There are a number of obits up on all the major news sites about Lee Mendelson. They get his career mostly right but some had a little problem with the longevity of the main show I worked with him on, Garfield and Friends.

CNN says he did "over 100 episodes," which is only technically correct. Variety and People both said the show lasted from 1991 to 1994. CBR.com, which lately is vying with Donald Trump for erroneous statements, says Lee "executive produced 64 episodes of Garfield and Friends."

The Los Angeles Times didn't mention the series at all and TMZ did but didn't say how many episodes there were. With their usual flair for accuracy though, TMZ did run what they thought were two photos of Lee. One was and the other was of his partner, Bill Melendez.

The correct answer is that Garfield and Friends was on for seven years and 121 episodes, and Lee Mendelson was an Executive Producer on all of them.

But that's not the story I want to tell you here. The story I want to tell you here is about some specials that Lee did — hour-long prime-time specials that celebrated newspaper comic strips. They featured historical lessons about the form, interviews with cartoonists, musical numbers about comic strips and the last two of these specials even animated sequences of some newspaper strips that had never been animated before.

The first was called The Fabulous Funnies and it ran on NBC on 2/11/68. A description of it that I just stole off the website of Lee Mendelson Film Productions said…

Produced for NBC-TV network broadcast in cooperation with the National Cartoonists Society. The Fabulous Funnies is a one hour special on the history of the comic strip in America. It features some of the country's greatest cartoonists and their creations, from Barney Google to Dick Tracy. Hosted by Carl Reiner, the program also shows the artists at work, their characters animated, and a medley of songs from the comics performed by the Doodletown Pipers. The show is a unique combination of animation and live Action with a musical score by John Scott Trotter.

The ratings were huge and the folks at CBS, for whom Lee was producing the Charlie Brown specials, said to him, "Why didn't you offer that special to us?" Lee replied, "I did. You didn't think it would do very well and passed so I sold it to NBC. The folks at CBS said, "Well…we want the next one." It wasn't until 1980 that Lee did the next one, which was called The Fantastic Funnies and, yes, it was on CBS. According to that same website…

This 60 minute television special is a tribute to the history of the comic strip. Loni Anderson hosts with interviews of the 14 most famous cartoonists. The show features animation of all the famous comic strips along with a number of musical segments and a comedy sketch by Howard Hesseman. Music by Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen.

There were several newly-produced segments animating then-new newspaper strips that had never been animated before, including Garfield The reaction to just a few minutes of the lasagna-eating cat in that special led to a second series of award-winning animated specials for Lee.

CBS also wanted another "Funnies" special but he was busy, plus he felt — even if the network didn't — that a TV special saluting comic strips was the kind of idea that would only work about once a decade or so. He put it off and put it off and eventually decided to just wait until he could make the next one about the 100th anniversary of newspaper strips.

Exactly what year that anniversary would be is a bit arguable depending on what cartoon-in-print you believe qualifies as the first comic strip. I have seen scholars of the form almost come to blows about it. Lee decided the first was something-or-other in 1897 so in 1997, he produced The Fabulous Funnies: The First 100 Years and he asked me to write it and co-produce with him. Quoth the website…

Using comic characters as hosts, this show celebrates 100 years of comic strips in America. From "Orphan Annie" and "Blondie" to "Peanuts" and "Shoe," cartoonists share the ideas and inspiration behind the creation of their comic strips. Cartoonists include: Chic Young (Blondie); Al Capp (L'il Abner); Dale Messick (Brenda Starr); Lynn Johnston (For Better or Worse); and Cathy Guisewite (Cathy).

Do you remember that show? If you think you did, you're wrong. It never aired. CBS paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, we produced it and delivered it and they said, "Great job! We'll find a spot on the schedule for it!" and then never found one. It was during a period when the three major networks aired very few specials and the ones that did get on had to be really, really important…like Emmy Awards important. They'd discovered that if a weekly series had a loyal following and you pre-empted it one week, not all of that loyal following remained loyal enough to not be following some other show the following week.

It had not always been like that but in and around 1997, that was the way audiences were behaving. Or at least that was Conventional Wisdom at the networks at the time.

