Marvel’s Folly of 1972

The chaotic “Marvel-ous” night Stan Lee and the Bullpen stumbled on stage at Carnegie Hall

by JON B. COOKE

Gerry Conway, who had joined the ranks of Marvel Comics after selling his first script to the publisher in 1970, was recently telling a story about his now ex-wife. “Carla was Stan’s secretary, and she had a legal background of her own, growing up with lawyers,” he said. “And Stan asked her to go through some paperwork that he inherited when he became publisher, and one of the papers was this contract. She said, ‘Y’know, Stan, there’s no performance guarantee in this contract. [The licensor] has these rights for five years, whether he does anything with them or not!’ Stan blew up! By this point, he was in charge of the company, the publisher, the guy who was supposed to make money for the company. And he was ham-strung for any possibility for selling these characters to TV for cartoons… songs… nothing! It was all controlled by this one guy.”1 The only projects to come out of the agreement was a “Rockomic” record album and “A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee,” a multi-media event held on Jan. 5,1972, at a prestigious Manhattan setting.

A live show devoted to Lee wasn’t a bad idea, Conway said. “On its face, it made kind of sense, because Stan, at that point, was becoming a pop culture figure. He wasn’t yet the Stan Lee of the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] days, but he had been written up in a number of articles and was well-known by college students.”2 In fact, only months prior, Marvel made it onto the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, proof that Lee’s company was hip and charting high in the zeitgeist of American youth. “And there was a big Marvel fan base, and the idea of some kind of live performance made perfect sense, and doing it at Carnegie Hall was a natural to feed Stan’s ego. And it would have been great if there had actually been anyone involved who had any theatrical or producer experience, and if there had been any way to actually create a cohesive whole out of a bunch of random things that got thrown together. Like a lot of Stan’s work, he needed strong collaborators, for someone to give shape to the material to the ideas that Stan had. And there was no one, as far as I am aware, who had, even remotely, a part of that.”3

Actually, the shaggy-maned 28-year-old who signed with Marvel was a seasoned producer by the time he put on the Carnegie show. In fact, he had learned on the job as concert promoter for national acts playing Madison Square Garden, including The Doors, Janis Joplin, and The Band, and as onetime stage manager of fabled rock venue Fillmore East. The dude could also boast a long association with theatre, albeit mostly of the amateur variety. His name: Stephen Howard Lemberg.

“MORE IN THEM THAN MEETS THE EYE”

The origin story of “A Marvel-ous Night…” is a little hazy, either starting in a buddy’s pad or at a bookstore. One 1971 newspaper article shared about Steve Lemberg:

A friend of his is a comic book freak. He spends some time at his friend’s apartment reading comic books. “I realized there is more in them than meets the eye,” he says. “I decided they would make really good theater.”4

An issue of Cash Box relayed a different version of the tale: “He got the idea for the whole Marvel project while browsing in a San Francisco book shop. ‘I saw these comics while I was just hanging out there and I bought a few, and then it came to me.’”5

The initial notion was for him to license Marvel characters for radio serials only. In their book, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book [2003], Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon described the negotiations between Lemberg and Charles “Chip” Goodman, who was representing Marvel while his father, publisher Martin Goodman, was out of town:

In 1971, rock promoter Steve Lemberg sat down with Chip to negotiate for the radio rights to several Marvel characters. Lemberg was only interested in radio serials, but then a strange thing happened. “I just kept asking for more rights,” Lemberg recalls. “Every time I asked for something, they gave it to me. I’d say, ‘Does anyone have the rights to do movies?’ They’d say, ‘No,’ because at the time no one really wanted to do movies. And I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a few hundred dollars… for those rights, too.’” Lemberg says he walked away with an exclusive option to license the majority of the company’s heroes — including Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four — for motion pictures, television, and radio. The total price: $2,500, plus an annual fee to renew his option.6

Top: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Go to 881 Seventh Avenue in midtown N.Y.C., between West 56th and 57th Streets! Above: Ad in The New York Times and The Village Voice, in December 1971. Our own Glenn Whitmore added colors at Ye Ed’s request..

Above: The Man himself in 2012, posing with the Carnegie Hall show poster before it was auctioned. Below: At the Carnegie Hall show, Stan and his wife and daughter recited stanzas from his epic poem, God Woke, which was eventually published with illustrations by Mariano Nicieza in a limited edition book. Published by William Shatner’s imprint, God Woke was adapted as a graphic novel in 2016, with the assist of writer Fabian Nicieza. Inset bottom right: From the “Best Bets” section of New York Magazine, Jan. 3, 1972, plugging the event. Comment on the magician’s monkey was derived from a mention in a New York Daily News article.

