Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America

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“I want you to believe . . . to believe in things that you cannot.”

— Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

“It’s a perfect night for mystery and horror.

The air itself is filled with monsters!”

— Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

“Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?”

— Bobby Pickett and Lenny Capizzi, Monster Mash (1962)

The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze Lisa Loring 83 Ken Weatherwax 86 “Addams” memorabilia 88 Al Lewis 92 Butch Patrick 95 Pat Priest 98 “Munster” memorabilia 102 TV ’toons 106

THE GENESIS Foreword 4 Introduction 6 Harbingers 10 “Shock!” 12 John Zacherle 16 Vampira: TV pioneer 20 Horror hosts 21 Famous Monsters #1 22 James Warren 24 Forrest J Ackerman 26

MOBILE MONSTERS MOVIE MONSTERS 8mm and Super 8 films 47 Veteran horror stars 50 Boris Karloff remembered 52

Jitters ’n’ jalopies 108 Ed “Big Daddy” Roth 110 George Barris 114 Tom Daniel 117 Weird-Ohs 118 The stigma is kaput 121

MONSTERABILIA

MAINSTREAM INVASION Monsters meet rock ’n’ roll 28 Bobby (Boris) Pickett 32 Aurora monster models 34 James Bama 38 Controversial kit 42 “Naked” monsters 44 Chaney Sr. and Jr. characters 46

Mars Attacks 58 Ugly Stickers 62 Trading cards 64 Monster Old Maid 66 Monster iron-ons 68 Monster masks 70

TERRORVISION TV anthologies 74 Spooky sitcom broods 76 John Astin 78 Felix Sila 82 Addams vs. “Addams” 82

Inset images, from left: “Phantom of the Opera” and “Dracula” © Universal Studios; Freddy Flypogger © Monogram Models

MONSTERS IN PRINT Warren renaissance 122 Russ Jones 124 Angelo Torres 127

in America 1957-1972 Creepy, Eerie, Vampi gallery 128 Frank Frazetta collage 130 Basil Gogos 132 Greg Bazaz 134 Famous Films 136 Castle of Frankenstein 138 Monster magazines 139 Monster comic books 140 Marvel Comics monsters 142 Funny monsters 144

BARNABAS AND FIENDS “Dark Shadows” 146 Jonathan Frid 148 Kathryn Leigh Scott 149 Lara Parker 150 David Selby 151 “Dark Shadows” ensemble 152 “Dark Shadows” memorabilia 156 “Dark Shadows” novels 158 “Dark Shadows” comic books 159 Ken Bald 160

Written and designed by: Mark Voger Publisher: John Morrow Proofreader: Scott Peters Front cover: Shock Monster art by Keith Ward (redrafted and colored by Mark Voger); Barnabas Collins © Dan Curtis Productions; “Phantom of the Opera” and “Creature From the Black Lagoon” © Universal Studios; Herman Munster © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; Famous Monsters of Filmland © Warren Publishing; “Ugly Stickers” art by Norman Saunders © the Topps Company Back cover: Vampirella art by Frank Frazetta © Warren Publishing; “Frankenstein” and “Creature From the Black Lagoon” © Universal Studios; “The Munsters” © KayroVue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; Uncle Fester © Filmways TV Productions; “Planet of the Apes” © 20th Century Fox

THE FINAL CURTAIN

For my big brother Bud

“Planet of the Apes” 162 Eerie Publications 164 That old gang of ours 168 Monster Memory Lane 170 R.I.P. 1972 182 Epilogue 184 Acknowledgments 190 Bibliography 190 Notes 190 Index 191

(1939-2013), who bought me vampire fangs and told me all about Roland “Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972” © 2015 Mark Voger ISBN 978-1-60549-064-9 First printing, June 2015 Printed in the USA All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from Mark Voger, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Inquiries should be addressed to Mark Voger c/o: TwoMorrows Publishing.

Photos credited to Kathy Voglesong © the estate of Kathy Voglesong.

Published by: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com

Inset images, from left: Barnabas Collins © Dan Curtis Productions; Basil Gogos art © Warren Publishing; Reed Crandall art © Warren Publishing; Norman Saunders art © the Topps Company

Foreword by John Zacherle When I look back on it, it’s kind of crazy.

My career as a host of monster movies, both terrific and terrible, happened by accident, you could say.

For one thing, I had never even seen the movies. I wasn’t allowed to see them as a lad in the 1930s, when they were made — the old black-and-white horror films like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”

All those great old monster movies from Universal — “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “The Wolf Man,” “The Mummy” — had never been on television. The TV people were afraid folks would object to their children watching them. Ha, ha!

So when Universal decided to release these old movies to television in 1957, they didn’t go after the big networks. They went after individual stations, which showed them on the air for one or two years.

That’s where I came in.

I started in Philadelphia at WCAU, on a live daily Western soap opera called “Action in the Afternoon.” I went from holding horses off-camera to playing roles in these cowboy stories. One time, I played an undertaker — kind of a creepy character.

That’s how I ended up doing the horror show. They remembered me playing the undertaker that one time. So they called me and said, “Hey, we’ve got these Opposite: John movies. Ya wanna do that?” I said, “Sure!”

Zacherle as We did it live. There was no such thing Roland in 1957. as tape – yet. We would show a segment of the movie, and then stop for commerRight: “Zach” cials, the same as today, except we didn’t recreating the have as many commercials as they do now. pose in 1993.

I’d do a little crazy experiment, which we Photo by Kathy would stretch out through all the intermisVoglesong sions. There were at least eight intermissions, and we had to have an opening and a closing. So any experiment I did had to last all night. I had to make sure I didn’t get too far ahead, or I’d be out of things to do and say toward the end. Ha, ha! So it was kind of exciting.

Well, it was a big, big, big hit. We topped the charts in Philadelphia, so to speak, when they decided to have me appear at an open house one Saturday afternoon, to see how many people were really watching the show. They knew they had good ratings, but they wanted to have something physical. The station claimed that 12,000 people showed up; the cops said 8,000. I have no idea if either of them were correct, but it was one huge mob. That got a lot of people’s attention.

I was fortunate enough to make a record, too.

The company was Cameo Parkway Records. The president used to sit and watch the show with his daughter. One night, I was reciting a limerick that somebody had sent in. He got the idea that if I recited four or five of those things, he could put some “funky music” behind it, as he said. He did it. It became a big hit. It was called “Dinner With Drac.”

So that publicity and the big mob scenes and the ratings and all that — suddenly, I found myself in New York City. I was here long enough to enjoy the same situation of live television.

It was an amazing time. It was a great experience, it really was. I never dreamed I’d be doing this. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

John Zacherle, Jan. 9, 2014, New York City

Introduction I believed in monsters as a kid.

The evidence was everywhere.

said? These are vampire bats! Any one of these bats could suddenly take human form, smile to reveal long, sharp fangs, and go for our throats! One of them could be Count Dracula himself!”

We filed out of the bat area, and proceeded to the snow owl.

When I was 8, I could cartoon a little, and my mom enrolled me in a summer art course in Haddonfield, New Jersey. The year ATTENDING CATHOLIC SCHOOL ONLY ADDED TO was 1966. My very first day in class was a field trip to the my confusion. If you’re a fan of old vampire movies, I don’t have Philadelphia Zoo. And since it was my first day, I didn’t know a to tell you that they frequently feature Catholic rituals, iconograsoul — not a student, not a teacher, no one. I don’t think I uttered phy and characters. There’s always a funeral procession for some a word that day. I was just this little stranger, on a trip away from blood-drained victim, led by a priest in a high hat, as black-veiled home by myself for the first time, crossing the Ben Franklin women blubber and an ominous church bell clangs.

Bridge in a bus full of unfamiliar faces.

This is especially true of Mexican vampire movies — the We toured the zoo and saw almost every kind of animal. cheezy, black-and-white ones dubbed into English by K. Gordon Unfortunately, the monkeys were “mating” (as a zoo lady Murray of Coral Gables, Florida. The Mexicans took their explained it), and they didn’t vampirism (not to mention their come out of the monkey house Catholicism) to new heights. If to entertain us, preoccupied as Dracula’s castle was cobwebby the they were. night Renfield arrived, the cobwebs Near the end of the trip, we in Mexican vampire movies were as were led into a large enclosed thick and plentiful as cotton candy area that contained many variat a carnival. The fangs were longer, eties of . . . bats. almost tusk-like. The higher, wider I knew two things about cape collars would have delighted bats: Batman and Dracula.

James Brown. Dracula had three Batman had that clean, stylbrides and a slave; Count Subotai in ized logo on his chest, and the “El Mundo de los Vampiros” “bat ears” on his cowl looked (1961) had dozens of curvy, tan, kinda friendly. The bats in negligee-clad, high-haired brides Dracula movies were likewise and an army of fuzz-faced batmen. sleek, black, streamlined Did Dracula ever entertain his minthings. ions? Count Subotai made like So I wasn’t prepared for Liberace, playing a gigantic pipe what ugly little creatures bats organ festooned with skulls. This is are in real life. They are misCount Subotai at his skull-festooned pipe organ. © Azteca-Columbia some serious vampirism. shapen miniature monsters, But just let a priest whip out a with dark, demonic eyes on horrible, fuzzy faces. crucifix in a Mexi-movie, and suddenly, you’d hear a shrill church The bat area at the Philadelphia Zoo was dark and humid, most organ, juxtaposed against a closeup of the cross, light gleaming likely to mimic the bats’ natural habitat. The bats were behind from some heavenly source. The vampire recoiled. If the cross but floor-to-ceiling windows, somewhat like Hannibal Lecter in touched his flesh, he sizzled like pork roll on a boardwalk grill.

“Silence of the Lambs,” fluttering on branches and perches. Panels This is what confused me. Every classroom at Holy Rosary separated the varieties. A zoo man, eager to demonstrate his School in the diocese of Camden was equipped with a crucifix. knowledge, identified the varieties and their predilections. He These were each hung, front and center, atop the blackboard, right came to one window and said five words that sent a chill down my above Sister’s head. You can’t blame me for thinking that, if vam8-year-old spine: pires ever attacked Holy Rosary School, we were ready for them.

“These are the vampire bats.”

I was freaking out. I looked at everyone around me. No one ANOTHER REASON MONSTERS WERE SUCH was alarmed. What was wrong with these people? plausible creatures is that there was always a plausible scientific My internal monologue went something like: “Are you all explanation for them. In the monster movies, doubters were crazy? Let’s get out of here! Didn’t you hear what the zoo man assuaged when a pipe-smoking, bespectacled professor drew a

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dusty old volume from a shelf in his well-stocked library. “Ah, yes, the legend of the vampire,” he would say. Or, “Ah, yes, the legend of the werewolf, or, as we men of science call them, lycanthropes.” The professor would theorize that there probably weren’t really such things as werewolves, but some men are so profoundly insane that they literally transform into beasts — fur, fangs and all.

It sounded like solid science to me.

Why wouldn’t a body made from sewn-together parts of other bodies, and then jolted with electricity, come to life?

Research only confirmed my position. I found “lycanthropy” in the dictionary. I found out that vampire bats existed. I found out that Transylvania was a real place. It’s in Romania. I found out that there was a real-life Dracula — someone named Vlad who earned the nickname “the Impaler,” and not for his luck with the ladies. I found out that mummies existed. A “pharaoh” (a fancy word for a mummy king) named Tutankhamun was a real-life mummy. I found out that dinosaurs, like the ones in “King Kong,” once trod the Earth. In science class, I was taught evolution, from which I concluded that monkey men and the Creature From the Black Lagoon likely existed centuries ago, before we humans were fully evolved.

I reasoned that one of those pre-evolution monsters could have been frozen in ice, entered a state of suspended animation, and now awaits the day when it is thawed and revived. Right?

Monsters are real.

I FIRST LAID EYES ON REAL MONSTER movie footage watching an episode of “Hollywood and the Stars,” an early-’60s TV series about old Hollywood movies narrated by an old Hollywood star, Joseph Cotten. The Jan. 13, 1964, episode began with Cotten saying, “Now, don’t send the children to bed.”

(Maybe this is why my folks let me watch it, bless ’em.)

The episode was all about monster movies. I saw the weirdest stuff, and it creeped me out. At one point, Cotten talked about this monster that, in my childhood memory, he called “Junior.” There was footage of this weird guy Junior attacking a lady on a bed. I didn’t know what in the world I was watching! All I thought was: Monsters are scary, and Junior is the scariest. (Upon reflection over the ensuing decades, I concluded that Cotten must have been talking about Lon Chaney Jr.) I have vague early monster memories beyond that.

I’m little ... I’m hanging out with a bunch of kids outside somebody’s garage ... the oldest kid is building Aurora’s Dracula model kit ... I haven’t yet heard of this guy Dracula ... I sound out his name from the box cover ...

“Drac-yoo-la” ... I ask another kid: “Who is Drac-yoo-la?” ...

“Oh, man,” the kid says, “he’s the scariest monster of all!” ... just that bit of suggestion makes me

“Teen-Age” werewolves are the worst kind of werewolves, according to kid logic. Shown: A Monster Old Maid card.

“Werewolf of London” © Universal Studios; Monster Old Maid cards © Milton Bradley

afraid, very afraid, of this guy Drac-yoo-la on the box . . . he looks really mad and mean ... he’s looking right at me.

I’m 5 ... I see a Frankenstein bubble-bath toy in the supermarket ... “Please get it for me, Mommy!” ... “Maybe another day” ... a week goes by ... my well-meaning mom presents me with a bubble-bath toy ... but it’s Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent, not Frankenstein ... I decide to try to transform Cecil into Godzilla . . . with a Bic pen, I draw what I think are Godzilla-type scales all over his face ... but it just looks like scribbles ... that night, I take Cecil to bed with me ... (I’m only 5, remember) .. . Cecil keeps smiling at me from beneath my scribbling ... I start to cry . . . I believe I have hurt Cecil’s feelings ... I sing “Put on a Happy Face” to Cecil until I fall asleep on my tear-stained pillow.

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I get totally freaked out by the animated alien bugs with the super-scary faces on “The Zanti Misfits” episode of “The Outer Limits” . . . so freaked out that I hug my dad ... He says, “What are you scared of? I eat those things for breakfast!”

I’m playing Milton-Bradley’s Monster Old Maid card game with some friends in a neighbor’s basement ... these are large-format cards with really cool monster faces ... one card shows “The Werewolf” . . . By now, I know what a werewolf is: a half-man, half-wolf who bites and claws people to death in the woods ... but another card shows a monster called a “Teen-Age Werewolf” ...

I’ve never heard the word “teenage” before ... I ask another kid: “What’s a teenage werewolf?” ... “Oh,” the kid says, “that’s the worst kind of werewolf!” ... From now on, I think the word “teenage” is a type of werewolf ... the worst kind.

I ponder the box art for the Phantom of the Opera model kit ...

I feel really sorry for the imprisoned guy behind the Phantom ...

He’s bloody . . . He looks like his hands are rat-bitten ... And he is screaming, because the Phantom has just removed his mask ... and the Phantom’s face is messed up somethin’ fierce ... I ask my mom: “What’s the Opera?” ... I figure it must be some horrible place where Phantoms keep people as prisoners ... and sic rats on them . .. and every once in a while, for good measure, unmask themselves to reveal their horrible faces ... My mom’s answer is confusing in its simplicity ... “It’s where people sing” ... Not, “It’s a traditional form of musical theater that originated in Italy in the 16th century” . . . Just, “It’s where people sing” ... This really messes my head up . . . Where people sing? ... Who could sing, with Phantoms running around unmasking their horrible faces?

IT WOULD BE A LONG TIME BEFORE I SAW AN actual monster movie all the way through, as they were scarce on Philadelphia TV after Roland left town (until a guy named Dr. Shock came along). My big brother Bud, 19 years older than me, always told me about this guy Roland who showed monster movies on Channel 10. He was the greatest, Bud said. (Was I surprised to learn, years later, that Roland was only on in Philly for one year. The way Bud talked, you’d think he was on for 10 years.)

I finally saw my first monster movie: “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948). It was a revelation. It had three monsters — Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man — and they looked just like they did in every photo and magazine cover and toy I’d ever laid eyes on. They were like the Aurora monster models come to life. Here’s how stupid I was: When I saw Bela Lugosi as Dracula in “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” my thought wasn’t: “Hey, that guy’s likeness was used for all these models and toys and magazines.” My thought was: “Wow, they found a guy who looks exactly like Dracula.”

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A Zanti attacks! Below: The impactful page 9 of FM #52.

“The Outer Limits” © Daystar Productions; Famous Monsters of Filmland © Warren Publishing

BARNABAS COLLINS WAS MY HERO WHEN I WAS in the sixth grade. He was a vampire on a show called “Dark Shadows,” a soap opera with witches, werewolves, ghosts and more vampires. It was on every day after school. We’d tear home from the bus stop. We didn’t want to miss a minute. Barnabas had a really cool hairstyle — four strands of hair plastered onto his forehead. He wore a double-breasted coat (an archaic style that hadn’t “come back” yet), a black-onyx ring on his right forefinger and carried a wolf’s-head cane. The dude was pimped out.

Barnabas’s story: Back in 1795, a blond witch with huge eyes and a nasty temper named Angelique was in love with Barnabas, but Barnabas loved sweet, innocent Josette. Angelique didn’t take this well. She put a curse on Barnabas, turning him into a vampire.

In his vampiric state, when he was about to devour some floozy he picked up at, say, the Blue Whale in Collinsport, Barnabas’ eyes would be dark with eye-liner, and he had really cool fangs.

For Halloween, I decided to be Barnabas. I put on eye-liner, fangs and a cracker-jack ring I painted black with Testors modelkit paint. I even had a Josette. Ann Foristall, who I had a crush on, agreed to go trick-or-treating with me as Josette to my Barnabas.

That year, oddly, both my sister and little brother wore drag for Halloween. My sister Bobbi was a bearded sailor, my little brother Brian was an old lady. We rushed home from school, put on our costumes and raced to Ann’s house to pick her up to go trick-ortreating. Because — according to an indisputable tenet of kid logic — the earlier we commenced to trick-or-treatin’, the more stuffed our pillowcases would be with Zagnuts, Tootsie Rolls, Snickers, Baby Ruths, Paydays, Milky Ways, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms.

FORRY ACKERMAN ALWAYS SAID THAT FAMOUS Monsters was what boys read between comic books and Playboy.

I saw my first “Dark Shadows” episode when I was 9 and my last when I was 12, so naturally, at some point during my watching history, I started thinking about girls every waking minute.

When I turned to page 9 of Famous Monsters #52 (1968) and saw side-by-side photos of Kathryn Leigh Scott — one with a goopy eye as Josette in zombie form, one a glamor shot in civvies — I fell deeply, madly in love. (With the civvies one, not the goopy-eye one.) I’d already had a thing for Josette — God, she was sweet — but seeing Kathryn Leigh Scott in street clothes just got me somewhere deep. Why, oh why, did I have to be 10?

Which brings us to some pervasive clichés about monster fans back then — that we were loners, losers, nerds; that we possessed not a shred of athletic ability; that we inspired indifference, if not outright revulsion, in girls.

All of these clichés, it turns out, were true.

It’s sad, pathetic, to say that monsters were our friends. (They were.) Or that we identified with these deformed, hated creatures who, after all, only wanted love. (We did.) Or that we saw ourselves when King Kong clutched Fay Wray; when Quasimodo supped from Esmeralda’s urn; when Boris Karloff smiled pleadingly at Elsa Lanchester and caressed her bandaged hand, alas in vain; when Lon Chaney Sr. pointed a bony finger at Mary Philbin and bellowed: “Feast your eyes, glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!”

What would motivate a little squirt to ponder mortality?

Monster movies made us contemplate the big stuff: birth, I WANTED TO BE ANOTHER TOD death, life, love, man’s inhuBrowning, another James Whale, another Ray manity to man, the afterlife, Dennis Steckler, and in 1971 when I was in the immortal soul. the seventh grade, I bought a Kodak Super 8 It twisted our brains camera. It was a small, box-like thing. Our when Count Dracula called first movie, “Fury of the Vampires,” had a cast Professor Van Helsing “one of three: my sister Bobbi, my brother Brian who has not lived even a sinand our cousin Terri. As the lead vampire, gle lifetime” .. . when Dracula Bobbi was styled like Carolyn Collins in the said, almost wistfully, “To die, movie “House of Dark Shadows”: white cape to be really dead, that must be (actually, a white towel affixed with a safety glorious” ... when Im-Ho-Tep pin), white face (baby powder) and dime-store A vampire’s fury and a Shock Monster on Super 8. said, “It was not only this fangs. We shot it in the woods (instant producbody I loved, it was thy soul” tion values). We brought along a crucifix (Catholic households ... when Henry Frankenstein patted an unearthed casket and said, always had these things hanging around); my grandfather’s rubber “He’s just resting, waiting for a new life to come” . . . or when the mallet (for the staking); and a bottle of Heinz Ketchup (for the spurned monster, gripping the handy-dandy lab-exploding lever, resulting blood). I wanted the climax to be super gory, like the told his Bride in a voice devoid of hope: “We belong dead.” crossbowing of Barnabas in “House of Dark Shadows.” My sister was a real trouper, allowing me to pour ketchup all over her.

UM, THAT GOT A BIT HEAVY, BUT FOR THE MOST (There must be a psychological explanation for all of this.) In one part, the Monster Craze was an innocent, naive, fun time for us shot, you can see the ketchup bottle. In another, ketchup is clearly dopey little kids. Its mysteries would slowly unravel, like Kharis’s streaming into Bobbi’s right ear. “Fury of the Vampires” won critmoldy gauze. As someone who was a child during the Craze, my ical acclaim — from my parents, uncles and aunts. aim is to report on the era with the viewpoint of an eyewitness.

We followed up with a Dracula movie that had “superimposed” That’s about it, Dear Reader. Let’s jump into the way-back titles (the film’s credits were painted on a clear plastic sheet) and machine and check out some cool monsters. a beheading; and a Mr. Hyde-ish movie shot in the snow using my Topstone-brand cheapo Shock Monster mask — the one with the protruding eye and cotton-candy blue hair. We added a black felt top hat to give our ersatz Hyde that “Victorian London” look.

(And, unavoidably, undesirable things like apples and oranges.)

But Ann said she couldn’t go out just yet. She had to wait for her father, who always accompanied Ann and her brother and sisters on Halloween. The snag: Ann’s dad wouldn’t be home from work for another hour. And even then, they’d have to eat dinner first. That comes out to 90 minutes at best. And 90 minutes on Halloween translates into a lot of Zagnut bars.

On the spot, I made a very unchivalrous decision, possibly the least-chivalrous decision I’ve made in my life. I informed Ann that my sister, my brother and I could not wait for her. Time was a-wastin’. There were doors to knock on, candy to collect. Ann looked bewildered. “Sorry,” I said with a shrug, wearing my eyeliner and carrying my dad’s putter for a cane. We turned and left.

(What a little jerk I was. The company of a beautiful woman, I’ve since learned, is always more desirable than candy.)

A couple of hours later, after darkness had fallen, our group was turning a corner when we saw Ann and her family. Her crew-cutted father shot me a look. Ann was no longer dressed as Josette; her costume looked vaguely hillbilly-ish. “Who are you supposed to be?” I asked Ann as our groups crossed paths for a moment, never slowing. “I’m Daisy Mae,” she said, as she and her family marched by and vanished into the night.

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Monsters sprang forth from classic literature. From left: 1950s-’60s paperback editions of 1818’s “Frankenstein,” 1831’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” 1886’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and 1897’s “The Invisible Man.” Editions shown: “Frankenstein” © 1963 Airmont Publishing Co.; “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” © 1957 Avon Publications, Inc.; “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” © 1964 Airmont Publishing; “The Invisible Man” © 1964 Airmont Publishing

Harbingers of the Monster Craze We just thought monsters were gnarly.

We didn’t know they were classy, too.

We only knew them from movies, magazines and model kits.

We didn’t know that monsters sprang forth from classic literature.

Or that there were monsters, real monsters, before even the advent of the printed page.

That dinosaurs — actual giant monsters with pointy teeth — walked the Earth 230 million years ago.

That neanderthals — actual monstrous men with misshapen skulls and shaggy manes — walked the Earth 130,000 years ago.

That cave paintings — such as one found in Australia depicting extinct giant birds, making it one of the earliest examples of monster media — date back as far as 40,000 years.

But monsters as characters of fiction started coming on strong during the 19th century. Some important milestones: ■ JAN. 19, 1809: Writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston. The tortured Poe penned some of literature’s most macabre — and most adapted — works. The titles of Poe’s stories and poems (“The Black Cat,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Raven”) will be familiar, even if the storylines aren’t. Such was the power of the Poe name, that screenwriters often used his titles, if not always his content. Poe died on Oct. 7, 1849, at age 40.

■ 1818: The novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”

by Mary Shelley is published. It’s hard to fathom that the monster who launched a thousand Aurora model kits and Famous Monsters of Filmland covers was in existence two centuries ago.

■ 1831: The novel “Notre-Dame de Paris” (the original French title of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) by Victor Hugo is published. Hugo’s intent was political and social commentary, but deformed bellringer Quasimodo — who had zero supernatural

aspects — became a fan favorite during the Monster Craze.

■ JAN. 5, 1886: The novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson is published. The story of a scientist’s exploration into the dark side of man inspired magazine covers, masks, a model kit and a comic book during the Craze.

■ MAY 26, 1897: The novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker is published. Stoker’s influential vampire saga inspired films from the sublime (“Dracula”) to the silly (“Billy the Kid vs. Dracula”).

■ 1897: The novella “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells is published — a story from a sci-fi specialist adopted by monster fans.

■ SEPT. 23, 1909: The first installment of the serialized novel “Le Fantôme de l’Opéra” (“The Phantom of the Opera”) by Gaston Leroux is published in Le Gaulois, a French newspaper.

These literary works gave filmmakers license to explore horrific and, it must be said, human themes.

In two silent classics — 1923’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and 1925’s “The Phantom of the Opera” — Lon Chaney Sr. played, not monsters per se, but grotesque men who needed to be loved. Still, his indelible portrayals of Quasimodo and Erik made Chaney a hero of the Monster Craze, three decades after his death at age 47 on Aug. 26, 1930.

The seminal early talkies “Dracula,” starring Bela Lugosi, and “Frankenstein,” starring Boris Karloff (both 1931), were controversial in that they depicted supernatural events without explanation or excuse: The monsters in the stories were real. But the original novels gave directors Tod Browning and James Whale, respectively, clout in the form of time-honored literary precedents.

Once moviegoers began voting in favor of these weird films where it counts — at the box office — dissenting voices waned, and the monster movie became a genre unto itself.

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A system

to the

Boy, did the Beaver (Jerry Matthers, below) get in trouble when he wore one of the monster sweatshirts above to school in a 1962 episode of “Leave It To Beaver.” As the decade ensued, the Monster Craze “mainstreamed” monsters. © NBC Universal Inc. REMEMBER THOSE TORCH-WIELDING villagers in “Frankenstein”? That’s how adults felt about monsters in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

Adults, by and large, hated monsters.

At best, they feared monsters would give their children nightmares. At worst, they regarded monsters as false idols that glorified the occult.

The Monster Craze would one day achieve the unthinkable; it would “mainstream” monsters, make them family-friendly. But before that accidental revolution took place, monsters were frowned upon by parents, educators and clergy — not to mention, the politicians who sought their vote.

There’s an episode of “Leave It To Beaver” that encapsulates adult attitudes toward monsters at the time.

In “Monster Sweatshirts” (Season 4, Episode 35), which aired June 2, 1962, Beaver (Jerry Mathers) and three of his buddies purchase — you guessed it — monster sweatshirts. The shirts cost $3.75 each at Tilden’s Sporting Goods in downtown Mayfield. The monsters on the shirts are generic; Beaver buys the one with three eyes. While the boys wear the shirts on a bustling street, a woman shoots them a look of disgust. This is only the beginning.

In an early, pre-adolescent act of rebellion, the boys make a pact to wear the shirts to school the following day. Alas, when the big day comes, only Beaver honors the agreement. He is promptly sent to the principal’s office, and later, his dad grounds him for the weekend.

(You could say Beaver’s dad, Ward Cleaver, didn’t have a leg to stand on. The actor who played him — Hugh Beaumont — was a star of “The Mole People.”)

BUT PRIOR TO THE MONSTER CRAZE igniting in 1957, monsters — and adult discomfort with them — had been in a state of slumber.

For the most part, there hadn’t been movies about conventional Gothic monsters for a long while .. . unless they were meeting Abbott and Costello.

(The final film to feature classic Universal monsters Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man was, in fact, 1948’s “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”)

Thereafter, the monsters you saw onscreen usually fell into two categories: aliens from outer space or irradiated giant bugs that attacked entire cities. No less a body than the United States military fought them off.

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The gruesome Crime SuspenStories #22 cover (1954). Right: Michael Landon needs a bib in the drive-in hit “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” (1957). © E.C. Publications; © American International Pictures

From 1951’s “The Thing From Another World” (good) to 1957’s “Beginning of the End” (cheezy, but still kinda good), these were frequently cheerless black-and-white films with manly men in uniform as protagonists, using missiles and tanks instead of wooden stakes and silver bullets to fight monsters. Heck, these were more like war movies than monster movies. And somehow, the participation of the military, fictional though it was, sent a chilling, unspoken message: This monster movie is approved by the U.S. government.

In other words, these were monsters that parents could be comfortable with. No undead beings kept alive for centuries by drinking the blood of innocent young women. No flat-topped, neck-bolted creatures sewn together from dead body parts, brought to life via alchemy and electricity. No men changing into beasts. Just giant beings that were either invading from another world or manipulated by radiation.

Both options were teeming with political overtones in this, a political time. In Cold War culture, movie aliens were often a metaphor for those pesky Communists, and irradiated insects symbolized the effects of atomic weapons, another hot-button topic (“Duck and cover!”). In real life, politicians got involved soon enough.

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IN 1954, JUVENILE DELINQUENCY WAS DEEMED SO dire a problem, a senate subcommittee investigated its causes and prevention. On the subcommittee was Sen. Estes Kefauver (who, two years later, became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee).

During a hearing, Kefauver — inflamed by Fredric Wertham’s comics-damning book “Seduction of the Innocent” — famously grilled William M. Gaines, publisher of EC Comics’ Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror, about EC’s indisputably gory horror comics. The politician and the publisher quibbled at length over Johnny Craig’s gruesome Crime SuspenStories #22 cover, which depicted the beheading of a once-attractive woman. (The portly perpetrator grasps the head by its long blond locks.) The exchange was televised, and parents were nudged to a flawed conclusion: horror comics equals juvenile delinquency.

This awful publicity proved damaging to the comics industry. Comic-book publishers responded by forming a self-censoring body called the Comics Code Authority. One of the CCA’s first acts was to outlaw horror comics. Yep, in the United States of America, horror comics were actually outlawed. Even the words “horror” and “terror” were forbidden in the title of comic books at the time. Gothic monsters were practically in hiding.

SO CLASSIC MONSTERS HAD BEEN DEAD FOR A long while. Dracula’s dusty bones lay in his coffin, waiting for someone to yank the wooden stake out. That metaphorical event would happen in 1957.

That year, the timeline is tight. Events happened fast and furiously. June 19, 1957, saw the release of “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” starring Michael Landon as a drooling beastie wearing a high-school letter jacket. The playful title of this American International Pictures film directed by Gene Fowler Jr. proved irresistible to a certain strain of moviegoer, mixing as it did the then-popular “I Was” titular device (“I Was an American Spy,” “I Was a Communist for the FBI”) with the burgeoning “teenage” trend. (Following World War II, teen-themed movies, paperbacks, comics, music — rock ’n’ roll itself, yo — were on a steady rise.)

But there was the werewolf thing in there, too. And so a lowbudget, minor-studio film put a modern twist on the old werewolf legend . . . and became a box-office smash.

The very next week saw the American release of “Curse of Frankenstein” from England’s Hammer Films, the first of a long line of stylish color (or, as the Brits spell it, “colour”) remakes of the old Universal monster films (“Horror of Dracula” and “The Mummy” soon followed), spiced up with blood and cleavage.

These releases did not, themselves, kick-start the Monster

Craze. But they provided early, seismographic rumblings that a full-blown ’quake was nigh.

October 1957 was the nail in the coffin for genre naysayers.

That month saw the rollout of Screen Gems’ “Shock!” package of 52 Universal horror (and horror-ish) films released to TV. Philadelphia “Shock Theater” host John Zacherle ­— who, as his Roland character, was among the first to air the movies — recalls the multi-film package was offered, not to the networks, but to smaller independent stations, amid worries parents might not be happy about their children being exposed to horror films.

That old bugaboo — parental outrage — was still a concern.

But not for much longer.

“Shock!” was an overnight sensation. According to Billboard, stations announced ratings increases between 38 and 1,125 percent. “To put it mildly, the figures will have wide ramifications ... and may even be a factor in network thinking,” Billboard reported.

Zacherle marveled that only a few years later, when he hosted for Channel 9 in New York, that station aired horror movies on weekend afternoons rather than late at night, where it was traditionally thought horror films belonged. “They didn’t care,” Zacherle said, and another inroad was made.

Taboos were being broken.

The stake had been removed.

OF THE 52 FILMS RELEASED to television in Screen Gems’ “Shock!” package in 1957, only half of them, more or less, can be called true horror films. Others are mysteries, spy thrillers, “Inner Sanctum” adaptations. A few — “Danger Woman,” “Chinatown Squad” — make you wonder why they were even included. Then again, “shock” can be considered a catch-all term.

The influence of “Shock!” can scarcely be overestimated. Following is the film roster that changed the world.

“The Last Warning” (1929) “The Cat Creeps” (1930) “Dracula” (1931) “Frankenstein” (1931) “The Mummy” (1932) “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1932) “Destination Unknown” (1933) “The Invisible Man” (1933) “The Secret of the Blue Room” (1933) “The Black Cat” (1934) “Secret of the Chateau” (1934) “Chinatown Squad” (1935) “The Great Impersonation” (1935) “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1935) “The Raven” (1935) “Werewolf of London” (1935)

“Dracula’s Daughter” (1936) “The Invisible Ray” (1936) “The Man Who Cried Wolf” (1937) “Night Key” (1937) “Reported Missing” (1937) “The Spy Ring” (1938) “Mystery of the White Room” (1939) “Son of Frankenstein” (1939)

“The Witness Vanishes” (1939) “Enemy Agent” (1940) “The Invisible Man Returns” (1940) “The Mummy’s Hand” (1940) “A Dangerous Game” (1941) “Horror Island” (1941) “Man Made Monster” (1941) “The Wolf Man” (1941) “The Mad Doctor of Market Street” (1942) “The Mummy’s Tomb” (1942) “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1942) “Night Monster” (1942) “Nightmare” (1942) “Sealed Lips” (1942) “The Strange Case of Doctor Rx” (1942) “Calling Dr. Death” (1943) “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” (1943) “The Mad Ghoul” (1943) “Son of Dracula” (1943) “Dead Man’s Eyes” (1944) “The Mummy’s Ghost” (1944) “Weird Woman” (1944) “The Frozen Ghost” (1945) “Pillow of Death” (1945) “Danger Woman” (1946) “House of Horrors” (1946) “She-Wolf of London” (1946) “The Spider Woman Strikes Back” (1946)

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The man in the long black coat

“SHOCK THEATER” SOUNDS COOL, DOESN’T IT? But actually, the title of the horror-movie show that debuted at 11:25 p.m. EST on Oct. 10, 1957, over Channel 10 in Philadelphia was a bit more of a mouthful: “The Million Dollar Movie Presents Shock Theater.”

The film shown could scarcely have been more appropriate: “Frankenstein.”

And neither could the host: Roland (accent on the “land”), played by John Zacherle — Presbyterian, Philadelphian, World War II veteran, former cowboy actor.

Roland became a local phenomenon, but before long, Zacherle’s national profile would emerge. There was the little matter of a Top 10 novelty song, “Dinner With Drac - Part 1,” which peaked at #6 during its seven weeks on the Billboard chart in 1958. Suddenly, the “Cool Ghoul” — as Dick Clark nicknamed Zacherle — was rocking out on “American Bandstand.”

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“We had a makeup man who tried to make me up to look like Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera,” said John Zacherle.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Famous Monsters of Filmland made Zacherle its cover boy twice, with issues #7 (1960), in a painting by Albert Nuetzell, and #15 (1962), in a painting by Basil Gogos. Zacherle’s national profile was also enhanced by coverage in Life, TV Guide and The Saturday Evening Post. © Warren Publishing National magazines began to take notice. In 1958, Zach and his fellow horror hosts were profiled in the March 29 edition of TV Guide (“TV’s Newest Rage: The Monster of Ceremonies”), followed by spreads in the May 26 edition of Life (“Night Harbingers of Horror”) and the Aug. 16 edition of The Saturday Evening Post (“TV’s Midnight Madness”).

Then Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine put Zacherle on its cover twice, with issues #7 (1960) and #15 (1962). Famous Monsters regularly kept readers apprised of Zacherle’s comings and goings, and its in-house Captain Company marketed a Zacherley mask (crafted by master mask-maker Don Post) and poster. Add to that syndication of Zach’s later New York shows — monster enthusiast Bob Burns recalled watching him on a Los Angeles affiliate — and Zach became the nation’s Cool Ghoul.

A quick note on the spelling of Zach’s name: His birth surname is, indeed, spelled “Zacherle.” His final broadcast as Roland aired on Sept. 5, 1958. (Again, the choice of movie shown was appropriate: “The Black Sleep.”) When he relocated to New York to host movies at WABC, a “Y” was added to his surname as an on-air moniker . . . and “Zacherley” was born.

The following Q&A with Zacherle (born: 1918) is gleaned from seven interviews I did with him between 1991 and 2014.

Q: How did you land your first job in television?

ZACHERLE: I had been in a little theater group in Philadelphia. I

was trying to find myself after being in the Army during World War II. I wasn’t in battles — I was behind the lines, in supply.

They sent me to England, Scotland, Italy, North Africa. Then I was sent back to Washington, DC. A big shot! I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly one day, big whistles were blowing and church bells were ringing. The war was over.

I got home to Philadelphia, but I didn’t know what to do. I had just gotten out of college when I was picked up and put in the Army. I kind of drifted around. I think it was a cousin of mine who got me interested in a theater group near where I lived in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. I went down there and got involved. I enjoyed it, I really did. I worked on scenery. One day, a lady who worked for the Board of Education said, “Why don’t you go out to the TV station? They’re starting something new out there.” The next thing I know, I’m working behind-the-scenes on this live Western soap opera. It was called “Action in the Afternoon.”

Q: A live Western soap opera — it’s almost inconceivable. It just goes to show you how different early television was.

ZACHERLE: It was a half-hour every afternoon, five days a week. It was really very exciting. The show was set in, I seem to recall, Hubberly, Montana, in the 1880s. They built a lot of outdoor scenery, just false-front buildings, so you could ride in on a horse, and it looked like a town. They’d ride horses outside the studio, and then if there was a shootout, they’d scramble to get inside the studio. There was a barroom, a doctor’s office. They had a horseshoe

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From top left: The 1960 ad for Captain Company’s Zach poster; art from a 1960 mock presidential campaign; 1960’s “Zacherley’s Midnight Snacks,” one of two Zach paperbacks put out by Ballatine Books. It reprinted short stories (one by Richard Matheson) from pulp-fiction magazines going as far back as 1939. man, a newspaper man, a lady who ran the bar.

They were the regulars. But every week, some stranger would come to town — mostly nasty people who were trying to steal something. By Friday, the stranger would either end up in jail or chased out of town . . . or married. Ha, ha! Then on Monday, another stranger would come into town, and they’d start all over again.

I learned a lot about how you have to adjust, because the microphones weren’t always working in the outdoors. We had to deal with the weather.

Whatever the weather was, that was it. There was no tape in those days. Eventually, I guess, about halfway through the year, they gave me some speaking roles. I was introduced wearing different costumes.

They’d put on makeup and whiskers and things, to make me look like a different person. I had a lot of parts that were major parts.

This went on for the whole year.

Q: How did “Action in the Afternoon” lead to you hosting horror movies as Roland?

ZACHERLE: I guess the last month of the show, I played an undertaker with a long, black coat. He traveled from town to town and would sell them a year’s supply of coffins. Talk about morbid, ha!

It was about a year or so later when the station signed up to show these old horror movies. They called me up and asked me to be the host, because they remembered me as the undertaker.

Q: Was “Shock Theater” well-received from the start?

ZACHERLE: It became a big, smash success, as they used to say in the record business. (Using “disc jockey” voice) “It’s a real smash!” We drew a huge audience — mostly high school and college kids. We had a big following.

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Q: Do you have any memory of doing that very first “Shock Theater” broadcast in Philadelphia? Were you making it up as you went along?

ZACHERLE: No, no. We sat down and talked it over. We watched the movie. It amazed me. I had never seen those films at all when I was a kid. Suddenly, I found myself doing this. We would sit and watch the movie so that I could say something about what the actors were saying, maybe, or what had happened in the last eight minutes. I’d make some kind of a comment. I was called (emphasizes pronunciation) “Ro-land.” I was supposed to be called “Ro-land,” but the boss (at WCAU) pronounced it “Ro-land” one day, and nobody felt like arguing with him. It sounded kind of funny, so they kept calling me “Ro-land.”

Q: How did you develop your makeup?

ZACHERLE: We had a makeup man who tried to make me up to look like Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. They made me look like my lips were sewn together, like a shrunken head.

Eventually, I had to put the makeup on myself. It almost became an exaggerated makeup, like Kiss wears. Of course, this was black and white, and people at home weren’t getting very sharp pictures.

The transmission wasn’t that good in those days. I would be doing my thing, horsing around and having experiments to show what went wrong in the movie — why Boris Karloff suddenly got loose and had to be chased and caught.

Q: Some have said that your Roland persona was scarier than your later Zacherley persona. Like, Zacherley was more of a funny guy.

It’s a testament to Zacherle’s charisma that he was able to hold an audience while showing “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

ZACHERLE: They got that idea from the video (“The Zacherley Archives,” released in 1998). It may be that on that particular night (in the program on the video), I was kind of mad at Igor or mad at my wife or mad at the movies or mad at the commercials.

It may be that I sounded a little more scary.

Q: Ah, yes, Igor and My Dear and Gasport — your cast of characters that were never seen onscreen.

ZACHERLE: Igor was an old friend of (“Tonight Show” co-host) Ed McMahon.

Igor lived in a cage that was part of Ed McMahon’s act when he was at the same station, at Channel 10 in Philadelphia. He used to introduce the late-night movies.

With great ceremony, he would come through a gate that looked like an old-fashioned bank vault — it looked like a jail, almost — with movie cans in his hand, and say, “Now tonight’s ‘Million Dollar Movie’ ” — or whatever they called it down there — “is so and so,” and then they’d run the movie. It was a big deal (laughs).