The broadcast of The Fabulous Funnies: The First 100 Years was delayed and delayed, and at one point there was some discussion of us going back and redoing some narration to change "This year is the 100th anniversary of comic strips" to "Last year was the 100th anniversary of comic strips." Lee also thought about maybe picking something in 1898 to declare as the first newspaper strip so he could keep "The First 100 Years" in the title. Finally though, they decided they were never going to air it and that's why you've never seen it. Since you probably never will, I'll tell you a few things about it…

There was no live host. One fourth of it was hosted by Charlie Brown, one fourth by Mother Goose and Grimm, one fourth by Cathy (from Cathy Guisewite's strip of the same name) and one fourth by Momma (from Mell Lazarus's strip) — all animated. June Foray, by the way, did the voice of Momma. There were also freshly-produced segments wherein some relatively new strips were animated for the first time, including Ernie by Bud Grace and Jump Start by Robb Armstrong.

There were interviews of cartoonists — some newly-recorded, others pulled from previous specials or Lee's film archives. I did some traveling for it and interviewed Charles Schulz up in Santa Rosa, Stan Lee and Mike Peters back here, Robb Armstrong in New York, and a few others. Yes, I know Stan Lee was not a cartoonist. We cribbed a musical number from the 1968 special and it was a pretty nice end product if I do say so myself. Since I'm one of the few people alive who saw it, I have to say so myself.

Still, my most positive memory of it was working more closely with Lee than I had on other projects. He had that rare, wonderful ability that you don't always find in producers. He knew how to be there when he was needed and how to leave the other folks working on the show alone when he wasn't needed and on Garfield, he'd left me pretty much alone. It was while putting this project together than I really began to appreciate how good he was at producing television shows and I learned a number of things that I wish I'd learned a decade or two earlier. I'll tell you about all that in Part 2 tomorrow.

CLICK HERE TO GET TO PART 2

Back in the eighties, DC Comics published a very fine series of comics of their character, Hawkman. It was written well by Tony Isabella and drawn the same way by Richard Howell. Both of these gents are longtime friends of mine and before you think I'm posting this because of that, stop. You already know that I know almost everyone in comics, especially from this era. Have you ever seen me ask you to sign a petition to urge the reprinting of any of my other friends' work? No.

But I'm pushing this campaign here because it was a very good body of work…much better than most of the stuff DC has reprinted from that decade. So go sign the petition pushing for its reissue. Unless you make a voluntary donation, it won't cost you anything and you might just help get a real good body of work back into print…where it should be.

Back in this post, we told you about a stage production based on the great animated Xmas special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. It was a one-time performance this year done in New York on December 16 and we showed you some moments from a one-time performance in 2014. Here's almost the same video except these scenes are from this year's. That's Gavin Lee as Magoo…

This will amuse fans of classic Tom & Jerry cartoons. An artisan in Japan has taken some of the character-distorting images from those films and turned them into sculpture. Go take a look.

I just noticed that as I was posting the obit on Lee Mendelson, ABC was rerunning two of his Charlie Brown specials. In death, he's still more successful than most live producers.

Producer Lee Mendelson, winner of a dozen Emmy Awards and four Peabody Awards, passed away yesterday at the age of 86. One of each of those trophies was for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which first aired in 1965. CBS expected it to bomb in the ratings but it turned out to be one of the highest-rated specials ever and its annual viewing became a vital tradition in households not just in America but around the world. It also led to more than forty subsequent Peanuts specials produced by Lee and his animation partner Bill Melendez as well as two movies. Lee Mendelson Productions also produced award-winning documentaries and animated shows not featuring Charlie Brown and his friends.

I worked with Lee on several of them including the Garfield and Friends cartoon show for CBS Saturday morning. He was — and I've said this before many times — the smartest, nicest and most honest producer I've encountered in the television industry. Once you knew him, you understood why cartoonists like Charles Schulz and Jim Davis were so willing to trust him with their beloved children.

Even though I knew he'd been ill in recent years, the news still comes as a jolt. I have so many memories of working with this extraordinary man, I have to decide which ones I should share here so this will not be the last post about him. And the recent airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas will not be the last that we will see of his screen credit. For one thing, that show will rerun forever.

Here's a nice rendition of Tom Lehrer's season-appropriate tune, performed by Anthony Vila. That's right. As some of you have figured out, I'm doing this for eight days and nights…

• I'm thinking that if I ever wrote something that caused more than half the people in the country to think I should lose my job…well, I might still defend it but I would stop insisting that it was "perfect."

Good morning. Hope you had a good Christmas and/or are having a good Hanukkah. In the home where I grew up, we discriminated against no holidays and celebrated them all. That was why I refused to ever join the War on Christmas, in addition to the fact that it didn't really exist. If it had though, I would have had my father pay some doctor to claim I was exempt because I had bone spurs.