Lemberg utilized his company, National Copacetic, Ltd., for the licensing deal, and, in later years, he told Sean Howe, “I owned more rights to Marvel than Marvel had. The only decision that Chip ever made was to give me all the rights to his comic books. They gave me a 20-page contract with interlocking rights and options; I could do anything I wanted. I could make movies, records, anything. It was really a trip.”7

(In comparison, since Iron Man was released in 2008, the MCU films have (as of June 2022) thus far generated $26.6 billion in box office receipts, making it the highest grossing movie franchise of all time. This does not include the books, the toys, the clothing, and all of the myriad licensing revenue, as well as the original source from whence all of this intellectual property sprang, the Marvel Comics Group.)

In late 1971, Lemberg told a reporter that he had spent eight months pursuing the licensing arrangement with Marvel and its corporate owner, Perfect Film and Chemical. “He borrows on everything he owns, sells stock, accepts help from his parents. It has cost him $80,000 so far,” related an article.8

Lemberg’s plans were wildly grandiose, to say the least. One was to conquer the radio airwaves, both AM and FM, by embracing the logic of “Youngsters are geared to listening to three-minute [vinyl] records,” he told The Daily News. “That’s why I’m using five-minute serials.”9 With a target date of late February to start, he was planning a radio series starring Thor,*

*As for choosing the Kirby-Lee version of the Norse mythological god of thunder, Lemberg told Broadcasting magazine, “I chose Thor for the first series for a couple of reasons. First of all, Thor is the prettiest of all the Marvel characters. And there is a lot of love interest that runs through the comic. The language in the strip also lends itself well to dramatization. And, because it all takes place in space, that lends itself to the use of electronic music and the like for backgrounds.”13 four five-minute episodes a day, five days a week, to be broadcast on as many as 400 commercial and college stations.

For the Thor series, Lemberg projected 65 episodes to start and estimated the overall investment at more than $100,000 (costing $1,500–2,000 per episode). Plans were to follow Thor with a series starring T’Challa, the Black Panther. “Because T’Challa is Black and lives in Harlem,” Lemberg told media trade magazine Broadcasting, “that will give me a chance to use some R&B for the music.”10

Aiming for the early months of 1973, Lemberg was forecasting an investment of $2.5 million into an arena show that would tour the country, “a combination circus, light show, and rock ’n’ roll concert spotlighting comic characters,”11 described as presenting a storyline “about the end of the universe.”12

Also set for ’73, the young producer envisioned a fulllength feature film, The Silver Surfer, to star Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson (who had, at that point, a single movie role to his credit). Also in the planning stages were individual movies to feature Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the thunder god.

Additionally, Lemberg spoke of plans for a giant trade paperback, as large as The Whole Earth Catalog (11" x 14") that will “stretch [the] comic form to its limits,” which he planned to sell for less than $10. Estimated release date: Christmas 1972.14

And there also was a proposed TV special featuring French film director Alain Resnais, as well as a line of half-music, half-dramatic record albums, the first to star Spider-Man.

The cocky, self-assured Lemberg, described as “a fellow with long, curly black hair and a black, bushy moustache,” boasted to a journalist, “I figure within the next five years, my company should make — and it’s a conservative estimate —some $50 million.”15 But, to accomplish this stratospheric goal ($361 million in 2023 dollars), the confident young man needed promotional help. Apparently, devising global conquest by way of the Marvel universe was too big a job for just one person.

Enter The Metallic Mama

Ten years older than Lemberg, Barbara Gittler preferred to think of herself as the “Jewish Mother” of the Manhattan society of specialized agencies that found work for advertising professionals — Madison Avenue “mad men” headhunters, if you will. “But not only is Barbara a Jewish mother,” New York Magazine explained in 1968, “she is a Jewish mother who understands pot.”16 She also was a member of the “Metallic Mamas,” which New York described as “a group of hungry ladies who look like you could be their lunch.”17

By the time Gittler, the mother of three young kids, met Lemberg, she’d already established Barbara Gittler Associates, which then signed to handle National Copacetic’s dealings in-

The pair realized they also needed a press agent for the show and enlisted the services of Abby Hirsch, who shared about her experiences with the two in a 1974 memoir, The Great Carmen Miranda Look-alike Contest and Other Bold-Faced Lies. Hirsch described the “couple of hustlers”18 thusly:

Still in his twenties, a one-time production manager for Fillmore East, Steve combined the qualities of a friendly St. Bernard and a snake-oil salesman. His girlfriend/partner Barbara was a Jules Feiffer creation come to life, a gaunt woman with stick-straight salt-and-pepper hair. Even at the time, she was a bit long in tooth to qualify for the Pepsi generation.19

Hirsch, the onetime “publicity girl” of Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann, confessed, “When I worked on ‘A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee,’ shame dogged my every step. In between blushes, however, there were a lot of laughs.”20

The publicist’s first challenge, Lemberg explained to her, was to hype the Carnegie Hall event, which he described as “an evening of light entertainment with audience participation.” Then Gittler chimed in on the discussion:

“This is very heavy,” Barbara told me, lighting one of an unending chain of cigarettes and taking a deep drag. “Stan Lee’s creations are human beings, throbbing with life, aching with pain. Iron Man has a heart condition. Spider-Man has a junkie roommate. Ben Grimm is an outsider because of his bad skin. Thor, in his mortal state, is very vulnerable.”

“That’s just part of the story,” Steve added. “Stan Lee might be the Homer of this generation. His Silver Surfer is the new Messiah sent by a far-reaching cosmic power with the potential to solve modern man’s dilemma: yet he is rejected by those whom he would save. Stan Lee is defining our culture. He is a Maker of Myths.”21

(Meanwhile, over on the West Coast, Lee’s ex-myth-making partner, Jack Kirby, now creating legends for Marvel’s rival, had skewered “Stan the Man” in a savage caricature named “Funky Flashman,” within the pages of Mister Miracle #6. That had gone on sale November 11, less than a week after Lee posed with Lemberg examining a copy of Thor for a Newsday photographer. Lee biographer Abraham Reisman described the brutal portrayal: “Funky loves himself even more than he hates doing real work, and he tries to get [Mister Miracle] on his side by showering him with insincere, alliterative compliments, while repeatedly showing cowardice in the face of battle.”22 Reportedly, Stan was “kind of hurt” after seeing the comic book.)23

Staging The Marvel Universe

“Kirby-esque” might be a perfect description for Steve Lemberg’s vision of the one-nighter scheduled for 8:00 p.m., Wednesday night, January 5th. “The center of the Carnegie stage will be a giant Mylar throne,” Lemberg disclosed to Cash Box, a music biz trade magazine, “around which will weave the weird and wonderful works of Peter Nevard, who will create a cacophony of Asgardian effects with film, slides, and lighting. Magician Crozier has devised some never-before-seen illusions for the show, which will be the most elaborate production ever staged at Carnegie Hall. Two Marvel artists, John Bessman [sic] and Herb Trimbe [sic], who originated the Fantastic Four and the Hulk, will animate a fight sequence on the spot. Eddie Carmel, the nine-foot, eight-inch man, will improvise poetry dedicated to his Marvel heroes and in the lobby the audience will be surrounded by 128 huge panels, an exhibit created by Stan Lee to show the evolution of the comic book.”24

Lee, who hit it off on a personal level with fellow self-promoter Lemberg, had signed on as creative consultant for the many National Copacetic plans, and he likely suggested certain people to participate in the show. Among them was probably Federico Fellini, the avant-garde Italian film director, who had visited the offices of Magazine Management for an hour in late 1965. Lee had thereafter professed that Fellini was a fan of Marvel Comics and so, among a breath-taking list of celebrities tied to the show that Lemberg and Gittler rattled off to their PR person, there was the director’s name. But, when Hirsch by chance encountered the revered filmmaker at Sardi’s restaurant a day after she had sent out a press release announcing his participation, Fellini hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about when she casually mentioned the upcoming show. She soon realized, “Most of the people they had mentioned hadn’t been signed. A lot of them hadn’t been approached. And a good many of those who hadn’t yet been approached hadn’t even bothered to respond to invitations….”25

Still, there were a couple of impressive names among those who did sign up, including noted “new journalism” author Tom Wolfe and French film director Alain Resnais, both actual real-life fans of Marvel Comics, as well as funnyman Chuck McCann and actor René Auberjonois (who would later achieve a measure of fame playing the alien, Odo, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). Two other featured performers have their own fascinating backstories worth examining here.