So when he left town and that movie thing kind of died — I don’t think I replaced him — these horror movies, “Shock Theater,” came in. So they had to build a little set for me, and used Ed McMahon’s gate as part of my set. And that’s where Igor hung out. You never saw him, of course. I would lean over and holler at him and throw him things and feed him through the bars. He’d make a lot of problems for me.

Q: “Shock Theater” introduced the gimmick of the “pop-in” — popping into the movie for a quick bit of comedy, albeit, using ancient technology. How did the idea come about?

ZACHERLE: Ed White was the producer in Philadelphia. The thing was on for maybe two months. One day, we were watching the movie before doing the show. It was called “The Black Cat” (1934) with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Boris Karloff was standing up on an altar like a sort of preacher. He had a big, black robe on, and he was speaking to people who were lower than he was. The camera was looking up at him. There was another camera aimed down at the people who were looking at him with adoring eyes, listening to his oration.

Ed White said, “Hey, when they’re showing the people, why don’t we show you in there, just for fun?” So we did that. It was live television. You never could stop the film. You had to keep going. The only time you’d stop it was for commercials. So instead of seeing all the people there at one point, very quickly, we showed me looking up like they were. When we did it on the air, we all thought it was the greatest thing we could think of.

After that, we did it all the time. You had to time it just right, as I say, because the film was always running.

You’d just push the switch, and I had enough time to say, “What do you think you’re doing here? Get out of here!” and go right back to the film. If you did it right, it would come out kind of funny. If you didn’t do it quickly and on time, it would be a little messy, because we couldn’t stop it and correct it. But that became a big part of the show.

Q: You had a Top 10 hit in “Dinner With Drac.” What do you remember about recording the song?

ZACHERLE: It was the first time I was ever in a recording studio.

They didn’t do it the way they do it now, where everyone puts their parts on at different times. They had a little group who were the house band there at Cameo Parkway, Dave Apple and the

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Applejacks. They were nice guys. I was just reading it in a rather excited, exaggerated way: “A dinner was served for three ...”

Q: Your old buddy Dick Clark put you on “American Bandstand.”

ZACHERLE: Dick Clark and I started in television around the same time (in Philadelphia). He was doing a radio show at a station not far from where I was doing my TV thing. There was another guy who started hosting a dance show, but he made the mistake of inviting some of the teenage girls to his swimming pool out in the suburbs, so he lost his job. They gave the job of hosting this dance show to Dick Clark. A lot of 45s were coming out of Philadelphia at that time. Cameo Parkway had Chubby Checker. There were some girl groups. If they had a hit record, they’d be on Dick Clark’s show. It was all so close by; you just had to jump in a cab and get to the studio, and you would be on a network show. The same thing happened to me when my 45 “Dinner With Drac” caught on. I was on his show several times. I remember once I was on his Halloween show.

Q: Please talk about performing the song on Dick Clark’s show.

ZACHERLE: When he moved to New York, he had a show on Saturday nights. It was the best of the hit songs on the charts. The acts would come on and lip-sync their songs. He had me on. I didn’t just stand there and sing the song; I sat at a table and they had these dancers around me, kind of acting out the song. It was a lot of fun. They worked real hard, working out the choreography.

At the end, they carried me up the aisle. That was pretty exciting.

Q: Speaking of extracurricular activities, what’s the story behind the anthology fiction paperbacks you did for Ballantine in 1960, “Zacherley’s Vulture Stew” and “Zacherley’s Midnight Snacks”?

ZACHERLE: They sent me a whole bunch of things to read, to

Captain Company called the Zacherley mask a “work of art.” choose from, to put the book together. I was so busy at the time, I didn’t think I would have time to do all of that reading, but I thought I’d better try. It’s a good thing I did, because it was pretty racy stuff. Ha, ha, ha! I thought, “Oh my God, I can’t put these things out in my name for kids to buy!” So I picked the ones that didn’t have all the sex stuff in them.

Q: Amazing, Zach. You went from the war to wrangling horses to doing all of these incredible things.

ZACHERLE: Yeah. Ha, ha! Who’d have believed it?

Vampira: TV pioneer (with a 17-inch waist) WHO WAS TV’S FIRST HORROR host? Not the “Shock!” guys. Glamorously ghoulish Maila Nurmi — immortalized by Edward D. Wood Jr. as the zombie lady with the 17-inch waist in “Plan 9 From Outer Space” — had them all beat with her (albeit short-lived) 1954 show on KABC/Los Angeles.

Vampira was a true harbinger of the Monster Craze. Nurmi (1922-2008) explained the character’s genesis in a remarkable interview for Kevin Sean Michaels’ documentary of 2006, “Vampira: The Movie.”

Nurmi said she concocted the character as a way to fund her true objective: to become an evangelist. She fashioned a costume inspired

by Charles Addams’ then-as-yet-unnamed Morticia character, and won a contest at a masquerade ball. There, she was spotted by Hunt Stromberg Jr., program director for KABC, who later decided to put Nurmi’s character on the air. To avoid an outright ripoff of Addams,

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Nurmi incorporated ideas from the bondage art of Bizarre editor John Willie — particularly in the waist-cinching department. The name “Vampira” was coined by Nurmi’s then husband, screenwriter Dean Riesner.

Nurmi dramatically opened the show by slinking down a dark corridor that was foggy with dry ice. She said Vampira connected with viewers because “she defied all protocol.”

But the actress believed she was blackballed by the station after her contract expired. Said Nurmi: “They wanted to do ‘The Addams Family,’ and without me. They wanted me out of commission. So they fixed that.”

As to why the character endures: “Vampira was timeless. She lived in any age. ... She’s that powerful and evil force: the lady with the black hair.

We’ve seen her in all art forms.”

Maila Nurmi

Hosts with the most Cheaply produced and ratings rich? A TV exec’s dream.

Once “Shock!” simultaneously dropped its monster bombs throughout America in 1957, the horror host became a pervasive television tradition.

Independent stations discovered that horror hosts were a cheap, easy way to fill airtime, and so the format continued long after the initial “Shock!” broadcasts.

Famous Monsters #2 (1958) included a rundown of the original “Shock!” hosts.

They were: Marvin on WBKB/Chicago; Dr. Lucifer on WBAL/Baltimore; Milton Budd on WMBD/Peoria, Ill.; David Allen on WKBN/Youngstown, Ohio; Mad Daddy on WJW/Cleveland; Terence on KRON/San Francisco; Gorgon on KFJZ/ Fort Worth, Texas; Dr. Meridian on WPTA/Fort Wayne, Ind.; Chuck Zink on WTVJ/Miami; Selwin on WISH/ Indianapolis; Warren Reed on KTNT/ Seattle; Tarantula Ghoul on KPTV/ Portland, Oregon; and Roland on WCAU/ Philadelphia. Life magazine added Ottola Nesmith on KTLA/Los Angeles.

Beginning in 1962, Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) brought an irreverent, beatnikish sensibility to WJW/Cleveland. Wrote Michael Weldon in Psychotronic Video: “He used beat slang, including dig, baby, groovy . . . He also criticized and made fun of the people who owned and ran the station he worked for and got away with it, because his ratings were so high.”

Beginning in 1963, “Chilly Billy” Cardille played host on WIIC/Pittsburgh.

1980s-era Action Comics artist Howard Bender recalled Cardille aired “some of the most cheezy monster movies ever made, with titles like ‘The Brain From Planet Arous,’ ‘The Crawling Eye’ and ‘Beast From Haunted Cave.’ His skits and cardboard sets gave these corny fright flicks that extra fun factor.” Cardille made a cameo in George A. Romero’s groundbreaking, shot-in-Pittsburgh zombie flick “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).

When makeup artist and collector extraordinaire Bob Burns was stationed in Texas while in the Army, he played Egore

(among other monstrous characters) to host Joe Alston on KENS/San Antonio.

Horror hosts continued to pop up, such as Gregory Graves (Harvey Brunswick) on KMBC/Kansas City in 1958; Morgus the Magnificent (Sid Noel) on WWL/New Orleans in 1959; Sammy Terry (Bob Carter) on WTTV/Indianapolis in 1962; Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark) on KOGO/San Diego in 1963; Sir Graves Ghastly (Lawson J. Deming) on WJBK/Detroit in 1967; Svengoolie (Jerry G. Bishop) on WFLD/Chicago in 1970; and the Ghoul (Ron Sweed, a protegé of Ghoulardi) on WKBF/Cleveland and affiliates in 1971.

By 1970, Roland had been gone from Philadelphia for a dozen years. WPHL in Philly decided to get back into the game, and invited John Zacherle to return to the city as host.

When Zacherle declined — by then, he was a groovy New York FM DJ — WPHL hired Manyunck magician Joe Zawislak to host as Dr. Shock.

Zawislak wore Roland-style makeup, but not before WPHL asked for, and received, Zacherle’s permission. “Scream In” debuted on March 7, 1970.

To make Dr. Shock less scary to children, Zawislak brought on his baby daughter Doreen, calling her “Bubbles” in honor of the show’s sponsor, Bubbles Booth Soda. From the time she could toddle, Bubbles would knock on Dr. Shock’s coffin to “awaken” him. Doreen Zawislak grew up on the show; she was 9 when her father died of a heart attack in 1979 at age 42.

“He was very funny and crazy,” Doreen told me of her father. “If I wanted my friends to come over, he would do magic for them. There was never a dull moment. He did visit a lot of sick children.

There was a sick bat at the Philadelphia Zoo, and he adopted the bat.”

Cleveland’s Ghoulardi, Kansas City’s Gregory Graves and Philadelphia’s Dr. Shock.

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A magazine of our own Like a bat out of Transylvania, FM flew off shelves IT WAS SENSORY OVERLOAD: FOR THE FIRST time, kids were seeing classic horror films such as “Dracula,” “Frankenstein” and “The Mummy,” thanks to the 52-film “Shock!”

TV rollout in 1957 and ’58. And just maybe, they were noticing some cast redundancies among the films. (White-haired, bespectacled Edward Van Sloan, for example, was in all three aforementioned movies, spouting wisdom as professorial types.) Or perhaps they were noticing earmarks in the directorial styles of James Whale or Tod Browning or Reginald Le Borg.

Or differences in production values between 1930s and ’40s films.

Without realizing it, these youngsters were becoming movie buffs. The more they learned, the more they wanted to learn. So if ever a publication came along at the right time, it was Famous Monsters of Filmland — a magazine all about monster movies.

IT ALL STARTED, AS SO MANY THINGS DO, WITH a girlie magazine.

James Warren — a fledgling publisher based in Philadelphia (and an admirer of Hugh Hefner) — put out the Playboy clone After Hours, for which Forrest J Ackerman, then a writer and writers’ agent, was a contributor. In Ackerman’s recollection, Warren folded After Hours due to some transgression on the part of a part‘My God, if the kids out there are gonna respond to this like I ner, but had enough financial reserves to publish one more “oneresponded in the movie theaters, we just may be able to take one shot” magazine (perhaps on Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley). medium — motion pictures — put it into this magazine, and give “I met Forry through the pages of After Hours, which was a them a magazine of Saturday afternoon at the horror movies.’ shabby imitation of Playboy,” Warren told me in 1997. “He was a “I said, ‘Forry, can you write this thing for literary agent for Hollywood-based writers. He me if I tell you exactly what to write? Are you had submitted some material for After Hours, James Warren parodied Hugh knowledgeable enough about this?’ Of course, I and I bought it. I liked him right away, because Hefner on the Famous was talking to the man who was probably more we got along over the phone and through the Monsters of Filmland #1 knowledgeable about this than anybody on the mail. We both had the same sense of humor. cover with an ascot, shapely planet. That was a stroke of terrific luck, “We met, finally, in New York City in 1957. blonde ... and Frankenstein because Forry Ackerman was the greatest writer He brought back with him, from England, a mask. Above left: Cinéma 57, ever created by God to tell the story of the hisFrench magazine called Cinéma 57. The entire an inspiration from France. tory of horror movies.” issue of this magazine was a pictorial history of © Warren Publishing; The men agreed that a monster-themed pubpast and present horror movies — American as © French Federation of Ciné Clubs lication might sell. well as foreign. I looked through that, and my “We looked at each other,” Warren recalled, eyes just opened up wide, because I went back “and I said, ‘Forry, I can see a one-shot magazine on this. I love to my youth, to my Saturday afternoon movie matinees, when I the subject matter and so do you. I’m going to try and get these saw ‘Frankenstein’ in 1938 or ’39.” pictures from the publisher in France.’

While paging through, Warren had a “Eureka!” moment.

“He said, ‘Why go to the publisher in France? I’ve got ’em He recalled: “The more I looked through it, the more I said,

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“Yours gruely,” concluded the editor’s message in FM #1, establishing a penchant for punnery ­out of the box. © Warren Publishing myself in my own house.’ He said, ‘I’ve got 35,000 stills. Many of them are horror-monster movie stills.’ ” But magazine distributors didn’t embrace the idea — that is, until Life did a spread on the sudden popularity of films like “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” Warren got the green light, with one catch: The word “Monsters” had to be prominent in the title. (This greatly disappointed Ackerman, whose title of choice was Wonderama.)

Still, theirs was a winning team. Ackerman had the encyclopedic knowledge of fantasy films and the seemingly endless supply of movie stills. And Warren — who developed a reputation for sometimes being mercurial (if also for getting things done) — had the production savvy and a disposition for risk-taking.

At the time, John Zacherle was doing his thing in Warren’s hometown of Philly. Recalled the TV host: “Jim told me that he and Forry just locked themselves in a room with all the photographs that Forry had, and put the magazine together in three days.

They didn’t even think there was going to be more than one.”

THE RESULT, FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, sold out during a Feb. 27, 1958, snowstorm in Philly.

“I went out in that snow and I made the rounds of newsstands and I saw the newsstand guys,” Warren recalled.

“The word got out that this was something hot, and it was selling out. They tacked it right up there in front, three or four of them, right up there over the Time magazines and over the Esquires and over the Playboys, even.”

Ackerman told me in 1998: “That 35-cent edition, for which I was paid $400 to create, now goes for $1,300.”

Warren ordered a second printing, and followed up with stealth distribution in other major cities. Wherever it appeared, FM sold like wolfsbane in Vasaria. Warren later decided to make Famous Monsters a regularly published, bona fide magazine.

Wearing monster masks, Warren posed for the first two covers of FM, and his painting of Lon Chaney Sr. as the Phantom for issue #3 became FM’s first painted cover. From #3 on, most of FM’s covers boasted paintings by such artists as Albert Nuetzell, Basil Gogos, Ron Cobb, Maurice Whitman and Vic Prezio.

More of a sci-fi guy than a monster guy, Ackerman nonetheless enjoyed playing monster-mag editor. “FJA” shamelessly self-promoted in FM; not an issue seemed to go by without his photo (often alongside genre celebs such as Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr. and Caroll Borland) and references to the “Ackermansion,” his memorabilia-filled home. At Warren’s direction, Ackerman punctuated his prose with puns. His idols, it became clear in the pages of FM, were Chaney Sr. and Boris Karloff. (“Oh, King, live forever,” he once wrote of Karloff, to the actor’s chagrin.)

Famous Monsters was like porn for monster fans. Often, paging through an issue of FM was akin to an illicit thrill. Mothers tossed them out; nuns confiscated them. There was some dark stuff in those pages ... even a little gore every now and then.

FM paved the way for all of the monster mags that followed — some innovative, some pale imitations — such as Fantastic Monsters of the Films, Castle of Frankenstein, Horror Monsters, For Monsters Only and Modern Monsters.

But there was only one Famous Monsters of Filmland . . . the one that started it all.

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The Hef of horror How James Warren created a publishing empire IF YOU TURN PROFESSIONAL PUBLISHER AT THE WARREN: I designed the logo. I designed the book. I designed the age of 10, is it your destiny to become a publishing magnate? interior pages. I picked the type. I designed the two-column for“I had a newspaper, a neighborhood newspaper, that was printmat. I chose every picture. And I chose the contents of the magaed on a mimeograph machine,” recalled James Warren. “I sold it zine completely. I even picked out the staples. Do you have any door-to-door for 3 cents each. It was stapled together. Four pages. other questions? Some people generally think that the publisher is I did the stapling and the printing and the writing a big, fat guy who sits up there behind a desk with and the artwork and the ad solicitation from the an accounting background and doesn’t know anyJames Warren dressed neighborhood stores — a dollar each for an ad, thing about writing or art or production or printers’ as a devil in a blue suit which was a lot of money in those days. So I guess ink. I came from the creative end; I became a busifor the cover of Famous I became a professional publisher at 10.” nessman. It wasn’t the other way around.

Monsters #2 (1958).

Eighteen years later, he introduced Famous Q: Please talk about reproduction. The covers were © Warren Publishing Monsters of Filmland, the flagship magazine of exceptional — the “bleeds” (trimmed edges), the Warren Publishing, the prolific company he foundprocess color. Your interior pages in Creepy, etc., ed in Philly and moved to New York. Famous Monsters spawned sometimes blended line art (solid blacks) with “halftones” (grays). a publishing empire — and countless imitators. I spoke with the Philadelphia native, who was born in 1930, in interviews conductWARREN: Those halftones had to be shot in a very special way. It ed in 1997 and 2001. was a process that we developed ourselves. If you’re working with a great artist — if Michelangelo walks into your office — you’re not just going to say, “Okay, we’ll reproduce him the same Q: Give me the nuts-and-bolts — how did you and Forrest J way we do everyone else.” Each guy’s stories were Ackerman put together that first issue of Famous Monsters? shot and burned differently into that offset plate. A WARREN: I picked the categories, laid it out and said, “All Steve Ditko was shot differently from a Jack Davis, right, Forry, this is what we’re going to have. We’re going who was strictly just black-and-white line — very litto have articles on A, B, C, D and E. Write this, but write tle wash, sometimes. A (Frank) Frazetta was shot difit toward an 11-year-old child, because that’s going to be ferently from a Reed Crandall. our reader.” Forry balked, because Forry wanted an adult Q: Why was the reproduction important to you? magazine. All of his life, he wanted to have a magazine on imaginative movies. And here I am putting one WARREN: I always said: If we don’t nail them together for him, but it was not for adults; it graphically, we’re not going to get them was for an 11-year-old. I forced him to get it into the story. The story has to be good-todown to an 11-year-old, because I knew that excellent, but the graphics have to be we had an audience of 11-year-olds. I didn’t great. And the company was sort of built know if the adults would buy it. And thus, on that premise. Because I perceived that Famous Monsters #1 was born. the generation was changing. They Q: You had a background in design, and Famous Monsters certainly had its own, unique look. For the record, how much did you have to do with FM’s look?

WARREN: Everything. Do you need anything past that (laughs)?

Q: Well, tell me about some of the graphic techniques you employed — for instance, all of that “horrific” hand-lettering.

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weren’t reading the Harvard shelf of books. They were watching a little thing in the living room with a tiny screen. It was called TV. And their attention span was getting shorter.

They were used to things happening pictorially and graphically. They were doing less reading and more watching. I saw this

happen in your generation. When I was a kid growing up, I read.

Q: The ads in Famous Monsters were just as much fun as the editorial content. Readers still remember ads for the Don Post masks, the Aurora models and all manners of monstrous paraphernalia, offered through some apparently magical company called Captain Company.

How did it come about?

WARREN: It came about because advertisers would not let me into their offices. I came with Famous Monsters and I said, “I know you’re the ad agency for Schwinn bikes” or whatever toys, “and this is the perfect medium because we go right to this audience.” They took one look at it and threw me out of the office. They said, “This is unhealthy. This is decadent. This is outrageous. You should be ashamed that you are even publishing stuff like this.” And, “Get the hell out of this office.”

And because no advertiser would touch me or go near me, I figured the only way to prosper on this was to become my own advertiser. So I started Captain Company, and picked the items that went with the stories that I showed. I think it was in FM #4 that we ran an early story on “The Mummy.” On the next page after the story, we offered a Mummy mask. It was always my experience that whenever I saw a great movie, I wanted to be whoever that was and buy whatever was in that movie, whether it was a Western or a Saturday afternoon serial.

So Captain Company sort of evolved natuIn a page from Famous rally, because I was an old Johnson Smith catMonsters #20 (1962), alog fan and I loved sending away for things.

Warren presents a shelfGod, the excitement of putting 35 cents in an dwarfing award to James envelope and mailing it, and coming home H. Nicholson of American from school the next day and saying to your International Pictures. mother, “Did it arrive yet? Did it come yet?” © Warren Publishing was incredible for me as a kid. I wanted to do that again with Captain Company.

Q: When you count Creepy and Eerie and Vampirella and Screen Thrills Illustrated and Blazing Combat — it’s a publishing empire. Did you feel like Hugh Hefner?

WARREN: Hugh Hefner was big inspiration for me back in 1953, ’54. I saw that a 28-year-old kid could put out a magazine in his kitchen behind his one typewriter and have it revolutionize the newsstand. Which is exactly what Playboy did. I figured if he could do it, I could do it. There was a time in the late ’50s when I wanted to go out to Chicago and work for Playboy, because I loved what he was doing. He was defining the rest of the world. Because Playboy in those days was very controversial. Hef was being arrested every other Thursday.

We did the same thing with monsters, because the teachers and the educators and the parent-teachers groups did not like us.

They thought we were putting out a lot of bad stuff.

Q: Bad stuff that influenced many of the most successful filmmakers and writers that followed.

WARREN: Well, back in the ’60s, two or three of our biggest fans were three guys you probably never heard of, who later went to Hollywood and wrote books and did a lot of things out there. One was little Stevie Spielberg, who was a fan of Famous Monsters when he was about 14. Another one was little Georgie Lucas. I’m sure nobody’s ever heard of him. He later went to Hollywood and made some movies. And another great fan of ours was little Stevie King, who grew up and wrote some books. I don’t know if you’ve heard of those guys.

4SJ of Karloffornia Monsters were good to Forrest J Ackerman Editor Forrest J Ackerman advised publisher James Warren to use Lon Chaney Sr. as the Phantom of the Opera on the cover of Famous Monsters #3 (1959, far left), resulting in the uncredited painting by Warren seen. Ackerman called FM #24 (1963, near left) a favorite issue. © Warren Publishing

YOU’VE HEARD THE EXPRESSION: HE’S A walking encyclopedia. This, and then some, could be said of Forrest J Ackerman (1916-2008), the avowed sci-fi guy who — chaos theory alert — without a grand plan, wound up editing the first-ever regularly published monster magazine.

Ackerman walked around carrying a library in his noggin.

He could tell you all about the great sci-fi pulps — who edited them, who wrote them, who published them, what years they appeared on the stands. He could tell you the dates of death for your favorite horror movie stars. He could talk about Lon Chaney Sr. until you were blue in the face (as Chaney sometimes was).

It was this encyclopedic knowledge that publisher James Warren tapped into when the two men set about creating Famous Monsters of Filmland, published as a one-shot in 1958.

Ackerman (a.k.a. “4SJ,” “4E” and “the Ackermonster”) was an inveterate hoarder of memorabilia. He owned rings worn by Bela Lugosi in “Dracula” and Boris Karloff in “The Mummy”; the cape Lugosi wore in “Plan 9 From Outer Space”; and movie stills numbering in the six-figure range. He was chummy with Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen and Fritz Lang, director of his favorite film, “Metropolis” (1927). He named Zandor Vorkov.

He was born, he lived and he died in Los Angeles — or “Horrorwood, Karloffornia” — and that’s where he belonged.

The following is from a 1990 interview.

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Q: Was it a turning point in your life when the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland sold out?

ACKERMAN: It sure was. Because up to that time, my main occupation had been representing about 200 science-fiction authors. Of course, I only expected it to be a once-in-a-lifetime issue, never thinking there would be 190 before I was through (in 1983). But when the second one came out, and the publisher wanted a third and a fourth, and subscriptions and so on, I thought, “Well, gee, I can’t really handle both deadlines here, with the magazine and all of those clients.” So I radically cut the clientele in half to about 100, and then to 50, and for a while there, I got down just to the top 25 names, like A. E. van Vogt and Raymond F. Jones and Don Glut, who was coming up fast.

Q: I’m guessing that at the time, you would have preferred to be doing a sci-fi magazine rather than a monster magazine.

ACKERMAN: Absolutely. Yes, it’s kind of a case of the clown who wants to be a Shakespearean actor, and the Shakespearean actor who wants to be a clown. I would have preferred to be known as another (Hugo) Gernsback or (John W.) Campbell or (H. L.) Gold, and hoped that I could make my mark as a science-fiction editor.

In an alternate universe, maybe I would have put out 190 issues of a sci-fi magazine.

Q: But monsters have been good to you.

That’s one time he didn’t say, “You may be right but I’m boss.”

ACKERMAN: Oh, absolutely. I’m not going to turn my back on monsters at all, any more than Boris Karloff did. No. It’s brought me a great amount of satisfaction. It may seem kind of strange in a magazine devoted to death, doom and dismemberment that I would sneak in little morals like, “Hey, kids, don’t smoke, and don’t dope, and don’t drink.” Now, the bread cast upon the waters is coming back to me. Almost daily, I’m getting letters from readers who have children of their own who say, “I never would have paid any attention to anything my dad or mom said, but if Uncle Forry said don’t dope, that was gospel.” So I guess I must be rather hated by the tobacco industry and the liquor industry for all the customers I lost them.

Q: What was the perfect issue of FM for you?

Q: You’ve said there was a refrain that James Warren used …

ACKERMAN: Yes. “You may be right, Forry, but I’m boss.” So we did it his way.

Q: But you two had a delicate chemistry. You needed each other.

ACKERMAN: I felt that if at any time I walked out on him, there would go 100,000 stills, that he never seemed to realize was an important part of it all — that not only was I providing the memories and the words and revising things that other peoFamous ple wrote and so on, but Monsters along with all that editorial editor came all of these stills. It’s taken Forrest J me from 1930 onward to collect Ackerman all of those — and special in 2001. behind-the-scenes things Photo by Kathy from foreign countries Voglesong and so on. The magazine never would have been as rich without that treasure load.

ACKERMAN: Well, I kind of think the one that had the “Werewolf of London” on the cover (#24) and said “A Forbidden Look Inside the Ackermansion.” Also, I liked the Boris Karloff tribute (#56), although it was very sad and I was very mad at Jim Warren.

When Boris Karloff was still alive and getting along in age, I said, “Jim, you know, shouldn’t we do an issue devoted to him while he’s still here and can appreciate it?” And his answer was: “Let me ask you one question, Forry. Which will sell more copies, Boris Karloff alive or Boris Karloff dead?” I said, “But, Jim, do we have to be that crassly commercial?

Can’t we have both? Can’t we do something now while he’s alive, and hope he lives four or five more years, and then do a memorial?” But in the end, we had to wait for dear Boris to die on February 2, 1969.

Q: Have you thought about what your epitaph might be?

ACKERMAN: I think just a simple statement: “Science fiction was my life.”

Q: Sure. Famous Monsters was so visual. Did you have any input on the covers?

ACKERMAN: I had no input whatsoever on the covers. They were always a surprise to me. Aside from, I think, on something like the third cover. Warren wanted to go out to a magic shop and pick up a Halloween skull and put it on the cover. I said, “But, Jim, that has nothing to do with films. It’s not a classic monster.

By God, if you want a skull, let’s put Lon Chaney as ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’ ”

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Monster hit songs

The unholy alliance of rock ’n’ roll and monsters

THE TWO REVILED DEMON CHILDREN BEGAN TO The song itself seemed like an irrevocable call-to-arms for this mate almost immediately. new music: “We’re gonna rock, rock, rock ’til broad daylight.”

We’re talking about rock ’n’ roll and the Monster Craze, which So — if you’ll accept for the moment my theory that rock was exploded around the same time — the middle 1950s. born in earnest in 1955 — the Monster Craze followed by a mere Wonderful things happened in the 1950s: TV dinners, the Hula two years. Neither phenomenon exactly won universal parental Hoop, Marilyn Monroe. But it’s no exaggeration to say the ’50s approval. Ed Sullivan famously wouldn’t allow Elvis Presley’s was also a time of social paranoia. hips to be seen on his Sunday night variety show. Monsters, as The decade’s defining event, what history calls the Red Scare, we’ve discussed earlier, were pointy-teethed, neckbolt-wearing fostered an environment in which mainstream Americans were pariahs among the Parent Teacher Association set. It’s no wonder often mistrustful of anything different, anything that was “other.” rock ’n’ roll and monsters formed their little unholy alliance.

As the Army-McCarthy hearings drilled into the proletariat: You are either one of us, or one of them.

ANOTHER QUESTION FOR HISTORIANS: Above: John Ashley This atmosphere created the perfect storm for the when was the first song to combine monsters and and dancing girls birth of rock ’n’ roll, which was all about rebellion rock? Certainly, “Monster Mash” by Bobby (Boris) have “ee-ooo” to and sex and crazy dances.

Pickett — that freaky-funny novelty hit with referencspare in “How to When was rock ’n’ roll born? That’s a toughie. es to “Wolf Man, Dracula and his son,” which went to Make a Monster” As you watch the 1938 Andy Hardy movie “Judge #1 in 1962 — is the one we remember best.

(1958).

Hardy’s Children,” and Andy disrupts a boring But there are many precedents. © American cotillion by coaxing the band into playing swing, the As more and more living rooms became TV-setInternational Pictures resulting joyful chaos sure looks and sounds an equipped during the 1950s, families were vanishing awful lot like rock ’n’ roll. from movie theaters so they could watch their tiny, Historians have their theories, and their disagreements, as to blurry screens at home. Fine and dandy for Daddy, Mommy and the moment rock ’n’ roll was hatched. As for me, I point to July 9, the tykes, but teenagers needed to get away from their square rela1955, the day “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the tions. Drive-in theaters became the perfect modern surrogate for Comets became the first song of this embryonic type to hit #1 on Lovers’ Lane. Cars provided cover for fumblings in the dark, and the Billboard sales chart. Not just because of the Billboard thing. movie soundtracks handily masked any heavy breathing.

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Sand, surf and sea monsters: The Del-Aires rock “The Horror of Party Beach” (1964). © 20th Century Fox

Thus, the drive-in market — specifically targeted at teens — was up and running.

Big movie stars? Who needs ’em?

Independent movie companies, chiefly American International Pictures (AIP), instead garnered box office with sensational titles like “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “Invasion of the Saucer Men” (both 1957). For drive-in movies, the focus was on genre, not star power, and the rejuvenated monster genre was rid1958 ing high. Increasingly, teenagers were cast as the stars of these movies. (It was a win-win for AIP, enhancing teen relatability as it shrank payroll.) And what kind of music did teens like to listen to? Thus, dipso facto, rock ’n’ roll songs began to pop up in monster movies.

“I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” which ignited the whole teen monster trend, interpolated rock ’n’ roll out of the box. Ken Miller — as a pal of Michael Landon’s title terror — sang “Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe” (“I wanna girl with a lotta dough”), perhaps the earliest example of a rock ’n’ monsters coupling. Miller’s voice has a pleasant ring, but his singing is incessantly behind the beat. He explained why in 2002.

“I got to sing a little song there, which was unfortunately out of sync,” Miller told me with a laugh. “That’s what happens when you’re doing a film that doesn’t have a big budget. They never did put it in sync.”

In “Blood of Dracula” (1957), Jerry Blaine sings “Puppy Love” (not to be

1965

confused with the later Donny Osmond song) as one of the up-to-no-good boys who crash a party at an all-girl boarding school. In “Earth vs. the Spider” (1958), a giant spider frozen in a state of suspended animation is roused by ... a blaring rock combo. In “How to Make a Monster” (1958), John Ashley plays himself (as if, ha-ha, he is a celebrity outside of AIP movies) singing “You’ve Got to Have Ee-Ooo” (it sounds like a fungus) surrounded by gyrating dancing girls. Ashley is also on hand in “Frankenstein’s Daughter” (1958), but it is Harold Lloyd Jr., son of the silent-era comic, who belts out the rockers “Special Date” (“at 10 o’clock / we’ll start to rock”) and “Daddy-Bird,” backed by Page Cavanaugh and His Trio.

This happens at the pool party of Ashley’s love interest, Sandra Knight — the first, and only, Mrs. Jack Nicholson. In “The Giant Gila Monster” (1959), Don Simpson sings rockabilly as a misunderstood teenage mechanic with a hidden talent. The poster boasts “rock & roll hits” such as “The Gila Monster Crawl.” Um, hits?

1962 AH, BUT THESE FILMS MERELY presented rock ’n’ roll songs within monster movies — as opposed to actually blending the genres.

In the movies, that profane collusion occurred with the opening theme from “Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow” (1959). The instrumental theme by Ronald Stein is, squarely, horror-rock — squeaky saxophone one moment, eerie strains the next.

Meanwhile, in real life, the genre-blending had already occurred. “Dinner With Drac” by John

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Zacherle was released by Cameo Parkway on March 10, 1958, and went to #6. A sample lyric: “A dinner was served for three / at Dracula’s house by the sea / the hors d’oeuvres were fine, but I choked on my wine / when I learned that the main course was me!” (Cole Porter, it ain’t.) Sheb Wooley’s silly “Purple People Eater,” if you wish to count it, was released by MGM on June 2, 1958, and went to #1.

Sample lyric: “Well I saw the thing comin’ out of the sky / It had the one long horn, one big eye.” Oy. “Ghost of Dragstrip But the most enduring monster hit by far came along on Aug. 25, 1962, when Bobby (Boris) Pickett Hollow” and “The released “Monster Mash” (to which Darlene Love conGiant Gila Monster” tributed backing vocals, by the by). As “Monster (both 1959) mixed Mash” shot up the charts to #1, it seemed as if the monsters, rock ’n’ whole world had become officially monster-crazy. roll, hot rods and Media marketeers hate a vacuum. If a novelty song pretty girls. What about monsters tops the charts, then power up the lab, more do you want?

Ygor. More are guaranteed to follow. Bill © American International Buchanan, a songPictures; © Hollywood Pictures Corporation writer-producer who was no stranger to novelty songs, jumped in with “The Night Before Halloween,” which was released by United Artists on Oct. 11, 1962. The song was a rather shameless ripoff of Pickett’s hit; Buchanan imitates Karloff, and actually references “the Mash” as a dance that monsters do. Buchanan imitates Bela Lugosi for the flip-side, “Beware,” which has cool sax and female backing vocals. Sample lyric: “Have you ever thought your boyfriend / might be a teenage ghoul?” Ouch.

Pickett’s sophomore effort was “Monsters’ Holiday,” a Christmas-themed novelty song released on Dec. 12, 1962. It peaked at #30, and was Pickett’s second and final Top 40 hit (not counting a 1973 reissue of “Monster Mash”).

Showing monsters some Love We rocked out to Darlene Love’s glorious pipes on such ’60s treasures as “He’s a Rebel” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

But Love distinguished herself as a sought-after background vocalist with the Blossoms, three California girls whose talents were utilized by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and their capricious mentor, Phil Spector. The Blossoms sang, often uncredited, on many a hit, including “Monster Mash.”

“That was in the heyday, when we would record with any and everybody who wanted to use the Blossoms,” Love told me in 2014.

What did she remember about the “Monster Mash” recording session?

Said the singer: “Back in those days, we did everything at the same time —

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the music, the background, the singing — because we only had ‘mono’ (non-stereo).

“Singing that song was fun, because we had to learn it before we recorded it. It was done in, oh, maybe five or six takes.

Back in those days, we did it so quickly.”

Had Love noticed that “Monster Mash” is played faithfully on a certain date?

“Oh, I did,” the singer said with a laugh. “If we forgot we did it, we were reminded on Halloween. Even riding around town, it would be on the radio or every place you’d go on Halloween. If it came on in the elevator, I’d say, ‘Hey, guys, there I am, singing “Monster Mash”!’ ”

Darlene Love

The Standells (it says so right on their kick drum) rocked 1313 Mockingbird Lane in a 1965 episode of “The Munsters.” Herman (above) approved. Below: Ted Cassidy’s “The Lurch.”

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; “The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions

Sample lyric: “They were making a list and checking it twice / Frankenstein wanted a shiny new trike.” Oof. The Wolf Man himself, Lon Chaney Jr., even got in on the act, cutting a version of “Monsters’ Holiday,” which was released by Tower in 1965. Boy, is it culture shock to see a 45-RPM record with the credit “Lon Chaney” on it. The song sounds like Chaney did it in one take, and he doesn’t exactly sound sober. Alas, Chaney didn’t pierce the Top 40. The flip-side: “Yule-Tide Jerk.”

There were others, each more insufferable than the last. For the most part, the novelty monster-rock songs are pretty terrible, except for Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” which faithfully, and deservedly, gets played every Halloween at parties, taverns and on radio . . . and then gets put away for the next 364 days.

MUSIC WAS CHANGING; BILL HALEY AND ELVIS gave way to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Monster movies reflected this ... and still sometimes put rock ’n’ roll songs on their soundtracks. At least, some ironic monster movies did.

Such as the low-budget, but surprisingly clever, beach-movie parody “The Horror at Party Beach” (1964). The Del-Aires, a surf-rock quartet, wear striped shirts stolen from the Beach Boys.

One of them looks like Ernie from “My Three Sons.” They rock the beach until the trampy girl who cavorted with the bikers gets eaten by a mutated fish monster, ending all fun in the sun.

Chaney Jr. rapped the lyrics for the opening theme of Jack Hill’s sick indie “Spider Baby” (1967), which married a garage-rock riff with forboding music. It was composed by ...

Ronald Stein.

In TV land, the Standells rocked 1313 Mockingbird Lane while playing themselves on “The Munsters,” in Episode 26 of Season 1 (“Far Out Munster”). It aired on March 16, 1965, so Beatlemania was in full swing. The very Californian Standells did everything possible to remind you of the very British Beatles.

They played two songs, “Come On and Ringo”

(with lots of “yeahs”) and a cover of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” that did not have John, Paul, George and Ringo shaking in their Beatle boots.

In the plot, the Munsters rent their house to the band, and return to find a regular hootenanny going on. Says a beatnik who spots Herman: “Did you see the hair-do on the tall one? It’s the greatest thing since Carl Sandburg!”

At first, the adult Munsters don’t dig the Standells, but little Eddie is hip. “Hey, Dad,” Eddie squeaks, “those neat guys are the Standells!” Herman finally admits: “They are rather razzmatazz.

You know, they’re almost as good as Kate Smith.”

Soon after, the Munsters’ rivals, “The Addams Family,” did a bit of rockin’ and rollin’ of their own. In Episode 33 of Season 1, “Lurch the Teen Idol” (airdate: May 14, 1965), the Addams’ but­ and ler (Ted Cassidy) grunts “Go, go, baby!” at his harpsichord — scores a hit record. In real life, Cassidy put out a novelty single on Capitol Records, “The Lurch,” and performed it on TV’s “Shindig” while dancing, Lurch style, with teenaged girls. It’s every bit as wince-worthy as it sounds.

“The Lurch” — ­ insipid spoken-word mixed with okay contemporary pop — is excruciating to listen to. And yet, it brings a smile to your face. Those demon children, rock ’n’ roll and monsters, still couldn’t get enough of each other.

What did it all mean? Where did it all lead? I have a zany theory. Would there have been Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Rob Zombie or death metal without “Dinner With Drac” and “Monster Mash”? Eh, probably.

But all of these acts have acknowledged the influence horror films had on their art.

(Black Sabbath named itself after a Boris Karloff movie, fer cryin’ out loud.)

I believe you can draw a line from those early monster-rock pioneers, however silly, to their wild-maned, leather-clad, studsbedecked descendants. You’ve gotta slither before you can stalk.

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‘Mash’ up How Bobby Pickett’s Boris Karloff impression led to a #1 hit record

THE WATUSI. THE FRUG. THE MASHED POTATO. THE TWIST. All of these dances got teens gyrating in the 1950s and ’60s. But one had them stomping like Frankenstein and flailing like the Wolf Man: the Monster Mash.

Bobby (Boris) Pickett scored overnight success with his novelty single “Monster Mash,” which went to #1 in 1962, charted for 14 weeks, and is still played every Halloween.

For a song that reached such heights, it had humble beginnings.

“Monster Mash” sprang from Pickett’s impression of “Frankenstein” star Boris Karloff.

The legend goes that one night, while Pickett’s band was playing the doo-wop song “Little Darling” (a 1958 hit for the Diamonds), the singer launched into an impromptu impersonation of Karloff, which fit perfectly the spoken-word break in the middle of the song (“My darling / I need you / to call my own / and never do wrong ...”).

I spoke with Los Angeles native Pickett (1938-2007) via telephone in 2005.

Q: It wouldn’t be Halloween without hearing “Monster Mash” on the radio. Do people tell you what the song means to them?

PICKETT: Well, I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I’ve heard people have used it as their wedding song, getting married on Halloween and stuff. People who made love for the first time in the back seat of a Chevrolet when it was playing on the radio. All kinds of stuff.

Q: Certainly, when you first recorded the song, nobody knew it would be remembered all these years later.

PICKETT: Absolutely not (laughs).

Q: How did the song come together? What were your hopes for it?

Top: Bobby (Boris) Pickett in 1962.

Above: Boris Karloff in the 1958 stinker “Frankenstein 1970.” © Allied Artists

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PICKETT: I didn’t have any hopes for it at all.

I thought a few Boris Karloff freaks would get a kick out of it, and some of my demented family and friends. Lenny Capizzi and I sang together in his group, the Cordials. I used to do a Boris Karloff impression. I loved to do it since I was 7 years old. One night after a set, he said, “You know, we ought to do a novelty record with that voice.” About a year later, I called him. I said, “Let’s get together and work on that idea you suggested.” The song wrote itself in about an hour.

We put it on an eight-track tape recorder.

Q: Did you shop it around a lot?

PICKETT: We took it to the only person we knew in the music business: Gary Paxton, who had sung “Alley Oop” as the Hollywood Argyles. He was now a producer. He listened to it. He said, “This is a #1 record. We’ll record it on Saturday. I’ll get my friend Leon Russell to play piano.” Now, Leon showed up late for the session, so he only played on the B-side, “Monsters’ Mash Party.”

But Gary took it around to four major labels. They all turned him down. One of the labels that turned him down was London Records. So he put it on his own label, Garpax. Gary knew disc jockeys up and down the coast of California and in Central California, and they all started playing it.

Whenever it got played, the phones lit up.

And then London Records called up and said, “Oops, we made a mistake. We want to make a deal.” And in eight weeks, it was #1. The rest is history.

Q: What was going on in the world when “Monster Mash” hit?

PICKETT: Well, it became a hit in the week of the Cuban missile crisis. That was the week it reached #1. It was the comic relief for trouble in the world.

Q: How did your life change?

Pickett gets in a horrific state of mind in these publicity photos, dressed as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Hunchback. © Garpix PICKETT: It just changed my life drastically. I suddenly got blown up with myself. I became the big spender who always picked up the tab and chased girls all over town. A playboy. I thought I was something really important. It destroyed a couple of friendships along the way (laughs). But ultimately, I saw the light and mended all wounds and went on with my life. I worked as an actor on television and obscure, lowbudget films and theater. I’ve had a great time.

