RetroFan #10 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

September 2020 No. 10 $9.95

Can I come to your house and play?

RARE GODZILLA TOYS

FIFTY YEARS OF ? Can You Dig It

T h e Br a d

y Bu

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hH L o CH Funny, ur’s g roov y GERI R EIS freaky FAKE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

Kathy Garver Ed “Big Daddy” Roth • Spaghetti Westerns • The Spider/Spider-Man & more! 1

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RETROFAN #12

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RETROFAN #14

BRICKJOURNAL #65

Hollywood interviewer CHRIS MANN goes behind the scenes of TV’s sexy sitcom THREE’S COMPANY—and NANCY MORGAN RITTER, first wife of JOHN RITTER, shares stories about the TV funnyman. Plus: RICK GOLDSCHMIDT’s making of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, RONNIE SCHELL interview, Sheena Queen of the TV Jungle, Dr. Seuss toys, Popeye cartoons, DOCTOR WHO’s 1960s U.S. invasion, & more fun features!

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19 The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

CONTENTS Columns and Special Features

Retro Heroes 50 Years of Shaft

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Running for Laughs: Fake Presidential Candidates

Retro Interview Family Affair’s Kathy Garver

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon The Secret Origin of Spider-Man

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Cartoon Preview Specials, Part Two

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Issue #10 September 2020

Retro Interview The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s Geri Reischl

Oddball World of Scott Shaw! Ed “Big Daddy” Roth

Ernest Farino’s Retro Fantasmagoria The Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone

Departments

Retrotorial

RetroFad The Twist

Too Much TV Quiz

Retro Toys Godzilla Merchandise in the U.S.A.

Retro Travel Stuckey’s

3 RetroFan™ #10, Sept. 2020. Published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $67 Economy US, $101 International, $27 Digital.

ReJECTED RetroFan fantasy cover by Scott Saavedra Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Shaft © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Shaft artwork by Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Ivan Nunes. Shaft art © Dynamite. Family Affair © Don Fedderson Productions. Godzilla © Toho Co., Ltd. Brady Bunch © Paramount Television. Howard the Duck © Marvel. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2020 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224

RETRO HEROES

Fifty Years of

(ABOVE) Cover artwork to Dynamite Entertainment’s comic book Shaft #1 (Dec. 2014). Art by Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz, with colors by Ivan Nunes. Shaft © Ernest Tidyman Estate. Shaft art © Dynamite.

by David F. Walker It is difficult to fully understand the tremendous impact John Shaft had on the pop-culture landscape 50 years ago, but to say that he helped change that landscape forever wouldn’t exactly be hyperbole. When the black private detective stepped out of the pages of Ernest Tidyman’s 1970 novel Shaft and on to the big screen in the 1971 film of the same name, the world of pop culture was primed and ready for something new. And that something new, embodied by actor Richard Roundtree, strutted through the gritty streets of Times Square to the rhythm of a funky theme song written and performed by Isaac Hayes. Audiences went wild, and everyone from book publishers to film producers to toy manufacturers took notice as the popularity of Shaft and a handful of other films paved the way for the blaxploitation movement that dominated the first half of the Seventies. To be clear, Shaft was not the only character to bring about a seismic change in how black masculinity was portrayed in popular entertainment, nor was director Gordon Parks, Sr.’s film truly a blaxploitation movie in the truest sense of the word. But at the same time, any examination of the emergence of the black action hero in the Seventies, the explosion of films produced and marketed to an urban (black) audience, and the lasting legacy of badassery must shine a spotlight on the black private dick. John Shaft was to black action heroes in the Seventies what James Bond was to spies in the Sixties, the difference being that there had been plenty of spies before Agent 007, but only a very small number of black action heroes came before Shaft. Given the iconic legacy of John Shaft, it is hard to believe that he was the creation of a middle-aged white man trying to change careers. Ernest Tidyman, a crime reporter from Cleveland, was looking to transition from journalism to fiction, but had found little success with his first novel, 1968’s Flower Power. At the same time, Macmillan Press mystery editor Alan Rinzler was looking for something new to shake things up within the genre. Rinzler had already worked with author Claude Brown on his successful memoir Manchild in the Promised Land (1965). Set in the Forties and Fifties, Brown’s gritty comingRetroFan

