Wide Walt

A whole lotta folks online are discussing the new animatronic Walt Disney and saying it doesn't look enough like him. As I said, I think he looks a little like Mike Lindell.

This is not a huge deal but I'm curious about one aspect of this. Obviously, the Disney folks could have called in any of thousands of sculptors in this world who could have produced a dead-on accurate likeness of their company's founder…and maybe at some point they did.  What strikes me as wrong about the final version of Walt is that his face is too wide. Here — I altered an image to explain what I mean. The image at left is how he/it looks. The image on the right narrows his/its face down a bit…

To me, the one on the right looks a little more like the Walt Disney I recall…the guy hosting the TV show in the early sixties.  And what I'm curious about is whether the animatronic's face is as wide as it is because they had to stuff it so full of whatever kind of gizmos they need to squint his eyes, blink 'em, make his lips move, etc.  What that face does in the video released so far is amazing.  I don't know the tech terms for what's inside there that makes all that happen…but I'll bet there's a lot of it.

Did Walt get a bit of a swelled head for that reason?  I still think the folks who built this thing did an incredible job.  I'm just curious if at some point they decided to sacrifice likeness for lifelike facial movements.  If anyone sees any articles that address this, lemme know.

Today's Video Link

In 1962, an outta-work TV producer-writer named Allan Sherman recorded an album of song parodies for Warner Brothers Records and quickly went from being broke to being very rich and famous. Very few records have had the immediate success of My Son, The Folk Singer and very few of them were comedy records. Sadly, Mr. Sherman's success did not last. He had a number of failures and a self-destructive streak. He was almost forgotten by 1970 and dead by '73.

I was a tremendous fan of his work even though when I was in high school, he sorta/kinda threatened to sue me — a story I've told several times on this site, here for instance. I still like listening to his recordings even though a lot of the comedy in them is quite dated.

Here he is on some TV show, singing one of the bigger hits from that first record, "Sarah Jackman." The lady in the duet is Christine Nelson, who was on the record with him. Most of the lyrics were rewritten for this TV appearance on the assumption, I assume, that everyone had heard the original record too many times by then…

Jeremy Railton, R.I.P.

On almost every show I worked on for Sid and Marty Krofft, the main guy in charge of design — of sets or costumes or both — was a lovely and talented gent named Jeremy Railton. No matter how little money there was in the budget or how little time there was on the schedule, Jeremy would cobble up something that looked like he had unlimited time and money. That was because he had unlimited talent.

He was an Emmy winner who worked with just about everyone including Michael Jackson and Fleetwood Mac. He designed a lot of Pee-Wee's Playhouse and you had to be damned good and imaginative to come near that franchise. Online sources say he was 80 but they don't say what he died of.

I hadn't seen Jeremy in many years but I have only good thoughts about him. He was really good at what he did. InPark magazine has a lot more about him.

Recommended Reading

Amanda Marcotte on why, after all the Trump crimes and moral transgressions his base has excused or denied, they're in high dudgeon about this Epstein thing.

I also think this conspiracy theory is different from many of the others because this one has an actual dead body attached. Of all the ones these same people believed about Hillary Clinton, the ones that had the widest fan base were the ones that led to the mysterious death of White House Counsel Vince Foster.

Someone killed Jeffrey Epstein and the circumstances — and the fact that a video that was released was apparently edited — makes it quite easy to believe that Someone was not Jeffrey Epstein…especially when Trump's White House seems to be saying there was no evidence against him. And of course, Trump is looking more and more panicked with his denials, practically ordering them to forget about the whole thing.

I have no idea where there is going and you don't either. But it does seem to be a possible answer to the question that all those Internet "reporters" trying to make like Jordan Klepper keep asking people in MAGA hats: "Is there anything Donald Trump could do that would cause you to break with him?"

Today's Video Link

We've been talking here about short comedies made by Columbia Pictures in the thirties through the fifties. Here's a Three Stooges short from 1944, Crash Goes the Hash. This one features two of the Most Valuable Supporting Players in the Columbia stock company…Vernon Dent (playing Fuller Bull) and Bud Jamison (as Lord Flint). In fact, it was Jamison's last of many, many appearances in the Stooges' films.

