Here are a few messages that seem like they oughta be up here. This first one is from Daniel Klos…

I'm sure others have already written in to tell you this, but just in case they haven't, the new 14-disc Superman Ultimate DVD Collection that came out last month from Warner Bros. has all 17 Fleischer cartoons on it, completely restored. I've bought many, many versions of these cartoons over the years on DVD and VHS trying to get the cleanest, most pristine prints I could find, but the ones on this DVD set are the best I have seen hands down. (Also the best I've heard. Several collections have tried to update these things with upgraded sound effects and the results were less than desired)

No one else wrote to tell me that so I'm glad you did. If someone wants to order that set, here's an Amazon link. Meanwhile, Dan O'Shannon sent me a message devoid of capital letters…

a little while ago, you posted a betty boop cartoon in which she impersonates maurice chevalier, and you posited that doing chevalier was mandatory for all performers at paramount (just ask the marx brothers). i smiled at the thought, but woke up today with a chilling realization: you may be right. check out jerry lewis in "the stooge" (paramount, 1952). it's the scene where dean's too drunk to go on stage so jerry goes up by himself. sure enough: chevalier. i'm beginning to think that there are more chevalier impersonations on film than there is actual film of chevalier.

I once had an interesting discussion with an impressionist friend about stars he called "gimme impressions." These were people who had one or two traits so distinctive that if you could approximate them — fairly easy to do — then onlookers would recognize who you were doing and it really didn't matter if the impression was any good at all. I've seen/heard people do Groucho with no attempt to approximate his voice or rhythms. The "impression" is just to hunch over, pantomime a cigar and maybe try to move one's eyebrows up and down. I suspect Chevalier would fall into the same category: You stick out your lower lip, mime a straw hat and attempt any sort of French accent and…voila! Chevalier! That's probably why he was so mimicked…but it does seem to also have been some sort of Paramount Pictures corporate policy.

This last one's from Bart Lidofsky…

I have deja vu about this, but, just in case: I used to have a talent (well, a skill, since it required actually using it to keep it up). I would be able to see about 10-15 minutes of a movie, and I could figure out the year it was made, plus or minus one year. There were many things I looked at for clues. Period pieces, of course, were harder (the only movie that I can recall getting really wrong was when I first saw Privilege; it was so dead on with a lot of its predictions, including style, that I thought it was made in 1972 or 1973 instead of 1967).

Which brings me to my point. For pretty much all other movies, one major clue to movies made before 1969 or after 1971 was the attitude the movie showed towards its female characters. It is difficult for those who were not news/media aware during those years (and I am certain that I am merely jogging your memory rather than informing you) how radically societal attitudes towards women were altered during that short period of time. I've since done more research, but the short version is that attitudes that were formed over thousands of years for very good and logical reasons became obsolete starting with the Industrial Revolution (and one can trace the codifying of a lot of laws in the West locking women's positions in society to technological advances which removed physical necessities for this). However, the inflation of the mid-late 60's, making two-income families more of a requirement than a luxury for the middle class, brought home that many of the attitudes in our society towards women made no sense when measured against reality.

That Girl is a wonderful example of this; as a show about a single woman during the time that the attitudes were beginning to change, it reflected some of those changes, as the series went on (I Dream of Jeannie did similar things, but the basis of the show made the changes much more uncomfortable for the comedy). Both shows ended by the time that the change had been more or less set into society; it was no coincidence.

One of the first people I worked with in the TV business was a delightful gent named Jerry Davis who, among his many other credits, produced That Girl. He used to say that two things made that show work. One was Marlo Thomas because everyone at ABC was convinced Marlo Thomas could be a star and so they pushed the series in every way possible. The other was the timing. Two years earlier, it would never have gone. But then one day, someone at a major ad agency wrote a memo that said that the thing America was yearning to see, and wasn't yet getting on their teevees, was "young women controlling their own lives." It wasn't a matter of the characters being powerful — obviously, Samantha on Bewitched (which Jerry had produced before That Girl) and Jeannie on I Dream of Jeannie were powerful…but they functioned in relation to a male. Jeannie just wanted to serve her master, Tony. Samantha just wanted to have a "normal" marriage with her mate, Darren.