Q: I imagine you were on “Shindig” or “Hullabaloo” or “American Bandstand” or “Ed Sullivan.”

PICKETT: Well, I was working a lot.

I was traveling a lot. I was meeting a lot of people. I was meeting a lot of beautiful girls. That was exciting (laughs).

Q: Were you on any of those programs I just mentioned?

PICKETT: I did “The Steve Allen Show,” which was a big deal for me, because I was always a Steve Allen fan.

Q: At the time “Monster Mash” became a hit, there was a Monster Craze going on in America. There were models kits and toys and TV series like “The Munsters” and “The Addams Family” . . .

PICKETT: Yeah. That all came after “Monster Mash.” I believe “Monster Mash” had an influence on it.

Q: Even Lon Chaney Jr. got into the act.

PICKETT: That was my original record, which was “Monsters’ Holiday.” He covered it because the guy who wrote it (Charles Underwood) knew him and got him to do a version.

Q: Were you a fan of Boris Karloff? Were you a monster-movie guy?

PICKETT: Yes. That’s how I got into it. My father used to manage movie theaters in Somerville, Massachusetts. I used to spend my entire youth watching these horror films that he would run in the theater from time to time. I was attracted to it, the whole idea of monsters. That’s why people are always attracted to that. About 120 Frankenstein movies have been made, at least.

Q: Did you ever meet Mr. Karloff?

PICKETT: I never met Mr. Karloff, but I’m in touch with his daughter Sara, who told me that he loved the record but didn’t think it sounded a bit like him (laughs).

Q: Do you still love the song, or are you tired of it?

PICKETT: I wouldn’t be able to do it every Halloween if I didn’t love it.

Q: Hey, Paul McCartney still does “Yesterday.”

PICKETT: Well, to be compared with Paul McCartney is an honor.

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Building model citizens

“SHOCK!” BROUGHT MONSTERS TO TELEVISION. FAMOUS MONSTERS of Filmland brought them to the printed page. But young monster fans yearned for something more tangible. And marketeers hadn’t yet caught wise to this need.

So when, in 1960, the Aurora Plastics Corporation of West Hempstead, Long Island — manufacturers of car and airplane model kits since 1952 — conducted its first-ever survey to determine what new kits might attract customers, the answer surprised them: monsters.

That old bugaboo, fear of parental outrage, gave Aurora pause. The story, whether veracious or embellished over time, goes that the company consulted psychologists on the issue, and said psychologists suggested monster models might even be a healthy thing for kids.

Aurora’s concerns weren’t about backlash alone. There was a substantial financial investOpposite: The cover of Mad #89 ment to consider as well.

(1964). Above: A 1962 ad. Right: Bill Bruegman, author of “Aurora History and Aurora’s first monster kit (1961).

Price Guide,” recalls speaking with Aurora exec© Universal Studios; © EC Publications; © utives about this period. As Bruegman told me in Warren Publishing; © Aurora Plastics Corp. a 2014 email: “The gist of it was, the tooling for these kits was expensive and involved a lot of stages involving other companies, etc., and they wanted to make sure it was worth the initial overhead. The biggest psychological concern, of course, revolved around how the children were going to react to the Creature, King Kong and Godzilla — the naked monsters.”

Hmmm ... hadn’t thought of that one. (Well, Frankenstein, at least, wore pants.)

Famous Monsters publisher James Warren said he, too, pushed the idea to Aurora.

“I sat down with them and they saw what I was doing in the magazine,” Warren said. “I told them that if they would come out with model kits of Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, the Mummy, the Creature From the Black Lagoon — these would be phenomenal.

They were skeptical. They looked at me like I was crazy, because they didn’t know what I

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knew. Because I knew what was out there. I knew my customers.

“Subsequently, I got a license from Universal to do this, and I gave (Aurora) their first big order. I said, ‘I guarantee you this is going to work. If not, I will buy up all the kits that you have not sold.’ That took guts, because I didn’t have the money to do that.”

Aurora put out its first monster kit, Frankenstein, in 1961. Artist James Bama, then a paperback cover specialist, painted the box art.

The sculpture of the figure — which favored Boris Karloff’s rendition of the monster (though Bama’s art was more Glenn Strange-y) — was true to Aurora’s exacting standards. The cellophane wrapping made you wonder all the harder what lay within the box.

The Frankenstein kit, which generally sold for 99 cents, was an instant sensation. At the Aurora factory, overtime and extra molds were required to keep up with the demand.

“Of course, the Aurora thing set it off in the toy business,” Warren said. “That was followed by all the other toy manufacturers who brought out monster items.”

More monster kits followed: Dracula and the Wolf Man in 1962; the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy and the Creature From the Black Lagoon in 1963; the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dr. Jekyll “as” Mr. Hyde, King Kong and Godzilla in 1964 (the giant monsters were larger sets, at 50 cents more apiece); the Bride of Frankenstein and the Witch in 1965; and the Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré (an FM original) in 1966.

A wonky trend-within-a-trend during the Monster Craze blended monsters with hot rods. Aurora tapped into this spinoff fad with its monster-car line beginning in 1964: Frankenstein’s Flivver, Dracula’s Dragster, Wolf Man’s Wagon, the Mummy’s Chariot, King Kong’s Thronester and Godzilla’s Go-Cart. The kits were humorous — Dracula’s head was comically enlarged, Frankenstein had a yo-yo, etc.

— while the facial sculptures recalled the earlier kits.

But superb sculpting was the key to Aurora’s genius. The lifelike kits are a feat of artistry and engineering. (One such sculptor was Ray Meyers, according to Cortlandt Hull and Dennis Vincent’s 2010 documentary “The Aurora Monsters.”)

Bruegman told me of two unnamed sculptors in a 2014 email: “I do know for certain that it was two Italian brothers, very much the consummate old-world craftsmen. They also did the 6-inch Marx monster figures for Louis Marx. Wherever there was extraordinary detail . . . it was usually the work of those two brothers.”

FOR WE PINT-SIZED CONSUMERS, THE PAINTING and glueing of monster models yielded rewards beyond merely having something cool to put on your bedroom shelf.

There were tactile and olfactory sensations involved. The rustle of the cellophane as you opened the box ... the smell of the paint and glue (thankfully, we didn’t enjoy this too much) ... the small thrill of mixing a custom color (Phantom green! Mummy gray! Blood red!) ... the sense of artistry felt in applying paint with brush ... the patience-building exercise of holding parts together as the glue dried ...

No further proof of the popularity of Aurora’s monster model kits was needed than the cover of Mad magazine #89 in 1964. In a painting by Norman Mingo, the Frankenstein monster is depicted putting together a model of ... Mad mascot Alfred E. Neuman.

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The big three — Dracula, Wolf Man, Frankenstein — were immortalized in Aurora model kits. © Universal Studios; photos by Mark Voger

Art outside the box Bama imbued his monsters with an eerie glow

Creepy art for the Mummy, Dr. Jekyll “as” Mr. Hyde (heavily referencing Fredric March), the Hunchback of Notre Dame (ditto, Anthony Quinn), the Creature and the Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré. Opposite: Bama Wolf Man box art — talk about glow. © Universal Studios; “Castel-Maré” © Warren Publishing

HE IS CONSIDERED THE GREAT CHRONICLER OF Q: How were you selected to illustrate the model kit boxes? the American West, an artist on a par with Norman Rockwell and BAMA: I was at Cooper Studio in New York. It was a big place.

Andrew Wyeth.

They had 45 artists and seven salesman. When the jobs would But James Bama has a skeleton in his closet. come in, the salesmen would try to match up the And a vampire. And a werewolf. And a mummy. most appropriate artist with the job. So I got the And a giant monkey . . .

Aurora job. Now, Aurora never thought monsters The artist, born in New York City in 1926, is laudwould sell. There was a guy there who would ed for his breathtaking canvases depicting prairie life. always say, “Let’s try monsters.” They had just put But monster fans will always think of Bama as the out a series on disasters — bombed-out buildings guy who painted the unforgettable, shudder-inducing and things like that. Didn’t sell. So finally, they box art for the Aurora Plastics Corporation’s monster said, “Okay, we’ll try monsters.” For some reason, model kits. they went for it. I did the first one, which was Bama brought the movie monsters to life, using Frankenstein, and they brought it to a convention. garish colors to imbue them with an eerie glow. His No one at the convention liked the idea, but some backgrounds — crumbling castles, spooky forests, of them had kids there, and the kids went nuts for stormy skies — placed the monsters in a tangible it. The kids loved it. netherworld. Bama’s box paintings were, themselves, Photo courtesy of James Bama something like little movies.

Q: What was the response when the first kit was As renowned as Bama is in the art world, these earlier contrireleased to stores? butions to popular culture, not to mention his memorable Doc BAMA: They sold a million of the Frankenstein models. They folSavage paperback covers, still come back to haunt him. lowed it up with Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Hunchback of Notre “The world will come to an end,” the artist told me in 2010, Dame. I did 22 of the boxes. It really got bad after a while. The art “but the monster models and Doc Savage will still be around.” director would sneak them into my office, they were so awful.

Right on.

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At first, Bama used movie stills as references, until parents complained his art didn’t reflect the actual product within the box. Oddly, for his Phantom box art, Bama used James Cagney in 1957’s “Man of 1000 Faces” (who was playing Lon Chaney Sr. playing the Phantom) rather than Chaney himself. Just as oddly, it worked. © Universal Studios; photo is “flopped” (mirror-imaged) for comparison to box art

They would have the monsters riding through the cemetery in hot rods, drinking blood. They were terrible. I finally quit after 22 of them. But they’re still not dead!

Q: Why do you think they were so popular?

BAMA: Well, I was the first one to do the monsters in color, other than what you saw on the movie posters. The movies were all in black-and-white, and so were the stills from the movies. Around 1958, they started showing all of those movies on television, in black-and-white, of course. So these kids had never seen these monsters in color until my box art for Aurora showed up. It was new to them.

Q: Compared to the more subtle colors of your later Western paintings, the colors on your Aurora boxes are really vibrant and garish.

BAMA: That was for reproduction. They were garish because that’s what they wanted for the monsters. They didn’t want subtlety for Frankenstein and Dracula. So I did them with a broader palette.

Q: I wasn’t complaining.

BAMA: Oh, of course not. This was what was appropriate. Like I said, I did science fiction and everything else. And I knew what would sell.

Q: What did you use for references?

BAMA: Well, that was in the stills. There was a place called Culver Pictures in New York which had a huge file of movie stills. I knew some people there. They had all of these monster movie stills.

Those stills were dramatically lit.

BAMA: They were done from movie stills. I made up the backgrounds.

Q: Some of your Aurora paintings are clearly likenesses of the actors. Your Dracula is clearly Bela Lugosi.

Q: Were you provided with model kits as references?

BAMA: Yes. For the Hunchback, they wanted me to do Anthony Quinn. Not Charles Laughton, not Lon Chaney Sr., but Anthony Quinn, which I’d never seen.

BAMA: Not at first. After a while, the parents started complaining that the box art didn’t look like the models. So eventually, they did provide me with photos of the kits. The Mummy was the first one that I did of the kit, specifically of the kit. I remember I did one of The Guillotine, which showed a guy getting his head chopped off.

The parents complained that it was too gruesome, so that one was discontinued.

Q: Could you talk about the dramatic lighting you used on the boxes? I love the way Dracula and the Wolf Man are lit from underneath.

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Q: But your Wolf Man has original elements. He’s wearing an 18th-century shirt with puffy sleeves and a cummerbund . . .

BAMA: That’s Lon Chaney Jr. The Wolf Man I did was Lon Chaney Jr. Q: You rattled off those names — Laughton, Chaneys Sr. and Jr. — pretty knowledgeably. Are you a fan of the monster movies?

BAMA: Oh, yes. I love them. I have a collection of 3,000 movies. I

The clearest example of Bama’s use of a movie still was his Dracula box art, which mirrored a publicity photo of Bela Lugosi from “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948). Again, it seems odd that Bama didn’t go with a still from the 1931 “Dracula” — and yet again, Bama’s instincts were spot-on. © Universal Studios; box photo by Kathy Voglesong

row for an hour and a half every night, and I’ll just watch movies. I’ll watch the horror movies in sequence, or Sherlock Holmes movies or whatever I’m in the mood for.

Q: Did you see your box art in stores at the time of release?

BAMA: I never saw them. I was 35 years old at the time, and I wasn’t interested in kids’ model kits. They weren’t offered to me, and I didn’t ask for them. I was 82 before I saw them! But almost everyone I know who is in their 50s says to me, “I put together those monster models when I was a kid.” So it was tremendous exposure. But I can’t escape it. For all of the beautiful Western paintings I’ve done since 1968, I’m better known for the monster kits and Doc Savage. I did 62 Doc Savage covers. That’s a lot of covers. I told my wife (Lynn), “The world will come to an end, but the monster models will still be around.” You know, my wife posed for one of my Aurora jobs. That was her, posing for The Witch.

Q: Was she prettier than The Witch?

BAMA: A little bit. I always thought of her as an AnnMargret, Lee Remick type. She was gorgeous. She still is.

As I get older, my eyes get weaker, so she still looks beautiful to me.

Then there was Aurora Plastics Corporation’s infamous guillotine model kit.

Aurora had been enjoying great success with its model kits based on movie monsters, themselves often based on classic literature. Its Hunchback of Notre Dame set depicted a scene of outright torture — a chained Quasimodo with whip marks on his exposed back — but no one batted an eye. After all, the Hunchback was a character from classic fiction (Victor Hugo, yo!) and the kit was based on a relatively recent Hollywood hit.

Buoyed by its monstrous success, Aurora brought out a decidedly gruesome kit: a working guillotine. “Victim loses his head!

Really works!” proclaimed one ad.

Added another: “Harmless fun!”

The kit worked like this: The blade came down; the head of the bound man was “cut off”; it landed in the basket. Kids across America painted blood stains on the kit’s blade, head and basket with generous dabs of Testors red enamel.

A colleague of mine built the kit, way back when. Said he of the reliability of the guillotine’s function: “It worked fine except that I covered and re-covered that poor little man’s head in so much red paint, it did occasionally stick.”

“Harmless fun!” proclaimed a 1965 ad for Aurora’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine model kit. Parents begged to differ.

Photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Disturbing as the guillotine kit was, Aurora seemed to think it had an “out.” The company hedged its bet by naming the kit “The Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors Guillotine.” In other words, this kit didn’t depict an actual beheading — it was a depiction of a depiction.

And that depiction was from a famous attraction at a respected wax museum. Madame Tussaud’s originated in London, you know. And London is a classy place.

It didn’t work. Parents freaked, and Aurora discontinued the product.

Not that Aurora exactly dialed down the nightmarish thereafter. The Witch cooked rat stew. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit implied torture of a most insidious kind — a poor soul chained by the neck and ankles to a prison wall, defenseless against non-human visitors (there’s a nearby snake and a rat), who apparently starved to death over a lengthy period.

Compared to that, a beheading sounds downright merciful.

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Bama’s box art for The Witch (for which his wife posed) and Aurora’s Witch kit; the Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Maré kit.

The Witch box photo by Kathy Voglesong; Witch kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights; Forgotten Prisoner kit photo by Mark Voger

Cover your eyes — it’s the naked monsters!

Aurora’s King Kong, Godzilla and Creature From the Black Lagoon model kits.

“King Kong” © RKO Radio Pictures; “Godzilla” © Toho Productions; “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” © Universal Studios; Kong and Godzilla kit photos by Nancy Richmond; Creature kit photo by Mark Voger

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Opposite: The cover for Famous Monsters of Filmland #32 (1965) announced the winners of the magazine’s model-customizing contest. The cover model was built by Lance Herpeck, then of Detroit. © Warren Publishing

Monsters played on the silver screen by Lon Chaneys Sr. and Jr. in model kit form: the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera and the Mummy. © Universal Studios; Phantom and Mummy photos by Mark Voger; Hunchback photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Reel horrors

Castle Films’ “Doom of Dracula” made it possible to watch Boris Karloff remove a stake from Dracula’s heart ... over and over.

“House of Frankenstein” © Universal Studios; photo by Mark Voger

WATCHING A MONSTER MOVIE WHENEVER YOU want? Without consulting your local listings for time and channel?

Without your parents driving you to a theater? Sweet.

In the days before home video made such a luxury so common that it is taken for granted, companies such as Castle Films, Ken Films, Columbia Films and Blackhawk Films brought moving monsters into your very home.

All you had to do was turn down the lights and crank up the projector, and you could watch actual classic monster movies — albeit, versions that were silent and heavily truncated.

The 8-millimeter (and later Super 8) prints were generally 200 feet — about 15 minutes long each, according to the ads. The films could be purchased in department stores or via mail order.

Castle Films is the best remembered company, for two reasons.

First, Castle had a lock on most of the Universal classics, thanks to a decades-old backstage business deal. Castle was founded by Eugene W. “Gene” Castle, a former newsreel cameraman, around

1918, and the company penetrated the home-movie market in the ’30s. In 1947, Castle was gobbled up by a division of Universal Studios, hence Universal’s library was ripe for the picking. Still, it took Castle a long while — 12 more years — to release its first monster movie: “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

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Castle Films virtually cornered the market on the Universal monster movies, thanks to a backstage business deal. © Universal Studios This happened in 1959 — just as the Craze was building steam.

Another reason Castle Films endures in the collective memory of the era’s monster fans: The company’s releases were advertised incessantly in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

In editing full-length features down to 15 minutes, Castle made some creative choices. In “Ghost of Frankenstein” (1942), there’s a sequence in which a courtroom hearing is held to determine the mental condition of the monster, played by Lon Chaney Jr. (Man, is it weird seeing the Frankenstein monster sitting in a courtroom.

Did they swear him in?) Castle edited these scenes together and titled the result “The Trial of Frankenstein.”

The 1944 film “House of Frankenstein” featured three monsters: Dracula (John Carradine), the Wolf Man (Chaney) and Frankenstein (Glenn Strange). Castle compiled the Dracula scenes — notably those between Carradine and Boris Karloff as the mad scientist who unstakes him — titling it “Doom of Dracula.”

Also released by Castle were “Dracula,” “The Invisible Man,” “The Mummy,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “Son of Frankenstein,”

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“Man Made Monster,” “The Wolf Man,” “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,” “The Mummy’s Ghost,” “The Mummy’s Tomb,” “Revenge of the Creature” and “The Creature Walks Among Us.” Movies offered by Ken Films included the Charles Laughton 1939 “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Earth vs. the Spider,” “Rodan the Flying Monster,” “Varan the Unbelievable” and “Planet of the Apes.” Columbia Films offered “The Black Room,” “Curse of the Demon,” “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” “The Giant Claw” and “Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.” Blackhawk Films, which specialized in silent movies, offered Lon Chaney Sr.’s 1923 “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and his 1925 “Phantom of the Opera.”

Fashioning your own movie theater at home paid off in chills and thrills, but this was one expensive hobby. The films cost in the neighborhood of between five and eight bucks apiece — a pricey neighborhood for the Beaver Cleaver generation.

Still, when the room went dark and you heard the clatter of film sprockets rattling through your projector, all was right with the world ... at least for the next 15 minutes or so.

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Taking their final bow SEEING THE DISTINCTIVE, LINED FACE OF GLENN Strange as Frankenstein on toys and in magazines, and then seeing Strange pour drinks on “Gunsmoke,” was oddly comforting.

This was one very cool thing about the Monster Craze: A lot of the monsters were still around. That is, many of the actors who played monsters in the classic movies of the 1930s and ’40s were still among us — and still working.

And they were playing ball. They were, as the expression goes, trading on their reputations. In the process, these old-timers got a little exercise and, not for nothing, a paycheck.

Details from artwork for “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” (1966) with John Carradine, above, and “The Raven” (1963) with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, left.

SWEATY SCARE-MEISTER Lon Chaney Jr. — the only actor in cinematic history to play the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy — was, by the 1960s, kind of a mess. By all accounts, the man had a serious drinking problem. (This is not hard to fathom, to see him onscreen in those days. Chaney looked, well, sweaty.) But the public clamored for him to again play monsters, and Chaney, bless his overtaxed heart, obliged. He is glorious as Simon, creepy manservant of Vincent Price’s reincarnated cultist in Roger Corman’s “The Haunted Palace” (1962). Chaney wears ghoulish makeup — yellowish face, dark around the eyes — though his own physical deterioration contributes as much as anything to his monstrous visage. In Jack Hill’s “Spider Baby” (1968), Chaney plays the antsy caretaker of a weird clan of grown “children” at a moldering homestead. See also “The Alligator People” (1959), “Hillbillies in a Haunted House” (1967) and “Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (1971), in a portrayal that harkens to his Lenny in the 1939 “Of Mice and Men” — if Lenny was in the throes of delirium tremens. Chaney wore Hunchback, Mummy and Wolf Man makeups in a heartwarming 1962 “Route 66” episode with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. He got his rock ’n’ roll on by recording a single, “Monster’s Holiday,” and appearing in two episodes of “The Monkees.”

CADAVEROUS CURMUDGEON

FUNNY FAT MAN

Basil Rathbone starred in only one proper horror film during Hollywood’s golden age, but it was a doozy: “Son of Frankenstein” (1939), in which he played, you guessed it, the son of Frankenstein. But Rathbone frequently glanced the genre in his Sherlock Holmes films. Horror stars appeared in the series (John Carradine, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco), and Holmes “met” monsterific characters like the Creeper (Rondo Hatton) and the Spider Woman (Gale Sondergaard). During the Monster Craze, Rathbone upped his horror filmography — hey, work is work — in such movies as “Tales of Terror” (1962), “The Comedy of Terrors” (1963), “Queen of Blood” (1966), “Ghost in the Invisible Bikini” (1966) and “Hillbillies in a Haunted House” (1967).

By then, Rathbone was rail thin and, truth to tell, looked miserable over his cinematic fate. When Rathbone screams “Ya! Ya! Ya!” at the beach-party kids in “Ghost in the Invisible Bikini,” his bitterness is palpable. But the latent old ham within the actor came to the fore in Jacques Tourneur’s “The Comedy of Terrors,” in which Rathbone spouts Shakespeare in a daze between head-clobberings, and does pratfalls that would make Buster Keaton proud. It’s good physical comedy — not to mention, good Shakespeare-spouting.

Like Rathbone, Peter Lorre didn’t play monsters per se.

But Lorre’s horror filmography in the old days commands respect: “Mad Love” (1935), “Invisible Agent” (1942), “The Boogie Man Will Get You” (1942), “The Beast With Five Fingers” (1946). By the 1960s, Lorre had, shall we say, lost his sinister svelteness.

When he was thereafter cast in horror-related projects, Lorre’s roles were exclusively comical: “Tales of Terror” (1962), “The Raven” (1963), “The Comedy of Terrors” (1963) and the “Route 66” episode with Karloff and Chaney. Carrying European panache and the aura of movies like “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca,” Lorre lent sophistication to the spooky goings-on.

WRINKLED ROGUE If John Carradine did nothing else but play Count Dracula in “House of Frankenstein” (1944) and “House of Dracula” (1945), his standing as a horror star would be assured. But back in the day, Carradine’s horror filmography was offthe-charts in films good and godawful: “Revenge of the Zombies” (1943), “The Invisible Man’s Revenge” (1944), “Voodoo Man” (1944), “Return of the Ape Man” (1945), to name a smattering. In 1966, Carradine did his contemporaries one better by reprising his flagship monster role, albeit in a low-budget stinker by William “One Shot” Beaudine titled — it never gets old — “Billy the Kid vs.

Dracula.” Carradine was a bit long-in-the-tooth to play the Count, which only added to the fun. His ’66 Dracula looks like a joke: baggy eyes, top hat, giant red bow below his neck, Snidely Whiplash mustache. Carradine’s performance is the campiest of his career, which is no faint praise. See also “The Astro-Zombies” (1968), “Horror of the Blood Monsters” (1970) and “Blood of Dracula’s Castle” (1969). He looked like a debauched Dracula in a black top hat and cape on “The Beverly Hillbillies” — as a magician, not a vampire.

BRUTISH BARKEEP Glenn Strange played Frankenstein’s monster in three 1940s films: “House of Frankenstein,” “House of Dracula” and “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

Strange played more monsters in the ’40s, but darn it, not in the ’60s. However, if you needed a Glenn Strange fix, all you had to do was tune into “Gunsmoke,” on which Strange had a recurring (albeit, small) role as Sam the bartender. Even in his red vest, the guy still looked like Frankenstein.

GRANDPA MONSTER “Frankenstein” star Boris Karloff was the busiest of them all. In the 1960s, Karloff was pushing 80 and could barely walk, but he starred in no less than 14 horror or horror-comedy films; hosted the eerie anthology TV series “Thriller” (1960-62); did mucho television, including “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.,” “I Spy,” “The Wild, Wild West” and, believe it, “Shindig”; recorded albums (children’s stories as well as spooky stuff); lent his likeness to comic books and a board game; and voiced animated characters (“Mad Monster Party,” “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas”). Karloff always joked that he wanted to die with his greasepaint on. He very nearly did.

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Get ready for a love-in. In speaking with actors and directors who worked with Boris Karloff in the final decade of his life, you’ll hear the same refrains: He was a consummate professional. He was prepared. He was generous. And he relished the filmmaking process.

CAROL BURNETT

The TV doyenne did comedy with Karloff in front of a studio audience in a 1964 episode of “The Gary Moore Show.”

Karloff played himself. Burnett screamed a lot.

“The thing I remember most was that he was such a gentle person, such a gentleman,” Burnett told me in 2012.

“His whole demeanor was that of niceness and kindness. He didn’t act like some big star coming in. He laughed; he was fun; he knew his lines. He’d been a movie person, and this was a live show, practically. He did beautifully.”

STEFANIE POWERS

Powers played the groovy titular spy in the 1966-67 series “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” Karloff gamely donned drag (including a dreadful bouffant hairdo) as the titular baddie in the 1966 episode “The Mother Muffin Affair.”

Powers learned about Karloff’s casting one morning just before entering the makeup department.

“I walked into makeup and there were, you know, lots of chairs and people with sheets over them,” Powers told me in 2011. “I walked in and said, ‘Good morning, everybody!’ I said, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got Boris Karloff! This is fantastic!

He used to scare me when I was a kid!’ I was so thrilled.

“Suddenly, this body moves in this chair. He just turns around. He’s in full makeup with the hair and all of that as Mother Muffin. He turns around and says” — Powers imitated Karloff here — “ ‘Hello, my dear.’ That’s how I met Boris Karloff. He was charming, the most lovely man. He could not have been more giving.”

BILL COSBY

As a star of the breezy 1965-68 espionage series “I Spy,” monster-movie fan Cosby got to work with an idol of his when Karloff guest-starred on a 1967 episode shot in Spain. During his first meeting with Cosby and co-star Robert Culp, Karloff made a subtle reference to his own unease with ad-libbing (which was Cosby and Culp’s stock-in-trade on the show).

Recalled Cosby in 2014: “We shook hands, and he looked at us and he said with that slight lisp he had, ‘I’ve watched you two boys, and when you stop talking, I’ll say my words.’ ” One afternoon after shooting had wrapped, Cosby was in the back seat of a car next to Culp ... and directly behind Karloff.

“We start to drive, and I’m in the back seat behind Boris Karloff,” Cosby said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “who scared us so bad that we had a horrible time when I was in the projects (in Philadelphia) coming home at night under the Ninth Street Bridge. I’m looking at him, and he has his topcoat just over his shoulders. As we’re turning on this road, it’s getting dark, and the car rolls ever so slightly, and Boris is up there, and his head is going left to right, left to right.”

By now, Cosby was whispering so softly, he was barely audible. He continued: “And I start to get a feeling as I’m looking at the back of his head, that if this man turns around and makes a face, I will scream.

“I say to Bob, ‘If he turns around and has a look, you gotta help me beat him up.’ Bob said he had the same feeling.”

Boris Karloff smiles malevolently in Roger Corman’s “The Terror.” Opposite: Karloff dons the old flattop for “Route 66.”

“The Terror” © American International Pictures; “Route 66” © Screen Gems

ROGER CORMAN

Corman, the so-called “King of the Bs,” directed Karloff in two 1963 films, “The Raven” (a horror comedy with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and a young Jack Nicholson) and “The Terror” (a horror quickie with Nicholson).

“He was a far better actor than most people realized, because he was identified so much with horror films,” Corman told me in 1993.

“I got along with him very well.”

With one caveat. Added Corman: “It’s just that he — maybe having to do with his age or his classical training — came in knowing his lines perfectly. And it was difficult for him to make an adjustment when Peter would start to ad-lib or improvise. And I loved some of the things Peter was doing. But Boris tried, and it worked well. I have nothing but good things to say about him.”

JACK HILL

In 1968, Hill wrote and directed English-language scenes for a quartet of Mexican horror films that proved to be Karloff’s last. Hill shot Karloff with the Mexican cast at a small Los Angeles soundstage; the movies were finished in Mexico. The way Hill remembers it, Karloff was old, sick, frail ... and happy to be working.

“He thought it was fun. He thought it was great,” Hill told me in 1998. “He loved all of the scripts. It gave him a chance to play four different characters back-to-back over a four-week shoot. He had a great time with it.”

As for Karloff’s condition on these, his final films: “He had emphysema, and he had to have oxygen with him all the time. He’d be in his wheelchair, and when it was time for him to do his scene, he would get up and he would do his action, and then go back and sit down and breath his oxygen again. It was really quite pathetic, but I didn’t think of it that way at the time, because he was so goodspirited. Everybody was really proud of him.

“He liked to work. It got his mind off his problems. He knew that he wasn’t going to last much longer. In fact, the way he put it to me, he said, ‘I want to go out in harness.’ ”

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Dell published comic book adaptations of “Mad Monster Party” (1967), above left, and “Die, Monster, Die!” (1965), above. At far left is the Karloffian puppet from “Mad Monster Party” and a Dell panel depicting same. Below: Karloff visits the DC Universe as the host of “Thriller” surreptitiously assists the Daily Planet cub reporter in DC Comics’ Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #64 (1962). © Dell Publishing Co.; Curt Swan art © DC Comics Inc.

Karloff continued to host Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery for 11 years after his death, making it the spookiest comic book ever. © The estate of Boris Karloff

From top: Game Gems’ Boris Karloff’s Monster Game” (1965); Belmont’s paperback “Tales of the Frightened” (1963); Decca’s album “An Evening With Boris Karloff and His Friends” (1967). Below: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (1966). © Dr. Seuss Enterprises IN THE EARLY 1930S, BORIS KARLOFF graduated from a guy who drove a cement truck between movie gigs to a bona fide movie star with a nice spread in Coldwater Canyon. This status bump was courtesy of his unforgettable portrayal of the monster in James Whale’s 1931 “Frankenstein,” which the actor imbued with childish innocence, painful longing and rage.

Karloff later referred to the monster as “my best friend and benefactor.” For Karloff, the point wasn’t that he was typecast as a result of “Frankenstein” . . . the point was, he was working.

Three decades later, Karloff found himself in another role: as Hollywood’s elder statesman of horror. Despite his declining mobility — he sometimes worked in a wheelchair — Karloff was only too happy to again play the bogeyman.

There he was, joking about “monsters with long hair” on “Shindig” . . . singing in Rankin-Bass animation . . . voicing the albums “Tales of the Frightened,” “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” and “An Evening With Boris Karloff and His Friends” . . . meeting the beach party gang in “Bikini Beach” (1964) and “Ghost in the Invisible

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Bikini” (1966) . . . among more serious work. Karloff went to dark places in Mario Bava’s “Black Sabbath” (1964), as a vampire who preys on his own family; Michael Reeves’ “The Sorcerers” (1967), as a destitute senior adrift in a sea of mod youth; and Peter Bogdanovich’s “Targets” (1968), as a horror movie star who retires because his movies can’t compete with the violent contemporary world.

His two seasons hosting “Thriller” upped the actor’s visibility. A genteel, suited Karloff introduced episodes amid snappy jagged-line graphics and a jazzy theme with shrill horns and frantic bongos. “Thriller” provided work for Karloff’s fellow old-school horror stars like Henry Daniell (who Karloff taunted in “The Body Snatcher”), John Carradine (from whose heart Karloff extracted a wooden stake in “House of Frankenstein”) and Otto Kruger (who faced the title she-fiend in “Dracula’s Daughter”).

And Karloff finally eclipsed “Frankenstein,” though he didn’t realize it at the time. By narrating the 1966 TV special “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grince Stole Christmas” (and providing the voice of the Grinch), Karloff found a place in the hearts of children of all ages, for the ages.

Forry’s farewell to the master The first of many Karloff bios, Forrest J Ackerman’s “Boris Karloff: The Frankenscience Monster” is as ragtag as its title is puzzling. Still, “Forry” gets huge points for bringing out his 192-page paperback tribute within months of the actor’s Feb. 2, 1969, death. Ackerman cranked out “Frankenscience” in 14 days by playing editor rather than writer. He repurposed material from magazines (including a 1932 issue of Movie Classic), and mixed it with remembrances by Christopher Lee, Elsa Lanchester, Vincent Price, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Lang and Alex Gordon. (Ackerman later admitted he ghost-wrote Lon Chaney Jr.’s remembrance at Chaney’s request.) Not surprisingly, Ackerman’s Karloff filmography has stood the test of time. The cover portrait is by Verne Tossey, a prolific paperback cover artist who specialized in Westerns and sexy ladies. © 1969 Ace Publishing Corp.; art photographed by Kathy Voglesong

King Kong trampled New York. Godzilla blasted Tokyo. Quasimodo poured molten lead on Frenchmen. But let a Martian kill one dog, and there’ll be hell to pay.

This axiom was proven when the Topps Company released its infamous “Mars Attacks” trading card set of 1962, which presented blood ’n’ guts, torture, mass slaughter, giant bugs — even leering sexual suggestion. The Martian shown groping a terrified blonde in Card #21, “Prize Captive,” looks like he’s enjoying himself a bit too much.

But Card #36, “Destroying a Dog,” was the final straw. It depicted a Martian blasting a famil pooch with a ray gun as a boy looks on in horror. Such was the outrage in testmarket areas over the series’ visceral — albeit, beautifully painted — images of gore, panic and sexy babes, that Topps yanked the series just as national distribution was imminent.

The controversial 55-card set was conceived, co-plotted and written by Len

Above: Card #36, “Destroying a Dog.” The mailbox is a homey touch. Opposite: Card #21, “Prize Captive.” Um, do Martians like Earth girls that way?

“Mars Attacks” © the Topps Company

Brown, a longtime Topps employee who believed the set’s abrupt cancellation sealed its legend.

“It just had a short life,” Brown told me in 1996, “which, I suppose, added to the mystique. They were always hard to get. The people who saw them, talked about them.”

How did “Mars Attacks” come about? Brown, a Brooklyn native born in 1941, explained that Topps earlier released “Civil War News,” a tradingcard set that was wildly popular with the Beaver Cleaver generation. Was this due to kids’ abiding interest in American history?

Hardly. The artwork for “Civil War News” was downright gruesome. (The card titled “Death at Sea,” depicting an 1862 contest off the coast of Norfolk, is like something out of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie.)

“We were trying to brainstorm another (non-sport) card set,” Brown recalled. “In those days, we didn’t put too many out.”

He and Woody Gelman, Topps’ president, briefly considered a World War II set. But Brown had another idea.

“I was a big fan and collector of the

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EC Comics of the ’50s,” he said. “They did a great line of horror “The pulps influenced us, as well as every movie we ever and science fiction. As a kid, I was just crazy about them, and I saw,” Brown said. “When we started trying to conceptualize the still had my collection.” story, we would actually think, ‘Okay, what else have the movies So enamored was Brown of EC Comics that he hired an EC done? Giant insects! Let’s put giant insects in the set! How about artist, Wally Wood, for some Topps projects. shrinking rays? Remember ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ Continued Brown: “EC had this one title called Weird Science (1957)? So we had a card where they were using a shrinking ray. which I just loved. Wally Wood had done some great covers for We used every movie cliché and every pulp-cover cliché.”

Weird Science. One cover in particular showed a very ’50s-looking flying saucer landing with some Martians coming out of it, WITH THE PLOTTING DONE, BROWN CALLED IN and a couple of kids perched behind a big rock. They were kind of another comic veteran, Bob Powell, to pencil the individual cards. watching in awe as these Martians were “A very competent, prolific comic-book artist landing. I still remember the image very of the ’40s and ’50s,” is how Brown described well.”

Powell. “He did The Shadow for years, and a lot Brown even remembered the specific of horror and science-fiction books.” issue — Weird Science #16 (1952) — and The finishes were done in paint on canvas by brought it into the Topps office. the great Norman Saunders, a prolific pulp cover He recalled: “I remember showing the artist during the heyday of the pulps. Saunders cover to Woody and saying, ‘Wouldn’t, like, had painted cards in the Civil War series a year a space-invasion series work on the cards?’ earlier. (“We brought Norm in almost at the “Woody was a big fan of science fiction, 11th hour to complete that set”). too. He was about 20 years my senior. He Saunders’ intricate brushwork lent the series grew up loving ‘Metropolis’ (1926) and its realistic, fine-art look. Two artists, whose Amazing Stories, the old pulp magazines. So names escaped Brown, were enlisted to help it was an easy sell. Woody and I just started Saunders finish the last 10 or so cards. working on it.”

But prior to the “Mars Attacks” rollout, In the project’s early stages, Brown and Topps did a bit of second-guessing, according to Gelman turned to Wood for help in concepBrown. For one thing, Topps released “Mars tualizing the look of the aliens.

Attacks” under a bogus moniker, Bubbles Inc. “Wally did a bunch of pencil sketches,” Also, 17 cards in the set were retouched for their Brown recalled. “We gave him guidance that scantily clad women and gore.

A decade after illustrating the we wanted kind of a brain creature. I think it Brown explained: “The president of the comcover of Weird Science #16, artist was Wally who came up with the skull on pany thought we were pushing it a little too far.

Wally Wood designed the “Mars the lower part of the face. Sort of a death We had women clad in negligees in some cases, Attacks” characters inspired by it. and (Saunders) ended up turning them into robes skull. Just a great look. © DC Comics Inc. “Wally was very good at solidifying the that went up to their necks. Yeah, we did have look of these creatures, and establishing the look of the characters Norm retouch a bunch of things.” Brown added: “Imagine the and the spaceships. He did a lot of the original sketching.” furor that was raised with the sanitized version.”

Next came the plotting of the 55-card story, which was done by The negligees weren’t a case of 1960s sexism-as-usual, but yet Brown and Gelman (with Brown writing the copy on the cardanother allusion to those pulp covers of yore. backs). The two men leaned on their sci-fi roots to concoct an Explained Brown: “(Scantily clad women) were always on the anything-goes story with wildly inventive — if derivative — plot pulp covers. Woody was a huge collector of pulps. He had a comelements. plete run of Amazing Stories from April ’26 right up into the ’50s,

Card #19, “Burning Flesh.” That’s gotta hurt. Card #37, “Creeping Menace.” Well, this picnic is ruined! “Mars Attacks” © the Topps Company 60

Card #30, “Trapped!!” The illustration “made no sense at all,” said “Mars Attacks” writer Len Brown. “Mars Attacks” © the Topps Company and Weird Tales. He was very influenced. He had a lot of original art from the pulps.

“We had one (pulp-influenced) card that made no sense at all,” Brown said with a laugh. “It was a woman in a spider web, and a spider is approaching her. There’s not even a Martian on the card!

That was almost a cliché of the pulps. Women were always trapped in giant spider webs, or so it seemed in the pulps.”

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH WAS AT HAND Brown and Gelman felt they had created a sci-fi classic.

Would the public agree?

“I remember we put it out in some test stores as soon as we got product, and we were very excited because the tests were doing very well,” Brown said. “And then we actually shipped it to a couple of markets. We shipped it to the Northeast, up in Connecticut and into the New York area.

“Then we started getting very bad press. We started to get mail.

There was bad press in some of the papers. I remember being shown clippings that said, ‘Look what they’re selling next to the baseball cards these days.’ ” The biggest outcry was reserved for — you guessed it — card #36, “Destroying a Dog.” “That’s the one everyone seems to talk about,” Brown said.

“Any kid, I guess, who sees that, remembers the image, the kid owner (on the card) standing in the background crying and screaming, watching the Martian blast the dog. And then that caption: ‘Destroying a Dog.’ It was something.”

Gelman was soon contacted by a friend who was then a district attorney in Connecticut.

Recalled Brown: “The D.A. actually called him and said, ‘How can you put these things out? I’ve been getting complaints about them up in my office. These things are for kids! They’re so gory.

I’m really surprised you guys are putting them out.’

“We were real sensitive to that type of reaction in those days.

So the feeling was: ‘Aah, life is too short to have these headaches.’ So we just stopped shipping it. That was the end of it. “ ‘Mars Attacks’ never really lived up to the success that we hoped for it. It never was a national release, so in many parts of the country, people never saw it.”

But in the intervening years, its legend grew. Topps finally gave “Mars Attacks” a proper national release 32 years later, in 1994. Comic books, toys and new trading cards based on the characters were marketed. Tim Burton directed a 1996 big-budget film adaptation, also titled “Mars Attacks,” starring Jack Nicholson.

“It was such a thrill working on ‘Mars Attacks,’ ” Brown said.

“I remember thinking, ‘I’m getting paid to do this.’ I was a fan and a collector, so for me, it was a labor of love.”

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PAUL IS THE CUTE ONE WHO PLAYS guitar. No, not Paul McCartney of the Beatles. Paul with the two eyeball-y heads, from the Topps Company’s hairraising “Ugly Stickers” set of 1965.

The set — which mixed comical and repugnant imagery with aplomb — is often assumed to be the work of artist Basil Wolverton, the Picasso of freaky cartoon monstrosities. It’s true that Wolverton contributed 10 of the 44 creatures — his work is eminently identifiable — but other artists, chiefly Norman Saunders and Wally Wood, did the bulk of the set. However, Wolverton’s artwork was the set’s springboard, and he might have played a larger role but for a dispute with Topps.

David Saunders — the son of Norman, who published the gorgeous 368-page hardback “Norman Saunders” (Illustrated Press) — told Pete Boulay that Topps engaged his father to design creatures in Wolverton’s style, which was a wakeup call for the elder Saunders. “They look simple and crude, but they are incredibly well designed,” said Norman (as quoted by David). “It’s really hard to make something like these.”

But the real wakeup call for Saunders came when Wood pushed for artist solidarity in Wolverton’s dispute. That’s when Saunders found out Wolverton’s freelance rate was 10 times his.

Topps eventually came to an agreement with Wolverton, and “Ugly Stickers” uglified the world.