This was the Stooges' 77th film for Columbia. Stooge experts — there are such people — cite this short as one of the first in which you can see Curly Howard's declining health. Two years later while filming Half-Wits Holiday, he had the stroke that ended his performing career. He's still pretty funny in this one even if he was slowing down a little…

Sudden Realization

I've been staring at the animatronic version of Walt Disney, thinking that he looks familiar but not because he looks like Walt. And it finally hit me who he reminds me of. He looks like Mike Lindell.

Disney Doppelgänger

We're now getting a First Look at a new Disneyland attraction — "Walt Disney – A Magical Life." I'm sure the museum parts of the exhibit are wonderful but all anyone's going to talk about is the audio-animatronic figure of Mr. Disney. It took the tech guys a long time to build this and it probably would have been a lot cheaper to find a few good actors who looked enough like Walt that a make-up team could make them look more like him. But the technology is the star here.

It's an amazing creature they made but based on what's been released so far, I'm surprised it doesn't look or even sound more like Walt. That's supposedly Walt's own voice but it doesn't sound that much like him to me.

What a creation like this makes me think about is all the TV shows, movies and comic books I've experienced in which someone turned out to be a robot and no one knew that until the robot busted or caught fire or something. If the Disney experts spending years and oodles of Disney dough couldn't make a robot that could pass for human even for a few seconds, maybe we're a lot farther from that day than anybody thought. And they weren't even trying to build one that could walk around and interact with humans.

FACT CHECK: The Blowhard Blows Hard

Folks in the political media are still arguing over how many Americans will lose their health insurance over the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill which is looking too big and not beautiful enough. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett recently made some assertions which are debunked by Politifact and FactCheck.org.

Donald Trump has always had this inexplicable revulsion against windmills and wind farms. Recently, he said: "I have a great relationship with President Xi but I asked him, how many wind farms do you have? He makes (wind energy components), but they don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you, very, very few. And wind is tremendously expensive and is very ugly." I have no idea how wind could be "ugly" but as Politifact notes, China accounts for more than 44% of the world's wind energy capacity.

And as the Associated Press notes, almost everything Trump says about wind power is just plain wrong.

The folks cheering what ICE is doing seem to be under the impression that everyone (or almost everyone) getting detained, deported or just scared outta their minds is a vicious criminal and we're all better off without them in our midst. But as the Associated Press notes, ICE is going after a lot of people who can in no way be described as criminals.

And Steve Benen thinks that Trump's threats to revoke the citizenship of Rosie O'Donnell and others should be taken more seriously; not that he'd necessarily do that but that he really seems to think he can do anything.

The Latest Boop News

Boop! The Musical played its final performance yesterday afternoon. You can see a cellphone video of the final bows over on this site.

At least, this is the final performance of its debut stand on Broadway. Rumors abound that there's an afterlife ahead and one person involved with the production wrote me to say they're waiting to hear…but this person, who asked not to be quoted directly, said they aren't sure just what they're waiting to hear.

If not for my still-healing left foot, I'd have grabbed Amber, jumped on a plane and gone back to see it. At least a dozen friends of mine went and all but one said it was one of those great "feel good" experiences. The one who was disappointed was only a little disappointed, mainly by the book. If you hear any news before I do, lemme know. (The foot is well enough to go to Comic-Con, not quite up to all the walking necessary for a New York experience.)

Today's Video Link

I'm kinda fascinated by the output of the division of Columbia Pictures that made short two-reel comedies from 1933 to 1959. They starred a wide array of comedians, some of whom were on their way up and some who were on their way down. In the latter category were folks like Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon and Charley Chase — comics who'd made films for bigger studios on bigger budgets for bigger paychecks. Their marketability had changed, in some cases because movies had learned to talk. The dominant act there was, of course, the Three Stooges who made shorts for Columbia from 1934 until the division closed down

Columbia's shorts department could make short comedies cheaper than anyone else and often, a film would be a "remake" of an earlier Columbia short. I put "remake" in quotes because they didn't reshoot the entire film — just enough footage to integrate into the old one so they could pass it off as new. Yesterday's video link here was the 1946 short Mr. Noisy, starring Shemp Howard. It was a "remake" of the 1939 short, The Heckler, starring Charley Chase. Here it is with, as you can see, an awful lot of the same footage. It was pretty much the same film with a different lead comic…

Today's Political Thought

Do you get the feeling Donald Trump is about to start deporting anyone who mentions Jeffrey Epstein?