The key to That Girl was that Marlo's character didn't want to just marry Donald. She didn't rule that out but there were other things that mattered to her. Every network around that time did a couple of pilots that aspired to depict women controlling their lives but, according to Jerry, the other ones all chickened out and in some way made the female an appendage of a male. She was making decisions with "him" keeping an eye on her.

I don't think the old That Girl episodes hold up all that well. There are some wonderful comedy bits and performers in them but we've evolved so far beyond that era and its view of women. You're right though that it was a great marker of its time.

Before I forget: Those of you interested in the music changes made on reruns of WKRP in Cincinnati can find out everything you want to know on this page. Thanks to John Schrank for the link.

Here's another one of those Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer studio. This one is called Volcano and it was released on July 10, 1942.

Superman/Clark Kent doesn't have many lines but the ones he has sure don't sound like Bud Collyer to me. The narrator is said to be a gentleman named George Lowther, who also wrote and directed the Superman radio show at times. He also authored a very nice book about the character in 1942 and is said to have contributed a number of key ideas to the Superman legend. And that's about all I know so you might as well go ahead and click. If you need me, you know where I'll be.

E.J. Dionne on how George W. Bush wanted this war…but apparently not enough to pay for it.

One of my favorite places on this planet is the tourist attraction in Los Angeles known as Farmers Market. My parents took me there when I was a toddler. In fact, I have a fuzzy but certain memory of being taken along to a baseball game at Gilmore Field, right next door to the Market, when the Hollywood Stars played there. This was before L.A. had a major league team, though come to think of it, there have been many years since the Dodgers moved here when that still seemed to be the case. In any event, the Stars played their last game there in '57 when I was five and I remember being to at least one of them.

Everything in that area then was Gilmore: Gilmore Bank, Gilmore Field, Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore gas station, etc. The Gilmore Bank is still there, though in another building. In the photo above, if you look at the far right, you can see the screen of the now-extinct Gilmore Drive-In where around 1959, I squirmed through a double-feature of Onionhead and Once Upon a Horse. Onionhead was the movie that convinced Andy Griffith to get into television and Once Upon a Horse was the movie that proved Rowan and Martin were not the new Martin and Lewis. Then as now, the Gilmore Company owned and operated the wonderful amalgam of merchants, grocers and eateries that is Farmers Market.

I remember the way Farmers Market looked when I was a kid. Parts of it have been torn down since then but the portions that remain don't look all that much different. Or to put it another way, those sections have probably changed less than almost any other well-travelled part of Los Angeles. I wrote a few other thoughts about it in this post last September…and I even wrote them sitting at a table at Farmers Market.

If any of my friends are as fascinated by the place as I am, they might want to check out the new Farmers Market website. It's just been remodelled and there's a very nice History section with photos aplenty. And now that I've gotten to thinking about it, I have a yearning to dine there. (It wasn't the main reason I picked out the home I now live in, which is within walking distance, but it was a contributing factor.) I think I'll post a link to an article and a link to a video and then take a hike over there for supper. See ya later.

I fixed the link in the post before last but I fixed it wrong. I think I've now fixed it right. And trust me, I wasn't trying to have to make corrections on a post about corrections.

In the previous post, I accidentally — but appropriately — linked to the wrong page. It has now been corrected.

2006 in media errors and corrections.

In the past, I've posted links to a couple of the Superman cartoons produced by the Max Fleischer Studio, and later (after Max got kicked out of his own studio) by its successor in interest, Famous Studios. Today, we go back to the first in the series, which was just called Superman when it was produced by Max's operation and released September 26, 1941. The 8,000 different companies that have since put it out on home video have occasionally referred to it as The Mad Scientist but as you'll see, that title appears nowhere on the film.