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RETRO heroes

of-age account of his experiences in Harlem became a critically acclaimed and controversial bestseller. Rinzler hoped to capture the gritty realism of Manchild in the Promised Land, and give it a home in the mystery genre, leading him to reach out to literary agent Ronald Hobbs. One of the few black literary agents in the Sixties, Hobbs suggested Tidyman, who was still better known for his reporting than his fiction. Commissioned by Rinzler in 1968, Tidyman began to develop a mystery for Macmillan that would star a hardboiled black private detective named John Shaft. Tidyman’s creation began to take shape in late 1968, but John Shaft was not the first black private detective in crime fiction. Shaft had, in an artistic sense, several brothers—or perhaps cousins—who came before him, clearing some of the paths yet to be traversed in mainstream books or movies.

readers to Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs. On paper, Tibbs and Shaf t have very little in common other than their skin color and the fact that like Toussaint Moore, their creators were white men. But the importance of In the Heat of the Night and Virgil Tibbs is undisputed, as the character came to life on the big screen in Norman Jewison’s 1967 film adaptation starring Sidney Poitier. Winning the Oscar for Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night would go on to spawn six more novels by Ball, two more films starring Poitier (The Organization and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs), and a television series starring Howard Rollins as Tibbs. Ernest Tidyman went to work writing Shaft in late 1968 with a publishing deal in place. He finished the book in 1969, and began shopping it in Hollywood nearly a year before its publication. Even before Shaft came out, there was interest in turning it into a movie. In the Heat of the Night had been a turning point for the

Room to Swing’s Toussaint Moore and In the Heat of the Night’s Virgil Tibbs were among the trailblazing black detective works paving the way for Shaft. In the Heat of the

Night © United Artists. Courtesy of Heritage.

One of the most important of Shaf t’s older literary brothers was a character introduced more than 60 years ago, and largely forgotten today. Toussaint Moore is considered by historians to be the first black private detective to appear in fiction. Introduced in author Ed Lacy’s 1957 book Room to Swing, Toussaint Moore returned in 1964’s Moment of Untruth. The same year that Lacy’s Room to Swing was published, author Chester Himes published the first of his “Harlem Detective” novels, chronicling the exploits of Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, two tough-as-nails detectives in the New York Police Department. Himes wrote eight novels starring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones between 1957 and 1968, and the characters would be crucial in clearing the way for Shaf t to take America by storm. Along with Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, another literary character was pivotal in laying the groundwork for Shaft. In 1965, author Joe Ball’s In the Heat of the Night introduced 4

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portrayal of black masculinity in film. In one of the film’s most revolutionary moments, Virgil Tibbs slaps a white man who seconds earlier had slapped him. And there was no retaliation. Tibbs was not made to pay for his ultimate sin of striking back against the racist power structure. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of cinema. Even football playerturned-actor Jim Brown had yet to do anything as incendiary in films like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra. While Sidney Poitier had earned his place as one of Hollywood’s top leading men in the Sixties, Jim Brown was establishing himself as the first black action hero in mainstream film. Before Brown’s rise to stardom, the closest thing to a true black action hero in Hollywood had been Woody Strode, but his roles had been in films of a different era—made before Virgil Tibbs slapped a white man. Brown’s movies came after the slap heard around the world, and he soon found himself as the leading man in movies like The Split and 100 Rifles.

SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

Running for Laughs: Pat Paulsen and Other Comic Candidates for President by Scott Saavedra If I could eat hot dogs every night for dinner and eat Cap’n Crunch sugar cereal every morning and sit around reading comic books and MAD magazine and watch reruns all day and watch my favorite shows at night and watch Warner Bros. cartoons on Saturday, then my life would be perfect. As a kid. That was my perfect kid life. I should have mentioned that straightaway. Also, I didn’t want to ever go to school. I wasn’t interested in the Math number-making or the English word writing-stuff (clearly). I was eight years old. It was 1968. Except for everything I didn’t want to be doing (school), I would end up having a pretty good year. That was me. America… well, she was having a tough go of it. Various sources peg 1968 as a uniquely turbulent time. “Turbulent” is very much the required adjective. The year began with North Korea capturing the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo, claiming that the ship was in their territorial waters (the U.S. said, “Uh, no”). The war in Vietnam continued to be unpopular and the “national dialog” about it was more shouting match than conversation. The North Vietnamese “Tet Offensive” surprised U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, a negative turning point for the conflict. More than one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans were past done being treated as secondclass citizens and the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4th only made tensions worse. Oh, and it was an election year. A really rough one. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to run for another term. Candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, nearly five years after his older brother, President John F. (ABOVE) Pat Paulsen campaign poster detail, 1968. Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (INSET) The President I Almost Was