ASK me: The H-B Shmoo

John R. Troy has the following question…

You've covered Li'l Abner, Al Capp, and a lot of Hanna-Barbera stuff over the years on your blog, but I've never seen this mentioned.

As a kid, I remember a short lived series featuring The Shmoo from the Li'l Abner comic strip, called The New Shmoo, and after that he also appeared on a show where Fred and Barney were cops and had him as an assistant. They sort of reinvented him as a shape-shifting blob and had Frank Welker do the voice.

I was wondering, do you know anything about how Hanna-Barbera got the rights to this character? It seems a bit strange that they got the rights to just that character and not the Li'l Abner strip, though I also know Shmoo merchandising was a big thing in the 1950s, so I could see a separate licensing deal.

And why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I don't believe the character was ever shown in animation before.

You've come to the right place, John. I can answer everything except that last part. I was working at Hanna-Barbera at the time and though I only had one teensy-weeny thing to do with that program, I heard a lot about it. I can answer all your questions except one in two words. Those words are "Fred" and "Silverman."

Mr. Silverman was then the Programming Chief at NBC and because of his background programming Saturday morns elsewhere, he took a special interest in that daypart at NBC. One of his aides told me Fred would have been a happier man if all he had to worry about each day was his network's Saturday morning schedule.

He was, among his other contributions to that job description, the person behind the belief that the network should not trust the cartoon studio too much creatively.  The argument for this was as follows:  If Hanna-Barbera was producing shows for your network and also for another network — and they were always producing shows for another network — they might assign their best people to the other network's programs. Based on my observations, that was not an unreasonable concern. So you had to have someone who worked for your network supervise everything, approve scripts and storyboards and voices, etc. In other words, become the real Producer of the show no matter who was credited in that position.

Joe Barbera and others at H-B complained mightily about the networks tampering with their shows…and they were right to complain because sometimes, the network person in charge was a real boob. If the studio had only been concerned with selling shows to one network, that might not have happened. But only selling to one network was not going to happen because the firm that owned Hanna-Barbera — it was no longer Bill and Joe — loved the idea of selling as many shows as possible, preferably squeezing all the competition outta the way and outta the business.

When Bill 'n' Joe sold out, they stayed on to run the company that bore their names.  The folks who took control loved it when at any given time slot on Saturday morning, there was a Hanna-Barbera show on CBS, a Hanna-Barbera show on NBC and a Hanna-Barbera show on ABC. Thus Joe Barbera's marching orders were pretty simple: Sell as many shows as you can.

So one day, Joe was over at NBC trying to sell them as many shows as he could…and Joe was a terrific salesperson. You might not like everything he sold. Joe certainly didn't like everything he sold. But he was there trying to sell, sell, sell — and Silverman had an idea. He remembered how popular The Shmoo was in the old Li'l Abner newspaper strip. People loved those little creatures and there was a brief merchandising boom for them. Fred suggested building a show around The Shmoo.

Reportedly, Joe said — this is what he later said he said — "You want to do Li'l Abner?" and Silverman (also reportedly) said, "No, kids today won't care about those hillbillies. Just get The Shmoo. If you do, I'll buy it." Following through on that was Joe Barbera's job.

So he went back to the office and told one of his business guys to buy the rights to make a cartoon show about The Shmoo. The business guy said, "Do you have any idea who I contact?" and J.B. thought for a second and he called in his secretary and said, "Call Mark Evanier and see if he knows who the hell owns The Shmoo." She called me in my office down the hall and I gave her the phone number of Al Capp's brother.

I had a telephone friendship with Capp's brother because of a couple of projects with which I was almost involved, most of them potential revivals which never happened of the Li'l Abner Broadway show. But as I'm writing this now, I'm not sure if the brother spelled his first name Elliot or Elliott, or if his last name was spelled Kaplan or Caplin. I've seen every possible permutation. But I did know his number and that he handled business dealing for the Capp Estate. I also knew that if he didn't control the rights to The Shmoo, he'd know who did.