From top left: Topps’ “Monster Laffs” card #43; Rosan’s “Famous Monsters” #53; Topps’ “Monster Laffs” #74 (all 1963); card #48 from another Rosan series (1960s); Leaf’s “Spooky Stories” #46 (1961); and Topps’ “Monster Greetings” #40 (1965).

Images © American International Pictures; © Universal Studios; © United Artists; cards © the Topps Company; © Rosan Printing Co.; © Leaf Brands Inc.

MONSTERS TO ROT YOUR BRAIN, AND GUM TO rot your teeth. What more does a kid need?

Most of the era’s monster trading cards were humorous — if juxtaposing a monster face with a corny gag qualifies as humor.

The field was led by — guess who? — the Topps Company. In 1959, Topps came out with its “You’ll Die Laughing” series, with art by EC Comics veteran Jack Davis. You know what happened when Topps put out its “Mars Attacks” series of 1962.

Topps licked its wounds and got silly with “Monster Laffs” and “Monster Midgees” (both 1963); “Ugly Stickers” and its sequel, “Make Your Own Name Stickers” (both 1965); and “Terror Tales” (1967). “Monster Greetings” (1965) was a somewhat groovier series, with photos of stylish girls interacting with

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monsters and recognizable artwork by R. Crumb, just a few years prior to his “Keep on Truckin’ ” and “Stoned Again” posters.

Competitors followed (silly) suit with Leaf’s “Spooky Stories” (1961), Nu-Card’s “Horror Monsters” (1961), Rosan’s “Famous Monsters of Filmland” (1963) and Fleer’s “Weird-Ohs” (1965).

TV yielded its share: Donruss’ “The Addams Family,” Leaf’s “The Munsters” and Topps’ “The Outer Limits” (all 1964); and Philadelphia Gum Corp.’s “Dark Shadows” (1968 and ’69).

A series didn’t even have to be monster-centric in order to feature monsters. In Topps’ three “Batman” series of painted art (all 1966), the Caped Crusader and Robin the Boy Wonder faced a vampire, a mummy, a skull-headed phantom, amphibious creatures, a giant spider and a giant rat. Holy horror movie!

Batman meets the monsters “Why are Batman and Robin fighting so many monsters on these trading cards?” collectors wondered in 1966, when Topps released three painted series. (We weren’t complaining ­— just wondering.) Little did we know, the sets were largely painted by Norman Saunders, a master of the pulp-fiction cover, who was introducing his 1930s-honed pulp style to a new generation.

Batman © DC Comics Inc.; trading cards © the Topps Company

COME ON, MILTON BRADLEY. The kids who buy “Monster Old Maid” are aficionados who can spot ill-chosen or misnamed stills from 20 paces. But that’s the charm of MB’s wonky 1964 set of 40 oversized cards.

Using James Cagney instead of Lon Chaney Sr. for the Phantom and Hunchback cards is for starters. One Phantom photo catches Cagney smiling at the camera — a behind-the-scenes photo, not a still per se. The Wolf Man cards show Oliver Reed from Hammer Films’ “Curse of the Werewolf.” Dracula’s Daughter isn’t Gloria Holden from Universal’s 1936 film; instead, it’s Andrée Melly, a vampire girl from Hammer’s Dracula-less “Brides of Dracula.”

Least appropriate of all is MB’s use of Henry Hull from “The Werewolf of London” for its Teen-Age Werewolf cards. The 1935 Hull film came decades before the juvenile delinquency epidemic that inspired “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” Plus, “Teenage Werewolf” was from cheapo indie American International Pictures.

And yet, “Monster Old Maid” was no less fun.

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Monster iron-ons were touted as “the newest way to ‘Monsterize’ your shirts,” etc., in this Captain Company ad from 1964. The ad ran for so long, the illustrations themselves entered the consciousness of monster fans, whether or not they ordered the ironons. The adorable ink renderings captured actors’ likenesses — Lugosi, Strange, Chaneys Sr. and Jr. — with a touch of playful humor. © Universal Studios; © Warren Publishing

Be the monster Masks made fans into instant Frankensteins IF YOU LOVED MONSTERS; WATCHED THE ing hands. (A Wolf Man needs his claws, you know.) movies; studied the magazines; painted and glued the model kits; Due to the high price tag, Don Post masks weren’t sold in the how could you take your fandom to the next level? average department store. (Back then, the masks could be found, By becoming a monster. for instance, in the gift shop at the Movieland Wax Museum in This was possible thanks to manufacturers — Los Angeles.) Likewise, Captain Company offered chiefly Don Post Studios and the Topstone Rubber them via mail order.

Above: Topstone’s Toys Company — who found a niche making monDon Post’s masks were dead-on likenesses of gallery of generic sters out of young monster fans. movie monsters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the monstrosities.

Prices varied wildly, especially in 1960s money.

Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Phantom, the Creature, Opposite: Don Post Connecticut-based Topstone’s monster masks, the Hunchback and Mr. Hyde. Post went off-road Studios masks, from some of which predated the Monster Craze, were with masks of the Metaluna Mutant from “This sold in stores and via mail order (including Warren Island Earth” and — though one can scarcely imaga color 1965 ad.

Publishing’s ever-enterprising merchandising arm, ine the demand — the Mole People, eh, Person. © Topstone Rubber Toys Company; © Universal Studios; Captain Company).

The hand-finished masks took around four hours © Don Post Studios Topstone’s masks of more or less generic monto complete, and the results were veritable works of sters (Girl Vampire, Lagoon Monster, Horrible art. But the claim “exactly like the actual masks used Melting Man) sold for an eminently affordable $1.49 each. in the famous Universal movies” was somewhat disingenuous.

But quality doesn’t come cheap.

Universal makeup master Jack P. Pierce utilized appliances, but For a mask crafted by the artisans at North Hollywood-based not full-on masks, with one exception. (By 1944’s “The Mummy’s Don Post Studios, you’d have to fork over $34 — a veritable forCurse,” Lon Chaney Jr. had grown tired of the makeup ordeal, and tune to the Beaver Cleavers of America — plus $17.50 for matchindeed wore a Kharis mask fashioned by Pierce.)

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THIS IS NOT TO SAY DON POST (1902-1979) DIDN’T have big-screen cred. Post contributed prosthetics to real-deal movies, notably the pod people in Don Siegel’s Cold War classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) and deformed townies in Roger Corman’s faux Poe “The Haunted Palace” (1964).

How did Post achieve these dead-on likenesses? He was an expert practitioner of the life mask. In one version of this process, a subject’s head is covered with a substance called moulage, and then plaster of Paris, which hardens as the subject keeps still while breathing through straws inserted — TMI alert — into his nostrils. The carefully removed result becomes a mold from Right: Recognize which recognizable facsimiles of the our cover boy and subject’s face can be produced. frontispiece girl in Post created life masks of most of this Topstone ad? the great horror stars: Lugosi, Below: Don Post's Karloff, Lorre, Carradine, Chaney biggest seller, the Jr., Price, Caroll Borland, etc. As such, he was able to fashion his Tor Johnson mask. masks using the actual features of the © Topstone Rubber Toys Company; photo stars. Post’s Dracula mask eerily

by Kathy Voglesong resembled Lugosi, chin cleft and all.

His Frankenstein mask was a replica of Glenn Strange’s lined face. His Tor Johnson mask looked like the Swedish “Plan 9 From Outer Space” star come to life.

As reported in an uncredited article in Monster World #3 (1965), Post set up shop in 1939, creating then-topical masks of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin ... Post rescued, with help from partner Verne Langdon and Universal makeup chief Bud Westmore, some “old, long-lost monster molds” from the still-standing Opera House set used in Universal’s 1925 “Phantom of the Opera” . . . Said Post: “We climbed ladders like spiders to a loft located stories above the Opera House stage” ... Said Langdon: “We had to lower the molds by rope and pulley. On a second visit, we carried individual molds, weighing less, down the ladders one at a time.”

Famous Monsters publisher James Warren made a deal with Langdon to market the Don Post masks.

“He thought we were a big company,” Warren said with a laugh. “He didn’t realize I was operating out of my bedroom.

The first order was for 144 masks. They sold out, I think, two days after that issue went on sale.”

Langdon (1941-2011) was a vital, versatile behindthe-scenes player during the Monster Craze. In addition to his work with Don Post Studios, he co-produced (with Milt Larsen) Boris Karloff’s album for Decca Records, “An Evening With Boris Karloff and His Friends.” It was Langdon who came up with the idea to market a Tor Johnson mask.

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As Langdon told Terry and Tiffany DuFoe in VideoScope: “Tor was just thrilled out of his mind, and he was thrilled with the royalties I paid him, too, which nobody else bothered to do. It turns out that the Tor Johnson mask was the all-time best seller of Don Post Studios.

More than Mussolini. More than Hitler.

More than Frankenstein.”

In Famous Monsters #39 (1966), Langdon wrote that “Planet of the Apes” makeup wizard John Chambers, then second vice president at Don Post Studios, helped create the Tor mask, which indeed took on a life of its own.

(Mel Gibson goofs around with one in 1979’s “Mad Max”).

Post also created masks of “The Munsters” and Warren Publishing’s mascots Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie.

In 1967, Post marketed lower-priced The real Tor masks of six Universal monsters “made of a specially-formulated rubber-like composition!”

If you didn’t have 34 bucks, maybe you could scrape together a lousy $8.95.

Chintzy, cheezy and potentially hazardous, Ben Cooper Halloween costumes were monsterific nonetheless. From top left: Barnabas Collins, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Morticia Addams and the Phantom of the Opera. © Ben Cooper, Inc. YOU NEED CHEAPER STILL? There was always Ben Cooper, Collegeville and Halco, manufacturers of super-chintzy — and, admit it, cool in their way — Halloween getups that often didn’t make it through the Big Night.

The “costumes” were glorified aprons (in “rayon taffeta”) ... the crackly vinyl “masks” were affixed with a rubber band ... crossing the street while trick-or-treating was a life-and-death proposition . . . every kid stuck their tongue through the mask’s super-tiny “mouth,” despite the likelihood of factory germs.

But, after all, Ben Cooper, Collegeville and Halco did monsters. There’s something about that neon-ish, yellow-ish green on the Frankenstein mask that just screams Monster Craze, ya know?

Plus, not for nothing, the costumes cost about two bucks each.

All this talk of affordable masks brings us back to those cheapo generic monsters from Topstone. (Frankenstein, Topstone’s only mask with a proper name, was in the public domain, though Topstone’s design came dangerously close to that of Universal.)

These were no-name, no-origin, no-movie, no-nothing mon-

sters concocted to sidestep costly licensing. (Many credit the designs to commercial artist Keith Ward, which I tend to believe, based on observation of illustrations officially credited to Ward.)

Despite their generic status, these orphan monsters became, themselves, classics of the Monster Craze. Their ubiquitous presence in the pages of Famous Monsters assured that they would be remembered by a generation of monster fans. They resonated.

The illustrations — if not always the flimsy, floppy, suffocating masks themselves — were chilling. Girl Vampire has a gloomy, hauntingly beautiful visage. She looks angry. She looks evil. What’s on her mind? She’s our Mona Lisa.

Another mask, the Shock Monster — originally called, simply, Horror — with its rotting face and hanging eyeball, has garnered cult status. I bought one in 1971, when I was in the seventh grade.

It had green skin and blue hair. It was really, really rad. When you put it on, it felt a bit claustrophobic. But the aroma of low-grade rubber was ambrosia. It didn’t matter that you could barely see or breathe. You were a monster.

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From above: Topps’ “The Outer Limits” trading cards; Milton Bradley’s board game; Famous Monsters #26 (all 1964); and Dell’s The Outer Limits #17 (1968).

“The Outer Limits” © Daystar Productions; cards © the Topps Company; uncredited cover art © Warren Publishing; comic book © Dell; game photo by Kathy Voglesong

Awesome anthologies Thought-provoking shows provided monster fix

EVERYBODY HAS A GROTESQUE MONSTER FACE with giant nostrils. But it’s really about the loss of self in a stifling environment of conformity.

There’s a guy with a giant head and pointy ears who can blast you with mere thought. But it’s really about the self-destructiveness inherent in man’s lust for advancement.

There are crawling bugs from another planet with horrible faces. But it’s really about how, despite our better nature, we humans are “practiced executioners.”

Television anthology series served up chills ... and sometimes even monsters. More importantly, they made us think.

It was the writing. Literate, provocative scripts often powered “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (1955-65), hosted by the master himself; “The Twilight Zone” (1959-64), hosted by Rod Serling; “One Step Beyond” (1959-61), hosted by John Newland; “Thriller” (1960-62), hosted by Boris Karloff; and “The Outer Limits” (1963-65), hosted, you might say, by the voice of Vic Perrin (with an otherworldly assist from composer Dominic Frontiere).

“Hitchcock’s” bread-and-butter was murder stories. “Beyond” squarely met the supernatural, if not the monsterific. Under the aegis of its chain-smoking creator/writer/host Serling, “Twilight Zone” did imaginative sci-fi and fantasy, and presented some bona fide monsters. (See the freaky monster family in “The Masks,” or the bubble-headed alien in “To Serve Man.”) “Thriller” started off favoring straight crime yarns and got progressively weirder, to the point where Karloff played a dusty old zombie and Henry Daniell played a “London After Midnight”-esque ghoulish entity. But “The Outer Limits” ... now, that was a weekly monster fest.

SOME EPISODES, IT CAN be argued, were masterpieces of the medium. Donna Douglas — who won fame as dazzling tomboy Elly May Clampett on “The Beverly Hillbillies” — starred in the memorable 1960 “Twilight Zone” episode “The Eye of the Beholder.” Douglas played a woman considered a freak by her fellow man — the aforementioned folks with the big nostrils. At the hospital where she undergoes surgery to correct her “ugly” face, the staff watches televised broadcasts of their likewise monster-faced president forcefully extolling the virtues of sameness.

Douglas said that during filming, she met with Serling, who wrote the episode.

“He was such a special human being and so talented,” the actress told me in 2003. “I just treasured the oppor-

A comformer in “The Twilight Zone” episode “The Eye of the Beholder” (1960). Below: David McCallum has a big head in “The Outer Limits” episode “The Sixth Finger” (1963).

“The Twilight Zone” © Cayuga Productions; “The Outer Limits” © Daystar Productions

tunity to get to know him. He was just a brilliant, brilliant person.

“Doug Heyes was the director. It is a classic. In that show, ‘Eye of the Beholder,’ it shows how people will so try to be like everybody else rather than being who they are within their own selves. Because that’s your own uniqueness.

“I always tell people: ‘Nobody in the world can be a better you than you. All you have to do is be the best you that you can be.’ ” Hear, hear, Elly May. David McCallum — who gained fame as karate-chopping superspy Illya Kuryakin on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” — has the big head in the memorable 1963 “Outer Limits” episode “The Sixth Finger.” McCallum plays an uneducated miner who agrees to participate in an experiment to expand his intelligence.

Things, ahem, go wrong from there.

McCallum filmed the episode prior to his career breakthrough as Illya. But he didn’t denigrate the role when I brought it up during a 1995 interview.

“They’re great entertainment. They’re wonderful entertainment,” McCallum said of “The Outer Limits” and his other career ventures into science fiction.

“The makeup (in ‘The Sixth Finger’) was by that wonderful man, John Chambers, who created those masks. Oh, that was an extraordinary experience.”

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“The Munsters” and “The Addams Family” on the cover of Monster World. The shows premiered six days apart.

“The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions; “The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; Monster World © Warren Publishing

Spooky sitcom broods

When monster families invaded the living room

WHAT A YEAR WAS 1964. THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT was passed . . . LBJ beat Barry Goldwater ... the Beatles landed in America . . . and two “monster family” sitcoms premiered within days of each other.

“The Addams Family” debuted on Friday, Sept. 18, 1964, at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. “The Munsters” debuted the following Thursday, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. on CBS. Despite their shared creepy-kooky factor, the shows were markedly different in tone. But the fact remained: Two comedies about not-altogether-human families were now in primetime — the clearest sign yet that the Monster Craze had permeated, well, everything. Some believe “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters” represent the apex of the trend.

“THE ADDAMS FAMILY” was based on macabre cartoons by Charles Addams published in The New Yorker magazine. The cartoonist had been featuring the characters since, roughly speaking, 1938 — little by little, they coalesced into something resembling a family — but he never named them. As producer David Levy developed the show for TV, he prevailed upon Addams to finally christen the characters.

Likewise, certain aspects of Addams’ characters were tweaked, tightened or fleshed out. In the cartoons, Addams placed his oddball family in a dark, cobwebby, dilapidated house; on TV, the Addams homestead seemed more Victorian, more eclectic, more tinged with old money.

John Astin played patriarch Gomez Addams with a lusty zeal, rolling his eyes, brandishing his cigars and slobbering all over his wife if she uttered but one syllable in French.

Carolyn Jones played Morticia, a dark temptress with saucer eyes in a tight black dress with intriguing floor tentacles that gave her, to quote the Big Bopper, a wiggle in her walk.

Jackie Coogan — the title urchin in Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 masterpiece “The Kid,” and a former Mr. Betty Grable — played Uncle Fester, who had the pallor and raccoon eyes of a shut-in.

Add to that Blossom Rock as withered hag Grandmama, Ted Cassidy as Frankensteinian butler Lurch, and Ken Weatherwax and Lisa Loring as the Addams’ deadpan kidlings Pugsley and

Wednesday. The catchy theme song by Vic Mizzy — complete with the cast’s finger-snapping — was the icing on the cake.

The Addamses weren’t monsters per se; they were more like wealthy eccentrics who rarely saw the light of day (and had a few monstrous relations). The Munsters were a different story.

CREATED BY THE PROVEN SITCOM TEAM OF JOE Connelly and Bob Mosher — the guys who brought you “Leave It to Beaver” — “The Munsters” was less cerebral, more monsterific, than “The Addams Family.” And since this was a Universal show, “The Munsters” had the license to borrow liberally from the Universal pantheon of monsters.

Fred Gwynne — last seen as Officer Francis Muldoon on “Car 54, Where Are You?” — played simple-minded undertaker Herman Munster, a comical Frankenstein with the flattop and neckbolts to prove it. Yvonne De Carlo, a ’50s “tit and sand” movie star (as Butch Patrick put it), played Herman’s wife Lily, the daughter of Dracula.

Al Lewis — last seen as Officer Leo Schnauzer on “Car 54” — played Grandpa Munster, a.k.a. Count Dracula, swapping Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian ghoul-ash for Noo Yawk Yiddish.

Add to that Beverly Owen (half of Season 1) and Pat Priest (the remainder of the series) as the Munsters’ “humanlooking” blonde niece Marilyn, and pint-sized Patrick as their pointy-eared son Eddie.

Universal’s two-time 1940s Dracula, John Carradine, appeared in two episodes as Herman’s boss at the funeral home. Surf- and garage-rock guitarists have taken Jack Marshall’s instrumental theme song to heart.

BOTH SHOWS YIELDED MUCHO MERCHANDISE. There were “Addams Family” trading cards, puzzles, a card game, a board game and Remco figures of Morticia, Fester and Lurch. Compilations of Addams’ New Yorker ’toons and novelizations of the show were published. There were “Munsters” books, a lunchbox, puzzles, board games, trading cards, a Gold Key comic book and Remco figures of Herman, Lily and Grandpa.

And — as if to complete some cosmic circle begun when these two monster-family sitcoms appeared, coincidentally and virtually simultaneously, to provide chortles with a side of chills — both shows were cancelled in 1966 after two seasons.

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Peculiar patriarch John Astin fueled his Gomez Addams with a zest for life THE STRANGE, OVAL-HEADED MAN WITH THE jaunty mustache and pin-striped suit sprang from the pen of cartoonist Charles Addams.

But John Astin created Gomez Addams.

On the 1964-66 sitcom “The Addams Family,” Astin gave Gomez a zest for life not seen in Addams’ droll New Yorker cartoons, upon which the show was based.

Astin’s animated Gomez wore piercing eyes ringed in black, and an ebullient smile. He stood on his head and brandished a sabre for exercise, and was arguably the most amorously demonstrative husband on television. Gomez practically devoured his “querida,” Morticia, John Astin, shown in played with a beguil1998, read Charles ing mixture of Addams’ cartoons as gloom and allure by a college boy.

Carolyn Jones.

Photo: Kathy Voglesong Born in Baltimore in 1930, Astin appeared on Broadway, movies and TV before landing the role of Gomez. (In 1962’s “That Touch of Mink,” he and Cary Grant were rivals for the affection of Doris Day. Guess who won?) Post-Gomez, Astin kept the creepy coming as Edgar Allan Poe in his acclaimed one-man show, “Once Upon a Midnight.” Following is a compilation from five interviews done between 1993 and 2008.

Q: Were you aware of Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons prior to being cast in “The Addams Family”?

ASTIN: I had been a great fan of the cartoons. When I was in college, I remember when my roommate first came home with (the Addams compilation) “Monster Rally.” We bought another copy, so we could razor out a panel or two and frame it and put it up. We didn’t want to do that without buying a second copy of the book, because we wanted one un-defaced copy in its virgin condition.

Q: In creating the role of Gomez, what did you derive from Addams’ cartoons?

ASTIN: When I realized that a series was

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going to be created based on the cartoons, I went back to them and studied them, trying to find out what was underneath them. What were they really about? I personally concluded that Charlie — whom I later got to know — was expressing the joy and wonder of life. There’s nothing really in bad taste, no real horror in Charlie’s cartoons.

They’re ultimately a kind of wakeup call for us to look at life from a deeper, broader perspective. And they have great wit and style and taste.

I think it’s one reason many of his imitators have never really come close to him. He’s inspired a lot of cartoonists, but nobody’s ever really come close to matching what Charlie did. He made us laugh, awakened us to some of our repressed hostilities, which we can sort of carry out through the cartoons without damage.

Addams Family.” The title, I recall, was David’s idea originally. So I embarked upon creating this character. I decided, with David’s approval, that Gomez would be a character that was romantic and passionately in love with his wife. On that, Carolyn and I were able to build a great many things.

Q: What of yourself did you bring to Gomez?

ASTIN: Well, Gomez is really me. My brother said that Gomez is the clearest extension of my personality than anything else I’ve done.

That’s really who I am.

Q: What aspects of Gomez were John Astin?

ASTIN: The love of spontaneity.

The appreciation of life. The enjoyment of any aspect of life that I can find. I think that’s probably at the root of it.

Q: He could be macabre, but never outright gory.

ASTIN: Exactly. When he implies violence, he never has anything really morbid in his cartoons. Even one as graphic as the woman on the front porch, with the enormous snake that has obviously consumed something. And the wife says something like, “George, will you stop mumbling?” Somehow, there’s no damage done.

I think I can best illustrate it by mentioning the cartoon in the hospital.

The nurse says to one of the characters, “Congratulations. It’s a child.” There was rumor for years that the unprinted — or unprintable — Charles Addams cartoon was the nurse saying, “Shall I wrap it up, or will you eat it here?” And later, when Charlie was asked about that cartoon, he said, “No, never. I never drew any cartoon like that.” I think there’s a little distinction there.

Q: Had you spoken with Addams prior to creating the role of Gomez?

ASTIN: Charlie gave us about a paragraph to work with. There wasn’t a heck of a lot, except for suggestions of names for that character. He recommended either Repelli or Gomez, and we chose Gomez. David Levy, the creator of the series, named some of the other characters. It’s really to David that we owe the whole concept of “The

Q: The material was so rich.

When the cast would do table reads, did the black humor in the scripts gratify you as a group?

ASTIN: I think we all felt that way.

Certainly, a read-through of the script was always an enjoyable experience. It’s interesting; we didn’t take a whole lot of time to do that. I know these days, they’re back and forth, and they write and rewrite. It goes on all week, in a half-hour show.

Which is fine, if that’s what’s necessary.

Q: What was your work week like?

Top: John Astin and Carolyn Jones tango with Charles Addams figures on a 1965 TV Guide cover. Above: Romance in “Addams” trading card #16 (1964). © Filmways TV Productions

ASTIN: We would come in on a Monday, and we would read one or two scripts, and we would come up with a few ideas or make a few comments. All of us. I mean, the door was open, the floor was available to anyone who wanted it. After this, which took about an hour, (producer-writer) Nat Perrin and the other writers would make some notes. The next day, we’d be shooting the show. Two days after that, we were finished. We worked three days a week on the show — that is, three days’ shooting. Sometimes we would do two shows in five days. The director helped a lot with that, too.

It was not a painful operation by any means.

We had relatively civil hours. It was a lot easier for me than, say, Carolyn or Ted (Cassidy), because

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they had to have more makeup put on. So they had to spend perhaps an hour longer in makeup than I had to. But for none of us was it an exhausting experience. We all had a good time and we had great days, which ended reasonably. We never shot late into the night.

Q: When the “Addams Family” cast first got a load of each other in the makeup — or when you first saw yourself in the mirror as Gomez — did that help you to get into character?

ASTIN: I imagine that it did, yeah. I know some time was spent selecting what to wear. We tried a few things on. In Carolyn’s case, they had to manufacture. They had to tailor it directly on her. But I tried on a few suits and said, “Here’s the one I like” (laughs). And we went with it.

Q: After seeing Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid,” it has colored everything I thought I knew about Jackie Coogan. How aware were you of that legacy, and of people like Margaret Hamilton, when they would walk onto the set? Did you feel the massive legacies of these people?

ASTIN: Absolutely. It was tangible (laughs).

You could touch it.

Q: The cast aside, who are the unsung heroes of “The Addams Family?”

ASTIN: First off, I would have to say we were very lucky with everyone we had — cinematography, set design and set decoration. I remember some of those wonderful things came from a woman named Ruby Levitt (the set designer). But I would say, really, I think of principally four people, cast aside. David Levy, who created the show and insisted that it be tasteful. Nat Perrin is hugely important in all this. Nat Perrin wasn’t with us at the very beginning, but came on board and, although he was not credited, did so much of the writing. So much of the spirit is captured by Nat in that show. Nat was the producer. Nat was an essential quantity in this show, an essential aspect of this show. And then when Nat wasn’t there at the beginning, there were Ed James and Seaman Jacobs, a writing team.

They wrote for, oh, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, George Burns, but

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mostly for Hope and Benny. They wrote series, too. Ed and “Sy,” as Seaman Jacobs is known, did this presentation script, which was very well done. They were the first ones to put it on paper.

But the biggest hero, as far as I’m concerned, is Nat Perrin.

Q: Was it weird to see your likeness on toys and games and books and trading cards?

ASTIN: Yes. It was shocking, really. Because I’d never contemplated anything like that. Of course, I’m used to it by now. But back then when it happened, it stunned me. I can’t describe my feelings. There was a bit of delight, but also shock that I should be there.

Q: Have you ever picked up any of the items?

ASTIN: You know, it’s strange. I picked up just a few.

There are a lot that I missed. And through the years, I have occasionally been blessed with a gift from a fan here and there, so that I have more than I started with. Sometimes, a fan would send a pack of the bubble-gum cards.

He’d send two packs and say, “If you sign these, you can keep the other pack.” So I signed ’em and kept the other pack.

Q: Do you have any theories on the enduring appeal of “The Addams Family”?

ASTIN: “The Addams Family” were strange Poe in 1848 on the outside, very healthy on the inside.

That was a metaphor for a lot of things. We always knew we had a good show. I would never have thought that it would still be a current item (so many) years later.

It’s replayed probably more than any show ever, except for the original “Honeymooners.” It’s literally never been off the air. People ask me about residuals.

Of course, in those Astin as days, we got paid for Edgar Allan five reruns, and that Poe in 2002. was it. People ask me, Photo by Kathy “Aren’t you disapVoglesong; Poe pointed?” You know, daguerreotype

by Edwin H. one is an actor primarily Manchester — at least, I am — because he wants to communicate with people. I want to spread whatever feeling or message or encouragement there is. Who can ask for more than that it continues? That’s much more important than money.

“The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions

John Astin on fellow ‘Addams’ cast members CAROLYN JONES

JACKIE COOGAN

The cornerstone of “The Addams Family” was the chemistry between Carolyn Jones (1930-1983) and John Astin as Morticia and Gomez.

“She was quite, quite a partner to have in that show,” Astin recalled.

“We used to joke about it years later. I remember once saying to her on the phone, ‘You know, Carolyn, I miss nibbling on your arm.’ And she went into one of those wonderful laughs that she had. She was a great laugher. A sort of lusty, raucous laugh that I can still hear.

“On the series, we were very friendly. We were both very professional, I think, with one another. As the years went on, we became closer and closer friends. Although, there was always an attraction there. I certainly felt it, and I know she did. We were able to bring that into the work, and I think it helped the show a great deal. It’s interesting. If we didn’t have anything to do, we could always look at each other.

“She was gorgeous. Also so witty and so intelligent, aside from being beautiful and being a wonderful actress. And she captured just the right style.”

At the tender age of 6, Jackie Coogan (1914-1984) played the title urchin in Charlie Chaplin’s tear-jerking dramedy “The Kid” (1921), which transformed Coogan into the first modern child star.

“You know,” recalled Astin, “ ‘Coog’ was such a talented fellow. In his later years, some people acknowledged that.

Personally, I never felt there was adequate appreciation for Jack’s talent.

“He had done many things since being probably — I think there’s probably a race between him and Shirley Temple for who is the most prominent child star. Of course, Jack was a child star before Shirley Temple, and almost all of Shirley Temple’s stuff was in ‘talkies,’ whereas some of Jack’s stuff was in silent films. But they were both major stars.

“I remember seeing him in Edward Albee’s ‘American Dream’ onstage in Hollywood (on a summer-stock tour), and thinking how good he was in it.

“Jack was a huge, huge star. During World War I, he raised a huge amount of money for Greek orphans. Many people held him in high esteem for that.”

TED CASSIDY

BLOSSOM ROCK

As Lurch, Ted Cassidy (1932-1979) was 6-feet-9-inches of Frankensteinian force; the Addams’ butler was the series’ most monster-ish being.

Cassidy, or at least his hand, also played Thing on the show.

“His portrayal of Lurch was truly a classic,” Astin said.

“Watch it closely. He conveys so much of the ‘long-suffering artist’ attitude. Lurch was an artist underneath. You can feel that in Ted’s portrayal. As was Ted. Ted was tremendously creative. If they had ever cast Hamlet that large, Ted would have been a very good one.”

Long-suffering artist? It triggers the image of Cassidy at the harpsichord.

“Actually,” Astin said, “Ted had a terrific singing voice.

He was very musical. He played the trumpet and I think he could noodle fairly well on piano. In fact, he did a record called ‘The Lurch,’ which got a heckuva lot of play.”

How close were Astin and Cassidy after the series?

“I was with Ted the night before he died,” Astin said. “I remember the kids calling me to say he slipped into a coma.

They thought my voice might help shake him out of it.”

As Grandmama, Blossom Rock (1895-1978) had zero vanity — a white fright wig atop her head, her wrinkles worn with nonchalance.

“Blossom had a great sense of humor,” Astin said of Rock.

“Did you know that she was Jeanette MacDonald’s sister?

But very different from her sister. A very straightforward woman, very frank about life and all the events in life. My mother visited the set a few times; she lived in the East. She and Blossom got along very well. It was sort of a kick for me, that my television mother and my life mother got along so well.”

In the person of Rock, “The Addams Family” once crossed paths with classic horror. In MGM’s “The Secret of Dr. Kildare” (1939), two “Mark of the Vampire” stars — Lionel Barrymore and Lionel Atwill — were in the same scene with Rock, playing her recurring “Dr. Kildare” role of Sally, the wisecracking hospital switchboard operator.

In 1965, Rock told an interviewer: “Not too many people recognize me as Granny in the show. I guess I would be insulted if they did.”

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The Itt factor LONG HAIR BECAME THE “IN” THING during the groovy ’60s. Felix Silla took it to a new level.

Silla played the recurring role of Cousin Itt — he of derby, dark glasses and a floor-length mane that fell somewhere between Robert Plant and Rapunzel — on “The Addams Family.” Silla’s Itt appeared in 17 of the total 64 episodes. Born in Rome in 1937, Silla was a circus performer before going into film and television.

The secret to the show’s chemistry, in Silla’s view: “We had a great cast,” he told me in 1998. “All the people on the show, including the crew, all got along really well. It was like a family. Like, you go to work and it’s a long day.

But when you went home, you were not tired, because you enjoyed working with each other. It went by so fast, because you had so much fun doing the show.”

The 3-feet-10 actor said that — considering the hair covering his face and the blackened shades — he had very few mishaps while filming.

“A couple of times, I missed the cue and went against the couch or things like that,” he said with a chuckle. “But not too often.”

Silla — who also played Twiki in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” — had a message for filmmakers who keep reviving “The Addams Family” on the large and small screens.

“The reason they’re remaking it, I think, is to try to make it better than the original TV show,” he said. “I don’t think it’s gonna happen. They’ll never make something better than the original ‘Addams Family.’ No way.”

Silla as Cousin Itt. © Filmways TV productions

TV’s Cousin Itt, Felix Silla, in 1998.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

TV ‘Family’ was not the real Charles Addams: widow IN HIS BLACK-AND-WHITE, INK-AND-WASH “The New Yorker is laid back and stuffy, if you will, cartoons, Charles Addams created a world populated but not really,” Tee told me in 1991. by cheerful murderers, naughty children, knights in “It had a bit of a higher tone, a little more class armor, derelicts, witches, clergymen, everymen than all this commercial television stuff. These and hitherto unclassified beings. dolls were coming out. That ‘Addams’ television Addams (1912-1988) grew up in Westfield, thing was not Charles Addams. His humor was New Jersey, where he drew inspiration from very subtle. I look at those old television things classical local architecture and Colonial ... they were for kids.”

Cemetery, a centuries-old graveyard and final The Addamses married in a pet cemetery; resting place for Revolutionary War veterans. the bride wore black. Tee thought of her hus“He always had us laughing,” Jane band’s famous antique weapon collection as art.

Anderson, a high school girlfriend of Addams, “Charlie collected antique crossbows, which told me in 1991. “Maybe he was a little shy.” are absolutely spectacular weapons,” she said.

Addams debuted in The New Yorker in 1932, “They were things that were used in the 14th 1929 portrait eventually contributing over 1,400 cartoons and 65 and 15th centuries. They had a beauty about them. covers. According to his widow, Tee Addams (1926He had a full suit of armor, also quite lovely. It was all 2002), the TV series “The Addams Family” was far from medieval, all wonderfully romantic. It wasn’t a weirdo indicative of the cartoonist’s own tastes. thing. It all fitted very nicely.”

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Daughter of darkness As Wednesday, Lisa Loring developed one mean deadpan WEDNESDAY ADDAMS HAD SOMETHING in common with Buster Keaton.

Keaton was the “Great Stone Face” of the silent comedies, whose deadpan reaction to the disasters around him made him all the funnier.

Little Wednesday – the pigtailed, headless-dollcarrying daughter in the eccentric TV brood known as “The Addams Family” – had her own impenetrable Lisa Loring, who stoneface thing going.

As played by Lisa was not permitted Loring – who was a to smile as mere 6 years old when Wednesday “The Addams Family” Addams, looking first aired in 1964 – good in 2001.

Wednesday had a matPhoto by Kathy ter-of-fact delivery that Voglesong belied the creepiness that surrounded her. You know: the man-eating plant, the hand in the box, the Frankenstein-lookin’ dude playing the harpsichord.

In a 2001 interview, Loring — who was born on Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, in 1958 — revealed one secret behind her distinctive deadpan: “I was never allowed to smile.”

On camera, that is. Otherwise, Loring had nothing but warm and lovely things to say about her television family.

Q: What had you done prior to “The Addams Family?”

LORING: I started modeling at 3 years old for a friend of my mother’s who was a commercial photographer. His name was Tom Kelly.

He’s most famous for doing the nude of Marilyn Monroe on the red velvet for the Playboy calendar. He put me under contract at 3.

By the time I was 5, he said to my mother, “Judy, she’s so well

behaved. She takes direction so well and she’s so photogenic.

Would you like me to help you get her a theatrical agent?” My mom said, “Sure.” They did. And I did an “Art Linkletter Show.”

I did a “Dr. Kildare” with Richard Chamberlain and a “Suzy Parker” with my mother. And then I got sent out on “The Addams Family.”

LORING: I don’t know. I think I understood most of it. I was never given line readings or anything like that. But I was never allowed to smile, because Wednesday was morose, of course. So I just said them the way I thought they should be said, and it always seemed to work.

Q: The series was on for two years.

Since you were so young, that must have seemed like a long time. Could you feel yourself improving as an actress?

Q: Do you remember anything about your “Addams” audition?

LORING: There were about 75 little girls. I didn’t know how to read. David Levy, the producer, recalled this to me years later. He was not aware that he was seeing kids who didn’t know how to read.

I was probably one of maybe two.

You know, it was from my age, 5 and a half, up to 13 years old.

He liked me so well. He said, “You had little white gloves on and a patent-leather bag.” He said, “I asked you to pout.” He said, “You just won me over, so I read the ‘sides’ (script lines) to you.” He said, “This is who I’m going to be.

This is who you’re going to be. This is what I say. This is what you say.”

And he was going to go through that with me a couple of times, he said.

And the second time, he said, I came back with the lines verbatim.

Then I did a screen test with five other little girls, and I got it. That’s how it went.

Q: Please tell me about the routine, the work week, on “The Addams Family.” Did you do table reads? Did you produce an episode within the space of a week?

LORING: Oh, I don’t know. I think when you’re a child, you just really do what you’re told. It always came naturally to me; I’ll just say that much. It was pretty easy for me. I never had a hard time. From what I recall, John Astin told me it was a rare occasion when they ever had to shoot a scene over because I didn’t get my lines right or I didn’t do it right.

Q: Do you have any particular memories of Carolyn Jones?

Top: Loring’s likeness alongside her fellow Addamses, from the box art for Ideal’s “The Addams Family Game.” Above: Loring on card #30 of the “Addams Family” trading card set. © Filmways TV Productions

LORING: Yes, we did an episode in the space of a week. No, we didn’t do table readings.

We just more or less did them on the set. At least with the kids, anyway. They brought the kids in, because we only had a certain amount of time that we could work, anyway. So we’d come on set and read our lines with whoever was in the scene. We’d walk through it and then do them.

Q: You were so young, but you always delivered your lines in such a deadpan style, which was very effective. Did you understand everything in the script, or was some of it over your head?

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LORING: We were very close. I loved her very, very much. She’s the only one I would let pull my first loose tooth. It was real loose, and I wouldn’t let anyone do it. She sent to her dentist to get stuff to numb it, and I let her pull it. Actually, I let her tie a string around the door and close the door (laughs). She thought I would get a kick out of that, and I did, even though I was scared.

I’d sit in her dressing room with her, and she’d always buy me special presents on Christmas and my birthday. She bought me this beautiful, solid, little gold rose with a diamond in the center. She never had any children, so I was really sort of a daughter to her.

Q: Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) was the original child star. He appeared in silent pictures; he worked with Charlie Chaplin. A law protecting child actors was named after him. Since you were working with Jackie, were you and Ken (Weatherwax, who played Pugsley) treated with extra sensitivity?

LORING: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that was the Coogan Law. His

Addamses mixing with Munsters?

Lisa Loring with Eddie Munster himself, Butch Patrick, in 2003.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

parents took $4 million from him when he was in the films.

Imagine how much money that would have been? So he did a lot for kids. And yeah, everybody — Jackie and everybody — were wonderful to Kenny and I. They treated us with just a lot of loving care.

have the Addams Family at Christmastime that he drew for me, and one other one. I’ve got about three of them.

Q: The Christmas episode was a special one for you and Ken. Wednesday and Pugsley were the center of attention. What do you remember about making it?

LORING: Not at all. I never really thought about it, you know.

You’d see the toys and the cards. I really wasn’t that aware of it when I was on the show.

LORING: You know what? I would have to see that again. You’re saying Christmas episode, and I don’t remember a thing of it until I watch them again. I mean, some episodes, I do. Like when they put me in a mini-Morticia dress and took my braids down and dressed me up in a party dress or when I ran away from home.

There’s things I remember.

But when I watch one — like, if I was sitting here watching one, I could probably tell you, “I remember this, that and the other.” But I haven’t seen them in quite a few years. When I watch them, all kinds of memories start coming back to me. But it’s been so long. If I don’t watch one, it’s hard.

Q: Do you have any theories on the enduring appeal of “The Addams Family”?

Q: Were you aware of the Charles Addams cartoons on which “The Addams Family” was based?

LORING: Oh, yes. Charles Addams did sketches for Kenny and I and signed them to us. I have a couple of them. One that he did for me, he gave me on my birthday. It said, “To Lisa Loring, with enthusiasm and affection for a memorable Wednesday.” And I

Q: Did it seem weird to see your likeness on merchandise such as board games and trading cards and paperbacks?

LORING: Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. First of all, for me, I think it’s very surrealistic, because I was so young when I did it. But I think that it has a real sense of family. They really had family values. They really were a family. I mean, they’re weird, they’re strange, but they’re really together. They really love each other. They look out for each other. They take care of each other.

All of that shows. I think that is a lot of the appeal. But then, they’re not normal. They’re not “Leave It to Beaver.” They’re not a regular middle-class family. So it’s got a double appeal to it right there, I think.

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you took away from working with a largely adult cast?

LORING: Just to treat people as wonderfully and lovingly as they treated me.

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Chip off the old block How Weatherwax made his peace with Pugsley THERE WAS A TIME WHEN ONETIME child star Ken Weatherwax wished that Pugsley Addams would just go away.

Things got pretty rough for the former “Addams Family” cast member when, at the age of 10, he was abruptly thrown into the real world after two seasons as the roly-poly, striped-shirt-clad son of Gomez and Morticia Addams on the 196466 sitcom classic.

But Los Angeles native Right: Ken Weatherwax (1955-2014) made Weatherwax it through the tough times. in 2001.

A stint in the Army, and Photo by Kathy Voglesong dedication to a new profession on the other side of the camera, Opposite: worked wonders for man who Weatherwax played Pugsley Addams. with Lisa Weatherwax even made Loring from a peace with Pugsley. After Milton Bradley meeting many of the faithful card game. fans of “The Addams Family,” © Filmways TV he came to the conclusion that Productions they weren’t ridiculing his Pugsley past. Rather, they recalled his portrayal of Pugsley Addams with sincere affection. Weatherwax spoke about this change of heart during a 2001 interview.

Q: Are you surprised that “The Addams Family” is still so important to people?

WEATHERWAX: It’s fantastic that so many people are interested, still. It’s a great feeling.

It really is.

Q: What kind of relationship did you have with the rest of the “Addams Family” cast?

WEATHERWAX: We were a very tight cast. It was a closed set. It was a troupe.

We all very much respected each other. We got a lot of support from the

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older actors. John Astin and Carolyn (Jones) were absolute professionals about everything, along with Jackie Coogan, the original kid actor. We had a lot of on-the-spot training. It was very close.

Not too much tension. I enjoyed being on the soundstage. I really had a good time doing the show.