The time between Christmas and the day after New Year's is always an interesting time for me. Some of the people I work with are working, others are not and nobody really expects anything to get done. In this town, there's really no Show Business between the last Friday before Christmas and the day after the Rose Parade.

I'm getting through the holidays as I always do by connecting and/or being with folks I like, meaning people who want to please folks they like. No stress. No arguing. Even the people I know who usually can't shut up about Trump shut up about Trump. If you want to resume telling others how horrible he is — and I feel some obligation to do so — refer them to this article by Richard North Patterson, which is the most devastating takedown I've ever seen of our current and maybe our final president. If you want to keep your holiday season free of the topic, bookmark the page and wait until a week from today to read it.

A pretty big rainstorm rolled through Southern California last night with a few lingering showers possible later today. When I got up this morning, I peeked out my bathroom window at the little cathouse in the backyard. Therein, looking safe and dry and eager for me to put food out for her was Lydia. I heard in my head a little snippet of Barry Manilow singing "I Made It Through the Rain." She was fine as I'd like to believe we all will be and not just until 1/2/20 rolls around and the world goes back to full power. In a way, we're all feral cats waiting out each passing storm.

Here's a nice rendition of Tom Lehrer's season-appropriate tune, performed by Klezmerica…

My old buddy Bill Cotter read my piece on sneaking into NBC many years ago and sent me this…

Carry a clipboard, act official, and the world is yours.

I thought you might get a smile out of a related tale. I spent 14 years at Warner Bros. and parked on the lot, but I often had meetings and eventually a second office in the "Glass Building" across the street from the main lot. I would walk through the main Administration Building, and return there, and the guards pretty well recognized me from all the trips so they would just look at me as I walked by.

One day a friend of mine named Lloyd Friedman from New York came out for a visit. I was sort of surprised when he walked into my office as the gate hadn't called to tell me he was there. As we walked out through Admin later for lunch, the guard called out "Have a nice lunch, Mr. Friedman." That stunned me a bit and I walked over to the guard and said "I have been walking in and out past you for years and never once have you called me by name. Lloyd is here for exactly 30 minutes and you call him by name. What's up?"

The guard replied, "Why, that's Mr. Friedman from New York." By now, I was more than a bit confused, as he not only knew Lloyd's name but where he came from.

Well, Lloyd and I figured out what was going on over lunch. When he first arrived he had said "I'm Lloyd Friedman from New York to see Bill Cotter." At that time, Warner Bros. was owned by Warner Communication in NY, and the guard had added 1 + 1 and arrived at 3, assuming Lloyd was some sort of executive out from the parent company, so out came the red carpet treatment.

Yeah, crack security for sure. Somehow I doubt that would work today, but perhaps if Lloyd came back today with a clipboard…

There are a lot of stories about folks sneaking into TV studios and onto movie lots years ago. It was a lot easier than everyone thought. And for every one of those stories, there were three about guards at the gate not recognizing Jimmy Stewart or Barbra Streisand. When we were doing Pink Lady, there was no drive-on pass for Sid Caesar one day and the guard — who was far from a young kid — didn't recognize him. Sid just backed his car out of the driveway and went home. Someone from the security staff had to phone him there, apologize and promise he could drive right in thereafter before he'd agree to come back for rehearsals.

I don't think a clipboard would work today. In the last ten years or so, whenever I've been to a studio, I have to show I.D. and even if there's a pass waiting in my name, they call someone and triple-check, plus I sometimes I have to let them inspect my trunk on the way in and/or out. I think I used this line before but they almost put you through the same procedure Goldfinger had to use to break into Fort Knox. Some say they've gone too far, security-wise. Then again, we don't know about some of the attempts that have been made. Maybe there's a good reason.

One of those videos I post each year just before Christmas and maybe my favorite…

• How do I go about regifting some sort of weird bird in…I think it's a pear tree?

The one and only Dick Van Dyke is making another of his rare live performances. He's playing the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood on Sunday, January 5. Tickets went on sale last night and they'll probably be gone by tonight. Click here to see if they have any left.

I've posted this before. As my Christmas gift to myself, I'm posting it again…

The kid in the above photo is me and I don't care that you don't believe it. It's me. I'm not sure where it was taken — some department store, probably May Company — or how old I was. Seven? Eight? Beats me. But it's me. And is it my imagination or does Santa look like he's telling me not to tell my parents about something he said or did?

I don't have a lot of great Christmas memories left to share here. In all my years of blogging and telling tales of my past, I may have exhausted my supply. There weren't that many to begin with.