And the next thing I knew, H-B was developing a cartoon show of The Shmoo.  They turned it into one of their many knock-offs of Scooby Doo but I neither worked on nor ever watched the series.  Supplying that one phone number is all I had to do with it. But hey, since I never saw it and you probably never saw it, let's watch the opening title together…

Okay. That was…well, interesting. I don't have any desire to watch an episode but if by some chance you do, someone has uploaded all of them to this page on the Internet Archive. My main reaction to the opening is to wonder howcome a character who can shape-shift into any form doesn't think to maybe grow himself a pair of arms?

As for how it wound up being connected with The Flintstones: Fred Silverman was a firm believer in the concept of programming "blocks." This is the theory that if you're putting on a half-hour Scooby-Doo show and a half-hour Dynomutt show, both will do better if you splice them into The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour…and it doesn't really matter if the two shows have anything in common or connect in any way.

He did this kind of thing often and because Fred was considered an expert at programming Saturday morning, others followed his lead. One problem with it for those of us who care about credits is that when they put two shows together in an hour like that, they merge the end credits and if/when the shows are later separated, the credits usually aren't.

(Which reminds me: If you watch the credits on The New Shmoo — I'll admit I peeked at them — you'll see the names of three great comic book artists — Mike Sekowsky, Dave Stevens and Jack Kirby. The way H-B did credits, all that means is that at the time the credits were made up, there was some paperwork somewhere that said those two gents had done some drawings that were intended for this show. I suspect Sekowsky did a fair amount, Stevens did a little and Kirby did almost nothing. At the time, Jack was under contract to the Ruby-Spears animation studio, which was literally across the street and owned by the same corporation that owned H-B. During times when Ruby-Spears didn't sell much to the networks — because, for example, Joe Barbera had done his job extra-well that season — Kirby's contract allowed Ruby-Spears to loan his services to Hanna-Barbera so he had stuff to draw to earn his salary. That's why Jack's credit was on a number of Hanna-Barbera shows, even some he only worked on for a day or two.)

Okay, this next part gets tricky…

In February of 1979, a new version of The Flintstones debuted on NBC's Saturday morning schedule and it was called The New Fred and Barney Show. Around the same time is when Mr. Silverman ordered Mr. Barbera to get the rights to the Shmoo and they also worked out a deal for a new cartoon show of The Thing, using the character from Marvel's Fantastic Four property but in a whole different concept. He became a teenager who turned into The Thing and there's a whole messy and convoluted story that I don't fully understand about how that deal was brokered. At the time, Silverman had canceled the Fantastic Four cartoon series that DePatie-Freleng — a rival cartoon studio which Marvel was in the process of acquiring — had produced for NBC.

Please don't ASK me to explain that. All you need to know here is that H-B was producing more episodes of The Fred and Barney Show to run as part of NBC's Fall 1979 schedule. They were also producing the new shows of the teen version of The Thing and what would be called The New Shmoo. At some some point, Silverman decided to marry two of those three shows together and they debuted in September as an hour series called Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.

The storylines of the two shows did not crossover. The characters only "met" in some short interstitial animated segments which had Fred and Barney dancing with The Thing. These were designed by my buddy Scott Shaw! who had the unenviable assignment of deciding how tall The Thing would be in relation to those guys from Bedrock and vice-versa.

The New Shmoo debuted as a standalone half-hour but after a few weeks, Fred decided it might do better as part of one of his "blocks." So there was soon a 90-minute show called Fred and Barney Meet The Shmoo. It featured a half-hour of Fred 'n' Barney, a half-hour of The Shmoo and a half-hour of The Thing, even though The Thing didn't get mentioned in the show's title. To make the 90-minute show even more disjointed, at one point they interpolated a special H-B had produced — The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White — cut into four segments aired over four weeks. Here's a promotional drawing of Fred and The Shmoo…and have you ever seen two cartoon characters who looked less like they belonged in the same drawing?