It was after the show got cancelled that I began having problems, like going to public school and having to put up with the bullies and that type of thing. I got kicked out of several high schools. I ended up in the service when I was 17.

Q: Why did you join the service at such a young age?

WEATHERWAX: I was given a choice: go in the Army or go into the Youth Offenders Program until I was 25. So I chose the Army. Because I was ready to go kill somebody at that time anyway, you know? So it was a pretty good deal. It matured me a bit. And then after I got out of the service, I went right back into the studios as a grip, behind the camera. I absolutely love my job. Love it. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.

Q: Was there a time, back when you were getting into trouble, that you really wanted to forget “The Addams Family”?

WEATHERWAX: Oh, yes, of course.

You know, at the end of the day, you want to take off your work clothes and go home and be normal.

But I wasn’t wearing that much makeup, and I couldn’t very well hide my face — you know, put on a goatee and go out in public.

So that’s when it started to become a problem, is when the show got so popular that I couldn’t go out in public without two or three people with me to take me out of situations. I’ve created a few riots just showing up at a couple of places. Unless you’ve ever been at the center of a riot — it’s unbelievable. People pulling your hair and so on and so forth.

Q: As you said, Jackie Coogan was the original child star, and he knew first-hand about the stresses a child actor faces. Was he or was anybody on the show especially sensitive to the needs of Lisa (Loring) and yourself?

WEATHERWAX: Yes. We had the obligatory social worker on the set at all times. You can’t work past 6 in the evening. So anything that had to do with any scenes that were to be shot with the children were shot between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., because we had to be off the set at 6.

But, we had to have mandatory three hours of school during that day. So we had a teacher. We had a little schoolroom in the back in a dressing room, a 2-by-4 size dressing

room, and we would do exactly three hours a day. She’d be standing there with a stopwatch. If they came to pull me out, they’d stop the watch. Between shots, I’d go back there and get another 20 minutes in. Or if we needed to get on the set, sometimes I’d end up in there on Saturday or Sunday to finish up the week of the hours that I owed to school, when they were really working us.

Other times, we would just show up on an empty stage to go to school, because the rest of the show would be on hiatus.

Q: The Christmas episode really spotlighted you and Lisa. Did you feel it was more of a chance for you as an actor?

WEATHERWAX: I didn’t think it was a chance. I just thought it was one of the special shows that centered on the kids. It was great. I remember the one scene where we kept knocking John Astin out — we kept knocking out Gomez to get his senses back.

They gave me a rubber bowling pin and they told me, “Go over there and hit him in the head with it.” Well, I whacked him in the head with it. He goes, “No, no, no! That’s not how we do it in the movies! You’re supposed to miss me by about that much, and then I go down.” Like I said, it was a lot of on-the-job training.

But it was fun, a lot of fun.

We enjoyed it.

Old-Hollywood ‘Addams Family’ ties Ken Weatherwax had a famous aunt: Ruby Keeler, who sang and danced in frothy 1930s Warner Brothers musicals. There were many such old-Hollywood connections on “The Addams Family.” Producer Nat Perrin wrote for the Marx Brothers.

Margaret Hamilton (the witch in “The Wizard of Oz”) played Grandma Frump in two episodes.

Ellen Corby (a spinster in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”) played Mother Lurch. More guest stars were Roland Winters (Charlie Chan in six movies), Frankie Darro (a onetime child actor who, like Jackie Coogan, worked in silent films) and Robby the Robot.

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Milton Bradley’s “The Addams Family Card Game” offered a rare opportunity to see the stars of the show in color.

“The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions

Aurora’s Addams Family Haunted House model and ad (1965); Remco’s Morticia, Lurch and Fester toys (1964); Pyramid Books’ paperback (1965).

“The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions; model photo by Kathy Voglesong; toys photo by Nancy Richmond

Poynter Products’ Thing toy bank (1964); Colorforms’ The Addams Family Cartoon Kit (1965); Simon & Schuster’s Charles Addams compilation “The Groaning Board” (1964); Milton Bradley’s Mystery Jigsaw Puzzle (1965). Opposite: Ideal’s expressive Uncle Fester hand puppet (1964).

“The Addams Family” © Filmways TV Productions; Thing bank and puzzle photos by Kathy Voglesong; puppet photo by Mark Voger

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Everybody’s Grandpa As eldest ‘Munster,’ New Yorker Al Lewis was a droll Dracula WITH HIS LONG BEAK, COMIC MANNERISMS and distinctly Noo Yawk accent, Al Lewis seemed the least likely actor to be cast as Count Dracula. But in some ways, Lewis was a better-known Dracula than his forebears Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine and Christopher Lee. That’s because even non-horror fans know Lewis’ Dracula, thanks to his role as Grandpa Munster.

There is confusion over Lewis’ year Lewis with of birth, apparently created by the actor stogie at his himself, who claimed to be older than he New York was (!). Many sources put Lewis’ birth eatery in in 1923, but he indeed told me he had 1989. been a circus performer in 1922.

Photo by Kathy Oh, that Grandpa ...

Voglesong Lewis died in 2006. I interviewed him at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Grampa’s Bella Gente on Bleecker Street, in 1989. Good conversation ... not to mention, good pasta.

Q: What happened during your audition for Grandpa Munster?

LEWIS: I never auditioned. They just called me and told me they were doing a pilot, and would I be interested? They sent me some scripts, and then I flew out.

Q: Would you say you created Grandpa? For instance, did you elaborate on the character in the scripts?

LEWIS: Yeah. Of course I created it. Sure! I mean, there was no previous mold.

Q: That really was you hanging upsidedown from the ceiling, when Grandpa used to sleep like a vampire bat?

a specific skill, to be able to pick up that quickly and go with it.

LEWIS: Yeah. From a trapeze bar. I’d done it in the circus. It’s not a big deal.

If you haven’t done it for many years, you just have to work into it.

Q: How were the relationships among “The Munsters” cast members?

Q: You were in the circus?

LEWIS: I started in the circus.

Q: What year was that?

LEWIS: 1922. I was in Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey, Cole Brothers Circus and Clyde Beatty circuses. I was a clown. I taught myself how to work the slack wire and I rode a trick motorcycle.

Q: How long did it take to get made up as Grandpa?

LEWIS: Approximately two hours.

Got in at 6 in the morning, and had to be ready by 8. Perc Westmore made me up. Perc Westmore was the head of makeup at Warner Brothers for, I believe, 26 years. And then he was out of the business for a while, semi-retired. And I brought him back in. He was my makeup man.

Q: What color was the makeup?

Would you call it greenish?

LEWIS: I never wore green. A lot of people say that, but I never have worn green. It’s hard to describe the color.

It’s a mixture. My color could best be described as battleship gray, kind of fading. It was no specific color. You see, in “The Munsters,” we were made up for color but it was never filmed in color.

Q: Did you ever ad-lib as Grandpa?

LEWIS: Yeah, sure. I always ad-lib.

LEWIS: The relationship on the set was very, very friendly. One of the reasons why the show has lasted as long as it has is because we enjoyed doing what we did with each other. Even though it’s obvious to anybody watching the show that it was written for Fred (Gwynne) and myself. Nobody bemoaned the fact that they had less lines than anybody else.

Q: Is it true that you were initially opposed to the casting of Yvonne De Carlo as Lily?

LEWIS: Well, both Fred and I didn’t think — we were mistaken, thoroughly mistaken — that she could be as good as she was in it. We were wrong.

Q: What do you think of (the 1987-91 television revival) “The Munsters Today”?

LEWIS: The new show? I never saw it. I never saw the old one. How would I see the new one?

Q: You’ve never seen the original “Munsters”?

LEWIS: I’ve never seen anything I’ve ever done.

Q: Wow. Never a stray episode of “Car 54, Where Are You?” or anything?

Q: Did the other cast members answer in ad-lib sometimes?

LEWIS: Never. Nope.

LEWIS: They don’t have the skill.

Q: Why do you have this policy of never watching yourself on television?

Q: (Laughs) . . .

LEWIS: It’s not funny. They just don’t have it. It’s

A panel from Gold Key’s The Munsters #1 (1964); detail from the “Munster Go Home!” poster (1966); art from Ideal’s The Munsters Target Game (1965).

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios

LEWIS: I have no idea. If I was that interested, I would. I don’t have a specific philosophical, emotional or religious reason. I just don’t, that’s all.

Q: How does it feel to see your likeness on toys, books, etc.?

LEWIS: I never really look. I don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff.

Q: You don’t own any of those?

LEWIS: No-o-o! Not at all. I have no memorabilia.

Q: You’ve never, for instance, looked into one of the comic books that Gold Key put out in the ’60s that were based on the series?

LEWIS: Nope! Never looked at the series, comic books, dolls, nothing!

Q: One time, while filming “The Munsters,” you lent your dressing room to the Beatles. What did you guys talk about?

LEWIS: What did we talk about? Good lord, the whole gamut.

Q: Had you ever heard their music?

LEWIS: How could I not hear it? They wanted to know what made me so brilliant, and I wanted to know how to write hit songs, so I could make as much money as they did. We talked everyday talk. They were very nice. I stayed friendly with a number of them.

Q: How did you hear that “The Munsters” was cancelled?

LEWIS: How did I hear? I guess I was told not to come into work Monday.

Q: Fred Gwynne hates to be associated with Herman Munster, but you don’t mind being called Grandpa, and you still play him. When did you decide to bring back the character?

LEWIS: I never consciously had a thought about bringing him back. If I thought about bringing him back, I’d have to think about where he went. And since I was alive and still am alive, I don’t know what that means.

Q: Would you say Grandpa Munster is your greatest role?

LEWIS: I wouldn’t say that Grandpa was my greatest role in the sense of achievement. I would undoubtedly say it’s the role that people in 50 different countries know me as.

Obviously, because people don’t realize that I last did the show (in 1966). In spite of that fact, it has never gone out of syndication in the United States. So when most of the people who are 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 . . . they never saw the show originally. All they saw were reruns. If you stay with me one week in the restaurant, you will meet people from all over the world where it is still running. It’s still running. Today! So, obviously, I would say, unquestionably, the role of Grandpa I am best known for. No question about that.

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On hanging upside-down like a vampire bat: ‘It’s not a big deal.’

Al Lewis duded up in 1990.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Kid with the pointy ears Butch Patrick wore the short pants as Eddie Munster TALONS DOWN, THE MOST ENVIED boy during the Monster Craze was Butch Patrick.

C’mon — the kid had a Frankenstein for a dad, Dracula’s daughter for a mom, Dracula for a granddad, a fire-breathing dragon for a pet and a teddy werewolf named Woof-Woof.

Best of all, Patrick had the highest seat in the coolest car on the planet: the Munster Koach.

Any psychological damage wrought by spending your entire childhood in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit is a small downside compared to all that awesomeness.

Patrick wore the Butch Patrick, Fauntleroy short pants, as remembered well as the pointy ears and as Edward the wicked widow’s peak, as Wolfgang Edward Wolfgang Munster Munster, in on CBS’ 1964-66 sitcom, “The Munsters.”

2003.

I spoke with Patrick Photo by Kathy Voglesong — who was born in Inglewood, California, in 1953 — in several interviews between 1991 and 2003. The actor reminisced about building “all the monster models,” which is ironic, since Patrick was, himself, immortalized in a monster model kit.

Q: You were 10 when “The Munsters” started shooting.

As a child, did it warp your mind to be wearing that makeup all the time?

PATRICK: After a while, you wore that makeup around so much that you forgot you had it on. It was kind of a strange thing, now that I think back about it. It must have been a strange deal.

On wearing the makeup: ‘After a while ... you forgot you had it on.’

Because, after a while, you just start talking to Fred (Gwynne) and Al (Lewis) in this makeup, and it doesn’t even phase you. They’re more familiar with the makeup than they are without the makeup, and it becomes second nature.

Q: Was it difficult for the cast to work on a show in such heavy makeup, with so many special effects?

PATRICK: We had a lot of special effects, which caused us more problems than the average TV show. The makeup made for a little bit longer of a day, and with the special effects situation, you had to pretty much get it done right the first time. Otherwise, it would take forever to reset the shot.

Q: You were the envy of a lot of kids in the ’60s.

Everybody on my block wished they could ride in the flying go-cart Grandpa made for you in one episode.

Was it scary riding in that thing?

PATRICK: Well, it was on wires. It was all pretty safe. The only time I ever got hurt on that show — in fact, it was the same episode — was when Fred and Al built a big pit out in front of the garage, so nobody could sneak up and see their secret project. I went down into the hole, and Al came up with his size-12 feet, and kicked up a whole pile of dirt right into my eyeballs while my eyes were still open. They just washed my eyes out and let me off the hook for homework that night.

Q: Who was your best friend on the “Munsters” set? It looks like it might have been Al Lewis, the way he would always toss a baseball with you between shots.

PATRICK: Al and I got along pretty good, but probably the best friends

Images of Eddie Munster. from top: A detail from Aurora’s Munsters model kit; a detail from Hasbro’s Munsters Picnic Game board; a panel from Gold Key’s The Munsters #1 comic book (all 1964).

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; kit photo by Mark Voger

that I had on the show were the special effects guys, the crew. There were four of them. I was really interested in watching what they were doing. They had a little room off to the side that I would spend a lot of time in, off the set, watching them set up for other things.

They had their own little area.

Mike Westmore was my makeup man. At that time, he was 27. I looked up to him like a big brother or an uncle that I didn’t have. In the morning, Mike would always make me up. After an hour and a half a day, for a couple of years, you get to know somebody pretty well. It’s just you and him, and you shoot the breeze about whatever — day-to-day life.

Q: How long did the makeup take?

PATRICK: When we first started out, it was an hour and a half. Then we got it refined to about an hour, on the average.

Q: I’ve read that Yvonne De Carlo had a bit of a “star” attitude when the series began, before she became “one of the gang.” Do you remember that to be true, or were you too young to pick up on it?

PATRICK: She was big in the “tit and sand” movies in the late ’40s and early ’50s. She was a star, and she still carried a lot of that star quality around with her. But her and Al, I think, got into it right in the beginning, and Al straightened her out. And after that, she was fine. But there was a little bit of her throwing her weight around, so to speak.

Q: What do you remember about John Carradine, who played Herman’s boss, Mr. Gateman?

PATRICK: He was a real stately gentleman. I had remembered him from all those scary movies. I was really impressed with him. One of the things that was really great about “The Munsters,” in that period, was the great guest stars. The show was popular. Fred and Al knew a lot of people from their New York days. Out here on the West Coast, we used a lot of actors and comedians like Harvey Korman, Frank Gorshin, Don Rickles, Richard Deacon.

We had a lot of good people that we were lucky enough to get to do guest-starring roles.

Q: Since you were still young and impressionable in the ’60s, did you also get caught up in the Monster Craze of that decade? Did you ever build Aurora monster model kits?

PATRICK: I was into that before “The Munsters.” I did all the monster models. I think every kid liked

Eddie and Woof-Woof in “The Munsters” (top), and Patrick with his old pal in 1991.

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; 1991 photo by Kathy Voglesong

dinosaurs and monsters and Army men — pretty standard stuff.

Q: Did it feel weird for you to see your likeness on so many products? Aurora put out a “Munsters” model kit that had a little Eddie figure in it, holding Woof-Woof.

PATRICK: I never really gave it much thought. It’s something that, because I never really was too concerned, I guess I never really formed an opinion. It has no bearing on me one way or another.

Q: You and Eddie Munster are inexorably linked, but you have fun with it. How did you accomplish that?

PATRICK: I think it’s the fans, and the sincerity of how much they really enjoy the show and how much it means to them. It isn’t a matter of, “It’s one of my favorite shows.” People are actually very adamant: “It is my favorite show, period.” They love the characters, they love the humanity of it, they love the family values.

It was, you know, a unique, one-of-akind show with the makeup and the way it was presented and shot. So I’ve found that now it’s really part of so many people’s lives that it’s fun to be part of it. I feel very comfortable talking about it and being part of it.

Q: Not to mention, you got to ride around in those cool cars (the Munster Koach and the Drag-u-la).

PATRICK: The cars were great. You know — George Barris (customizer of the Munster cars)! The cars were wonderful. I kind of fit in with the car really well.

Because, in the scheme of things, if it really was the family car, I’d probably wind up with it anyway. I would be the natural heir to it.

Q: That’s right!

PATRICK: The oldest kid always gets the car.

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The ‘human-looking one’ As Marilyn Munster, Pat Priest brought glam to ghoulishness THE CONCEPT OF BEING DIFFERENT, OF being an “other” in your own family, was explored in a subtle way on the 1964-66 spooky sitcom “The Munsters.”

“She’s the only human-looking one in the family,” Uncle Herman said of his niece Marilyn, with a disparaging emphasis on the word “human.” For in the topsy-turvy world of “The Munsters,” Marilyn was the family’s ugly duckling.

Hmmm ... does this make the Munsters the first mixed family on television? Albeit, the mix was interspecial — human and monster — as opposed to interracial.

Pat Priest took over the Marilyn role from Beverley Owen (who quit after 15 episodes). I spoke with Priest in 1998.

Q: You never had to wear monster makeup. Were the other “Munsters” cast members jealous?

PRIEST: I don’t know if they were jealous, but I’ll tell you one thing: I sure was happy. Because I only had to be in makeup for a half-hour. It took Uncle Herman two hours in makeup. And then at the end of the day, it took him an hour to get out of makeup. I could at least get in my car, get on the freeway and go home.

Q: But did it look like fun? Did you ever wish they made you up, just once?

Pat Priest, remembered as the datechallenged Marilyn Munster, in 1998.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

PRIEST: Nope. I never did. The only thing I would have liked is more lines from time to time. But, no, as far as the makeup goes, it was very hard on their skin.

Q: You replaced the first Marilyn, Beverley Owen, 15 shows into the first season. Were you cast in a whirlwind situation?

PRIEST: It was, it really was. When they knew she was going to leave, they started testing people. I think they’d been testing girls for a couple of weeks. This was the last day. They tested five of us that day.

This was on a Wednesday. They called me up on Thursday to tell me I’d gotten the part. Friday, I signed the contract.

Monday, I started work. Just that fast.

Q: Did the special effects and props make it grueling to shoot “The Munsters”?

If only Pat Priest would get out of the way, we could get a better view of the grille on the Munster Koach!

Photo courtesy of Pat Priest

PRIEST: Well, at times when we would have really big specialeffects shows, then there was a lot of waiting around. Because of course, our special effects then were nothing like the special effects now. Everything had to be worked out. It was kind primitive. We were probably the beginning of special effects. They’ve come a long way since.

Q: Was it weird for you to see your likeness on “Munsters” merchandise such as games and lunch boxes and comic books?

PRIEST: Oh, yes. And paper dolls. What amazes me even more is the prices they’re getting for these things. I can’t afford to buy my own memorabilia! A lunchbox is about $350-$500 with a thermos.

Isn’t that amazing? None of us saved anything. When we’d walk off the set on a Friday at the end of the day, there was a big garbage can right outside the stage door. We’d just drop our scripts in. I think Butch (Patrick)’s mother saved some of his for him. But all the rest of us just tossed them in the garbage. If I had known at that time how popular the show was going to be, why, I probably would have saved memorabilia, which I didn’t.

Didn’t save any. So I probably would have done things just a little bit differently.

Q: How do you remember working with Al Lewis?

PRIEST: I think his degree was in teaching. He had worked with handicapped children as a teacher. So he’s a very kind and very understanding man. He and Fred (Gwynne), they became kind of my mentors. I hung around with them. We went to lunch almost every day, the three of us. That was really nice. They were very protective of me. If anyone had any problems, or if I was upset or started to cry on the set, Al was always the one who’d come to me. “What’s wrong, honey? Is there anything I can do for you?” Just always very fatherly. I love that man to this day.

Q: How about Butch Patrick? He was the lone kid in all of this.

PRIEST: Butch had wonderful parents, and they were there. Al would play baseball with him, and his mom would come on the set. That was fine. Of course, he did his schooling, and he was off during the summer. He’d go home every night, so he’d have his friends in the neighborhood. When I felt sorry for Butch was after (“The Munsters”), and for a long time. Butch is the same age as my oldest boy. I feel very protective toward him. Because it has not been easy for him at all. Since “The Munsters,” it has not.

He’s a good kid. He’s a great kid, and I adore Butch.

Because Marilyn wasn’t a monster, she was often not depicted in merchandise. A delightful exception was Whitman’s jigsaw puzzle, with a bewitching Marilyn worthy of Gil Elvgren.

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios

Q: We weren’t as savvy about the stresses felt by child actors then.

Did you ever think Butch was missing out on his childhood?

kind of fell in that category — of course, I was much older — where you’re too old for boys and too young for men. You don’t quite fit into a leading-lady category, and you’re not a character.

It’s just a hard thing. When Butch came off the show, he really wasn’t a kid. There wasn’t anything for teenagers. He wasn’t a leading man. There just wasn’t a niche for him, so he floundered around for quite a while. That’s hard. That’s what happened, especially in the ’60s, to most of the kids at that time.

PRIEST: Yes, I did, though not at the time we were doing the show. You know, it’s very difficult for children who’ve been in the business for long periods of time, and then they grow up. I

Q: On “The Munsters,” you worked with some of the great comedic actors in Hollywood at the time. Guest stars like Don Rickles, Richard Deacon, Paul Lynde ...

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PRIEST: Oh, I loved Paul Lynde. Oh, he was wonderful. He was just funny all the time. And Jesse White worked our show. Darling guy. Comedian. Great. Frank Gorshin, Harvey Korman. Funny, funny, funny. We just had lots of funny people doing the show. I loved Jane Withers. Jane did, like, five “Munsters.”

Priest on fellow ‘Munsters’

Q: What about John Carradine, who played Herman’s boss, Mr. Gateman, in a couple of episodes?

You could call television’s Herman Munster, Fred Gwynne (1926-93), a Renaissance man.

Pat Priest does. “Fred was truly a genius,” the actress said of her 6-foot-5 TV uncle.

“He wrote and illustrated children’s books, and I’m the proud owner of one. He wrote music. He played the guitar. He did a lot of things that people just never knew about. His degree from Harvard was in advertising. Then, I think, he did a Hasty Pudding (Theatricals) revue, and came to attention of some people in New York. That’s how he got his start.”

Priest marveled at how Gwynne kept his humor while wearing a costume that weighed more than 40 pounds.

“He was a very sweet man; he was not temperamental,” she said. “Playing Uncle Herman was very, very difficult for him, because he was wearing that hot, hot suit every day. In fact, they’d have to stick hairdryers down his neck to try and cool him off, because that was all padded. Between shots, they’d try to take off the whole top part that was padded.

He’d just sit around in his T-shirt.

“So it was hard on him. Yet, I never recall him getting angry. Always jovial.”

PRIEST: Yes, and he was always (in mock English accent) veddy, veddy sort of British, and just very polite and sort of stern. Had this deadpan face all the time. All the time.

Q: How does “The Munsters” keep finding new audiences?

PRIEST: I feel that nowadays on television, they’re taking a dysfunctional family and making it out to be a normal family. “The Munsters” was a functional family. We ate all of our meals together. We did everything together. I went to school. Eddie went to school. We did our homework. We had all of the normal family situations, but in a weird circumstance. We did everything together: sitting down and talking as a family, listening to music in the living room when Aunt Lily would play the organ. It was a functional family, but just in a weird kind of a turnabout setting. It was just strange and different, which made it funny.

Children have no idea that “The Munsters’ was filmed 35 years ago. As far as they’re concerned, it was filmed last week. So all of a sudden, they come up, and here’s this little old grandma sitting there. Some little boy will come up and say, “Are you Marilyn Munster?” I’ll say, “Yes, I’m Marilyn.” And he’ll say, “You don’t look like her.” Well, sure I don’t. It’s been 35 years. You have to explain it.

FRED GWYNNE

YVONNE DE CARLO

A Marilyn panel from Gold Key’s The Munsters #1 (1964).

Before “The Munsters,” Yvonne De Carlo (1922-2007) was a bona fide movie star who bewitched men with her beauty in such films as “Salome Where She Danced” (1945), “Slave Girl” (1947), “Casbah” (1948), “Buccaneer’s Girl” (1950) and “The Desert Hawk” (1950). De Carlo played the wife of Charlton Heston as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic swan song, “The Ten Commandments” (1956).

Was Priest aware of her TV aunt’s rich filmography?

“Oh, yes. ‘Salome,’ yes,” Priest said.

“She was a beautiful woman. Yvonne and I got along fine.

Yvonne had children about the same age as mine. She had lunch a lot in her dressing room, but occasionally she’d need to get out, and we’d go out to lunch. We’d talk about our kids and what was happening and those kind of things. That was the kind of relationship I had with Yvonne.

“Actually, we became a family personally as well as professionally. No one on that set in two years ever had an argument, a fight or a disagreement with one another. Which is a nice thing to say, when you’ve got so many people working.”

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios

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Remco’s Lily, Herman and Grandpa figures (1964); King Seeley Thermos’ lunchbox (1965); Whitman’s “The Munsters: The Last Resort” (1966).

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; toys photo by Nancy Richmond; others by Kathy Voglesong

Ideal’s Lily and Herman hand puppets; Mattel’s talking Herman puppet (all 1964).

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; photos by Kathy Voglesong

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Hasbro’s The Munsters Drag Race Game and The Munsters Masquerade Party Game (both 1964).

“The Munsters” © KayroVue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; photos

by Kathy Voglesong

Hasbro’s The Munsters Picnic Game (1964); Milton Bradley’s The Munsters Card Game (1964); Ideal’s The Munsters Target Game (1965).

“The Munsters” © KayroVue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; photos

by Kathy Voglesong

A bowl of Cap’n Crunch, a glass of Hi-C and monster cartoons on a Saturday morning.

A recipe for juvenile obesity?

Absolutely.

But it’s also a tradition kick-started during the Monster Craze.

Animated monsters date back to the dawn of cinema, with “Gertie the Dinosaur,” a 1914 short by Winsor McCay, writer-artist of the trippy Sunday comic strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland.”

In 1945, “Casper the Friendly Ghost” shorts debuted from Paramount. These were kid-friendly cartoons — as long as you didn’t think about the fact that Casper was the spirit of a dead child.

The following year, Bugs Bunny met a monster with orange fur and claws in Chuck Jones’ short “Hair-Raising Hare” from Warner Brothers.

That monster, Gossamer, became a recurring character.

Of course, these theatrical ’toons eventually made their way to TV — itself, a monster with an insatiable need for programming to fill air time.

But once the Craze kicked in, animators began creating new monsters especially for small fries watching the small screen.

In 1959, J. Evil Scientist, wife Goonda and son Junior began popping up on Hanna-Barbera’s “Snooper and Blabber.” The Evil Scientist family was one prescient clan, having appeared on the tube five years prior to “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters.”

Hanna-Barbera’s “The Flintstones” spun comedy gold by lampooning trends of the day such as the Beatles, 007 and hillbillies. The show took its shot at monster-family sitcoms with its Nov. 12, 1964, episode titled “The Gruesomes.” It introduced the Flintstones’ new neighbors, the Gruesome family: dad Weirdly, mom Creepella and son Gobby.

And you could always find a monster on Hanna-Barbera’s adventure ’toon “Jonny Quest” (1964-65).

The Evil Scientists and the Gruesomes never won their own solo series. That makes “The Milton the Monster Show” (1965–67) a pioneer of a kind — the first stand-alone Saturday-morning monster cartoon. Milton had Gomer Pyle-like naivete and smoke puffing out of the unsealed top of his head — sloppy work by his creator, Professor Weirdo.

Also hanging around Milton’s creepy old homestead on Old Horror Hill were Count Kook (a fastidious butler), Heebie (a furry green cyclops) and Jeebie (a skeleton with a top hat). Hey, kids, make your own Milton at home with this recipe: six drops of the essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce and a touch of tenderness. Just a touch.

1966 saw the premiere of Hanna-Barbera’s “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles.” Franky Jr. was not a monster per se, but a giant robot who shared a time slot with a rock band that doubled as superheroes. In 1968, the roster of Hanna-Barbera’s “The Wacky Races” included the Creepy Coupe, a Munster Koach-influenced racer manned by monsters.

This ’toon trend hit its apex with Hanna-Barbera’s “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!” (1969 until ... forever). In it, teens wearing groovy threads investigated monster sightings, traveling the countryside with a talking dog in their psychedelic van, the Mystery Machine. It was like “The Partridge Family” meets “The X Files.” But the real mystery for kids watching this mind-bending series was figuring out the deal with these characters. Spoilers: Shaggy was a stoner; Fred and Daphne were never going to conjugate; Velma preferred the company of ladies.

Opposite: Creepella, Weirdly and Gobby Gruesome were new arrivals to Bedrock. From top: The Creepy Coupe from “The Wacky Races,” giggling mutt Scooby Doo, a “Scooby Doo” werewolf, and Milton the Monster with pals Heebie and Jeebie.

“The Flinstones,” “The Wacky Races” and “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!” © Hanna-Barbera; “Milton the Monster” © Hal Seeger Productions

Jitters ’n’ jalopies Monsters and hot rods were a wheel scary combo

Hawk’s Weird-Oh kit Digger, left, and Monogram’s Fred Flypogger artwork. Opposite: Aurora’s monster hot-rod box art.

Dracula, Wolf Man and Frankenstein © Universal Studios; Digger © Hawk Model Co.; Freddy Flypogger © Monogram Models; Digger model kit photo by Mark Voger

THERE’S A SEQUENCE IN “THE MUMMY’S GHOST” (1944) in which horndog college boy Tom (Robert Lowery) and his hotsy-totsy date Amina (Ramsay Ames) go “parking” in his sweet, vintage convertible roadster. Tom is trying to make time with Amina, but lately, she has been obsessed with ancient Egypt and death — a real buzz-kill in the romance department. The lovebirds don’t realize that the Mummy (Lon Chaney Jr.) has been limping around the area. Tom and Amina never notice the Bandaged One, but are spooked by his shadow and drive off before that slowest of monsters can get them in his clutches.

It’s the closest a classic monster ever got to a hot rod.

Until the Monster Craze.

Who knows why, but for some inexplicable, wonderful reason, monsters and custom cars cross-pollinated during the Craze, and it was a marriage made in Hot Rod Heaven.

Ed “Big Daddy” Roth created the Rat Fink and his merry band

of gear-shifting gruesomes such as Mother’s Worry, Drag Nut and Mr. Gasser, which were immortalized in model kits by Revell.

Herman Munster drove the Munster Koach and Grandpa drove the Drag-u-la — both customized by George Barris (the guy who did the Batmobile). AMT of Troy, Michigan, brought out model kits of both “Munsters” cars.

More model companies got in on the act with Rat Finkinfluenced drag-racing monsters. Hawk introduced its Weird-Ohs series, and Monogram Models brought out kits featuring “good groover” Fred Flypogger and mobile monsters like Speed Shift and Super Fuzz. All had veiny eyeballs and pointy teeth.

And Aurora — who started the monster model thing in the first place — put beasties behind the wheel in such kits as Dracula’s Dragster, Wolf Man’s Wagon and Frankenstein’s Flivver.

It sounds crazy: a monster driving a hot rod. But during the swinging ’60s, when anything seemed possible, it made sense.

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The Rat Fink’s daddy HE WAS CALIFORNIAN TO THE CORE. He put monsters behind the wheel.

And he created one of the iconic characters of the 1960s.

Cartoonist and car customizer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was a one-man brand who designed a line of model kits; customized cars and motorcycles; created vehicles for film and television; marketed T-shirts; and even recorded surf-rock albums.

Born in Beverly Hills in 1932, Roth is the father of the Rat Fink, a ubiquitous character emblazoned on T-shirts, key chains and decals. Beginning in 1963, Revell brought out a series of model kits featuring Roth’s Rat Fink and his drag-racing pals, in boxes decorated with photos of Roth, wearing his trademark goatee. Roth’s band Mr. Gasser and the Weirdos recorded the surf-rock albums “Hot Rod Hootenanny” (1963) and “Rods ’N Ratfinks” (1964), both for Capitol Records, both featuring Glen Campbell. Roth died in 2001 at age 69.

I interviewed Roth on St. Patrick’s Day 1990, as we sat in the bleachers of Asbury Park Convention Hall in New Jersey where, Roth was told, Jimi Hendrix once opened for the Monkees.

Rat Fink creator Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in 1990.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Q: What was the first thing you drew as a kid?

ROTH: We were drawing the “Japs” and the Nazis, and Americans always shooting them. You know, kids always draw what’s contemporary. In those days, we drew soldiers and pilots and airplanes and tanks and jeeps and all that kind of stuff.

Q: The monsters you drew didn’t have a precedent. They seemed to come from out of nowhere. How did you develop their look?

ROTH: We started going to the (auto) shows so much, and it was so boring at these shows, that I’d take my felt pens along with me and I’d start drawing guys in their cars. Nice-type guys. Then, all of a sudden, I’d get tired after four or five hours, and they wanted more and more. So, just for a dare, I put a big eyeball in there, hoping they’d go away, you know? But the more I did that, the more they’d come and want more stuff. So I just started doing that all the time.

Q: When and how did the Rat Fink come along?

ROTH: 1962, after a car show. Mickey Mouse had grown from a stick figure into a nice, beautiful, airbrushed figure. If you go back far enough, Rat Fink would be Mickey Mouse’s father. He has an “R.F.” on his shirt because Superman has a big “S” on his shirt. The original Rat Fink

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Above: Ed Roth posed for the box art for his model kits such as Mr. Gasser, Angel Fink, Drag Nut and Brother Rat Fink. Left: The Mother’s Worry kit, fly included. Opposite: The model that started it all: Rat Fink.

The Rat Fink © Ed Roth; box art and Rat Fink model kit photo by Kathy Voglesong; Mother’s Worry model kit photo by Mark Voger

had a cape, but I got rid of that, because he doesn’t fly anyway. The other thing about monsters is, I try to make ’em cute so that kids can enjoy them. My business on Earth here is to entertain kids in a G-rated manner.

Q: But the monsters you drew in the 1960s were rebellious-looking. They gave parents pause. Today, I guess, they’re not so shocking. Was it that back then, you weren’t as concerned about the G-rated thing?

ROTH: No, because I never went into this business to make a cartoon to begin with. And in the ’60s, out of the hundreds of designs I did, there were three that I changed later. One was “Lover Boy,” where I had a girl in his hand, and the girl had a couple of nails stuck through her like a voodoo doll. I changed that into an ice cream cone. And I had “Wild Child” with brass knuckles and an ax that I got rid of. And another one, called “Beaver Patrol,” I didn’t like the title of that, so I changed that.

So there were three designs out of the first 200 that were bad news. That’s not too bad of a track record.

Q: What made you a national phenomenon?

What broke “Big Daddy”?

ROTH: It was when Revell said, “We want to make a model out of your cars.” And then, of course, they made models out of the monsters, too.

That broke me into the big time.

Q: You worked on the model designs, but did you work on their 3-D realizations?

ROTH: Yeah.

Q: Did you do them in clay?

ROTH: Did ’em in clay, and the model-makers at Revell made ’em into plasticarb.

Q: How many different kinds of products had your monsters on them? There were decals, T-shirts, patches …

ROTH: Emco made a bunch of decals in the ’60s.

That was a big one. There’s a lot of old paraphernalia that I’ve licensed out through the years.

Q: Which do you prefer, drawing monsters or working on cars?

ROTH: It’s a real tossup. I suppose working on cars is where I make good at, but I’ve gotta make the money with the monsters.

Q: You designed a car called the Druid Princess for “The Addams

Family.” It was never on the show. Was it ever used?

ROTH: No. I built it for them on speculation. And the next thing was, they called me up and said, “We can’t use it, because we’re gonna quit the series.” And I thought “The Munsters” was so successful that “The Addams Family” would be. But I still have the car.

Q: In the wake of the Rat Fink kits came the Weird-Ohs and Fred Flypogger. Were those a ripoff of your style?

ROTH: There were three companies putting out monster kits. One of them was Monogram, with the (mascot) Mouse’s stuff. There was Hawk with five or six models. It seemed like every model company went into a monster collection. I think the Revell ones had the best assembly.

Q: There’s a character called Big Daddy played by Sid Haig in “It’s a Bikini World” (1967) …

ROTH: They had a couple of Big Daddies in those “Beach Blanket Bingo” things, where (Don) Rickles played the Big Daddy. They need a Big Daddy in all of those movies to show that somebody’s in charge, you know?

Q: How did you make out in the ’60s? Did you get your share of the Rat Fink pie?

ROTH: Financially, I don’t have any statement, but my wealth is in my wife, in the fact that I’ve built all those cars, and the fact that I’m straight with the man upstairs. These are my wealth, and the dollars seem to take care of themselves, you know? I don’t go overboard on any one thing. No drugs or stuff. Life is affordable if you watch your Ps and Qs.

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The Munsters’ family car, and the man who customized it.

Photo right courtesy of George Barris; “The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios

Big wheel IN THE OCT. 15, 1964, EPISODE OF “THE Munsters,” Lily Munster hired a used car salesman to combine a hot rod with a hearse as a gift for her hubby.

In real life, Universal Studios turned to George Barris.

Barris is the man who made Hollywood’s car dreams come true. He customized the Munsters’ head-turning family car the Munster Koach, as well as the Batmobile, the “Beverly Hillbillies” truck, Liberace’s piano-key Cadillac and many other iconic TV and movie vehicles.

The way Barris explained it, creating a car like the Munster Koach involves more than one skill set.

“It’s not just being a mechanic and it’s not just being an artist,” Barris told me in 1997. “You have to have both knowledge and creativity. Psychologically, you have to look at the person or the character that you’re going to design a car for. Then you have to work with the screenwriter to say, ‘Yes, we can do this. We can spin out here.’

“If somebody hands you a piece of paper and says, ‘Draw it’ — draw what? What are you going to draw?

Are you going to draw a car for ‘Batman?’ Are you going to draw a car for ‘The Munsters?’ Are you going to draw a car for ‘The Beverly Hillbillies?’ So to do what I do, that means you become a person who can create a product that follows the whole concept, not just one part.”

Barris recalled that when Universal was first developing “The Munsters,” a car had already been selected for the show. Luckily, Barris was called to in look it over.

“When they came to me, they came on a Friday,” Barris recalled. “They said, ‘We’ve got a new show coming up over at Universal. It’s called “The Munsters.” It’s kind of a funny, humorous show.’ They said, ‘We have

Dig that cool Cobra engine, those exhaust headers and 10 wild carburetors in this ad for AMT’s Munster Koach model kit.

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; advertisement © Aluminum Model Toys

an old Cadillac hearse.’ I went over and looked at it. I said, ‘That’s nothing different. This family is really funny and cute, and they’re going to create a lot of laughs.’ ” Whatever plans Barris and his wife, Shirley, had for that weekend were scrapped.

“I got together with my wife,” Barris said, “and we put together the Munster Koach over the weekend. We walked in Monday morning with drawings of what we could do to really simulate the show.”

(Barris apparently enlisted fellow car customizer Tom Daniel to draw the initial sketch of the proposed car. For Daniel’s version of events, see page 117.)

Barris’ objective was for the car to spotlight each character of the show, as he had done with the “Beverly Hillbillies” truck.

He recalled: “I looked at the script. We have Herman Munster and Lily Munster, who is Yvonne De Carlo. We have Al Lewis, who is the Grandpa who is always mixing up a bunch of brews. We put a compartment in there for him. And then we had the straight

young girl. We had a seat in the back for her. And then we had Butch Patrick, who was the little wolf-monster. We put a piggyback seat up there for him. So the purpose of designing it was to incorporate the features of the show in with the car.”

What kind of automobile did Barris start out with?

“I used three Model T’s in one,” the customizer said. “We had a big engine with 10 carburetors and wild-looking tires and peak fenders and spider-webs all over it and big, brass radiators and skulls and curtains for Al Lewis’ spookhouse.”

The finished Munster Koach proved to be an influential car, according to Barris.

“It became the real, big kickoff of using cars that are stars,” he said. “Universal received more fan mail for that car than the stars were getting. Because to the audience and the people — even up to this day — the Batmobile and the Munster car are the two most in-demand cars of all the collector items, either for merchandising or for touring or being displayed at many different attractions. That makes me feel great.”

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Grandpa Munster and the Kat from AMT talk chrome goodies in the Drag-u-la kit ad. Below: The world’s first look at the car.

“The Munsters” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; advertisement © Aluminum Model Toys

AS COOL AS THE MUNSTER KOACH WAS, IT HAD a fierce rival in another car customized by Barris for the show: the Drag-u-la. “Is this an automobile, or is this an automobile?” Al Lewis asked as Grandpa Munster in “Hot Rod Herman,” the May 27, 1965, episode of “The Munsters” that introduced the coffin-onwheels (literally). When Herman commented on the organ pipes used as the car’s exhaust, Grandpa said: “This is the only dragster in America that can play ‘Oh Promise Me’ in second gear.”

In real life, though, Lewis wasn’t quite as enamored of the car.

“With the Drag-u-la, it’s a wonder I’m still alive,” he told me.

“We filmed the Drag-u-la up in the hills, in the backlots of Universal. Originally, it had a bubble top. So they say to me, ‘Okay, Al, drive it to here.’ Well, there are no floorboards on this thing. In three seconds, I had a sandstorm in there. ‘George Barris!

Where the (expletive) are you? No floorboards! How am I supposed to drive this (expletive) thing?’ ”

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The Munster Koach wasn’t much better. “That (expletive) never ran,” Lewis said. “They had to tow it in with a thin wire.”

Pat Priest had other complaints. “It was very rough riding,” she said of the Munster Koach. “It was more a car for looks than function. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go on the freeway. I wouldn’t want to go more than just around the backlot at Universal. Of course, Butch (Patrick) and I always sat up in the back, and it was very rough riding and very loud. Extremely loud. It had big hotrod engines, and that was for the effect of the car, too.”

Patrick added this Munster memory: “One time, we drove off the lot in the Munster Koach. Went for a little joy ride. We came back about 20 minutes later. Everybody was still waiting around for us to return, because they thought we had just gone around the corner. Fred (Gwynne) took the car off the lot and out the front gate at Universal. An unplanned little excursion.”

But was George Barris another Bob Kane?

It’s clear that Barris turned to a fellow car customizer, Tom Daniel, to whip up a sketch when, in 1964, Universal Studios gave Barris a crunch deadline to propose a design for the family car on their new sitcom, “The Munsters.”

But Barris didn’t mention Daniel’s name when I interviewed him about the Munster Koach in 1997. “What else is new?” Daniel said of the omission in a 2014 email interview.

Except for a few modifications, Daniel’s original sketch closely resembled the finished Munster Koach. But Daniel was not officially credited; for instance, “Designed & built by George Barris” was emblazoned on AMT’s Munster Koach model kit box.

Born in East Los Angeles in 1936, Daniel is a celebrated customizer in his own right. He designed 75 model kits for Monogram Models, and his Red Baron — a hot rod in the shape of a German helmet — became the best-selling car model kit of all time, with more than 2 million units sold in its first two years of production.