by Jeanne Abel writing as Mrs. Yetta Bronstein. Reports of Yetta’s campaign may have doubted her chances of winning but didn’t dig deeper and uncover the hoax cooked up by her husband Alan.

Kennedy, was killed. That was soon followed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that was a violent, chaotic mess. It was, in short, a welcome time for some laughs by way of amusing candidates for president.

She’s a Man, Baby!

Mrs. Yetta Bronstein was a write-in “The Best Party” candidate for president in both 1964 and 1968. Her slogan was “Vote for Yetta and things will get betta.” She was a no-nonsense but kindly mother of one (a young budding musician of limited skill). At least, that’s what people paying attention were supposed to think. The first anyone had ever heard of Mrs. Bronstein was on a radio program called Table Talk out of the Chicago Playboy Club. She felt it was time for a “housewife” (her words) to run for the highest office in the land. She promised National Bingo and to put a Suggestion Box in front of the White House. Clearly, Mrs. Bronstein wasn’t a serious contender. New York Times reporter Ben A. Franklin (who—and this is a true fun fact—stayed at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel when in Philadelphia) wrote at the time that not only was there no urgent desire for National Bingo but that this “housewife” (his words) might “fail to carry a single district.” Mr. Franklin was both correct and incorrect. It was true that Mrs. Yetta Bronstein had a zero-to-none chance at capturing the White House, but Franklin failed to realize that Yetta wasn’t a housewife. She wasn’t a person at all. She was three people: a hoaxer named Alan Abel and his wife Jeanne performed as Yetta for phone interviews (Mrs. Yetta Bronstein didn’t make any personal appearances), and a photo of Alan Abel’s mother provided the face on campaign posters. RetroFan

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From Family Affair, Firestar, and Beyond

An Interview with

Kathy Garver by Shaun Clancy As a kid growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, my exposure to Kathy Garver’s TV work was probably the same as many of you. I would occasionally see a rerun of the popular sitcom Family Affair (1966–1971) on various channels (although I would develop a deeper appreciation of the show later, as an adult). Family Affair was about an engineer, Bill Davis (Brian Keith), a bachelor with an active social life living in New York City who takes on the unexpected role of raising his orphaned nephew (Johnny Whitaker as Jody) and two nieces (Anissa Jones as Jody’s pigtailed twin Buffy, known for carrying her doll Mrs. Beasley, and Garver as teenaged Cissy) who showed up one day at his doorstep. With the help of his valet (Sebastian Cabot), “Uncle Bill” and his newly formed family had five seasons of warm-hearted adventures with lighthearted humor aimed at adults. During its first three seasons, Family Affair was nominated for three Emmys. The TV show featuring Kathy Garver that really grabbed my attention was the animated Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981–1983), which aired Saturday mornings on NBC. This cartoon introduced a female character that I wasn’t familiar with in my Marvel Comics collection

(although she was soon introduced into comics)—Firestar, voiced by Garver, who interacted very well with her co-stars Iceman and Spider-Man, which made for a nice balance. The viewers apparently agreed, as it ran three seasons! “SpiderFriends, go for it!,” Kathy reminisces. Kathy Garver started her long and versatile career as a child actress and has since amassed credits in radio, stage, television, films, cartoons, and voiceovers. Her early movie roles include The Ten Commandments and The Bad Seed, with more recent film appearances in Mom, Murder & Me and The Princess Diaries. Her voice characterizations have appeared in many cartoons, commercials, audio books, and film voiceovers. And for decades she’s been a familiar face on television, from her pre-Family Affair childhood and teenaged roles on Our Miss Brooks, The Millionaire, Dr. Kildare, and The Patty Duke Show to more recent TV roles including a guest spot on the 2002 remake of Family Affair on The WB to starring in the newly developed Travis Hunt production, the series Aunt Cissy, announced in the summer of 2019 as “a new family comedy that is not exactly a sequel to Family Affair… but it has elements of the premise of that classic TV series, plus a few surprises.” She’s also