Miracle Monger Extraordinaire

Besides Stan Lee, perhaps the one person to appear more frequently on stage in the final production was Australian Geoff Crozier, who had been twice named “Top Magician of the Year” back in his home country. After arriving in the United States in September 1971, he practiced in a tiny shed on Staten Island, a New York City borough, where he worked out some spectacular tricks for his onstage debut at Carnegie Hall.

The eccentric 24-year-old, who would go on to make a name for himself as a flamboyant performer in New York City’s rock scene, was discovered by The Daily News to be living in a 10-foot square shack with “a friendly mutt named Schroeder, an wonderful.”

Below: News item appearing in the June 1972 cover-dated Marvel comics mentioning the event.

BEACH BUMMED

What became of the ambitious Thor radio serial scheduled to follow the show is a tale lost to the ages, but the duo’s greatest success — both aesthetically and critically — lay ahead that same year, 1972, a project far more focused and rewarding called Spider-Man: From Beyond the Grave, for all practical purposes a compelling radio drama on vinyl interspersed with catchy pop songs. But the Lemberg-Gittler production released in the fall wasn’t the first notion they had about pressing vinyl records featuring the House of Ideas. In the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page written at the end of January, Stan Lee wrote in his “Soapbox” column about the “thousands of angry letters”90 received from readers who wrote “to castigate us for not printing announcements of our Carnegie Hall show right here in our mags, so you could have known about it ahead of time.”91 Lee then hyped a live LP record they were considering: “But don’t lose faith, Believer! All is not lost. Luckily, a recording was made of the whole senses-shattering spectacle, and we’re gonna try to turn it into an album, which we’ll offer for sale as soon as we can work out all the dazzling details. So, if you can bear the suspense, watch this space in the months to come — save your pennies — and tune up the ol’ turntable, ’cause the best is yet to be!”92

Alas, no audio recording of the show has emerged, and unfortunately there also was minimal photographic evidence of “A Marvel-ous Night…,” a fact Roy Thomas rightly laments. “The most idiotic thing Lemberg did was not allow the public to take photos,” he said. “But not to take much of any himself or authorize any… There’s a bit of film of a couple of the things Stan did — reading his poem with his wife and daughter, and some footage with that real-life ‘world’s tallest man,’ etc. — but I don’t think there’s even an audio recording of our band or the rest of the show... or, if there is, I don’t recall ever seeing/hearing it.”93

As for Lee, obviously disappointed with the inaugural National Copacetic/ Marvel production — and perhaps exhausted considering how much time he spent on stage — he went on a Florida vacation soon after the show. It was likely an eventful holiday, during which Lee joined Marvel publisher Martin Goodman for a seaside interview with The Palm Beach Post. In that article,94 he again griped about the cancellation of The Silver Surfer, something Lee had done during the Alain Resnais segment of the Carnegie Hall show, about how young kids didn’t seem to cotton to the character like the older readers did. Goodman chimed in to suggest young ones didn’t like surfing.95 (It’s speculated that, during this visit, Goodman informed Lee he was retiring as publisher, the catalyst for a chain of events that would ultimately lead to another great 1970s Marvel-related debacle, the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard Comics line.)

By spring, Stan Lee was promoted to become Marvel Comics president and publisher. But, in a power-play intended to blunt Lee’s rise, Goodman’s second son, Chip (described by one author as a “chubby, balding hipster in rose-colored glasses”)96 was anointed Lee’s boss, while père Goodman basked in the Florida sun in his “red golf pant surrounded by huge splashes of modern art,”97 reclining in retirement with his companions, a toy poodle and a Yorkshire terrier.

“CRAWL LIKE A SPIDER, LOVE LIKE A MAN”

The Amazing Spider-Man: From Beyond the Grave record album debuting in Oct. 1972 was a far more successful Lemberg/Gittler production than the Carnegie Hall travesty of the prior winter. With effective story, lyrics, and music created by Steve Lemberg and with Barbara Gittler serving as producer, the “Rockomic,”* intended to be first in a series of many with each devoted to a different Marvel character, was overseen by the watchful eye of Buddah Records exec Neil Bogart (only months away from forming Casablanca and signing Kiss to a record deal).

Befitting Buddah’s fame (infamy?) as the predominate bubblegum music factory, Ron Dante, lead singer of The Archies (of “Sugar, Sugar” notoriety), was the lone singer on the LP. “I did the vocals for the album all in one night at a *Billboard described Buddah’s “Rockomic” experiment as an attempt to “combine rock music with episodic narratives featuring prominent comic book heroes.”98