In Daniel’s version of events, Barris telephoned him “in a panic” one fateful day in 1964.

He recalled: “All that Barris told me was that ‘The Munsters’ TV show plot was a kind of comedy with spooky characters; how many Munster family members were to be featured in the TV show; and that he had a five-door Model T Ford body, which was a stretched body that was used in the old days as a ‘depot hack,’ delivering train passengers from a train station to the nearest hotel. That was all he said, as he had no idea what to do with that five-door T body.”

What was Daniel’s thought process in sketching the car?

“Basically,” he said, “putting two-and-two together regarding the key elements of the scenario, and synthesizing those into a believable design premise.

“What sold the studio was my design sketch, which was done in a short amount of time.”

As for those modifications: “Other than the fringe hung along the top of the windshield by Barris’ late wife, Shirley, and the substitution of the large, round ‘old time’ headlights with cobwebs added to the lens that is shown on my design — replaced by gaudy brass-plated

Red Baron designer Tom Daniel and righteous ’Vette in 1973.

Below: Daniel’s 1964 Munster Koach sketch; the car adorns a lunchbox; AMT’s model box with George Barris’ design credit.

Photo by Darryl Norenberg, courtesy of Tom Daniel; sketch digitally enhanced for clarity; “The Munsters” © KayroVue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; lunchbox © King Seeley Thermos; model box © Aluminum Model Toys

‘suburban porch lights,’ again Shirley’s doing — and a slight modification to the air intake system, the design is pure ‘TD.’ ” For the sketch, Daniel was paid $200.

“What can I say? At the time, no one knew how popular that TV show would become, nor how much of an impact the Munster Koach would have in that TV series,” Daniel said.

He also drew the initial sketch for the Drag-ula, and gave Grandpa Munster’s dragster its name.

“The very first thing that came to my mind was the name ‘Drag-u-la.’ It was a natural,” he said.

“I made a very simple line drawing of a coffinshaped dragster with the bubble canopy at the rear.

To make it at least semi-streamlined, I drew a simple coffin shape without ornamentation.

“Other than substituting an ornate casket, and changes to the air intakes and exhaust header location, the Drag-u-la is basically the way I first envisioned it.”

Daniel said it would take about a quarter century before his side of the story began trickling out.

“George did not like it one bit when that started to happen,” Daniel said.

“George called me at home, screaming on the phone about how his late wife, Shirley Barris, had designed the Munster Koach.”

My repeated attempts in 2014 to contact Barris, then 88, for comment were unsuccessful, but Daniel added this: “By the time we were both inducted into the Diecast Hall of Fame at Las Vegas in 2009, I did shake his hand and, at one of the dinner question-and-answer periods, George actually admitted the facts of the matter.”

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From the weird world of Weird-Ohs: Model kit boxes of Francis the Foul (left) and Sling Rave Curvette (above), and a Huey Hut Rod card (top). Opposite: The Wade A. Minut box (top) and Marx’s beautifully sculpted Digger figure.

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Weird-Ohs © Hawk Model Company; photos by Kathy Voglesong

Weird world THOSE FREAKY EYES . . . THOSE POINTY TEETH . . . those crazy cars . . .

The Weird-Ohs line of model kits released by Chicago-based Hawk Model Company beginning in 1963 were like poor cousins of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Rat Fink line of car-crazy monsters. But the Weird-Ohs were cool — very cool — in their own right.

Plus, they branched out, going beyond gruesome gearheads to include beach bums (in their Silly Surfers line) and rock ’n’ rollers (in their Frantics line). The Weird-Ohs’ severe looks — the gnarly eyes, teeth and vehicles — were hypnotizing. You couldn’t look away.

Their origin is one of those “almost didn’t happen” stories. The characters were designed

by Bill Campbell, a onetime Hawk freelancer who wrote about the genesis of the Weird-Ohs for Alan Bussie’s web site OldModelKits.com.

“There was kit after kit coming out of Hawk,” Campbell wrote. “Around 1962, ’63, it struck me that recent model concepts of aircraft, cars, etc., were saturated to the point of suicide. So during breaks, I sat down at my drawing board and banged out some rough ideas of unique kits that I thought were worth developing.”

Campbell then created three-dimensional prototypes based on these sketches.

The gang’s all here in Ideal’s Weird-Ohs board game (1964). Below: Warren Publishing’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook (1965). Weird-Ohs © Hawk Model Company; game photo by Kathy Voglesong; Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook © Warren Publishing Two of Campbell’s four unsolicited prototypes were Digger and Daddy, characters that would later become fan favorites.

Wrote Campbell: “I brought my little monsters into Hawk one day. Dick and Phil (Mates, owner-operators of Hawk) said, ‘They are interesting, Bill. We’ll think about it.’ I had been around operations long enough to know that this is the friendly kiss of death.”

As luck would have it, Hawk was playing host to some distributors that week. Campbell’s models had been left on a conference room table. Continued Campbell: “They saw my little monsters lined up on the table and they went nuts over them. That is how the Weird-Ohs were given the nod for production. I was called in and asked to develop art on Digger, Daddy, Davey and Drag Hag. . . . The Weird-Ohs were a phenomenal sales success for Hawk, and the factory worked overtime to fill orders.”

The Weird-Ohs “Car-Icky-Ture” line introduced a bizarre cast of characters, some with boundary-pushing humor, some even with a hint of social commentary.

Characters immortalized in polystyrene: Digger (the “way out dragster”), Davey (the “way out cyclist”), Freddy Flameout (the “way out jet jockey”), Sling Rave Curvette (the “way out spectator”), Endsville Eddie (the “short stop stupe”), Leaky Boat Louie (the “vulgar boatman”), Wade A. Minut (the “wild starter”), Drag Hag and Weird-Oh jocks Francis the Foul and Killer McBash.

Daddy (the “way out suburbanite”) was a briefcase-carrying commuter who drove a coffin-on-wheels — quite the statement.

Huey Hut Rod (the “way outhouse bomb”) was a hillbilly who drove an outhouse fueled by moonshine, which was pretty vulgar and adult for a supposedly kid-friendly item. Sneaky, sneaky.

The Weird-Ohs’ popularity led to a board game from Ideal; a record album, “New! The Sounds of the Weird-Ohs,” from Mercury Records; a puzzle from Fairchild; and faithfully sculpted figures from Marx.

The trading card set from Fleer delved deeper into the WeirdOh universe, with characters that never made it to model-kit form (Donald the Duffer, Sarge Barge, Shorty Shotgun). The set presented new moments in Weird-Ohs’ lives (Huey’s outhouse-on-

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wheels catches fire, Curvette’s blond wig flies off during a date).

But the apex of the Weird-Ohs’ fame came when Warren Publishing put them on a magazine cover. Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup Handbook showed readers how to become a Weird-Oh in three steps ... right on its cover.

“I went to Boys Life and Scholastic Magazine to place ads in their magazines for Famous Monsters. And they threw me out. Right out of the office! They said, ‘We wouldn’t touch any crap like this.’ I’m being very kind, using the word ‘crap.’ They said, ‘This is disgusting.’ ” — James Warren, publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine Monsters, and purveyors of monster media, were still considered pariahs as the early 1960s gave way to the middle 1960s. But the times, they were a-changin’ …

The 1962 #1 hit “Monster Mash,” and the 1964-66 sitcoms “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters,” introduced monstrous themes and characters into mainstream American homes. And it happened via radio and television, then arguably the country’s two most trusted and powerful media.

This huge exposure — and especially the humor inherent in the song and TV shows — made monsters seem less threatening, more palatable.

A first-person anecdote: Once upon a time in the early 1960s, if you brought a copy of Famous Monsters into my alma mater Holy Rosary School, the nuns would confiscate it. You’d never see it again. But by 1965, I easily smuggled monstrous media into the hallowed halls of Holy Rosary, in the form of the “Munsters” lunchbox released by King Seeley Thermos.

Lunchboxes, you see, were considered wholesome — and therefore “legal” — at Catholic schools. Can I help it if the nuns failed to notice that my lunchbox had a Frankenstein dude and a Dracula dude on it?

A barrier was broken, nearly imperceptibly.

In third grade, we had to keep our lunchboxes on the floor beneath our desks. I secretly kept mine between my feet, so I could gaze down at the lunchbox lid — while pretending to read my textbooks — and stare at Herman Munster. (I still feel the thrill of that deception when I see a “Munsters” lunchbox today.)

In the piece, mother-of-four Terri Pinckard wrote: “Hollywood did not invent monsters. The literature of man has been full of them. The Loch Ness monster, the abominable snowman, from Hansel and Gretel to the gnomes in ‘Peer Gynt.’

Our sacred literature is a strong source, both the Old and New Testaments. The twelfth chapter of St. John speaks of the ‘great red dragon, having seven heads and 10 horns …’ Hell and brimstone await those who sin in horrifying descriptions in the New Testament’s verse.”

In Pinckard’s view, watching monster movies could be a cathartic act for kids: “The children let out their long-held breath, and turn to grin a little at us, saying, ‘Boy, was that close!’

On the way home, the children, my husband and myself discuss how well or poorly the makeup job of the monster was done, and how the wooden boots make the ‘monster’ seem so much taller than a ‘human.’ ” Pinckard got to the heart of the matter in recounting the day her 8-year-old daughter began asking questions about Nazi atrocities. Horrified at her parents’ answers, the little girl said, “But they did that to human beings!”

“She can never push that horror away,” Pinckard wrote, so that very evening, the family watched an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” “For how much better,” she wrote, “to have her dream of a Frankenstein than of Buchenwald. Yet, in reality, which was the monster?”

EMBOLDENED BY THE TURNING tide, the purveyors and their supporters began hitting back. “In Defense of Horror Films,” an THE MONSTER-THEMED essay credited to Vincent Price, ran in Fantastic Saturday morning cartoons that began to Monsters of the Films #4 (1962). It’s actually a pop up i­n the wake of the Addamses thinly disguised plug for “The Raven,” but Price and the Munsters signaled that the stig(or his ghost-writer) makes some valid points. ma against monsters was finally kaput. Parents Fritos’ Mini-Monsters, “It’s time that motion picture critics started taking were actually allowing their children to be top, and Frankenberry the so-called ‘terror’ or ‘horror’ films seriously,” Price entertained by monsters on Saturday mornings. cereal were early signs said. “Two things have been established about these (Or said parents were snoozing at the time.) that the stigma against exciting motion picture products — the public and the Monster-themed processed food would be monsters was kaput. acting profession take them seriously, and enjoy them. the kicker. It began as giveaways, as with the Frankenberry © General Mills “Unlike any other type of motion picture, the terror generic Mini-Monsters that came with Fritos or horror thriller offers the serious actor unique opporCorn Chips. (Some Mini-Monsters’ names were tunity to fully exercise his craft and critically test his ability to awkward ­— um, what was Gay Blade’s deal? — but the figures make the unbelievable believable.” were creepy and cool.) Then, in 1971, came the biggie: General Famous Monsters of Filmland #35 (1965) offered a plea for Mills introduced Frankenberry and Count Chocula cereals. parental acceptance of monsters, in an article titled “Monsters Are Move over, Toucan Sam. A pink-skinned Frankenstein as the Good For My Children — Yours Too!!!” (Yes, there are three mascot of a strawberry-flavored cereal that turned milk . . . pink? exclamation points in the title.)

The mainstreaming of monsters was officially complete.

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“Jim Warren was a feisty son-of-a-gun. He wasn’t going to give up when things were tough.

He put everything together on his own. He said, ‘I’m going to create a new magazine.’ ” — Greg Bazaz, onetime teen columnist for Famous Monsters of Filmland DAVID BECAME A GOLIATH. character Vampirella. For his part, Ackerman But for James Warren, the leap from a onewas no shrinking violet on the subject. shot magazine produced out of his parents’ “Vampirella was my brainchild,” he declared house to a multi-title publishing company based in his 1986 memoir, Famous Monster of in New York City didn’t happen overnight.

Filmland. “I wrote the origin story, nicknamed Following the runaway success of Famous her ‘Vampi,’ originated the inside front cover Monsters of Filmland, Warren founded Warren feature called ‘Vampi’s Feary Tales,’ named the Publishing, adding titles about movie nostalgia if readers’ department ‘Scarlet Letters,’ etc.” not monsters per se. First came the sci-fi mag Frank Frazetta painted the bewitching cover Spacemen (edited by Forrest J Ackerman, natch) for Vampirella #1. But, almost by happenstance, in 1961, and Screen Thrills Illustrated (edited by the character was designed by Trina Robbins future “Dracula vs. Frankenstein” producer (who was soon to become a pioneer in the Samuel M. Sherman) in 1962. underground comics genre).

As monster mania hit a peak in 1964, Warren “I designed Vampirella over the phone,” answered with two titles related to the craze he Robbins told me in 1992. “I happened to be at helped ignite: the FM companion Monster World Jim Warren’s offices, trying to show him my and the comics anthology Creepy (for which portfolio. But he got on the phone with Frazetta Warren solicited artists from the old EC days). and started talking about the costume. I knew “When the company was well-established, exactly what he meant, so I sketched it out and people would come to me to publish other magahanded it to him while he was on the phone. zines,” Warren told me in 1997.

“He said, ‘Just a minute. I’ve got a young “It’s easy, when you’re a publishing compalady here who has the right idea.’ And I got on ny, to publish crossword puzzle books or sports the phone with Frank Frazetta and simply magazines or fan magazines described it to him perfectly. Jim or rock ’n’ roll magazines. But Warren, being a man, didn’t quite Left: Warren Publishing’s I didn’t have a love for it. I know how to describe it right, and followups to Famous liked it, but unless I had the I did. Frank Frazetta was a very Monsters. Opposite: passion, I couldn’t do it. nice man, and very happy to get Horror comics hosts “I put out stuff that I my suggestions.”

Uncle Creepy, Cousin loved, and sure enough, there “Vampirella was created,” said Eerie and Vampirella. were enough people out there Bazaz, “and that helped turn the © Warren Publishing who loved it. Screen Thrills fortunes of Warren, because it was one of them. The monster became a very popular magazine.” theme, we sort of started. We followed it up Spanish artist José González, who debuted in with the comics of Creepy and Vampirella. I Vampirella #12 (1971), emerged as the characnever published anything I didn’t really love.” ter’s quintessential delineator.

Warren credited the success of his magazines Recalled Warren: “Vampirella, particularly, to his eye for talent. took 12 issues to find the right combination. I “The luck that I had was in finding great searched for the artist ‘Pepe’ González for two guys who also shared the passion,” he said. years. Couldn’t find him. I finally found him.”

“In this case, Forry Ackerman; Sammy Sherman; the old EC artists for Creepy, Eerie; WARREN IS CERTAINLY A CHEER(writer-editor) Archie Goodwin, who did most leader for talent. And it also seems fair to call of the great Vampirella stories.” him a tough taskmaster in the cause of executing The war comics anthology Blazing Combat his vision. blazed onto the stands in 1965, followed by the “I think probably all the stories you heard Creepy companions Eerie in 1966 and about him are mostly true — if not in fact, cerVampirella in 1969. Rotund, smirking Cousin tainly in character,” said J.R. Cochran, who editEerie was cut from the same rotted cloth as ed Creepy for Warren in the early ’70s.

Uncle Creepy, and Eerie’s stories were similar.

“One legend was that Warren supposedly ran But sexy-spooky Vampirella — who was more through over 20 secretaries within one year. He likely than her creaky predecessors to “star” in would scream, ‘My pencils aren’t sharp her own stories — was another kettle of bats. enough!’ He kept on hiring temp secretaries.”

“Between Jim and Forry, stories get kind of Cochran was quick to add: “I didn’t have any switched as to who did what,” said onetime FM run-ins with him. I don’t remember anything teen columnist Greg Bazaz on the creation of the like that. He trusted me with what I was doing.”

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Uncle Creepy’s papa Russ Jones: Resurrection man for horror comics genre ANGRY PARENTS AND A SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ran horror comics out of town in the middle 1950s. The founder of the embattled genre, publisher William M. Gaines, was forced to cancel the infamous horror titles of his publishing company, Entertaining Comics. Horror comics were dead — or were they (eh, eh, eh)?

A decade later, artist Russ Jones had the idea to gather EC’s scattered talent and publish new horror comics in a magazine format, thus side-stepping the censoring Comics Code Authority.

The old EC books had horrific “hosts” such as the Crypt Keeper and the Old Witch. For his new venture, Jones decided to revive that tradition — and Uncle Creepy was born.

Ontario native Jones was born in 1942 and produced cover art for Famous Monsters (#30) and Castle of Frankenstein, (1967 annual), and contributed plots to the 1967 anthology cheapie “Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horror” starring old-schoolers Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine.

I spoke with the artist in 2000.

Q: What were the circumstances when you first tried to launch Creepy?

JONES: Initially, I went to Bill Gaines with the idea. And of course, Bill had had his own problems earlier. He was very supportive. He and (editor Al) Feldstein and the whole group up at Mad helped out a lot. And I was working with Jim (Warren), and I was pushing him on it, but he was very slow. Finally, after months and months and months of, shall we say, arbitration and negotiation, we finally decided to come up with it. Jim gave it the green light, and we did it.

Q: Jack Davis drew the cover of Creepy #1, but you drew the Uncle Creepy prototype?

Russ Jones with Creepy #1 in 2000.

Background: Uncle Creepy’s inspiration, actor Alastair Sim. Opposite: Jack Davis’ Uncle Creepy art.

Photo: Kathy Voglesong; Uncle Creepy © Warren Publishing; “Scrooge” © Renown Film Productions

JONES: That was the original concept drawing that I sent to Jack.

That was kind of a style guide for it.

I was sort of aping Jack’s style as a joke for me and for him, because we were really good friends.

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Q: Who, or what, did you base Uncle Creepy on?

— and resurrect that because of the success of Creepy. Jim wanted to protect the title. So the idea was to put it on a newsstand and have some photos taken and just say that we could protect the copyright that way. Apparently, it worked.

JONES: Actually, Creepy was a combination of Alastair Sim from “Scrooge” (1951) and the British actor Anthony Dawson, who was the murderer in “Dial M For Murder” (1965).

Q: Of course, those Eerie #1 ashcans are collectible. How many were printed?

Q: Sim’s Uncle Scrooge is an annual Christmas classic. It’s heartwarming to learn that Sim influenced Uncle Creepy.

JONES: I don’t remember.

There were quite a few, because I, myself, had at least 500 copies, probably.

Maybe more. I don’t remember; it was a long time ago.

JONES: Yeah, he was really the genesis of Uncle Creepy.

Q: I loved the “Mummy” comic strip you did, which I saw in Monster World #1 (1964). It’s very faithful to the 1932 film, and you have those to-die-for inks by Wally Wood. Could you talk about developing the strip?

Q: Many of the old EC guys were in the early Creepy. Had you paid attention to Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, etc.?

JONES: Oh, yeah. My original idea was really to just be a resurrection man, and resurrect the EC line.

JONES: That was actually the genesis of the whole thing, was to bring comics to Jim. And it took a long time for that to come out. That probably was done a good six months prior to publication. And it was just coincidental that it ended up in Monster World, which didn’t exist at the time that we did it.

Q: But specifically in magazine form?

JONES: Yes. That way, I figured we could get around the Code (the Comics Code Authority). I’d done a lot of comic book work for Gold Key, and they weren’t Code signature. (Writer) Bill Harris taught me a lot up there. So between Gaines, Harris and Al Feldstein, we came up with a methodology around that.

Q: As you spoke with the EC artists about Creepy, were they excited about the idea of working in black and white in a larger format, and perhaps doing “washes” (ink and water applied with brush)?

Above: The Creepy Fan Club button.

Below: The Eerie #1 “ashcan” (1966) was thrown together to protect the copyright.

Creepy and Eerie © Warren Publishing

JONES: Yeah. Joe Orlando was. I know that for a fact. I think Reed Crandall was. George Evans wanted to always experiment.

Q: How many issues of Creepy were you the editor on?

JONES: I think I did the first four or five; and the first two issues of Blazing Combat; and the “ashcan” (sample issue) and then the real first edition of Eerie. But they were all uncredited. I got credited for three issues of Creepy.

Q: It’s a strange twist of fate that Eerie began as a #2 issue.

JONES: I think (publisher) Myron Fass was going to come out with his old Eerie — which I wasn’t aware of

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Q: What titles did you work on at Gold Key? JONES: I did the Boris Karloff and the Twilight Zone books. I was packaging those for Dell. So you’ll see a lot of the Creepy artists in there, as well, during that period. There was some (Angelo) Torres, Joe Orlando.

Quite a few.

Q: But they’re uncredited, aren’t they?

JONES: Uncredited. We snuck little things in. Bill (Gaines) always tried to find those, but we got through with some of ’em.

Q: Of course, the Karloff books began as Thriller, based on his anthology TV series. The comic book outlived the show and Karloff. Could you talk about that transition from Thriller to Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery?

JONES: All I know is that it happened. I think I worked on one of the Thrillers, and then I didn’t even know there was going to be a title change until the mag came out.

Because I did a lot of the portraits of Karloff that they picked up and went on for years later. They kept using my Karloffs.

You could call Angelo Torres the EC Artist Who Never Was . . . but Torres got his revenge (eh, eh, eh).

What would have been Torres’ comics debut — a 1956 sci-fi story for Entertaining Comics titled “An Eye For an Eye” — was not published due to its censorship by the Comics Code Authority.

Eight years later, Torres illustrated a story in Creepy #1, a magazine concocted to revive the EC spirit.

As Torres told me in 1995: “Creepy was an attempt to bring back the old EC Comics days — that great line of comics that Bill Gaines had, the horror and sciencefiction genre that was killed.

“To, in a sense, resurrect EC was the original idea behind Creepy. That’s why they went for the artists they went after: most of the old EC artists. They had (Jack) Davis. They wanted (Al) Williamson, (Joe) Orlando.

Everybody was in on this.”

Creepy publisher James Warren said as much during the magazine’s first-ever artists’ meeting, according to Torres (who was born in Puerto Rico in 1932).

“Warren brought us all together,” he recalled.

“We had a big dinner, and that’s what he said. He said he wanted to bring back, in magazine form, the old EC days. He said, ‘I’ll pay so much now. As the sales pick up, we’ll start paying more.’

“That was fine. So, we all jumped in. We went at it.

We started work. Davis did the first cover. (Frank) Frazetta started doing covers. George Evans was in on this. Several other people. We got very excited about it.”

Torres’ story “Pursuit of the Vampire,” written by Archie Goodwin, appeared in Creepy #1 alongside stories by EC greats Davis, Orlando, Williamson, Roy G. Krenkel and Reed Crandall; as well as Gray Morrow.

Torres became a mainstay in the early Creepy, sometimes telling his stories in pen-and-ink with fine crosshatching, or via gloomy wash applied with brush.

“That was another great thing about working for Warren,” Torres said. “They had great reproduction there. You could do anything you wanted. You could work in ‘halftone’ (gradations of gray), you could work in ‘line’ (stark blacks), or do it any way you wanted. I pushed every job differently. They were fun. The reproduction was fine; I thought the washes came out great.”

Torres’ stories in Creepy — which are something like monster movies translated to the printed page — perfectAngelo Torres’ “Pursuit of the Vampire” in Creepy #1. © Warren Publishing ly capture the genre. I remarked to Torres that his work in Creepy reminds me of Hollywood horror films of the Torres called Creepy a career highlight — at first, anyway.

1930s and ’40s and, strangely enough, Mexican horror films of the “In the beginning, it was,” he said.

1950s and ’60s.

“I only worked in the first eight issues, and I had fun with those “Oh, I’m a big movie buff,” Torres conceded. first eight or nine jobs that I did. Archie Goodwin was writing “I grew up on horror movies. Frankenstein movies and ‘The most of the work, which was good.”

Mummy’ — this is what I grew up watching when I was a kid.

But Torres felt Creepy failed to replicate the EC spirit.

I’ve been a big movie buff all my life. My biggest influence over“It just never went anywhere,” the artist said. “It just became a all in my work is the movies — the great directors and the great regular account, doing horror stuff. It just became one horror story adventures stories made in the ’40s and the ’30s, the (Errol) Flynn after another, and I became involved in doing other things. Finally, movies and things like that.”

I just had to drop it. I just couldn’t take any more horror.”

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Left: A panel from “The TellTale Heart” in Creepy #3 (1965), art

by Reed Crandall.

Right: Don Post’s Uncle Creepy mask. © Warren Publishing

Monsters aplenty in “Monster Rally,” Uncle Creepy’s origin story, from Creepy #4 (1965). Art by Angelo Torres. © Warren Publishing

Classic monsters often haunted the pages of Creepy and Eerie. Above: A panel from “Footsteps of Frankenstein” in Eerie #2 (1966), art by Reed Crandall. Left: A werewolf attacks in a panel from “Duel of the Monsters” in Creepy #7 (1965), art by Angelo Torres. © Warren Publishing

It’s no surprise what special ingredient Vampirella added to comics, least of all to adolescent male readers. Right: “Spaced-Out Girls” in Vampirella #1 (1969), art by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico.

Below: “Forgotten Kingdom” in Vampirella #4 (1969), art by David St. Clair. © Warren Publishing

Frazetta’s Creepy world

The stuff of nightmares — that describes Frank Frazetta’s covers for the early Creepy. They are like stories, really scary stories, with unrelenting monsters that inhabit an unholy netherworld no human should be caught alive in. © Warren Publishing

Cover artwork a’Gogos Artist’s monster covers were museum worthy

“This is my favorite,” said Basil Gogos of his 1969 portrait of Boris Karloff.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

SURE, JIM WARREN AND FORRY ACKERMAN FATHERED IT. And thousands of gruesome stills sustained it. But the secret weapon of Famous Monsters of Filmland was certainly Basil Gogos, who painted more than 40 unforgettable covers of the seminal horror magazine between 1960 and 1981.

Gogos’ portraits of movie monsters, though clearly referenced, were interpretive, even impressionistic. His horrible visages evoked pathos as they celebrated the macabre. And Gogos was a fine artist unafraid to use “sensational” colors — bright yellows, eerie greens, blood reds — that high-minded colleagues might have avoided. Gogos played to that cover, played to the magazine rack it would sit on, even as he answered to higher critics with his art.

Let’s put it this way: Basil Gogos would paint a Vincent Price or a Peter Cushing with a sensitivity heretofore reserved for portraits of kings or clergymen.

All that, plus Gogos’ Famous Monsters covers neatly fulfilled a most fundamental and essential of objectives: They sold magazines.

Gogos still remembers his first FM cover, for issue #9: a moody Price from Roger Corman’s then-current “House of Usher” (1960), for which Gogos was paid $125. (His price would reach $750.)

Gogos’ initial contact with FM’s publisher, Warren, was “kind of freakish,” the artist told me in 1993.

“I had an agent who met Warren, and Warren asked him if he had anyone who could do something that looked really ‘psychedelic.’ He (the agent) came to me and said, ‘Could you do it?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll try.’

“I did something that I was kind of embarrassed to take into the publisher, to be honest.

“But as it turned out, the rep took it in, and I got a call from Jim. He said, ‘Why aren’t you here so I can hug you and kiss you?’ He loved it. That was a real surprise. It was the beginning of a love affair that lasted quite a few years.”

Gogos found humanity in his portraits of movie monsters. More importantly, his artwork sold magazines. © Warren Publishing GOGOS PAINTED THE FIRST STRING OF MOVIE monsters, but he also created covers of some also-rans: Bernard Jukes, the stage’s Renfield; Boris Karloff as the Ghoul; Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein; Claude Rains’ Phantom of the Opera; Mr. Sardonicus; the Son of Dr. Jekyll; the Colossal Beast.

Gogos even did TV monsters: Zacherley; Barnabas Collins.

He devised his palette based on FM’s print reproduction.

“I made sure the colors were produced well,” the Egypt native said. “I used colors that were closest to the printers’ inks. The results were good, favorable. Very rarely did I have a problem.”

Gogos’ medium is acrylics, but he made at least one exception.

“I did (FM cover) #56 in oil,” he said, “but basically, I work in acrylics. I love acrylics, because the medium dries fast and I can control it well. When I use it thickly, it doesn’t crack.”

Besides his FM covers, Gogos painted Western, romance, war and men’s adventure magazine covers. In all, the artist estimated he produced 400 illustrations. But it is for his work for FM that Gogos is best known.

Which brought us to Gogos’ greatest regret concerning Famous Monsters of Filmland: At the time we spoke, Gogos possessed only one of his original FM cover paintings.

“I have no original whatsoever except for #56,” the artist said.

He was referring to his touching portrait of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, which graced FM’s Karloff tribute issue following the actor’s death on Feb. 2, 1969. Gogos painted Karloff as an older man; his humanity can be sensed beneath the scars, neckbolts and green skin.

“They’re all gone,” Gogos then said of his other FM covers.

“They’re owned by different people. I don’t own any of them.

“In those days, life was hard for an artist. As you know, we had to sign our work and give it away, practically, or sell it under worldwide conditions. It was up to the publishers; it wasn’t up to me, as an artist. I don’t have any art.”

How, then, did Gogos retain the original art to FM #56?

“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “It was like pulling teeth. But I got it back. This is my favorite.”

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I was a teenage editor Greg Bazaz’s life lessons at monster mag FAMOUS MONSTERS HELPED IGNITE the careers of such artists as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Tom Savini and Stephen King.

And Greg Bazaz.

Later an actor, Bazaz got a head start in the professional world as a teen editor and columnist for the 1958-83 magazine created by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman.

Bazaz was a 17-yearold high schooler in Onetime Famous 1968, when he wrote a Monsters teen letter to Warren suggesteditor Greg Bazaz ing that FM revive The with issue #56 Graveyard Examiner, a (1969), in which newsletter within the magazine that he debuted. was produced by and Photo by Mary Frank; courtesy of the for young fans, and hadn’t Asbury Park Press been seen in the pages of FM since issue #24 (1963).

Bazaz also wrote “Ask Greg,” a column accompanied by his photo in which he answered questions sent in by Famous Monsters readers. (The questions were rarely head-scratchers. Sample: How many times did Bela Lugosi play Dracula?)

Though Bazaz’s tenure was brief, he points with pride to the fact that following his departure, The Graveyard Examiner was continued in FM until Warren Publishing’s final issue, #191, in 1983.

When Bazaz and I spoke in 2006, we made a little game out of it. In tribute to his onetime FM column, every other question was “Ask Greg” style.

Q: How did you first hook up with Famous Monsters of Filmland?

BAZAZ: I was a high school kid and into the monster magazines. I noticed there was a decline in the quality of the magazines in the mid-to-late ’60s, so I wrote Jim Warren a long letter detailing what

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I thought was wrong with the magazine and how he could improve it — me, a brilliant 17-year-old kid. To my surprise, he wrote me back. He said, “Why don’t you come in to the office, and we’ll talk about your ideas?”

Q: Lon Chaney Jr. played the mummy in what three movies?

BAZAZ: Well, the mummy was never one of my favorite movies except for the original. I was never a fan of those, except for “The Curse of the Mummy” (sic) and “The Mummy’s Hand.” I don’t think I can name the third one.

Bazaz has the distinction of being in the final issue of FM of the 1960s, #60, which had a typically lovely Basil Gogos painting of Dorian Gray on its cover. © Warren Publishing

Q: It’s “The Mummy’s Ghost,” “The Mummy’s Tomb” and “The Mummy’s Curse.” Were the “Ask Greg” questions real, or did you make them up?

BAZAZ: Absolutely real. Forry lived in California. I hadn’t met him during my tenure there at Famous Monsters. But apparently, Warren said, “OK, we’ve got a kid to do The Graveyard Examiner.”

So Forry would send me packages all the time, these big manila envelopes.

He’d have dozens and dozens of letters for me to pick from.

Q: Name the sequel to “The Amazing Colossal Man.” BAZAZ: That, I couldn’t do, unless it’s “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.”

Q: It was “War of the Colossal Beast.” I’m not trying to burn you.

BAZAZ: Oh, man, I didn’t know I was in for a test (laughs).

Q: Today, with the Internet, the questions you used to get would be easy to answer. In the ’60s, there weren’t even that many books about horror films. What did you do for research?

BAZAZ: A lot of the letters were from kids who were much younger than I was — you know, 10- or 11-year-olds — so many of the questions were real simple. Warren provided me with a nice stock of back issues that I didn’t have, because my mother would never let me read monster magazines, because it was such trash. And there were some books available. Or, if I didn’t know the answers, a lot of times, Forry had already written the answers on the letters for me. Or I could ask Warren.

Q: Who unmasked Lon Chaney Sr. in “Phantom of the Opera”?

BAZAZ: Mary Philbin. I do have a bit of knowledge.

Q: What issues of FM were you in, total?

BAZAZ: I started with issue 56. The last issue with a Graveyard Examiner that I produced was 63. My last really good one was 61.

My name stayed on the masthead for another issue or two before they got around to changing it. It was pretty much a year.

Q: What actor played Dracula more often than any other actor?

BAZAZ: Christopher Lee. How many times did Bela Lugosi actually play Dracula?

Q: Just two: “Dracula,” 1931, and “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” 1948. I learned that from reading your column.

BAZAZ: I screwed it up in my first issue. I said three, because I included “Mark of the Vampire,” which I corrected in issue 57.

Q: Why did your tenure end?

BAZAZ: There was an incident where a friend of mine did a drawing of me as a monster. Through no fault of my own, it ran bigger than it should have. Warren said to me, “Keep your ego in check, Greg.” Then I made a little joke in print about Warren and Forry, and Warren thought I should have called him “Mr. Warren.” So one day, he just said, “I think we’re done, Greg.” But we’ve joked about it since. He signed an autograph to me, “Greg: You’re fired.” Forry, too. Years later, I went to a sci-fi convention, and it was the first time I’d run into Forry since I knew him in New York briefly. I went up and said, “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Greg Bazaz.” He said, “Sure! Greg Bazaz! Jim Warren’s still waiting for your next issue.”

Q: Who created the makeup for Boris Karloff in “Frankenstein”?

BAZAZ: Jack Pierce.

Q: Well, thanks again for your time, Greg.

BAZAZ: No, thank you. I’m just amazed that anyone remembers me at all. It was just one year.

Q: Well, after all, you’re a footnote in monster-magazine history.

BAZAZ: I’m a footnote.

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In 1964, Warren Publishing put out Famous Films, three fumetti-style magazines — that is, comics with photos rather than art. The movies, adapted by founding Creepy editor Russ Jones, were all over the map: “Curse of Frankenstein”/“Horror of Dracula,” “The Mole People” and “Horror of Party Beach.”

The “Mole People” book ably communicated the film’s deadly dullness, while “Party Beach” had a surprising amount of gore.

“Curse of Frankenstein”/“Horror of Dracula” © Seven Arts Pictures; “The Mole People” © Universal Studios; “Horror of Party Beach” © 20th Century Fox

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Castle of Frankenstein offered a more literate alternative to FM. © Gothic Castle NOBODY WAS READING Famous Monsters of Filmland for its pointed critical analysis of genre movies.

But there existed a magazine that strove to have adult conversations about fantasy films. Castle of Frankenstein — published by Calvin T. Beck — didn’t underestimate its audience, and played to an aficionado sensibility. (COF’s debut issue in 1962 featured pieces on “The Seventh Seal” as well as “The Tingler.”)

COF — which was preceded by Beck’s 1959 one-shot, Journal of Frankenstein — published Q&A-format interviews with horror stars (Christopher Lee, Lon Chaney Jr., Boris Karloff) and on-set coverage of films, such as its issue #7 cover story on the made-inEngland Karloff vehicle “Die, Monster, Die!” (1965). Future filmmaker Joe Dante — who would direct a valentine

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to the Monster Craze, 1993’s “Matinee” — was a contributing editor. Richard Bojarski, who later published biographies of Bela Lugosi and Karloff, contributed articles and a recurring comic strip, “Baron Von Bungle.”

A downside was COF’s erratic publishing schedule. An upside was a certain enterprising, multiple-issues-spanning feature. In issue #6 (1964) — five years before the first edition of Leonard Maltin’s “TV Movies” was published — COF inaugurated the “Frankenstein TV Movieguide.” The title belied its ambition to present synopses/reviews of every fantasy film extant. It’s something COF came to realize. “There’s a feeling that this department’s title is a misnomer,” went an intro in issue #14 (1969). “What we’ve been turning out is an SFantaFilm & ImagiMovie checklist.”

Above: A four-page foldout from Fantastic Monsters of the Films. Right: “Frankenstein ’68” from For Monsters Only. © Black Shield Productions; © Major Magazines, Inc.

CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN isn’t the only descendant of Famous Monsters that was no mere cheap knockoff — that succeeded in doing ambitious editorial.

The shortlived Fantastic Monsters of the Films (1962-63) offered magazine-y design, on-set coverage and insider insight, particularly in the realm of makeup. Among its editors were Paul Blaisdell, the makeup artist behind the ’50s bug-eyed aliens in “Invasion of the Saucer Men” and “It Conquered the World,” and Bob Burns, his assistant on those pictures. There were color foldouts on glossy stock, “spot” inside color and fiction, including a reprint of the 1947 Robert Bloch story “Black Lotus.”

For Monsters Only, (1965-72) from the folks who brought you the Mad imitator Cracked, was mostly jokey. Still, it featured well-researched profiles of monster movie stars

by Bojarski and comics by Creepy contributor Jerry Grandenetti that thrust classic monsters into the groovy 1960s. John Severin, another old EC guy and a founding Mad artist, provided covers and much incidental cartooning.

For every COF, there were countless alsorans and outright Famous Monsters knockoffs, among them Monster Parade, World Famous Creatures, Shriek!, Monster Mania, Modern Monsters, Marvel’s Monsters to Laugh With and Monsters Unlimited, Charlton’s Mad Monsters and Horror Monsters and the one-shot 3-D Monsters. But, hey, even the worst of these provided an all-important monster fix.

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Classics Illustrated kept monster comics alive during the horror ban. From left: Frankenstein (complete with blood), Mr. Hyde and Quasimodo. Opposite: CI covers, including Norman Saunders’ compelling Frankenstein on the run. © Gillberton Co. Inc.

As Disney purveyors, Dell was immune from the Comics Code. Once the Craze hit, Dell published monster comics based on movies, and even monsters as superheroes. © Dell The lid was off Pandora’s box. DC Comics put funny monsters in The Adventures of Bob Hope (below, in 1966 artwork by Bob Oksner) and Stanley and His Monster. © DC Comics Inc.

A verbose giant scorpion in Jack Kirby art from Journey Into Mystery #82 (1962). Opposite: The irrepressible Fin Fang Foom, also by Kirby, from Strange Tales #89 (1961). © Marvel Comics Inc. GORGOLLA IS NOT A CHEESE, IT’S A monster. But you’d know that if you read Marvel Comics’ beloved monster books of the late 1950s and early ’60s — the very books that paved the way for Marvel’s superhero renaissance.

Though the Comics Code Authority had outlawed horror comics, Marvel’s monster books slipped through the cracks, presumably because they were usually about giant monsters — the kind you fought with tanks, not wooden stakes.

In the pages of Marvel’s Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales, Journey Into Mystery, Amazing Adventures and Tales to Astonish, editor-writer Stan Lee worked overtime to concoct exotic monster names. Besides Gorgolla, there was Gorgilla (no relation), Orogo, Orrgo, Rorgg, Rommbu, Bombu, Quogg, Grogg, Grutan, Gruto, Monsteroso, Taboo, Tim Boo Ba and the best monster name of all, Fin Fang Foom.

Where on Earth did Lee find Fin Fang Foom?

“Believe it or not,” Lee told me in 1993, “I came up with that name because when I was a kid, maybe 10 years old, my father took me to see a movie. It was probably about pirates or something. It took place in China. The name of it was ‘Chu Chin Chow’ (1934). I don’t remember the movie, but I never forgot the name.

“Like, when I was a kid and I read Shakespeare, I didn’t understand it that much, but the rhythm of the language stayed with me.

And somehow, the rhythm of Chu Chin Chow — I never forgot it. So,” Lee added with a laugh, “when I was looking for a monster’s name, I came up with Fin Fang Foom because it had the same rhythm as Chu Chin Chow.”

The stories were frequently drawn by Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber — artists who would soon illustrate the exploits of Marvel superheroes in the very same books.

Lee wove monster themes into at least one such superhero: the Hulk.

“I had always loved the ‘Frankenstein’ movie,” Lee said. “To me, the monster was the good guy, because he really didn’t want to hurt anybody. Those idiots with torches were always chasing him up and down the hills. I thought, ‘What would it be like if I could create a sympathetic monster?’ I liked that idea, but I wasn’t sure what to do with him.

“Then I remembered Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ I thought, ‘What if the monster was really a human being who turned into the monster and turned back, and he couldn’t control the change?’ ”

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Kid-friendly “funny” monster comic books usually followed the monster-family model. From top left: John Stanley’s Melvin Monster, The Little Monsters and Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist. Opposite and left: Little Monsters panels. Below: Melvin Monster’s Baddy and Mummy — the latter, a decidedly morose and mysterious character for a kiddie comic book.

“Melvin Monster” © Dell; “The Little Monsters” © Gold Key; “J. Evil Scientist” © Hanna-Barbera

‘Dark’ dominion Barnabas and fiends: Monsters in broad daylight IT WAS A MONSTER FAN’S DREAM COME TRUE: A daily soap opera featuring vampires, werewolves, a Frankenstein type, a Van Helsing type, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type, witches and ghosts. Everything, it would seem, except a Godzilla type raining nuclear fire on foggy, gloomy, drizzly Collinsport, a coastal New England village where the weirdest things happen.

Though not at first.

When “Dark Shadows” debuted on June 27, 1966, it was different from an average daytime drama, if still a far cry from the monster rally it would become. Initially broadcast in black and white, “Dark Shadows” began as a soap infused with mystery, as young Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) took a job as a governess at Collinwood, ancestral home of the crusty, old-money Collins clan.

The idea for the show came to series creator-producer Dan Curtis (1927-2006) in a very “Dark Shadows” way.

“It happened with a dream,” Curtis told me in 2003.

“I had a dream about a girl on a train, stopping at this small staizens of Collinwood: the rotting hand of Count Petofi ... the living tion out in the weeds, middle of the night, getting out, standing on head of Judah Zachary ... the Jekyll-and-Hyde machinations of a platform, train pulling away. And she was doing it in voiceover.

Cyrus Longworth and John Yaeger ... Adam, the Frankensteinian It was sort of like she was reading a letter. I could hear her voice. creation of Dr. Lang ... Eve, Adam’s “Bride of Frankenstein.”

“And I woke up. I thought, ‘Oh, what a great idea.’ This girl Barnabas found a rival for his place on the cover of 16 was being hired as a governess, and this whole Gothic thing. I Magazine in pulchritudinous werewolf Quentin Collins, played thought, ‘What a terrific idea.’ Then I went back to sleep. with an intense gaze and fuzzy mutton-chops by David Selby.