Bud Collyer did Superman's voice in this one, Joan Alexander voiced Lois, Jack Mercer was the villain and I'm not sure who did the other voices. Perry White sounds a little like Jackson Beck.

This is a stunning work of animation and it runs a little over ten minutes. I'm told that at the time it came out, it was the most expensive non-Disney cartoon short ever made. It looks it. The Fleischer artists did a good job of capturing Joe Shuster's earthy drawing style and giving weight and form and shadow to his characters. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of "Best Short Subject (Cartoon)" but that's not as impressive as it sounds. Back then, each of the major studios had the clout to get at least one of its shorts nominated so it was probably just a matter of Paramount picking it as the short they wanted to have receive a nomination. Still, they seem to have recognized its excellence…or maybe it was just its price. Either way, you get to watch it for nothing…

You have a couple of them. You can find out what one is in this list of names for things you never knew had names.

Earlier today, I listed some of the men who drew comic books in the forties (or before) who are still with us and, in most cases, still active in the industry. I hadn't intended my list to pass for complete, and adding the following still won't make it complete but here are some more, along with the year in which I believe they did their first comic book or comic strip work: Sam Glanzman (1939), Joe Giella (1945), Al Jaffee (1942), Al Feldstein (1947), John Cassone (1940), Roger Armstrong (1940), Dan Spiegle (1949), Jerry Grandenetti (1946), Sy Barry (1945), Joe Edwards (1942), Ric Estrada (1949), Frank Frazetta (1944), Al Williamson (1948), Harry Harrison (1947), Bill Lignante (1949) and Lee Ames (1940).

And of course, once you get into the early fifties, there are a lot more: Steve Ditko (1953), Jack Davis (1950), Ramona Fradon (1950), Dick Giordano (1951), Mike Esposito (1952), Angelo Torres (1954), Mort Drucker (1951) and a number of others. It's kind of amazing to realize that the first issue of MAD was published almost 55 years ago and of the four stories in that first issue, three were drawn by men who are still around.

Gordon Kent and others are writing to ask if I have any personal anecdotes about Peter Boyle, the fine actor who has died at the age of 71. I have maybe a fourth of one. I always thought Mr. Boyle was a fine actor, starting with the film in which most of us first heard of him, Joe. It was a clumsy, sometimes tasteless effort but amazingly, Boyle was quite wonderful in it and its story, which was appallingly relevant in 1970, may be even more pertinent today. Or maybe not, I don't know. I'd have to watch it again.

My one encounter with the man came at the 100th birthday party for the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences in 1996. I was talking with the Guest of Honor and with another great voice thrower, Paul Winchell, who was then a spry 74 years young. Boyle came over to say goodnight to the Señor and somehow, he and I got to talking about what guys like that meant to our childhoods. I don't remember the words but the jist of it was how wonderful it was that Wences and Winchell had lived long enough to be properly honored and to maybe, just maybe appreciate the impact of their work on others. It's a bit chilling to recall the discussion today and to realize that Boyle did not even make it to the age Paul was on that evening. You hope he realized how much his work — Peter Boyle's, I mean — had meant to so many others.

If ten minutes with him is any indication, he was a crusty but sincere man, very devoted to his work. I saw an interview with him not longer after and was struck by how serious he was about acting…serious enough to give it his all but not so serious that it skewed out of proportion to other things in the world. The obits I'm seeing now on the Internet are short and obviously prepared in a hurry…but if you come across a longer one that goes into depth about his life, and about how he gave up life in a monastery for what some would view as the extreme opposite, give it a read.

That said, the following clip does not represent the extent of Peter Boyle's acting prowess or the seriousness with which he approached his work. But it sure is funny.

Paul Krugman on "The Great Wealth Transfer." Quick summary: Yes, the economy has improved in some ways over the last few years…but George W. Bush and his crowd have made certain that it only improved for the super-rich, even at the expense of anyone below that level.