(TOP) Kathy Garver on the set of Family Affair. (ABOVE) The actress’ memoir, Surviving Cissy: My Family Affair of Life in Hollywood (2015). © Kathy Garver. Family Affair © Don Fedderson Productions.

an accomplished author, with several books to her credit including Surviving Cissy: My Family Affair of Life in Hollywood (2015), X-Child Stars: Where Are They Now RetroFan

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RETRO INTERVIEW: KATHY GARVER

(co-written by Fred Ascher, 2015), and the cookbooks The Family Affair Cookbook (2009) and Holiday Recipes for a Family Affair (2019). What follows is a transcription of my telephone interview with Kathy Garver from May 2014, which was transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury in late 2019 and updated in January 2020 for publication in RetroFan with Ms. Garver’s approval. RetroFan: You did some radio work in the Fifties on a show called Whispering Streets. Kathy Garver: This was with Bette Davis, and I was so excited to see Bette Davis and record Whispering Streets with her. My mom came to pick me up; I was a child. We went over to ABC, and we all got dressed up. We got there a little late and said, “Where’s Bette Davis?” “She’s not here.” “Is she late?” “Oh, no, she records her part in New York.” “Nooo!” …and I never did get to meet her. I was so disappointed. It was an anthology series, and I did maybe three of them. I also did Heartbeat Theater, which I still have the script for and I believe it was an episode with [legendary cartoon voice actress] June Foray. On the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoon, I played Firestar, and June played Aunt May. I just had a little reunion with Dan Gilvezan. He played the part of SpiderMan, and the last time I was in L.A., he

FAST FACTS Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends ` No. of seasons: Three ` No. of episodes: 24 ` Original run: September 12, 1981–November 5, 1983 (although the episodes continued to be aired through 1986) ` Production companies: Marvel Productions Ltd. and Toei Animation ` Network: NBC Primary Cast: ` Dan Gilvezan: Peter Parker/ Spider-Man ` Frank Welker: Bobby Drake/ Iceman ` Kathy Garver: Angelica Jones/ Firestar

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gave me this wonderful documentary about how it all began and the process of SpiderMan and His Amazing Friends. Stan Lee is the host of it all, and it’s very interesting. RF: Did you audition for the Firestar part, or were you selected? KG: We all auditioned. I had just moved to San Francisco, so I flew down and they were kind of stern in a way. They knew what they wanted. RF: Did you know you were auditioning for the Firestar role specifically or was it just a general audition? KG: No, I knew it was for Firestar. RF: In the audition, did you play opposite anybody, or just read it cold? KG: In the first audition, I just read and then they had us back and then I read with Frank and Dan. Then we found out we had the parts and Dan found out he didn’t have it, and then he did. RF: Who was the director? KG: Al Dinehart. Alan was an independent contractor, and Marvel was pretty much running it with Stan Lee. This was the first time that they had animated one of their comic books into a television series. RF: Did you work off of a storyboard? They usually like to animate to the recorded voices. KG: Well, they did the storyboards first, but we really just worked from script. We’d do a roundtable to get the feeling of how the show was going, and then we would record. RF: You did some other Spider-Man voice acting after Firestar… KG: I played Aruma of the Jungle and Miss America [in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, 1994–1998]… and I also played Storm [in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends], which was kind of cool. Brian Keith, who did my television series Family Affair, was also a character in Spider-Man [Uncle Ben on Spider-Man: The Animated Series].

Publicity image of Firestar autographed by the actress who gave her voice, Kathy Garver. Firestar TM & © Marvel.