“I got up in the morning and I thought it was the worst idea I The black cherry on top was the haunting music of Robert Cobert. had ever heard of in my whole life. My wife was awake. I told her You could learn a few things by watching “Dark about this dream. She said, ‘Well, I think it’s a Shadows.”

Who knew that Barnabas walling up great idea.’ I said, ‘You do?’ ” Fangs for the memories!

Reverend Trask with brick and mortar was a literShortly after that, Curtis sold the show.

Opposite: Jonathan Frid ary allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of “It was not a tough sell,” he recalled. as Barnabas on a paperAmontillado”? (Actually, back then, who knew “I thought it would be a nighttime show, but back cover. Above: The what a “literary allusion” was?) The show chalthe guy who was head of daytime (at ABC-TV) show’s shaggy werewolf. lenged the laws of physics with its penchant for loved it. He insisted that we develop it for day© Dan Curtis Productions time-tripping. Storylines were set in 1795, 1897, the time. We made a deal. That was it.” contemporary 1960s, the future and parallel time.

When Curtis introduced the show’s first “Dark Shadows” inspired an avalanche of merchandise, includsupernatural storylines — the ghost of Josette (Episode 70, Sept. ing comic books, model kits, board games, trading cards, a 30, 1966) and the flame-engulfed phoenix Laura Collins (Episode 32-book paperback series and a Grammy-nominated #13 hit single 191, March 30, 1967) — he saw a bounce in the ratings. (“Quentin’s Theme”). There was a syndicated “Dark Shadows” Thereafter, Curtis and his writers kept the scary coming. comic strip and two feature films, “House of Dark Shadows” It all led to the introduction of 18th-century gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins on April 18, 1967. The casting of Canadian actor (1970) and “Night of Dark Shadows” (1971).

All this, and “Dark Shadows” still maintained its soap-opera Jonathan Frid — handsome in an odd way, and a little bit sad — cred by introducing a classic love triangle. Barnabas was eternally was pure kismet, a perfect pairing of player and role. Barnabas caught between the woman he loved — sweet, innocent Josette was no wild-eyed bloodsucker; he was a reluctant vampire who (Katherine Leigh Scott) — and the woman who would stop at regretted his kills and was capable of feeling love. nothing to possess him — big-eyed witch Angelique (Lara Parker).

With his black-onyx forefinger ring, silver wolf’s-head cane The mad monster party ended with the final episode on April 2, and strandy hairdo, Barnabas became a cult figure — and Frid 1971. But we still haven’t seen the last of Barnabas Collins and became something of a teen idol. Kids ran home from school to watch Barnabas’ daily exploits, and those of his fellow freaky den- “Dark Shadows.”

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Jonathan Frid BARNABAS COLLINS KILLED DESERVING parties and random strumpets in Collinsport.

But he saved “Dark Shadows.”

Luckily, the show’s creator, Dan Curtis, was out of town when Canadian actor Jonathan Frid (1924-2012) was cast as Barnabas in 1967.

“It was Dan’s idea to have this vampire to begin with, way back when,” Frid said in 1990.

“But he wasn’t in New York at the time they actually cast the role of Barnabas. I doubt whether I ever would have been Barnabas if he had been there. Because, he wanted somebody that was very aggressive, very macho and strong and violent, in a sense. But while he was away, the mice played.

“The associate producer, with the writers, decided that they wanted to go for a more complex kind of character, to keep it going longer. Because, they were counting on this character to keep the show going. So I had this meeting with them and we talked about the character. We developed it together.”

The ploy worked. The overnight popularity of Barnabas sustained “Dark Shadows.”

“The press, of course, made it up to be just a guy with a couple of fangs biting everybody,” Frid lamented. “I only did that for about three minutes of the whole five years that I was on the show.

Jonathan Frid, “There were many, many scripts who will forever that were terrible, and often, I was be remembered terrible. Never worse. But the varias Barnabas ety of emotions and the complexity Collins, in 1990. of Barnabas made him the most Photo by Kathy Voglesong; interesting character I’ve ever collages by Mark Voger; “Dark Shadows” © Dan played, including Shakespeare. And Curtis Productions it was constantly fascinating and surprising to me what I was called upon to do.”

By not playing Barnabas as an outright villain, Frid believes he was able to hold the audience’s interest.

“He was not just a vampire, not just a romancer,” Frid told me.

“He was sometimes evil, too, but everybody’s got evil in them. He had evil. He had everything. He was always falling in love; he couldn’t stand the woman who loved him. He was passive. He was aggressive. He was angry, and justifiably. Sometimes non-justifiably. He was just like every other human being. He was just another person with a problem — a couple of problems. He had a medical problem. He needed blood in his system all the time.

And he had to get it quick.

“There are no such things as heroes and villains, you know.

And Barnabas was neither hero nor villain.”

Kathryn Leigh Scott AMONG THE “DARK SHADOWS” CAST, Kathryn Leigh Scott was a pioneer.

Cast members often did double, triple and quadruple duty as centuries-old ancestors of their characters, a tradition that endeared viewers while it afforded actors with a stretch. But Scott was the first, owing to the time she stood in for a clothes dummy — on her day off, yet. (Scott was then playing heroine Maggie Evans.)

“I wasn’t working that day, but I came in to pick up some scripts,” Scott told me in 1997.

“I saw (producer) Bob Costello and the wardrobe lady trying to dress this clothes dummy. They were putting this old-fashioned lace on her and some eerie light and they had a fan and there was a veil over her face. They were trying to create a ghostlike effect, but it looked like nothing. ” Scott offered to help, and Costello asked her to stand in for the dummy. Makeup artist Vincent Loscalzo then transformed Scott into the ghost of Josette duPres, 18th-century love interest of Barnabas Collins (who had yet to be cast).

“He took a ping-pong ball, cut it in half and painted an eye on it,” Scott explained. “He put some putty on my cheekbone. Then he put some dreadful hair on me and mucked it up with baby oil and talcum Kathryn Leigh powder, and they dressed me in these clothes. Bob said, ‘Lift your hands Scott, who slowly and open you mouth slowly.’ played Barnabas’ The fan, with the air rushing against true love Josette my eye, made it water, so I looked du Pres, in 2005. like I was crying.”

Photo by Kathy Voglesong; “Dark Shadows” That very footage was used to © Dan Curtis Productions depict the ghost of Josette. Therefore, it seemed only logical to cast Scott in the role of Josette.

“Then,” said Scott, “(series creator) Dan Curtis started doing it with the other actors as well. But had I not done it that day, I don’t know that they wouldn’t have cast for another actress. That’s the genesis. That’s where it started.”

At first, all the multiple roles, century-hopping and parallel-time storylines had folks on the set fretting.

Recalled Scott: “Every once in a while, we would have one of the directors or one of the actors or writers protest, ‘Dan, they’re not going to get this. They’re not going to understand.’ But Dan never underestimated the audience. I think the fact that Dan never talked down to the audience, or never felt that they wouldn’t get it, is also part of that enduring thing.”

Playing the ghost of Josette wasn’t the only time Scott wore monstrous makeup. When — spoiler alert — Angelique coaxes Josette into jumping off Widow’s Hill, she does so by conjuring a vision of Josette as a vampire.

Widow’s Hill was not as expansive as viewers believed.

“Nobody would ever believe that the piece of ground that we filmed that on — the one where the hand comes up out of the grave — was about as big as a large coffee table,” Scott said with a laugh. “And that step, where I walk out and stand at the edge and jump, was the size of maybe two kitchen tables together.

We worked in very cramped quarters.”

Lara Parker The vengeful, and beautiful, witch Angelique cast spells on those who crossed her. And Lara Parker, who played Angelique on “Dark Shadows,” cast a spell on viewers — when she trained her piercing baby blues on the TV camera, and recited damning incantations.

“My eyes were my gift,” Parker told me in 1997.

“Everybody gets one. I was lucky to have big, blue eyes.

They would change color with what I had on.”

Not that it was Parker’s idea for Angelique to look directly at the camera.

Lara Parker, “They wanted me to stare right into who played the the lens (during incantations),” Parker beautiful (but said. “The problem with the incantadon’t cross her) tions is that they were hard to learn, witch Angelique, because they were just a bunch of words that weren’t really connected to in 2001.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong; anything. ‘I call on the powers of darkcollages by Mark Voger; ness to ...’ so on and so on. A lot of “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions times, I ended up reading them off the teleprompter. You would see my eyes dart over to the side and then back to the lens,” Parker added with a laugh.

“I think a lot of the intensity came from the fact that I didn’t have the faintest idea of how you did an incantation.

So I was just trying to kind of hoke it up.”

Arguably the most memorable “Dark Shadows” storyline was the Barnabas/Josette/Angelique narrative — a classic love triangle with a Gothic twist.

Said Parker: “Angelique and Josette represented two sides of woman, you might say — the side that is capable of anger and resentment and bitchiness and manipulating other people’s lives, and then the other side, which is the pure side, which is the virginal side. I felt sorry for Katherine (Leigh Scott, who played Josette), because she always had to play, ‘Oh, poor me!’ But she was the one, of course, that Barnabas loved.

“The essential irony of the vampire is that he cannot love. Because whatever he loves, he destroys. If he makes love to the woman, he will bite her and she will die. So he has to always live in denial. And denial — the frustration of not being able to have the beloved — is really what romantic love is. Romantic love is being in love with the thing that one could never possess.”

Parker didn’t always play all-out villainy; in fact, she was constantly asked to act “meaner.”

“I wanted to be the heroine,” Parker said. “For a long time, I played Angelique as if she were the heroine of the piece, rather than playing her like the evil villain.”

But Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas, assured Parker that her approach was valid.

Recalled Parker: “I had a lot of talks with Jonathan. He said, ‘You know, if you play the reluctance to being evil, you get a lot more mileage out of the character.’ I think that was the secret.”

David Selby Lon Chaney Jr. never made the cover of 16 Magazine.

But another actor who famously played a werewolf — David Selby, he of piercing eyes and hunky countenance — indeed penetrated the teenybopper realm populated by Davy Jones, Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy.

As Quentin Collins on “Dark Shadows” — a 19th-century werewolf with muttonchops that would make Mungo Jerry proud — Selby brought teen-idol-readiness to the Gothic soap when his character debuted on Dec. 16, 1968.

“I’m just delighted that people responded to him,” Selby told me in 2001.

“He had the long frock coat, which I thought was wonderful, and he had the sideburns. And, you know, he was a bit of a rogue. So I’m not sure why people have identified with him, but I’m grateful that they have.”

“Dark Shadows” creator Dan Curtis brought in Quentin to give the show a boost.

David Selby, who Recalled Selby: “When I first played hunky werewolf met Dan Curtis, I went over and Quentin Collins, in did a little scene in his office.

1989 when he was a Then they went over and looked star of “Falcon Crest.” at me on camera, and I got the “Falcon Crest” © Lorimar Television; “Dark job.”

Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions At first, viewers saw Quentin, but didn’t hear him. (Quentin was then a silent ghost.)

“It was about three months before the character ever spoke,” Selby said with a laugh. “I was worried that once I opened my mouth, they won’t want me.

“But it all worked out for the better. I think the character fit right in there with Jonathan (Frid, who played Barnabas).

Quentin was younger than Louie Edmonds and Jonathan and Joan Bennett, and he was a male figure that could play off of Kathryn Scott’s character; Lara Parker’s Angelique; Beth, the character that was brought in by Kate Jackson. He could play off of all of those young ladies that came through.

“And of course,” Selby said, laughing again, “I was delighted to be able to do it.”

Truth be told, Quentin took a bit of the spotlight away from Barnabas. Was there any jealousy on Frid’s part?

“Let me put it this way: I was never aware of it,” Selby said. “I suppose, in my way, I was so delighted to have a job, and the character was received so well, that I was sort of in my own world. But I don’t recall being consciously aware of any such thing. And that’s the truth.”

As for seeing his face on “Dark Shadows” merchandise: “I can only say that I always wanted a bubblegum card.

Because, being a baseball fan when I was a child, I thought, ‘Oh, these guys have these bubblegum cards.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, so I finally got one!’ I was delighted.

No, I didn’t mind that at all. I thought, ‘Goodness, look at that.’ ” The enduring appeal of “Dark Shadows” did not mystify Selby.

“To this day, it’s a world that you can escape to,” he said. “It’s not dependent upon technology or anything. It’s old-fashioned storytelling.”

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DIANA MILLAY

LOUIS EDMONDS

When Jonathan Frid would remove his fangs after playing Barnabas Collins, he went home a regular person.

But Frid’s fellow “Dark Shadows” cast member, Diana Millay, said she really was one of the otherworldly entities she played on the soap: a phoenix (that is, an immortal being that sets itself on fire and becomes reborn every 100 years).

Millay played the phoenix Laura Collins in the storyline that helped set “Dark Shadows” irreversibly down its Gothic path. The actress said cast and crew sensed they were onto something when they taped the seminal storyline.

“I won’t say we thought we were going to be some legend in our own time, but we felt it, yes,” Millay told me in 1997.

“The reception, immediately, was totally overwhelming.

We thought, ‘Hey! What are we doing?’ ” Millay — who can be seen yukking it up at Angelique’s funeral in “Night of Dark Shadows” (1971), the second feature film based on the series — considers herself a spiritual person. Given that playing Laura has won Millay lifelong fans, did she think the role was kismet?

“What you really mean,” Millay said with a sly smile, “is, was I always a phoenix? Of course! I was, indeed, always a phoenix.”

An actual Phoenix, eh? Surely, Millay was pulling my leg.

The actress elaborated: “When I was a little girl, I knew that I was a little weird. So in that sense, if you want to ask if it was destiny that I played this part, I suppose you could say so.

“Would I ever have played another part on this show, like everyone else who played 16 parts? Of course not. I never would have.

They knew I would only play the phoenix.

So in that sense, it was destiny, I suppose.”

Every bit as witty and urbane as the characters he played on “Dark Shadows,” Louis Edmonds (1923-2001) did not look down upon the spine-tingling soap.

“The work was good,” Edmonds told me in 1997.

“For all of us actors to be able to go change over and play our ancestors and all of that business, it had a certain richness to it that not many actors have the chance to do.”

“Dark Shadows” aficionados, and some cast members, have reached a consensus on Edmonds’ finest blooper.

“They seem to think I was quite brilliant one day when we were in the vault looking for somebody,” Edmonds said dryly. “The line was something like: ‘This is the vault of our ancestors.’ But I said ‘incestors.’ ‘This is the vault where our incestors lie.’ I corrected it cleanly with not a lot of stuttering and stammering.”

Edmonds wasn’t particularly impressed to see his likeness on merchandise such as trading cards.

“You don’t mean, like, the baseball playing cards?” said the actor. “If I saw them and don’t remember them, it’s because they began to blur. You just accept that as part of the job. Just as Jonathan (Frid) — with his Barnabas thing — must have gotten sick of seeing himself.”

In the 1970 film “House of Dark Shadows,” Edmonds got to do something he never did on TV: become a vampire.

“Oh, I was getting so bored being straight man during all the fun everybody else was having, turning into a vampire,” he said. “I just rode right along with it.”

Millay in 1997.

Out-of-character photos by Kathy Voglesong; insets: screen shots; “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions

Edmonds in 1997.

NANCY BARRETT

ROGER DAVIS

When we think of “Dark Shadows,” we think of swirling fog, musty mausoleums and creaky coffin lids. It’s no wonder Nancy Barrett stood out, with her groovy 1960s fashions and sensibility as hip ingenue Carolyn Stoddard.

“She was a very ’60s person,” Barrett told me of her Carolyn character in 2004.

“She was clearly very rich.

She was a little bit isolated and wanted to break out, like everybody in the ’60s — they wanted to break out of whatever mold they had been cast in.

“I sort of understood this dame immediately. She just wanted to do everything there was to do in life.”

Wardrobe-wise, Barrett had more fun playing flashback characters, such as Millicent Collins in the 1795 storyline.

“There were some wonderful velvets and much more interesting clothing designed for the periods in the past,” Barrett said. “Carolyn was not as interesting to me as, say, Millicent, who had ringlets, which I never in my life had and always wanted. And, you know, the high collars and the long dresses. That was really dress-up time.”

In the 1970 film “House of Dark Shadows,” Barrett played a pulse-pounding scene as a vampire being staked. Barrett’s face — with wide eyes and bared fangs — was featured prominently on posters.

“I loved that part!” Barrett said.

“That was my most favorite.

I mean, it was hard work.

We were in a stable, and it really was not clean. Of course, the camera shots had to be exactly right and everything.

But I have to say that it was a lot of fun.”

It wouldn’t be a horror film without a strapping hero. In “House of Dark Shadows” — the 1970 feature based on the Gothic soap — it fell on the ample shoulders of Roger Davis to defeat Barnabas.

The setting: Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) loves Jeff Clark (Davis), but Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) aims to make her his vampire bride.

Clark’s vampire-vanquishing weapon was a crossbow, resulting in an extremely gory — hence, crowd-pleasing — climax.

“They did it with a lot of spurts,” Davis told me in 1997.

“They had this big thing, and they would spurt the blood straight out as it came up. I thought it was a great scene, too, especially in slow motion.”

Davis — then known as a cut-up on the set — was asked his favorite “Dark Shadows” blooper. Said the actor: “Whenever I’m asked if I brought home any souvenirs from the show, I always say, ‘I brought home an arm.’ ” He explained that in one “Dark Shadows” scene, a severed arm in a box he held appeared to become re-animated. The trick: It was actually Davis’ arm; the arm that “held” the box was the fake. In the scene, the severed arm was supposed to come alive and strangle another character.

Recalled the actor: “But the first time we did it, when I lifted it up to choke him, the box dropped! It was hanging off my arm!

We were taping, so we had to do it over. That’s the only time (‘Dark Shadows’ producer) Dan Curtis would do it over. He would only do it over if it looked really bad.”

Barrett in 2005.

Davis in 1997.

MARIE WALLACE

DENISE NICKERSON

The Frankenstein monster demanded a mate. As did his “Dark Shadows” counterpart, Adam — a scarred, pathetic man-made creature played by Robert Rodan. And so, the Gothic soap borrowed from the 1935 classic “Bride of Frankenstein” to give its viewers Eve, played by beautiful, red-headed Marie Wallace.

(But in true “Dark Shadows” form, the show added a twist by making Eve’s life force an evil spirit from the distant past. “I have been asleep for so long,” were Eve’s first words, and the fireworks began.)

Wallace was doing a play in New Hampshire when her agent asked her to audition for “Dark Shadows.”

“I knew nothing about ‘Dark Shadows,’ ” Wallace told me in 2001. “I didn’t know it existed. I never read vampire stuff and I’ve never gone to any of the movies.”

Eve was one of three roles Wallace played; the others were Jenny Collins (a.k.a. “Crazy Jenny”) and Megan Todd.

Wallace recalled: “When I first went in and was contracted to do Eve, I had no idea that there’d be any other part. Then when Adam killed me, I went off and did a play. No sooner did I get back, they called me and said they had another part.

Would I like to play it? At that point, they didn’t need an audition any more. And so I did Crazy Jenny.

“When that was over — I think Quentin killed me on that one — some time passed. I think I did another play. I got the call for Megan Todd.”

Wallace believes that part of the allure of “Dark Shadows” was the grooviness of the period: the 1960s.

“There’s something about the innocence back then,” she said. “Even though at the time, we didn’t think it was very innocent.

But looking back, there was such an openness and bigness about all of this.”

As Amy Jennings, Denise Nickerson became the on- and offscreen playmate of her fellow child actor, and “Dark Shadows” co-star, David Henesy. It was Amy who first contacted the spirit of Quentin Collins (David Selby).

Having a built-in playmate on the set made the job more fun for Nickerson.

“We had a blast,” she said of working with Henesy. “We started a little restaurant on the set. We were charging ’em five bucks a day for a hot plate.”

Nickerson and Henesy did some bad stuff, too.

“We spent a lot of time in (‘Dark Shadows’ star) Joan Bennett’s dressing room, smoking cigarettes,” Nickerson told me in 2000.

Didn’t Bennett, who was old enough to be their grandmother, smell the cigarette smoke?

Explained Nickerson: “We could do that because she wore Jungle Gardenia (brand) perfume, which is extremely intense.

She bathed in it, practically. You could smell her way before you ever saw her.

“So her dressing room was a perfect place to smoke. You couldn’t smell the smoke through the Jungle Gardenia.”

Nickerson was in another cult classic; she played Violet, the girl who turns into a giant blueberry, in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971), in a scene that was horrific if not horror.

“When lunchtime came,” Nickerson said of wearing the huge, round costume, “it was only a half-hour lunch. They assigned a man to roll me every five minutes. I wish I could have such an easy job.”

Wallace in 2005.

Out-of-character photos by Kathy Voglesong; insets: screen shots; “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions

Nickerson in 2005.

JERRY LACY

Lacy as the bad reverend.

When it comes to fire and brimstone, Reverend Trask — the self-righteous witchhunter of “Dark Shadows” — has all the other preachers beat. Clutching a Bible and pointing the finger of guilt, Trask is Collinwood’s meanest citizen.

Was he as fun to play as he seemed?

“Yes, he was,” said Jerry Lacy (who played several iterations of Trask, but whose first and favorite Trask was from the revered 1795 storyline).

“You know, actors sometimes don’t get a chance to play a real mustachetwirling villain like that. And the show was, of course, very melodramatic. So, yes, from that point of view, it was fun.”

Lacy’s fellow “Dark Shadows” cast member, Jonathan Frid, played Barnabas Collins as a tragic figure rather than a mere bloodsucker. When Lacy played Trask, was he thinking that this character truly believed he had a sacred mission to punish evildoers?

“Absolutely. He definitely believed it,” the actor told me in 2006.

“Of course, almost all actors, with any character they play, have to find the truth in the character to make it work. So, yes, Trask positively believed that he was doing the right thing.”

Once he joined “Dark Shadows,” Lacy began getting recognized on the street.

“It was my first soap opera,” he said.

“You know, the show was already going very strong when I joined the cast. I was forewarned this would happen, and it did.

“Surprisingly, nobody seems to hold it against me that Trask was such a bad guy,” Lacy added with a laugh.

He said there was a family feeling among the “Dark Shadows” cast.

“I think any time you get a good group of actors together like that, that develops,” he said. “Especially if there’s any longevity to the show.”

Why, in Lacy’s opinion, is “Dark Shadows” still remembered?

“If anything,” he said, “it’s probably the campiness — the flubs and the goofs.

And, I guess, Frid’s personality.”

JOHN KARLEN Mix equal doses of Renfield and James Dean, and you get Willie Loomis.

The character, as played by John Karlen on “Dark Shadows,” recalled Dracula’s slave Renfield while heeding the commands of his vampire master, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid). But Willie’s status as a perpetual outsider in a world of privilege gave him something of Dean’s edginess.

During a 2005 interview, Karlen laughed when I called him one of the “kids” in the “Dark Shadows” cast.

“I was not a kid, I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I had been through the mill already by the time I hit ‘Dark Shadows.’ I had done a half-dozen Broadway plays and all that kind of stuff. I was in the Air Force for four years. I was a lot older than I looked.”

It was Willie, hoping to find jewels in the Collins mausoleum, who set Barnabas free after nearly two centuries in a chained coffin. Karlen plays down his responsibilities on the show.

“I was lucky enough to have been playing Willie, so I was only on once or twice a week,” he said. “I didn’t have to carry the load that Barnabas or a couple of the other people had to carry.”

Karlen reprised Willie in 1970’s “House of Dark Shadows.”

“The movie was fun,” he recalled. “It was just an enjoyable shoot. I can look back on myself in that film and I like whatever I did. It just fit right into the whole picture of what it was.”

Willie may have been a drunkard and a thief, but viewers felt sympathy for him — especially when Barnabas disciplined him.

“There are so many loyal fans to this guy still around out there,” Karlen marveled.

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas (top) disciplines John Karlen as Willie (above) in 1970’s “House of Dark Shadows.”

“House of Dark Shadows” © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

Milton Bradley’s Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Game; a detail from the Famous Monsters #59 cover; MPC’s Barnabas Vampire Van model kit; Philips’ “Dark Shadows” album (all 1969).

Photos by Kathy Voglesong; “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions; Basil Gogos cover art © Warren Publishing

From top: PGC’s “Dark Shadows” trading cards (1968 and ’69); MPC’s Barnabas and Werewolf model kits (1969); Whitman’s Dark Shadows Game (1968).

Photos by Kathy Voglesong; “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions

“Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions; covers © Coronet Communications, Inc.

WHO KNEW WE WERE READING “CHICK LIT”?

Thirty-three “Dark Shadows” novels were published by Paperback Library between 1966 and 1972. Kids bought the books because all but the first showed Barnabas Collins on the cover (though Barnabas didn’t appear as a character until the sixth).

Granted, the novels had plenty of ghostly goings-on, and lots of Collins family secrets. But at heart, they were Gothic romances.

Speaking of secrets, the “Dark Shadows” novels had a biggie.

Their author, Marilyn Ross, was no lady. Dan Ross (1912-1995) wrote all 33 novels under a nom-de-plume: his wife’s name.

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Ross wisely chose to eschew existing TV plots for his “Dark Shadows” novels. “I didn’t want to imitate other writers,” Ross told Craig Hamrick in 1990. “I was willing to use the characters, but ... I wanted to use my own storylines.”

Ross, who cranked out each book in three weeks, also wrote the novelization for the 1970 movie “House of Dark Shadows.”

What he didn’t write, thankfully, was 1969’s abysmal “Barnabas Collins in a Funny Vein.” Sample joke: “Who did Barnabas vote for in the 1964 election? Bury Ghoul-water.”

Oy. It makes Forrest J Ackerman look like Noël Coward.

GOLD KEY PUBLISHED 35 “DARK SHADOWS” comic books between 1969 and 1976. The series’ illustrator, Joe Certa, is an important but undersung artist, as cocreator of DC Comics’ Martian Manhunter. Indeed, Certa’s sequential art of J’onn J’onzz transforming into an Earthling is reminiscent of his Barnabas changing into a bat. (Gold Key, not bound by the Comics Code, was allowed to publish vampire and werewolf characters.) Certa’s figures can be stiff, and you wouldn’t call his likenesses of the “Dark Shadows” cast dead on. But he captured the show’s Gothic eerieness, and his heroic Barnabas — ever sprinting through Collinsport to prevent some cosmic catastrophe — is an iconic part of “Dark Shadows” ephemera.

Top left: Barnabas in motion, as artist Joe Certa frequently depicted him, from Gold Key’s Dark Shadows #15 (1972). Top right: A Quentin panel from #6 (1970). From above left: Covers for #2 (1969); #6; #10 and #11 (both 1971). “Dark Shadows” © Dan Curtis Productions 159

Ken Bald with a favorite “Dark Shadows” page at his studio in 2012. Opposite: A detail from the Aug. 29, 1971, Sunday page.

Photo by Jerry McRea, courtesy of The Star-Ledger; “Dark Shadow” © Dan Curtis Productions

Artist sank his teeth into strip MOVE OVER, CHARLIE BROWN. In 1971, that challenge came from a certain TV vampire.

But in the always-play-it-safe world of syndicated comic strips, an undead being didn’t stand a chance as a comic-strip hero.

And, as things turned out, Barnabas Collins’ tenure as a contemporary of Beetle Baily, Dick Tracy and Brenda Starr was brief.

But for one glorious year, veteran artist Ken Bald illustrated Barnabas’ daily adventures with a dead-on rendering of Jonathan Frid and backgrounds enhanced with Gothic detail. The “Dark Shadows” comic strip ran from March 14, 1971, until March 11, 1972.

“I liked doing ‘Dark Shadows,’ ” Bald told me in 2012. “I always did like the occult, so I enjoyed doing it.”

Bald was born in New York in 1920; served as a Marine during World War II; drew Captain America and the Sub-Mariner for Stan Lee in the 1940s and ’50s; and had been illustrating the “Dr. Kildare” comic strip for King Features when he heard that a “Dark

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Shadows” strip was being contemplated.

“Actually,” Bald recalled, “Al Capp’s brother, Elliot Kaplan, was writing ‘Dr. Kildare.’ (Producer) Dan Curtis was thinking of putting out a syndicated strip of ‘Dark Shadows.’ So (Kaplan) mentioned it to me. I saw ‘Dark Shadows.’ (Curtis) interviewed me, he saw my art and thought it would be a good idea.

“But when we took the idea for ‘Dark Shadows’ to King Features — who liked me and were happy with what I’d done — they didn’t think that the ‘Bible belt’ or so many other Southern cities would go for idea of ‘Dark Shadows.’ ” Eventually, NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) green-lit the strip, and Bald began illustrating “Dark Shadows” using a nom-de-plume at King Features’ request: K. Bruce.

Mind you, Bald was still drawing “Dr. Kildare” at the time.

“For one year, I didn’t have a day off,” the artist said with a laugh. “I did ‘Kildare,’ six dailies and Sunday, and ‘Dark Shadows,’ six dailies and Sunday.”

WHEN BALD NEEDED TO RENDER the female characters of Collinwood, he didn’t have to look far for a model.

He explained: “Very often, I worked from Polaroids. My wife (Kaye Bald) was in the movies. For a while, she was kind of the queen of commercials on television. She did so many commercials in ’40s and ’50s.

“She was all of the women in ‘Dark Shadows’ and most of the women in ‘Kildare.’ She posed for my movie posters. I used the best model that there was.”

Did Kaye Bald — who acted in 1940s movies as Kaye Dowd, starring outright in “An Angel Comes to Brooklyn” (1945) — get a kick out of posing for her husband’s “Dark Shadows” strips?

“I loved it,” she said. “When I did it, I had a lot of wigs. I could change my look. Whatever Ken wanted me to do, I did. One time, I frightened my dog. I didn’t look like myself when I was coming up the stairs. He began to back up and go ‘Woof!’ ” The “Dark Shadows” comic strip did well — depending on which city you were measuring by.

Recalled Bald: “ ‘Dark Shadows’ was a big success in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and some of the big cities.

“But in the Bible belt, they couldn’t buy a vampire hero. As successful as it was, it did not make the money we hoped it would.”

Plus, the grind was getting to Bald.

“I couldn’t keep it up,” the artist said.

“I was making more money doing comps and illustrations. They wanted to keep it going — Dan Curtis and so forth. But I had to give it up — reluctantly, because I really liked drawing it.

It was a little more exciting than squeaky-clean ‘Dr. Kildare.’ ” In 1996, “Dark Shadows” actress Kathryn Leigh Scott published “Dark Shadows: The Comic Strip Book,” which compiled all of Bald’s strips, through her company Pomegranate Press.

“I love his rendering of Barnabas Collins,” Scott said of Bald’s art. “His work is so vibrant.”

The best of Bald “Of all the ‘Dark Shadows,’ I saved one Sunday page,” said Ken Bald of his original art for the page published on Aug. 29, 1971, which Bald kept framed in his Mount Arlington, New Jersey, studio. “We had to do ’em pretty damn big back then, the Sundays. It’s the one with a werewolf who’s killed and turns out to be the Count or something. I liked that one best. It had big closeups of Barnabas Collins, and it had the transformation from the werewolf into this Count, and it had them fighting before that. It’s one of my favorites.”

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Going ape over ‘Apes’ SCI-FI OR MONSTER MOVIE? The 1968 smash “Planet of the Apes” was not so much a sci-fi film as a big-budget mainstream entertainment with a sci-fi premise. Let’s face it: Charlton Heston was playing Moses in a loincloth, fighting man-monkeys instead of pharaohs.

Besides, John Chambers’ inventive makeups thrust “Apes” firmly into monster territory.

The script, co-written by “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling, was loosely based on Pierre Boulle’s 1964 novel “La planète des singes” (originally titled “Monkey Planet”). The basic idea of a society of intelligent apes and some character names were used, but the similarities ended there.

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Four more films, a TV series and much memorabilia followed, including comic books, paperbacks, model kits, action figures, Topps trading cards and Ben Cooper Halloween costumes.

In the summer of 1970, comedians made hay out of the similarity between the titles of two thencurrent film sequels, “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” ... and “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

And lest we forget: Decades later, declassified documents revealed that Chambers — who created those indelible, still imitated apes makeups — helped free the Iranian hostages in 1980. Who knew that a spiritual descendant of Jack P. Pierce was, like, a top-secret CIA-operative-type dude?

From top: Ben Cooper’s Dr. Zaius and Dr. Zira masks (circa ’70s); Gold Key’s “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” comic book and interior panel (1970).

Opposite, from top left: Cover detail from Famous Monsters #80 (1970); Signet’s reissue of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel “Planet of the Apes” with movie images (1968); Topps’ “Apes” trading cards (1969).

“Planet of the Apes” © 20th Century Fox; Famous Monsters of Filmland © Warren Publishing; mask photos by Vanessa Johnson

The bloody thing

It took guts, a lot of guts, to make Eerie Publications GREAT HORROR COMICS ARE INGENIOUSLY written . . . exquisitely rendered ... they use “shocks” judiciously . . . and challenge our imaginations.

The only thing Eerie Publications’ horror comics ever challenged was our stomachs. And that’s why we love ’em.

Eerie Publications is an instance of good old American exploitation, of one entity using cheap sensationalism to undercut another, superior entity. After Warren Publishing successfully revived horror comics in magazine form in 1964 (following the embattled genre’s decade in Comics Code-induced exile), Eerie Publications was formed to tap into this newly discovered vein of newsstand gold.

The company did so with an almost willfully low-end product. Eerie Pubs honcho Myron Fass — infamous for his fixation with guns — upped the gore factor and raided, er, repurposed languishing pages from pre-Comics Code 1950s horror comic books for EP’s new titles: Weird, Horror Tales, Tales From the Tomb, Tales of Voodoo, Terror Tales and Witches’ Tales.

NEW STORIES WERE PUBLISHED AS well, but the material was slapdash, and artists rarely signed their work. A contingent of South American artists cranked out much of the new material, while the Americans who contributed — Marvel Comics mainstays Chic Stone and Dick Ayers among them — were hardly doing their best work.

The gruesome, garish covers — Eerie Pub’s star selling point — were not painted by Frank Frazetta incognito.

Herewith is the recipe for an Eerie Publications cover: Indiscriminately combine every cliché known to horror (Get creative! Put pointy ears on a Frankenstein! A hunchback on a mad doctor! Make a werewolf blue!); add one damsel in a short skirt and torn blouse; and dowse liberally with blood.

(Where were Wertham and Kefauver when you needed them?

Not to censor gore — to advocate for better art and stories.)

Not surprisingly, many of the covers were done by a girlie-mag artist: Bill Alexander.

In a typical EP edition, there was no editorial to make readers feel like part of a community — no editor’s greeting, no consistent “host,” no letters page, and certainly no artist profiles. The only clue that actual human beings, not sugar-mill zombies, assembled these magazines was found on the table-of-contents page, with its listing of editor Carl Burgos, art director Irving Fass and art editor Ezra Jackson.

(Years later, we ignorant kids found out Eerie Publication’s that Burgos was a light of the covers idled at cruelGolden Age of Comics, having to-women. Left: A drawn the first-ever Human young lady gets an acid Torch story in Marvel bath, from the cover of Comics #1 back in 1939.)

Weird Vol. 3, #1 (1969).

The interior paper stock was dingy and Opposite: Monster-onthin. The evergreen monster violence, from table-of-contents colthe cover of Tales of lages looked like filthy Voodoo Vol. 2, #7 pasteups of third-gen(1972). eration “stats” (that is, © Eerie Publications photostat facsimiles).

To give the impression of the use of “halftones” (gray areas in artwork often achieved via ink-and-wash, also called “continuous tones”), EP likely employed a superimposition technique with the use of overlays. (This is guesswork on my part, but is there a better explanation for the sloppy alignment of those grays?)

Oddly, the 1950s reprints gave EP’s books a visual boost.

The art was better, if marginally. It had decently rendered faces, anatomy and backgrounds. The inks were less vague; the layouts more traditionally linear, hence, more accessible.

The throwback visual style of the reprints resonated, at least subconsciously, with young horror movie fans, who were accustomed to watching 1950s bombs like “Curse of the Faceless Man” and “The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake” merely for their promise of a monster.

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What Eerie Publications lacked in marquee talent and just plain good artwork, they made up for in blood and beheadings. Yuck! © Eerie Publications

Eerie Publications’ garish covers indiscriminately mixed horror clichés: vampires, werewolves, mummies, mad doctors. The ever-present damsels in shredded clothing were out of step with the times as they titillated young male readers. © Eerie Publications In Eerie Publications’ 1950s reprints, as in the older movies, men wore fedoras and striped suits; they drove “bulgemobiles” with humongous fenders; women wore old-fashioned hairdos; and there was a marked difference in characters’ attitudes and lingo.

(Nobody said “Buck up, Hal” at funerals any more.)

The reprints were largely from Ajax Publications’ pre-code titles such as Strange Fantasy, Haunted Thrills, Fantastic Fears, Voodoo, Strange Journey and Midnight. The old art was sometimes punched up —contemporized with added gore.

WHAT THE WRITERS AND ARTISTS OF EP’S NEW stories lacked in time and talent, they made up for in entrails.

Beheadings were a particularly favored plot point. Readers were constantly afforded a view into the neck-hole of a fresh beheadee, where spine, spinal chord, veins, muscles and spurting blood were on proud display — an anatomy lesson from hell.

The gruesomeness, of course, was the lure — as much of a lure as any rigged game of chance at a carnival. Once an undiscerning kid spotted the bloody horrors on the cover, he grabbed the issue.

When he looked inside and saw one of those neck-holes, he started digging into his pocket for change. But when he got home and actually read the thing, he felt cheated. Like, “Hey, this isn’t as good as Creepy.” And then, a month later, he’d buy another one.

EP’s story titles weren’t subtle about what was in store: “Shelf of Skulls,” “Feast for Rats,” “Zombie Vengeance,” “The Slimy Gargoyle,” “Food for Ghouls,” “Corpses Coast to Coast,” “Sewer Werewolves,” “The Blood Monster,” “The Blood-Dripping Head.”

Speaking of blood, the adjective “bloody” made its way into a good many titles: “The Bloody Corpse,” “The Bloody Head,” “The Bloody Ax,” “The Bloody Creature,” “The Bloody Wolfman,” “The Bloody Horror” and — the most vague, and most fitting, of all — “The Bloody Thing.”

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Dracula loves Frankenstein like a brother.

Why else would he traverse the globe to find the perfect surgeon to perform a brain transplant on the big green guy? Dracula even carries around portable electrode-chargers. But when the Wolf Man finds out about Drac’s plan to fix Frankie, werewolf and vampire fight fang-and-claw until both plunge off a cliff, while Frankenstein is incinerated in a gasoline-fueled inferno.

It goes to show you: Monsters are like family. They care for each other; they fight with each other.

That’s one interpretation of the climax of 1948’s “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

This is how a lot of us remember the creepy, kooky Monster Craze.

Monsters hung out; they inhabited the same universe; they posed for group shots, as if attending a highschool reunion. The marketing of monsterific merchandise often gave the impression that monsters were old buddies who shared adventures, like the Justice League or Ocean’s Eleven.

I’m talking about the “first string” of classic (mostly Universal) monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Phantom, the Hunchback, the Mummy, the Creature. These were the go-to monsters, although the Bride of Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde, King Kong and Godzilla hovered on their periphery. (I can’t say where that leaves the Astounding She Monster or Egaah.)

Monster fans dug the sometimes strict continuity employed in many Universal films, which made us feel like we were watching the same monsters from movie to movie, even if different actors played the roles. In “House of Frankenstein” (1944), a gendarme all but utters the title of the previous film when he says: “Our village has been quiet and peaceful since the dam broke and swept the Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster to their destruction several years ago.”

A generation later came the Craze, and movie monsters stomped off the screen into other forms — toys, models, magazine covers, trading cards. Again, it was like we were seeing alternative iterations of the same monsters, depending upon the vehicle of delivery.

Ah, memories. The first string was well represented in Aurora’s model kits. There were the Marx monster figures, which featured everyone except, oddly, Dracula, in lovingly sculpted likenesses that rivaled Aurora. Colgate’s Soaky bubble-bath toys featured only four first-stringers: Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Creature. (But lest you forget, Colgate didn’t market all four Beatles either; only Paul and Ringo rocked the bathtub.) See also the Don Post masks . . . Hasbro and Ideal board games ... Hasbro’s paint-by-numbers sets . . . SSP’s wallets and wall plaques ... and on and on ...

The next 12 pages spotlight vintage merchandise and imagery inspired by the marvelous monsters in that old gang of ours.

Monsters were kinda like old buddies who hung out together.

From top: Humbrol’s model paint ad (1963); AA Records’ “Famous Monsters Speak” album (1963); Marx figures (1963).

Opposite: Colgate’s Frankenstein Soaky toy (1963).

Soaky and Marx figures photos by Kathy Voglesong; characters © Universal Studios

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Aurora’s Big Frankie (1964); Famous Monsters’ 1965 Yearbook cover detail; Rosko’s Frankenstein Loses His Pants toy (1963); Don Post mask and hands (from 1965 ad).

“Frankenstein” © Universal Studios; uncredited cover art © Warren Publishing; model kit and toy photos by Kathy Voglesong

Hasbro’s Frankenstein Mystery Game (1963); Marx figure (1963); Colgate’s Soaky toy (1963); Aurora’s Frankenstein’s Flivver model (1964).

“Frankenstein” © Universal Pictures; game, and model photos by Kathy Voglesong; Marx figure photo by Vanessa Johnson; Soaky photo by Mark Voger

Famous Monsters #35 cover detail (1965); Don Post mask (from 1965 ad); Hasbro’s Dracula Mystery Game (1963); Castle’s 8mm film (1960s).

“Dracula” © Universal Studios; Vic Prezio cover art © Warren Publishing; game photo by Kathy Voglesong

Hasbro’s Wolf Man Mystery Game (1963); Don Post mask (from 1967 ad); Colgate’s Soaky toy (1963); Marx figure (1963); Don Post mask and hands (from 1965 ad).

“The Wolf Man” © Universal Pictures; game and Soaky photos by Kathy Voglesong; Marx figure photo by Vanessa Johnson

Hasbro’s Phantom of the Opera Mystery Game (1963); Famous Monsters 1966 Fearbook cover detail; Don Post masks (from 1965 and ’67 ads); Marx figure (1963).

“The Phantom of the Opera” © Universal Studios; game photo by Kathy Voglesong; Marx figure photo by Vanessa Johnson; uncredited cover art © Warren Publishing

Hasbro’s Mummy Mystery Game (1963); Colgate’s Soaky toy (1963); Marx figure (1963); Famous Monsters #36 cover (1965); Don Post masks (from 1965 and ’67 ads).

“The Mummy” © Universal Studios; game photo by Kathy Voglesong; Marx figure photo by Vanessa Johnson; Vic Prezio cover art © Warren Publishing

Famous Monsters #34 cover detail (1965); Aurora’s Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde model kit (1964); Don Post mask (from 1965 ad).