I do not remember ever seriously believing in Santa or of Christmas being that big a deal around our house. It was a time of love and joy and gifts but with my family, it was always a time of love and joy and gifts. The main features unique to Christmas time were a tree in the living room, a lot of TV specials I had to watch and a certain synchronization of presents.

Our family consisted of me, my mother, my father, my Uncle Nathan, my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Aaron. Nathan and Dot were my father's brother and sister. Aaron was Dot's husband. Nathan never married. One year, my mother's parents came out from Hartford and stayed with us for the holiday season. Then after Grandpa passed away, it was just Grandma one year. After Aaron died, we'd invite Aunt Dot's best friend Sally to join us for Christmas Dinner if she didn't travel out of town to be with other members of her family.

Since Sally was going to bring me a present, I felt I should get her one…and I never knew what to get for her. All she seemed to want was that I address her as "Aunt Sally" and you couldn't wrap that and put it beneath the tree. I think I usually gave her candy but the real gift was that I'd make the card out to "Aunt Sally." The rest of us were real good at taking the gift-selecting burden off each other by hinting with a minimum of subtlety as to what we wanted.

So we usually had six or less people at the table…and then as people died, it went down to five and then four…and at some point, it seemed a bit depressing to have much of a celebration at Christmas. It just reminded those of us who were left of those of us who were not.

At any given assemblage around the table, at least one person was Jewish and one was Catholic — and then you had me who had never been Bar Mitzvahed but identified as more-or-less Jewish but really had a foot in both camps. Early in my childhood, there had been a bit of polite, respectful debate about the co-existence of the two faiths in one family and then there had been that ghastly mistake of enrolling me in a Sunday Hebrew school. But the religious situation was never that serious nor was it divisive. There didn't seem to be any point to it.

One reason I find the whole current "War on Christmas" thing so phony is that each year I intermingled with people of different religions and there was never an issue. Not for one second did anyone attach any significance to wishing someone "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Hanukkah" instead of some other preferred form.

Not just in our house but throughout the neighborhood and at school, one good wish was as innocent and friendly as another. No hidden meanings or schemes to demean any faith were inferred or assumed. "Happy Holidays" meant "I hope your holidays (whatever they may be) are happy for you." It's amazing that some people have become convinced that that innocent little pleasantry could ever mean something menacing.

I've always felt that way about religious preference or even bigotry. Just let everyone be whatever they want to be and respect it. I feel the same way about racial prejudice or about prejudice over sexual orientation. If you just respect that others are what they are, it works out fine. It only becomes a war if you somehow feel threatened and choose to start one.

Getting back to the photo up top: I've been staring at it, trying to figure out what was on my mind when it was taken. This is a guess but I think it's a good one.

I never really believed in Santa…or if I did, I didn't believe the guy in the red suit at the May Company was the real Santa because — you know — he'd be too busy just before Christmas to sit around a department store all day. Besides, I was well aware there was a Santa down the street at Bullock's Department Store and another one over in Beverly Hills at Robinson's and what about that Santa outside on Wilshire Boulevard near Rodeo Drive who was out there all day ringing a bell for some charity and posing for photos?

So if I did ever believe there was a real Santa Claus — and I don't recall that I did — I'd figured out that I couldn't meet him or sit on his lap. The guy at May Company was some outta-work actor or someone they'd hire to impersonate The Man Himself to draw customers into their store. At that age, thinking like that is not cynicism. It's figuring out the world around you and all the fibs — some of them, no doubt well meant — that you need to overcome if you're ever going to grow up.

By the time this photo was taken, I knew there was no Santa. So I'm thinking I was pressured by some relative with the camera to get in the line to sit on the impostor's lap…and what was on my mind was probably something like this: "What am I supposed to do here? Pretend this guy is the real Santa, meaning that I go along with a fraud? Tell him my list of stuff I want this year? Or maybe I should rip that fake beard off him and expose him as the fake he is?"

I'm pretty sure I didn't do that last thing. I probably went along with the hoax just to get it over with.

Or knowing me, I may have climbed up on his knee and whispered to him, "I'll make a deal with you, fella. If you'll pull some strings to get me that Sneaky Pete Magic Set I want, I won't blow the whistle and tell all the kids in line that you're just an office temp in a fake beard!"

And history does show that one year, I did get my own Sneaky Pete Magic Set. So maybe this is the year that I learned that while racial or religious prejudice doesn't work, blackmail sometimes does. Have a Merry Whatever.