In his series, The Shmoo was much shorter than the teenage kids with whom he solved mysteries. In the promotional drawings, he was the same height as Fred Flintstone. This is the kind of thing that would have really bothered me if I'd been ten years old and watching all this. And even when I was ten, I don't think I'd have been watching all this. Or any of this.

So I think that answers all of John's questions except for "Why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I dunno. Because it rhymed? Because Silverman thought it made the show sound more exciting? Because the people doing this thought they were reinventing Al Capp's character? A lot of TV shows have names that don't make sense. Jimmy Kimmel Live! is not live, The Daily Show is not daily and there were no laughs on any program ever called The So-and-So Comedy Hour. It's a strange business, it is.

ASK me

me at Comic-Con!

And finally, here's my schedule for Sunday — two weeks from today! — at Comic-Con International in San Diego. If for some bizarre reason, you might want to attend a panel that doesn't involve me, the entire Sunday schedule you can be found here. And I should mention that what's left of the National Weather Service is predicting 75° and Sunny for the entirety of Comic-Con…

• SUNDAY •

Sunday, July 27 – 10 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL

It's a Comic-Con tradition to honor the man they call The King of the Comics, creator or co-creator of a staggering number of comic book characters, universes, and trends. If you don't know who he was and what he did, just look around the exhibit hall and you'll see his influence everywhere. Talking about Jack this year are Paul Levitz (former president of DC Comics), "Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity" curator Patrick A. Reed, attorney Paul S. Levine, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, and Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby from the Kirby family. Your host, as always, is former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 27 – 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II

Yesterday's Cartoon Voices panel was such a hit that we're doing another one with more people who speak for some of your favorite cartoon characters. On the dais for this one are Michael Scott Action (The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse), Vincent Martella (Phineas and Ferb), Abby Trott (Demon Slayer), Gabe Kunda (Barbie: A Touch of Magic), Maurice LaMarche (Futurama), and at least one surprise guest. Your moderator is, of course, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 27 – 2 PM to 3 PM in Room 7AB
COVER STORY

Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover, but no book was ever harmed by having a great cover. So, what makes a great cover? Does the idea precede the interiors, or is it the other way around? And why have covers become more varied and artistic in the modern age of comics? These and other related topics will be discussed by a group of artists who've drawn some acclaimed covers in the last few years, including Jim Lee, Rick Hoberg, Michael Cho, and Dan Jurgens. And it's all moderated by Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 27 – 3 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES

Are you considering (or maybe even actively pursuing) a career providing voices for animated cartoons, video games, and other related fields? You can find many people who will teach you — for a price. But how do you know who’s any good? And how does the business work? And what are the odds against you? In the interest of preventing wanna-be voice actors from being exploited, overcharged, or otherwise ripped off, this annual panel answers these and any other questions you may have for free. No one is going to try to sell you anything at this panel, which features voice actors Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore, as well as agent Julie Thompson of the prestigious agency, Sutton, Barth, and Vennari. The panel is moderated by Comic-Con mainstay (and professional voice director) Mark Evanier.

Today's Video Link

Did you ever wonder what a Three Stooges short would be like without Moe or Larry? Probably not but if by some chance you did, here's a possible answer. This is the 1946 comedy short, Mr. Noisy. Its star, Shemp Howard, was making comedy shorts for the same studio — Columbia — with a lot of the same people who worked on Stooges comedies. Shemp, as you may know, was an original member of the Stooges troupe back when they worked with Ted Healy. Shemp quit the act and was replaced by Curly…and I'm assuming everyone knows that Moe, Shemp and Curly were all brothers? Right.

In 1946, ill health forced Curly to quit the act so Shemp rejoined it. He made three more solo shorts after Mr. Noisy and was thereafter a Stooge until his death in 1955. As I've said before here, I think he was underrated. If the Stooges films with him weren't as good as the ones with Curly, that wasn't Shemp's fault. He's the best thing in them and he's pretty funny in Mr. Noisy…

Counter Intelligence

I had something set up to tell me when we passed the 33,000 mark in the number of posts on this blog but it didn't work. In case anyone's interested, as of this post, we have 33,310 posts on this blog, of which 266 are "encore" reruns.

This blog started on December 18, 2000 so on December 18 of this year, we will celebrate — if that's the correct word — twenty-five years of doing this.