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” © Paramount Pictures; Maurice Whitman cover art © Warren Publishing; model kit photo by Kathy Voglesong

Don Post mask (from 1967 ad); Famous Monsters #34 cover detail (1965); Marx figure (1963); Don Post mask (from 1965 ad).

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” © Universal Studios; Marx figure photo

by Vanessa Johnson; Ron Cobb cover art © Warren Publishing

Elsa Lanchester, the 1935 “Bride of Frankenstein,” struck a blow for feminism in monsterdom. Lanchester was represented on Famous Monsters #17 (1962); James Bama’s model kit box art (1964); and Aurora’s kit.

“Bride of Frankenstein” © Universal Studios; Basil Gogos cover art © Warren Publishing; model kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Hasbro’s Creature From the Black Lagoon Mystery Game (1963); Marx figure (1963); Colgate’s Soaky toy (1963); Monster World #4 cover (1965); Don Post mask (from 1967 ad).

“Creature From the Black Lagoon” © Universal Studios; game, Soaky and Marx figure photos by Kathy Voglesong; Vic Prezio cover art © Warren Publishing

Ideal’s King Kong Game (1963); Famous Monsters #6 cover (1959); Aurora’s King Kong’s Thronester box detail and kit (1966).

“King Kong” © RKO Radio Pictures; game photo by Kathy Voglesong; Albert Nuetzell cover art © Warren Publishing; model kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights

Ideal’s Godzilla Game (1963); “King Kong vs. Godzilla” lobby card (1962); Aurora’s Godzilla box art (1964); Aurora’s Godzilla’s Go Cart model kit (1966).

“Godzilla” © Toho Productions; game photo by Kathy Voglesong; model kit photo courtesy of Polar Lights

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By 1972, monsters traded their crumbling castles for a bleak contemporary world. “Dracula A.D. 1972” (left) and “Blacula.”

“Dracula A.D. 1972” © Hammer Films/ Warner Bros.; “Blacula” © American International Pictures

Why designate 1972 as the year the Monster Craze ended?

The quick, simple answer is: The bloom was off the rose.

Stick with me while I make a case using less esoteric reasoning.

At one time, it looked as if the Craze peaked with “The Addams Family” and “The Munsters,” and ended with those shows’ cancellation in 1966.

But then, some happy events transpired that would re-energize the Craze — and prolong its life.

The accursed Collinses of “Dark Shadows” debuted the same year we bid adieu to the Addamses and the Munsters. The Gothic soap didn’t set the world on fire at first, but 1967 saw the debut of its breakout character, 18th-century gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins. The torrent of merchandise that resulted made it clear that there was still life (and money) in monsters.

Then, in ’68, along came “Planet of the Apes,” with supercool monkey makeups and another flood of merchandise.

In 1969, just as Warren Publishing’s Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie were starting to feel old hat, Warren brought out Vampirella, whose peek-a-boo costume and otherworldly shape were catnip to adolescent male readers.

1970 saw the release of “House of Dark Shadows,” the bigscreen adaptation of the Barnabas Collins story. This movie alone rescued MGM, to hear Kathryn Leigh Scott tell it. That same year, “Count Yorga Vampire,” a quickie vampire flick cranked out by soft-core specialists, was a surprise hit, and “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” featured veiny mutants who worshipped an A-bomb.

Meanwhile, first-run monster movies were still crossing the pond from England’s Hammer Films, such as “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave” (1968), “Frankenstein Must be Destroyed” (1969), “Taste the Blood of Dracula” (1969), “The Horror of Frankenstein” (1970) and “Scars of Dracula” (1970).

Yep, monsters were still riding high between 1967 and 1970.

But by 1971, monstrous matters were on the decline.

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A 1969 ad heralding Aurora’s glow-in-the-dark reissues.

Characters © Universal Studios except the Forgotten Prisoner © Warren Publishing

On TV, “Dark Shadows” was cancelled. In the movies, the On the big screen, Hammer’s Dracula forsook his 19th-century Barnabas-less sequel “Night of Dark Shadows” was a botch. time zone for groovy contemporary London in “Dracula A.D. Meanwhile, Aurora seemed like it would go to any length (or 1972,” never to return. “Blacula,” from (who else?) American depth?) to keep selling monster-themed model kits, considering its International, mixed horror with the so-called “blaxploitation” two glow-in-the-dark reissue series (one was dubbed “Frightening genre — you know, “Super Fly,” “Coffy,” “Black Mama, White Lightning”) and especially its infaMama” — in a plot that brought an mous Monster Scenes snap-together African prince bitten by Dracula to kits, which presented scenarios mixgroovy contemporary Los Angeles. ing sexism and sadism. (The Plopping traditional monsters into a “Victim” character was a barefoot modern setting had been done since the hottie in a tied-in-the-front halter top dawn of the Craze — “I Was a Teenage and cutoffs; the Pain Parlor and the Werewolf” comes to mind — but by the Hanging Cage indisputably depicted late ’60s and early ’70s, times had bondage.) changed. The 1960s came in like “Leave Famous Monsters of Filmland It To Beaver” and went out like stayed strong, but in subtle ways, it Altamont. Dracula and Blacula were began to feel like it was either dealing with hippies and honkies. rehashing old material or struggling Barnabas Collins was dead. Apes to keep up with the times. (See FM’s Cornelius and Zira time-traveled from consecutive covers on “Asylum,” the future to ... groovy contemporary issue #86, and “The She-Creature,” Los Angeles. issue #87, to catch that subtlety.)

The bloom was off the rose.

You still felt that sweet Monster (A digression: No cultural revolution Craze vibe, mind you, but ... it ... happens overnight or follows a straight was . . . fading. line. The opening salvo for the next I maintain that the following year, phase of horror films occurred in 1968, 1972, was the inexorable finale of the while the Craze was still going strong: fearsome fad.

George A. Romero’s grim “Night of the What events can I point to? Eh, Living Dead,” the first modern zombie there are a few that kind of show the movie. Horror would never be the same.)

Craze was lingering, and kind of My final bit of testimony before sumshow that it was coming to an end. mation: Look at 1973. Look at it. Ya The 33rd and final “Dark wanna tell me the Monster Craze was An ad for Aurora’s infamous Monster Scenes Shadows” novel, “Barnabas, Quentin model kits. Frankenstein © Universal Studios; Vampirella © Warren Publishing still happening in 1973? The year of and the Vampire Beauty,” was pub“Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead lished ­— a small event, but not insignificant. “Vampire Beauty” Things,” “Satan’s School for Girls” and especially “The was the last gasp of “DS” memorabilia, if you don’t count Gold Exorcist”? In which demon child Regan (Linda Blair) did things Key’s Dark Shadows comic book. (Which I don’t. It wasn’t with a crucifix that Professor Van Helsing never dreamed of? unusual for comic books based on TV series to publish long past a Nah. It was over. Long over. 1972 was it. given series’ cancellation. The Dark Shadows comic book ran The Monster Craze was dead. until 1976 — five years after ABC pulled the plug on the series.)

Long live the Monster Craze.

Um, whose idea was it to market a model kit depicting the torture of a young woman?

Aurora’s Monster Scenes snap-together model kit series had a mad scientist and Vampirella double-team their scantily clad “Victim.”

Frankenstein © Universal Studios; Vampirella © Warren Publishing

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Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins (2012).

“Dark Shadows” (2012) © Warner Brothers

IT’S A METAPHOR, YO. Near the end of the 2012 animated film “Hotel Transylvania,” a gaggle of classic monsters — Frankenstein, Dracula, a werewolf, a mummy — wander into a festival of some sort.

The human-wary monsters have every expectation that they’re about to receive ye olde torchand-pitchfork treatment. Instead, they are applauded. The festival, they learn, is of a type never seen in the old days: a convention of monster fans.

It happened in real life, too. The Monster Craze blazed the trail for monster-themed, family-friendly fare such as “Hotel Transylvania,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Frankenweenie” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Put it this way: You never would have seen a cutesy, green Frankenstein bib in 1956.

The aftershocks of the Craze have been felt in readily identifiable ways.

There were two sitcoms and three TV movies reviving “The Munsters”; and two theatrical films, two TV series and a Broadway musical reviving “The Addams Family.” John Astin, the original Gomez Addams, avoided watching the 1991 “Addams Family” movie starring Raul Julia as Gomez. “But I was rooting for them,” Astin told me in 1993. “I joke that I’ve never received so many great reviews for a movie I wasn’t in.”

Tim Burton directed two big-screen adaptations of Monster Craze properties: “Mars Attacks!” (1996) and “Dark Shadows” (2012). Four cast members of TV’s original “Dark Shadows” traveled to England to make cameos in Burton’s film: Jonathan Frid, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker and David Selby.

“We were thrilled,” Scott later told me.

“It’s very rare for homage to be paid to the people who originated the roles.”

One imagines the Burton production

“The Munsters Today” © Kayro-Vue Productions and ™ Universal Studios; “The Addams Family” (1991) © Paramount Pictures

Epilogue TV’s very ’80s “The Munsters Today” (top) and 1991’s “The Addams Family.” was downright opulent compared with “House of Dark Shadows,” the 1970 feature film starring Scott and company.

“You have no idea,” Scott said, laughing. “We did the original film on a minuscule budget. But it was so popular, it actually saved MGM when it came out. On this (Burton’s) production, everything is so lavish. I suspect that what they spend in three days of filming would be what it cost us to make the entire (1970) movie.”

The cameo proved to be Frid’s final appearance; he died on April 14, 2012, a month after the release of Burton’s film.

Sara Karloff, Bela Lugosi Jr. and Ron Chaney unveil Basil Gogos’ gorgeous “spec” art for a proposed stamp set in 1995, at the Chiller Theatre expo in New Jersey. Below: The set became a reality in 1997 ­— alas, not with Gogos’ art. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

THERE WAS DRAMA IN THE PUBLISHING WORLD. In issue #191 (1983) of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, publisher James Warren announced that FM was parting ways with founding editor Forrest J Ackerman after 25 years.

(This was not FJA’s idea.) It turned out to be a “why bother?”

There was no Famous Monsters #192; Warren Publishing closed its doors shortly thereafter. Warren says he let go of his business due to illness. “There was nobody there to run the company except for me,” he told me in 2002. “When I couldn’t do it, nobody else

could. The company went into bankruptcy in ’83.” As for his illness: “Oh, I recovered. It took a long time. It took 10 years.”

FM, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella were later revived, with varying degrees of success (and legal mêlées). The Starlog group’s horror mag Fangoria established itself as FM’s spiritual descendant, even if its emphasis was on gnarly makeup, FX and gore.

Meanwhile, the survivors of horror stars Lon Chaney (Sr. and Jr.), Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff petitioned the U.S. Postal Service to issue a stamp set honoring their forebears. In 1994, Bela Lugosi Jr., Sara Karloff and Ron Chaney (grandson of Jr.) collected and submitted 11,000 signatures to that end.

Ron Chaney told me in 1995: “The way that we, the families, would like to see it is with their true personalities in the foreground and their famous monster characters in the background.”

Basil Gogos, the celebrated artist of more than 40 Famous Monsters covers, painted typically gorgeous “spec” art for each.

© U.S. Postal Service and Universal Studios

In July 2014, Universal Studios announced it would take a cue from the hit Marvel film “The Avengers,” and roll out new movies featuring its classic monsters, spearheaded by the guys who brought you — get out your hankies — “Transformers” and “The Fast and the Furious.” In the words of the great philosopher Sonny Bono, the beat goes on.

185

There was good news and bad news. A stamp set was indeed issued, in 1997. That’s huge. Alas, Gogos’ artwork was not used.

Gogos declined to talk about the situation ­— he apparently took it hard — but that year, Warren told me: “The post office came out with their monster stamps, which they copied right from Bill Gogos’ work.” Warren stated, not unreasonably, that the stamp designs were “lifted right out of our covers.”

For Warren, it brought to mind the time, decades earlier, when he was thrown out of the offices of Boys’ Life and Scholastic.

“Here we are in 1997,” he said, “and the United States Federal Government is copying our covers. I always wanted to go up to the office and nail the two people — one from Boys’ Life and the other one from Scholastic — who talked that way to me. I wanted to take those stamps and just plaster them right on their faces.”

(A post script on Lugosi Jr.: The son of Dracula became a lawyer advocating for the rights of celebrities whose likenesses are used in marketing ­— including that of his father.)

BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT AND ROB ZOMBIE DIDN’T have much in common sound-wise, but both singers loved Boris Karloff. The influence of horror movies on rock music is undeniable, with some artists wrapping themselves in the horror flag both musically and visually.

British proto-metalists Black Sabbath named themselves after a 1964 Karloff film, according to Black Sabbath’s singer, Ozzy

Ozzy Osbourne named his band after the Boris Karloff movie “Black Sabbath.”

Photo courtesy Divine Recordings; “Black Sabbath” © American International Pictures

Osbourne, and its guitarist, Tony Iommi.

In 1999, Osbourne told me that the band’s name came in a kind of omen one morning back home in Birmingham, England.

“We’re waiting for the doors to open to this rehearsal place,” Osbourne recalled, “and right across the road was a movie theater.

There was a horror movie playin’. Tony said, ‘Isn’t it weird that people pay money to see horror films and get the (expletive) scared out of them? Why don’t we start writing horror music?’ ” Iommi, an avowed horror buff, knew well the Karloff film, which was directed by Italian fright-flick maestro Mario Bava. “A good film, that,” Iommi told me in 2000. “I thought that was quite horrific, certainly for its time. It was their ‘Exorcist,’ you know.”

Meanwhile, in Detroit, Alice Cooper almost simultaneously came up with the idea to blend the genres.

Cooper told me in 1998: “I would go to every horror movie that came out. That’s when I realized, a long time ago, that with horror and comedy, there was a very fine line between the two.

And then, why not add rock ’n’ roll to that?

“When we did shock rock in the ’70s, it was truly shock rock.”

Kiss bass player Gene Simmons had specific movies in mind when he created his fire-breathing, blood-spitting stage persona.

Simmons told me in 2002: “My source was ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ the Lon Chaney original. There was a moment where Mary Philbin was about to unmask him, and the shadows hit his face a certain way. And when he comes down the stairs during the

“Shock rockers” Alice Cooper, Gene Simmons and Rob Zombie acknowledge the influence of horror movies on their music.

Photos by Kathy Voglesong

ds © Geffen Recor

big ballroom scene, again, shadows hit his face a certain way, even though he’s got a skull’s face on. It was indelibly etched in my mind. The boots, of course, came from Godzilla.”

Rob Zombie was just as specific. Aficionados easily recognize references in his titles and lyrics. “Meet the Creeper” recalls Rondo Hatton; “Beginning of the End” recalls giant grasshoppers; “The Sinister Urge” recalls Ed Wood, “Dragula” recalls “The Munsters.” Zombie said it all comes out of his love of the genre.

“I love everything, but probably my favorite era is the ’30s,” Zombie told me in 2001. “The classic wave of ’30s horror is just unbeatable. Obviously, all the originals — ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ ‘Old Dark House,’ ‘Dracula.’ I like everything.”

So much so that Zombie hired Gogos to paint the cover of his best-selling solo album, “Hellbilly Deluxe” (1998).

As Gogos told me in 2000: “Rob called me up. He has known my art for many years. He bought the magazines like everybody else. He’s known of me for I don’t know how many years. So he’s one of my fans. And I love him.”

Gogos said he didn’t paint Zombie from life. “Rob sent me a photograph and he described himself to me visually,” the artist said. “He suggested some colors that I could use, which was unusual for me; I like to pick my own colors. But it was helpful.”

“He did a fantastic job on the album cover,” Zombie told me in 2001. “I just loved it. I think that what (Frank) Frazetta is to the ‘Conan’ world of sword and sorcery, Gogos is to horror. His paintings just blow me away.”

DID THE HIP ’90s KIDS WHO BOUGHT “HELLBILLY Deluxe” realize the CD cover was part of a tradition dating back to 1960, when Gogos strove to follow Warren’s vague directions for a “psychedelic” rendering of Vincent Price for the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland #9?

Nah. And why should they?

That was a different time, before you could push a button and conjure up any image, any song, any movie, any information your heart desires in an instant.

Back then, whatever monster media you managed to see, even fleetingly — a magazine, a toy, a movie on a tiny, grainy, blackand-white TV screen — was rare and hard won. You treasured it.

You absorbed it. It stayed with you.

Monsters made us better people. After seeing the inhospitable way those torch-wielding mobs treated Quasimodo, Erik and Frankenstein, we took “do unto others” to heart.

We read (or tried to read) the original novels “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” etc., as thick and loaded with archaic language as they were.

We became art aficionados. Maybe we didn’t know Michelangelo, da Vinci or Raphael ... but we sure knew Frazetta, Gogos and Bama.

We, the Beaver Cleavers, helped nudge the culture forward every time we slapped down a nickel for a pack of monster trading cards.

We were part of a social network without even realizing it. Yeah, we friendless monster nerds found a friend in Frankenstein, and later on, made some flesh-and-blood ones.

Basil Gogos cover art

187

Who says Zach ain’t a playah? Venerable horror host John Zacherle shows he’s still got it with help from “scream queens” (clockwise from left) Jonlun, Manon Kelley, Linnea Quigley, Cheryl Fisher, Brinke Stevens and Tiffany Shepis.

1997 photo by Kathy Voglesong

Acknowledgments

Bibliography Notes

My heartfelt thanks to John Zacherle, a true human being despite having played a ghoul for more than a half century.

Ackerman, Forrest J; “Boris Karloff: The Frankenscience Monster” (1969); Ace Publishing Corporation, New York

Thanks also to James Warren and Forrest J Ackerman, whose influence on popular culture (and, in devious ways, even journalism) cannot be overstated.

Thank you to my publisher, John Morrow, and the TwoMorrows staff.

To the actors, filmmakers, artists, musicians, writers, car customizers and eyewitnesses who graciously submitted to my interrogation, among them Ackerman, Tee Addams, Jane Anderson, John Astin, Kaye Bald, Ken Bald, James Bama, Nancy Barrett, George Barris, Greg Bazaz, Len Brown, Bill Bruegman, Carol Burnett, Bob Burns, J.R. Cochran, Alice Cooper, Roger Corman, Bill Cosby, Dan Curtis, Tom Daniel, Roger Davis, Donna Douglas, Louis Edmonds, Jonathan Frid, Basil Gogos, Isaac “Ike” Heller, Jack Hill, Tony Iommi, Russ Jones, John Karlen, Jerry Lacy, Stan Lee, Al Lewis, Lisa Loring, Darlene Love, David McCallum, Diana Millay, Ken Miller, Denise Nickerson, Ozzy Osbourne, Lara Parker, Butch Patrick, Bobby Pickett, Stefanie Powers, Pat Priest, Trina Robbins, Ed Roth, Kathryn Leigh Scott, David Selby, Felix Silla, Gene Simmons, Angelo Torres, Marie Wallace, Warren, Ken Weatherwax, Zacherle, Doreen Zawislak and Rob Zombie.

A special thank-you to Kevin Clement who, as the man behind New Jersey’s Chiller Theatre expo, has thrown the world’s maddest monster party twice a year since 1990.

Thanks to the hundreds of vendors we met at various conventions, antique shows, auctions, flea markets and shops over the years. I may not remember your names, but I’ll never forget your generosity when I would say, “Wow! A Wolf Man Soaky! Can we take a picture of it?”

Thanks to Charles Clayberger, who collected 5,000 board games over a 50-year period, and to Col. Bob Randolph, the auctioneer extraordinaire who arranged for us to photograph the Clayberger collection.

Thanks to my wonderful family; the father-and-son team of Brian and Ian Voglesong, for their stellar efforts in painting and gluing many of the model kits shown; and to Alex Vogelsong for organizing the photo shoot. Thanks to my siblings, cousins, neighborhood kids and the occasional brave adult who appeared in my Super 8 monster movies. You know who you are.

Thanks to two gentlemen I’ve never spoken with: Chip Kidd, whose book designs continue to inspire, and Daniel Roebuck, who profoundly unnerved me in “River’s Edge” (1986). I later learned that Roebuck is a 1960s monsterabilia enthusiast and, even better, a Dr. Shock guy.

Ackerman, Forrest J; “Forrest J Ackerman, Famous Monster of Filmland” (1986); Imagine, Inc., Pittsburgh Addams, Charles; “The World of Charles Addams” (1991); Alfred A. Knopf, New York Bald, Kenneth Bruce; “Dark Shadows: The Comic Strip Book” (1996); Pomegranate Press, Beverly Hills Bojarski, Richard; “The Films of Bela Lugosi” (1980); the Citadel Press, Secaucus, N.J.

In presenting information or quotes that are not the result of my original reporting (or don’t fall within the realm of common knowledge or historical consensus), I prefer to credit sources up front, unless doing so would disrupt the narrative. Such instances follow: Page 11: “Cave paintings such as one found in Australia depicting extinct giant birds”: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, May 31, 2010 Page 15: “Following is the film roster”: “Shock!” catalog, 1957 Page 16: “11:25 p.m. EST on Oct. 10, 1957”: “The Zacherley Scrapbook”

Page 17: “His final broadcast as Bojarski, Richard and Beale, Roland”: Ibid Kenneth; “The Films of Boris Karloff” Page 21: “Horror movie hosts con(1976); the Citadel Press tinued to pop up”: Certain names Burns, Bob; “It Came From Bob’s were initially gleaned from George Basement” (2001); Chronicle Books, Chastain’s website “E-Gor’s San Francisco Chamber of TV Horror Hosts” Cox, Stephen; “The Addams Page 22: “Enough financial Chronicles” (1991); HarperPerennial, reserves”: “Forrest J Ackerman, New York Famous Monster of Filmland” Cox, Stephen. “The Munsters: A Trip Down Mockingbird Lane” (2006); Back Stage Books, New York Daniel, Dennis, editor; “Famous Monsters Chronicles” (1991); FantaCo Enterprises, Inc., Albany

Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle; “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present” A tip of the visor to journalistic colDidn’t I mention Dr. Shock? My eter(1988); Ballantine Books, New York leagues for editorial favors great and nal gratitude to Channel 17 of small. “Monster Mash” got a thorPhiladelphia’s “Shocky Doc” (aka Gifford, Denis; “A Pictorial History of ough scrubbing from Wallace Stroby Joe Zawislak) who, from 1970 until Horror Movies” (1973); the Hamlyn (while on deadline for his seventh he shuffled off this mortal coil in Publishing Group Limited, London novel); Vanessa Johnson (who lent 1979, aired movies ranging in quality her eagle eyes in addition to her from “Dracula” to “Curse of the Doll Gifford, Denis; “Karloff: The Man, beautiful photography); and Peter the Monster, the Movies” (1973); People.” It didn’t matter if the movScott. Thank you to colleagues at my Curtis Books, New York ies reeked. Every Saturday, you almae matres The Star-Ledger and could count on Dr. Shock to show a Maltin, Leonard, editor; “TV Movies” The Asbury Park Press who lent a monster movie.

(1969 edition); Signet, New York claw: Tracy Ann Politowicz, Shawn Weston, Jay Lustig, Mario Oliveira, Finally, cheers to the actors who Overstreet, Robert M.; “The Kathy Dzielak, Stephen Whitty, Chris wore the punishing makeups and Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide” Collins, James J. Connolly, Andy lent a human face and voice to mon- (various editions); Avon Books, New Prendimano and “Dark Shadows” sters. If not for you, the Monster York superfan Michael Bowers.

Craze wouldn’t have happened.

Schneider, Stuart and Zalkin, Bruce; “Monster Mash” presents more than Disclosure: Most of the monster “Halloween: Costumes and Other 80 photographs by my late wife, memorabilia shown in these pages Treats” (2001); Schiffer, Atglen, Pa. Kathy Voglesong, who the world lost are originals released during the in 2005. Working with these images period between 1957 and 1972. But Scott, Kathryn Leigh and Pierson, brought me back to those Nick-andJim, editors; “Dark Shadows not all. Model kits of King Kong, Nora days covering the entertainAlmanac” (1995); Pomegranate Godzilla, Mr. Hyde, Big Frankie, ment beat. (I was usually standing Press Frankenstein’s Flivver, the Addams next to Kathy as she shot the phoFamily house and the Rat Fink are Scott, Kathryn Leigh and Pierson, tos.) I miss you, Kate, but I’m happy originals; others are reissues from Jim, editors; “Dark Shadows: Return to shine a light on a fraction of your the original molds. The Marx figures to Collinwood” (2012); Pomegranate photography in “Monster Mash.” on page 169 are originals, but those Press on pages 171-178 are reissues from See also superb photography from the original molds.

While all of the Skal, David J.; “Hollywood Gothic” Nancy Richmond, Mary Frank, Jerry magazines shown are originals (with (1991); W.W. Norton & Company, McRea, Darryl Norenberg, Polar New York Lights ... and Edwin H. Manchester. the creases and tears to prove it), the “Mars Attacks” cards on pages Skal, David J.; “The Monster Show” I thank those who provided informa- 58-61, and the Marvel Comics pan(1994); Penguin Books, New York tion, materials and support. Howard els on pages 142 and 143, are Bender was, as ever, my go-to guy. reprints. Still, in all cases, my policy Skerchock, John; “The Zacherley (Howard photographed his copy of is to put the original year of release Scrapbook” (2002); Dark Dungeon Famous Monsters #1 from every ­­(to my thinking, the most pertinent Enterprises, Bellefonte, Pa. conceivable angle.) David Burd came information) i­n the captions. Dig? through with a key piece of the puzWeldon, Michael; “The Psychotronic zle. Thanks to Kathryn Leigh Scott of Know ye this: Every effort has been Encyclopedia of Film” (1983); Pomegranate Press and Jim Pierson made to verify the ownership or Ballantine Books source of all illustrated material. We of Dan Curtis Productions; and to Whitburn, Joel; “The Billboard Book Samuel M. Sherman, Billy and Ruth regret any errors of attribution, and Smith, Doug Kirby, Lindy Ayers, Ron will make the appropriate corrections of Top 40 Hits” (various editions), Billboard Books, New York in future editions.

MacCloskey and Keith Smith.

Page 23: “Life did a spread”: Ibid Page 23: “A Feb. 27, 1958, snowstorm”: “The Monster Show” Pages 28-31: Charting and release dates of records: “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits” Page 32: “Darlene Love contributed backing vocals”: “20 Feet From Stardom” (2013), documentary by Morgan Neville Page 35: “Manufacturers since 1952”: “Aurora Plastic Model Kits — A Brief History” (2007), web post by Alan Bussie Page 47: “Castle was founded by”: MacGillivray, Scott; “Castle Films: A Hobbyist’s Guide” (2004) Page 70: “With one exception”: “It Came From Bob’s Basement” Page 70: “Around four hours”: Monster World #3 (1965), uncredited article Page 77: Sitcom premiere dates: “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present” Page 81: “Rock told an interviewer”: “The Addams Chronicles” Page 132: “More than 40 unforgettable covers”: “Famous Monsters Chronicles” Pages 148-155: Air dates of milestone “Dark Shadows” episodes: “Dark Shadows Almanac” Page 162: “Helped free the Iranian hostages”: “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran” by Joshuah Bearman in Wired (2007) Page 165: “A contingent of South American artists”: 2014 email exchanges with Keith Smith, cocompiler (with Gene M. Broxson) of the checklist “Eerie Publications: An Index and Collector’s Guide” Page 167: “Reprints were largely from Ajax Publications”: Ibid

Index

Cassidy, Ted: 31, 77, 79, 81 Castle, Eugene W.: 47 Cavanaugh, Page: 29 Certa, Joe: 159 Abbott, Bud: 8, 13, 41, 47, Chamberlain, Richard: 84 51, 135, 169 Chambers, John: 72, 75, Ackerman, Forrest J: 9, 162 22-24, 26, 27, 57, 122, Chaney Sr., Lon: 9, 11, 16, 132, 134, 135, 158, 185 18, 23, 26, 27, 40, 46, 48, Addams, Charles: 20, 67, 135, 185-187 77-79, 82, 85, 90 Chaney Jr., Lon: 7, 23, 31, Addams, Tee: 82 33, 40, 42, 46, 48, 50, 57, Albee, Edward: 81 70, 72, 92, 109, 125, 135, Alexander, Bill: 165 138, 151, 185 Allen, David: 21 Chaney, Ron: 185 Allen, Steve: 33 Chaplin, Charlie: 77, 80, 81, Alston, Joe: 21 84 Ames, Ramsay: 109 Checker, Chubby: 20 Anderson, Ernie: 21 Clark, Dick: 16, 20 Anderson, Jane: 82 Clark, Lisa: 21 Ann-Margret: 41 Cobb, Ron: 23 Apple, Dave: 19 Cobert, Robert: 147 Applejacks, the: 20 Cochran, J.R.: 122 Ashley, John: 28, 29 Colby, Ellen: 87 Astin, John: 77-81, 84, 87, Comets, the: 28 184 Connelly, Joe: 77 Atwill, Lionel: 51, 81 Coogan, Jackie: 77, 80, 81, Ayers, Dick: 143, 165 84, 87 Bald, Kaye: 161 Cooper, Alice: 31, 186, 187 Bald, Ken: 160, 161 Cooper, Ben: 73, 163 Ball, Lucille: 80 Cordials, the: 32 Bama, James: 36, 39-41, Corman, Roger: 50, 53, 72, 178, 187 132 Bama, Lynn: 41 Cosby, Bill: 53 Barbera, Joseph: 106, 107 Costello, Bob: 149 Barrett, Nancy: 152 Costello, Lou: 8, 13, 41, 47, Barris, George: 97, 11451, 135, 169 117 Cotten, Joseph: 7 Barris, Shirley: 115, 117 Coward, Noël: 158 Barrymore, Lionel: 81 Craig, Johnny: 14 Bass, Jules: 56 Crandall, Reed: 24, 126-129 Bava, Mario: 56, 186 Crumb, Robert: 64 Bazaz, Greg: 122, 134, 135 Culp, Robert: 53 Beach Boys, the: 31 Curtis, Dan: 147-149, 151, Beatles, the: 31, 62, 77, 94, 153, 160, 161, 169 Cushing, Peter: 132 Beaudine, William: 51 Daniel, Tom: 115, 117 Beaumont, Hugh: 13 Daniell, Henry: 56, 75 Beck, Calvin T.: 138 Dante, Joe: 138 Bender, Howard: 21 Darro, Frankie: 87 Bennett, Joan: 151, 154 Da Vinci, Leonardo: 187 Benny, Jack: 80 Davis, Jack: 24, 64, 125, Big Bopper, the: 77 127 Bishop, Jerry G.: 21 Davis, Roger: 153 Black Sabbath: 31, 186 Dawson, Anthony: 126 Blaine, Jerry: 29 Day, Doris: 78 Blair, Linda: 183 Deacon, Richard: 97, 100 Blaisdell, Paul: 139 Dean, James: 155 Bloch, Robert: 26, 57, 139 De Carlo, Yvonne: 77, 93, Blossoms, the: 30 97, 101, 115 Bogdanovich, Peter: 56 Del-Aires, the: 29, 31 Bojarski, Richard: 138, 139 DeMille Cecil. B.: 101 Bono, Sonny: 185 Deming, Lawson J.: 21 Borland, Caroll: 23, 72 Depp, Johnny: 184 Boulay, Pete: 62 Diamonds, the: 32 Boulle, Pierre: 162, 163 Ditko, Steve: 24, 143 Bradbury, Ray: 26, 57 Douglas, Donna: 75 Brown, James: 6 Dowd, Kaye: See Bald, Kaye Brown, Len: 59-61 DuFoe, Terry: 72 Browning, Tod: 9, 11, 22 DuFoe, Tiffany: 72 Bruegman, Bill: 35, 36 Edmonds, Louis: 151, 152 Brunswick, Harvey: 21 Elvgren, Gil: 100 Buchanan, Bill: 30 Evans, George: 126, 127 Budd, Milton: 21 Fass, Irving: 165 Burgos, Carl: 165 Fass, Myron: 126, 165 Burnett, Carol: 53 Feldstein, Al: 125, 126 Burns, Bob: 17, 21, 139 Fisher, Cheryl: 189 Burns, George: 80 Flynn, Errol: 127 Burton, Tim: 61, 184 Foristall, Ann: 8, 9 Bussie, Alan: 115 Fowler Jr., Gene: 15 Cagney, James: 40, 67 Fraccio, Bill: 129 Campbell, Bill: 119, 120 Frazetta, Frank: 24, 122, Campbell, Glen: 111 127, 130, 131, 165, 187 Campbell, John W.: 26 Frid, Jonathan: 147, 148, Capizzi, Lenny: 32 150-153, 155, 184 Capp, Al: 160 Frontiere, Dominic: 75 Cardille, “Chilly Billy”: 21 Gaines, William M.: 14, Carpenters, the: 186 125-127 Carradine, John: 48, 50, 51, Garfunkel, Art: 186 56, 72, 77, 92, 97, 101, 125 Geisel, Theodor: 51, 56 Carter, Bob: 21 Gelman, Woody: 59-61 Cassidy, David: 151 Gernsback, Hugo: 26

Gibson, Mel: 72 Glut, Don: 26 Gogos, Basil: 17, 23, 132, 133, 135, 185-187 Gold, H.L.: 26 Goldwater, Barry: 77 González, Jose: 122 Goodwin, Archie: 122, 127 Gordon, Alex: 57 Gorshin, Frank: 97, 101 Grable, Betty: 77 Grandenetti, Jerry: 139 Grant, Cary: 78 Gwynne, Fred: 77, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101, 116 Haig, Sid: 113 Haley, Bill: 28, 31 Hamilton, Margaret: 80, 87 Hamrick, Craig: 158 Hanna, William: 106, 107 Harris, Bill: 126 Harrison, George: 31 Harryhausen, Ray: 26 Hatton, Rondo: 51, 187 Hefner, Hugh: 22, 25 Hendrix, Jimi: 111 Henesy, David: 154 Herpeck, Lance: 44 Heston, Charlton: 101, 162 Heyes, Doug: 75 Hill, Jack: 31, 50, 53 Hitchcock, Alfred: 75 Hitler, Adolf: 72 Holden, Gloria: 67 Hollywood Argyles: 32 Hope, Bob: 80, 140 Hugo, Victor: 11, 42 Hull, Cortlandt: 36 Hull, Henry: 67 Iommi, Tony: 186 Jackson, Ezra: 165 Jackson, Kate: 151 Jacobs, Seaman: 80 James, Ed: 80 Johnson, Lyndon B.: 77 Johnson, Tor: 72 Jones, Carolyn: 77-81, 84, 87 Jones, Chuck: 106 Jones, Davy: 151 Jones, Raymond F.: 26 Jones, Russ: 125, 126, 137 Jonlun: 189 Jukes, Bernard: 133 Kane, Bob: 117 Kaplan, Elliott: 160 Karlen, John: 155 Karloff, Boris: 9, 11, 18, 19, 23, 26, 27, 29-33, 36, 47, 48, 50-57, 72, 75, 126, 133, 135, 138, 185, 186 Karloff, Sara: 33, 185

Keaton, Buster: 51, 83 Keeler, Ruby: 87 Kefauver, Estes: 14, 165 Kelley, Manon: 189 Kelly, Tom: 83 King, Stephen: 25, 134 Kirby, Jack: 143 Kiss: 18, 31, 187 Knight, Sandra: 29 Korman, Harvey: 97, 101 Krenkel, Roy G.: 127 Kruger, Otto: 56 Lacy, Jerry: 155 Lanchester, Elsa: 9, 57, 133, 178 Landon, Michael: 14, 15 Lang, Fritz: 26, 57 Langdon, Verne: 72 Larsen, Milt: 72 Laughton, Charles: 40, 42, 48 Le Borg, Reginald: 22 Lee, Christopher: 57, 92, 135, 138 Lee, Stan: 143, 160 Lennon, John: 31 Leroux, Gaston: 11 Levitt, Ruby: 80 Levy, David: 77, 79, 80, 84 Lewis, Al: 77, 92-94, 96, 97, 100, 115, 116.

Lewis, Herschell Gordon: 59 Liberace: 6, 114 Lieber, Larry: 143 Lloyd Jr., Harold: 29 Lom, Herbert: 67 Loring, Lisa: 77, 83-85, 87 Lorre, Peter: 50, 51, 53, 72 Loscalzo, Vincent: 149 Love, Darlene: 30 Lowery, Robert: 109 Lucas, George: 25, 134 Lugosi, Bela: 8, 11, 19, 26, 30, 40, 41, 72, 77, 92, 134, 135, 138, 185 Lugosi, Bela Jr.: 185 Lynde, Paul: 100, 101 MacDonald, Jeanette: 81 Maltin, Leonard: 138 March, Fredric: 39 Marshall, Jack: 77 Marx Brothers, the: 87 Marx, Louis: 36 Mates, Dick: 120 Mates, Phil: 120 Mathers, Jerry: 13 Matheson, Richard: 18 McCallum, David: 75 McCartney, Paul: 31, 33, 62, 169 McCay, Winsor: 106

About Mark Voger Shown dressed as Barnabas Collins on Halloween 1968, Voger is a 1972 graduate of Holy Rosary School in the diocese of Camden in New Jersey. He writes about entertainment topics and designs pages for The Star-Ledger, and lives at the Jersey Shore.

Also by Mark Voger: “Hero Gets Girl! The Life and Art of Kurt Schaffenberger” and “The Dark Age: Grim, Great & Gimmicky PostModern Comics” (both from TwoMorrows Publishing)

Photo by Mary Voglesong

McMahon, Ed: 19 Melly, Andreé: 67 Meyers, Ray: 36 Michaels, Kevin Sean: 20 Michelangelo: 24, 187 Millay, Diana: 153 Miller, Ken: 29 Mingo, Norman: 36 Mizzy, Vic: 77 Moltke, Alexandra: 147 Monkees, the: 50, 111 Monroe, Marilyn: 22, 28, 83 Moore, Gary: 53 Morrow, Gray: 127 Mosher, Bob: 77 Mungo Jerry: 151 Murray, K. Gordon: 6 Mussolini, Benito: 72 Newland, John: 75 Nicholson, Jack: 29, 53, 61 Nickerson, Denise: 154 Noel, Sid: 21 Nuetzell, Albert: 17, 23 Nurmi, Maila: 20 Oksner, Bob: 140 Orlando, Joe: 126, 127 Osbourne, Ozzy: 186 Osmond, Donny: 29 Owen, Beverly: 77, 98 Parker, Lara: 147, 150, 151, 184 Patrick, Butch: 77, 85, 95-97, 100, 115, 116 Paxton, Gary: 32 Perrin, Nat: 79, 80, 87 Perrin, Vic: 75 Philbin, Mary: 9, 135, 186 Picasso, Pablo: 62 Pickett, Bobby (Boris): 28, 30, 32, 33, 186 Pierce, Jack P.: 70, 135, 162 Pinckard, Terri: 121 Plant, Robert: 82 Poe, Edgar Allan: 11, 72, 78, 80, 147 Porter, Cole: 29 Post, Don: 17, 25, 70, 72, 169, 170, 172-177, 179 Powell, Bob: 60 Powers, Stefanie: 53 Presley, Elvis: 22, 28, 30, 31 Prezio, Vic: 23 Price, Vincent: 23, 50, 53, 57, 72, 121, 132, 187 Priest, Pat: 77, 98-101, 116 Quigley, Linnea: 189 Quinn, Anthony: 39, 40, 42 Rains, Claude: 133

Rankin, Arthur: 56 Raphael: 187 Rathbone, Basil: 51 Reed, Oliver: 67 Reed, Warren: 21 Reeves, Michael: 56 Reisner, Dean: 20 Remick, Lee: 41 Rickles, Don: 97, 100, 113 Robbins, Trina: 122 Rock, Blossom: 77, 81 Rockwell, Norman: 39 Rodan, Robert: 154 Romero, George A.: 21, 183 Ross, Dan: 158 Ross, Marilyn: 158 Roth, Ed “Big Daddy”: 109113 Russell, Leon: 32 St. Clair, David: 129 Sandburg, Carl: 31 Saunders, David: 62 Saunders, Norman: 60, 62, 65, 140 Savini Tom: 134 Scott, Kathryn Leigh: 9, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 161, 182, 184 Selby, David: 147, 151, 154, 184 Serling, Rod: 75, 162 Seuss, Dr.: See Geisel, Theodor Severin, John: 139 Shakespeare, William: 148 Shelley, Mary: 11 Shepis, Tiffany: 189 Sherman, Bobby: 151 Sherman, Samuel M.: 122 Siegel, Don: 72 Silla, Felix: 82 Sim, Alastair: 125, 126 Simmons, Gene: 186, 187 Simon, Paul: 186 Sinatra, Frank: 30 Smith, Kate: 31 Sondergaard, Gale: 51 Spector, Phil: 30 Spielberg, Steven: 25, 134 Stalin, Joseph: 72 Standells, the: 31 Stanley, John: 145

Starr, Ringo: 31, 169 Steckler Ray Dennis: 9 Stein, Ronald: 29, 31 Stevens, Brinke: 189 Stevenson, Robert Louis: 11, 143 Stoker, Bram: 11 Stone, Chic: 165 Strange, Glenn: 36, 48, 50, 51, 72 Stromberg Jr., Hunt: 20 Sullivan, Don: 29, 30 Sullivan, Ed: 28, 33 Swan, Curt: 54 Sweed, Ron: 21 Tallarico, Tony: 129 Temple, Shirley: 81 Torres, Angelo: 126-129 Tossey, Verne: 57 Tourneur, Jacques: 51 Tussaud, Marie: 42 Underwood, Charles: 33 Van Sloan, Edward: 22 Van Vogt, A.E.: 26 Vincent, Dennis: 36 Vorkov, Zandor: 26 Wallace, Marie: 154 Ward, Keith: 73 Warren, James: 22-27, 35, 36, 72, 121, 122, 125-127, 132, 134, 135, 185, 187 Weatherwax, Ken: 77, 84-87 Weldon, Michael: 21 Wells, H.G.: 11 Wertham, Fredric: 14, 165 Westmore, Bud: 72 Westmore, Michael: 96 Westmore, Perc: 93 Whale, James: 9, 11, 22 White, Ed: 19 White, Jesse: 101 Whitman, Maurice: 23 Williamson, Al: 127 Willie, John: 20 Winters, Roland: 87 Withers, Jane: 101 Wolverton, Basil: 62 Wood Jr., Edward D.: 20, 187 Wood, Wally: 60, 62, 126 Wooley, Sheb: 30 Wray, Fay: 9 Wyeth, Andrew: 39 Zacherle, John: 5, 15-21, 23, 29, 30, 133, 188, 189 Zawislak, Doreen: 21 Zawislak, Joe: 21 Zink, Chuck: 21 Zombie, Rob: 31, 186, 187 Zucco, George: 51

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