Adjacent…about as close to "classy" as I've ever gotten. My food was…okay. Nothing special. It struck me that the only notable thing about the restaurant was who else was dining there while you did. Perhaps that has changed since 1983.

I couldn't help but overhear a few conversations at Mr. Cronkite's table. He was dining alone but folks kept stopping by to say hello and I guess they just wanted the bragging rights — "I spoke with Walter Cronkite the other night." Two of the tablehoppers I overheard said something complimentary to Mr. Cronkite and then buttoned it with his famous sign-off line, "…and that's the way it is." Mr. Cronkite chuckled politely as if no one had ever thought to say that to him before.

Once, I heard Don Adams, the star of Get Smart, say, "The great thing about having a famous catch phrase is that you get to use the same joke over and over. The bad thing is that every friggin' person you meet think they're so goddamn clever to throw it back at you." Mr. Adams had about eight of them so he knew of what he spoke — and no, he did not use the word "friggin'."

But like I said, I'm not the guy to ask about the cuisine there. I never enjoy the food at fancy, famous places where the alleged Upper Class flocks to chow down. Back at the time of this story, The Russian Tea Room was "the" place to dine in New York but I would have much rather been at the Carnegie Deli. There, I could have had a terrific corned beef on rye and a knish. And if anyone famous was at the next table, it was only Jackie Mason.

If I had to bet money — and I don't — I'd bet that Donald Trump will be found guilty in the Hush Money trial. And the main thing that makes me think that is that he obviously thinks that. He's ramping up his hysterical excuses about why the trial is rigged, unfair, a Witch Hunt, etc. He hasn't started attacking the jury yet because they haven't voted yet.

Cartoonist Russell Myers has been formally recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for the "Longest running daily cartoon strip by a single author." This is for producing the Broom-Hilda newspaper strip since April 19, 1970 — a feat which I believe was called to the world's attention by this blog back in this message.

It seems unlikely anyone will wrest the title away from him in the few decades. I don't know who the next contender would be but Russell ain't stopping now. And even if he quit or died tomorrow, he still has a year or two of Broom-Hilda strips in inventory.

Speaking of dead cartoonists: The Guinness folks currently recognize Johnny Hart as the "Most syndicated living cartoonist" and their listing says…

Johnny Hart, creator of The Wizard of Id and B.C., is the most syndicated living cartoonist with both these cartoons syndicated in 1,300 newspapers each, giving his work a combined total of 2,600 syndicated outlets.

I don't think this was ever a valid record because, first of all, the way syndicates count newspaper strip placements involves counting daily strips and Sunday strips as two separate sales. If the Picayune Post-Dispatch carries a strip seven days a week, the syndicate counts that as two newspapers, not one. One newspaper that carried B.C. and The Wizard of Id both daily and Sunday would be considered four newspapers. So the total number of papers carrying Hart's two strips has really always been way less than 2,600.

Secondly, I believe Charles Schulz and Jim Davis, creators of Peanuts and Garfield respectively, have both at times appeared in more newspapers with one strip apiece than Johnny Hart has with two. Of course, Charles Schulz no longer qualifies as a "living cartoonist"…

…and since his death in 2007, neither does Johnny Hart.