RF: You’ve also done voice work for other cartoons. KG: I did a lot for Hanna-Barbera: Yogi Bear [The New Yogi Bear Show, 1998], Super Friends… I did Dixie on Dixie’s Diner (1989). I played an evil character, Enyah, in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures, and I also did Pepper in Chuck Norris’ Karate Kommandos. RF: Did you work opposite Chuck Norris, or did he work separately? KG: He worked separately, but I had met him before. He taught me how to break a piece of balsa wood! I was very impressed that A, he could do it and B, that he could teach me how to do it! RF: Did you have any interaction with Stan Lee when you were voicing Firestar? He was in the California studios at that time pushing to get things going. KG: Oh, totally! This was the first time [Marvel] had done it, so he worked with the scriptwriters to get it just right and was intimately involved with the casting, the storyboards, and actual animation. It was a very hands-on thing. He wanted it to be really, really well done because it was the first. He was a very sweet, energetic man. RF: When you do voiceover work in live-action movies or television, are you taking the voice of the main character and using your own voice [dubbing] over theirs?

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

The Secret Origin of

SPIDER-MAN by Will Murray In interview after interview, the late Stan Lee related how his publisher initially refused to print Spider-Man. Lee recalled: “My publisher said, in his ultimate wisdom–– ‘Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. First of all, people hate spiders, so you can’t call a book Spider-Man. Secondly, he can’t be a teenager—teenagers can only be sidekicks. And third, he can’t have personal problems if he’s supposed to be a superhero—don’t you know what a super-hero is?’” Martin Goodman’s objections usually killed any Marvel project. But Lee had an ace––or should I say, an arachnid––up his sleeve:

Does whatever a… well, you know. (LEFT) The Master of Men debuts in The Spider vol. 1 #1 (Oct. 1933), a pulp magazine series that inspired young Stan Lee. Cover painting by Walter M. Baumhofer. (RIGHT) Spidey’s first appearance, in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Sept. 1962). Cover by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The Spider TM & © Argosy Communications, Inc. SpiderMan © Marvel. Courtesy of Heritage.

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“When I was about 10 years old, I used to read a pulp magazine called The Spider and subtitled ‘Master of Men.’ Perhaps it was the Master of Men that got me, but to my impressionable, preteen way of thinking, The Spider was the most dramatic character I had ever encountered. He ranked right up there with Doc Savage and The Shadow. Even better, he wasn’t as well known as the others, which gave me the warm feeling that his fans belonged to an elite club.” Goodman should have known this. He once published a pulp magazine called Ka-Zar the Great. Lee pressed his case: “For my part I told him his logic was incontrovertible, but hear me out. Then I told him about The Spider. Verily, I bared my soul, mentioning how my childish heart would madly pound in breathless anticipation of each new issue. I zealously explained how I hoped that Spider-Man would be a trend-setter, a funky freaky feature in tune with the times.” The year was 1962 when Spider-Man was conceived. Officially, Lee claimed inspiration struck when he spied a housefly climbing his office wall. Another, more complicated version of Spider-Man’s origins had it that artist Jack Kirby brought in the rough concept. Lee planned to have Steve Ditko ink Kirby on the new property. But when Ditko saw the first pages, he recognized a strong resemblance to a superhero called the Fly, which Kirby originated with partner Joe Simon just three years before. In both cases, a young boy was transformed into an adult super-hero via a magic ring. Either way, you could say that a lowly fly inspired Spider-Man. Lee always said that Kirby’s muscular Spider-Man looked too heroic for a character requiring underdog appeal. That was the public explanation. Fearful of a lawsuit from Archie Comics, who published The Adventures of the Fly, Lee huddled with Steve Ditko. Together they formulated a reimagined version. It was published