Every time I post an obit for someone like Martin Nodell, as I had to do the other day, I read messages from people lamenting how our heritage is slipping away…how the founders of the comic book industry are almost all gone. This is true and, of course, there's nothing that can be done about it, and we need to honor and interview these folks while they're still with us. This requires that we remember which ones are. This morning in an obit for his father in the L.A. Times, Marty Nodell's son Spencer says, "My dad is one of the last of the Golden Age artists. Guys like [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster, [Batman creator] Bob Kane, they've all passed. Jerry Robinson [co-creator of the Joker] and [Batman artist] Sheldon Moldoff are still with us, but otherwise they're all gone."

Well, not quite. Paul Norris, who co-created Aquaman, is still with us at the age of 92. George Tuska, who was drawing for Will Eisner's shop in 1939 would certainly fit anyone's definition of a Golden Age artist. He's still around at the age of 90. Nick Cardy, who started with Eisner at the same time, is a much younger man of 85.

Creig Flessel, who was drawing the covers of Detective Comics before Batman was in the book is alive at age 94. Jim Mooney, who drew his first comic book in 1941, is a mere 87 years of age. Joe Simon, who has a pretty impressive list of co-creations to his credit including Captain America, is 93. He started in comics in 1938. Joe Kubert, who's 80 years old, did his first comic book work in 1942.

Irwin Hasen is 88 and he started drawing comics in 1940. His occasional partner Bob Oksner is two years older and he started doing comics about the same time. So did Bob Fujitani, who's 86. Bob Lubbers (age 84) was illustrating for funnybooks in 1942. Carmine Infantino is 81 and he was drawing comics before 1941.

There are others I could add to the list…not many, sad to say, but there are others. Stan Lee wasn't an artist but he was an important figure of that era and he's not only going strong…at his current rate, he's going to outlive all of us.

Then you have a number of folks who are still with us who did their first comic book work later in the forties. Here are ten names and the years in which they first worked in comics: Russ Heath (1947), Gene Colan (1944), Dick Ayers (1947), Al Plastino (1948), Murphy Anderson (1947), Lew Sayre Schwartz (1948), John Romita (1949), Joe Sinnott (1949), John Severin (1947) and Will Elder (1947).

The point, of course, is not that we have a whole lot of these guys left…and Spencer Nodell, mourning his dad, can hardly be faulted for a bit of exaggeration at our collective loss. It's just that we need to treasure the pioneers of comics now, while we can, and not forget that they're here. It also still amazes me when someone suggests to a convention organizer that they invite some 91-year-old comic book legend as a guest and the organizer says, "Oh, my list is kinda full this year. I'll invite him next year…or maybe the year after." Let's not bury an entire generation before we have to.

And it's a special bonus because I didn't write any of it. It's another thirteen minutes of old cereal commercials for those of us who usually liked the commercials more than the cereal. (Warning: This package contains some repeats from others to which we've recently linked.) Among those in this collection, you'll find a couple of Alpha Bits spots with Jack E. Leonard voicing his mailman character, a Crispy Critters commercial with Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Linus the Lion-Hearted, Ex-pugilist Rocky Graziano as a sea captain selling Post Raisin Bran, a Sugar Bear ad with Gerry Matthews as the voice of the bear and Ruth Buzzi as Granny Goodwitch, Tony the Tiger as voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft, and a lot of commercials that suggest that if you eat Post Sugar Crisp, you can beat up anyone you want to beat up.

Somewhere in there, there's a spot with Euell Gibbons, a "naturalist" who was very famous for a brief time, mostly in jokes that appeared in Johnny Carson monologues. Mr. Gibbons used to advocate the eating of odd (to some) plants and berries that could be found in the wild and was known to take lunch by nibbling away in public parks. For some reason, some ad agency thought he'd be a dandy person to be the spokesperson for Post Grape Nuts…and he may have been, I don't know. All I know is that I thought it made the notion of eating that cereal sound like eating tree bark and I always wondered why they thought that was a good idea.

Chris Kelly on how George W. Bush ruined the movie, Stalag 17.