in Amazing Fantasy #15, which Goodman promptly cancelled, orphaning a follow-up story. That might have been the end of it except for the fan mail. It poured in, demanding more Spider-Man. Reversing course, Goodman instructed Lee take that orphan story and add another, releasing the Amazing Spider-Man in his own magazine six months after he was cancelled. It’s an amazing story. No pun intended. And it parallels how Lee’s favorite pulp hero came into existence. Lee’s recollection of the wall-crawling fly that inspired SpiderMan is eerily similar to the account told by Popular Publications founder, Harry Steeger, who conceived The Spider in 1933. When Steeger saw that The Shadow Magazine was selling like crazy, he wanted to publish something like it: “The Spider (as a title) came about on a tennis court, of all places, where I was playing tennis and noted a large member of the species walking along the edge of the court.” But Steeger, too, feared a lawsuit. So, he huddled with his lawyer. Said lawyer came up with a scheme: Hire an established writer and have him transform an existing character into a rival to The Shadow. R.T.M. Scott owned a fictional wealthy detective named Aurelius Smith, who was aided by a Hindu assistant, Langa Doone. Overnight, he was renamed Richard Wentworth, and his Hindu assistant was given the name of Ram Singh. Thus, Secret Service Smith became the dreaded Spider. Scott wrote two Spider novels, then gave way to newspaperman Norvell Page to continue the series as Grant Stockbridge, a cockeyed tip of the slouch hat to Maxwell Grant, the nominal author of The Shadow. No suit was filed. Over time, The Spider morphed into more and more of an imitation of The Shadow, donning a black cloak, carrying twin .45 automatics, and laughing maniacally as he blazed away at armies of criminals. But armies of criminals do not sustain a monthly magazine. Very soon, The Spider was taking on super-criminals, terrorists, mad scientists, and other sundry forerunners of comic-book super-villains you could imagine. Here is where we start to see the parallels to what Stan Lee did with Spider-Man three decades later. While it’s true that’s The Spider and Spider-Man were very different characters, their paths intersected in ways that are amazing coincidences––if they are coincidences. First, The Spider is wanted by the law, which saw him as a vigilante criminal. But Wentworth believed himself to be a crusader, on a holy mission to eradicate rampant crime. By contrast, poor Peter Parker simply wanted to get by, and found himself hunted by the law, which also misunderstood him. Nothing particularly new here. This was the same formula Stan Lee had been milking with the Marvel Western comic Kid Colt Outlaw. Unlike the Kid, Peter Parker early on learned the burden of responsibility when he achieved his spider-powers. With The Spider, he was driven by duty to a higher calling:

“Richard Wentworth, secretly The Spider, was the champion of oppressed humanity, its shield and protector against the murderous outbreaks of the underworld; wherever crime struck terribly, that way he hastened, taking up the challenge. The police had offered rewards totaling thousands of dollars for his capture ‘dead or alive.’ And the underworld hated him, and plotted his destruction with a fierceness bred of abject terror.” In those days before the advent of Superman, The Spider had no spider-powers. Yet according to Norvell Page, he possessed a forerunner of Spider-Man’s spider-sense, which tingled in the same eerie way: “But through years of ceaseless struggle and hourly danger— not alone from the Underworld but also from the police who considered his brand-marked executions of criminals only murder––he had developed an uncanny feeling like the sixth

The Amazing Spider-Men: (LEFT) Norvell Page. (RIGHT) Stan “The Man” Lee as Spidey, by John Romita, Sr. Both, courtesy of Will Murray.

sense of bats. Flying in the dark, scarcely seeing, the convoluted facial feelers of a bat received, apparently, an impact of airwaves that forewarned the animal of obstacles in its path. So something—thought waves?—warned The Spider of danger.” Actually, this sounds a lot like Daredevil’s radar sense. Either way, you can see where Stan Lee got the idea. Another example: “Had The Spider been spotted? He couldn’t be sure, but there was a tingling along his spine that seemed to warn of danger.” The Spider liked to go around branding the criminals he slew with his red spider-seal. Stan Lee recalled: “He wore a slouch hat and a finger ring with the image of an arachnid—a ring which, when he punched a foe fearlessly in the face, would leave its mark, an impression of a spider. It was The Spider’s calling card, and it sent goose pimples up and down my ten-year-old spine.” Here, Lee was confusing The Spider with Lee Falk’s Phantom. Actually, Wentworth pressed the base of his cigarette lighter to the foreheads of his kills, which imprinted the scarlet seal the underworld dreaded. RetroFan

August 2020

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

Saturday Morning Preview Specials Part Two: 1978–1983 by Andy Mangels Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning. Since 1989, I have been writing columns for magazines in the U.S. and foreign countries, all examining the intersection of comic books and Hollywood, whether animation or live-action. Andy Mangels Backstage, Andy Mangels’ Reel Marvel, Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes, Andy Mangels Behind the Camera… three decades of reporting on animation and live-action—in addition to writing many books and producing around 40 DVD sets—and I’m still enthusiastic. In my RetroFan column, I will examine shows that thrilled us from yesteryear, exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some milk and cereal, sit crosslegged leaning against the couch, and dig in to Retro Saturday Morning! Normally in this column, I have spotlighted one series or set of series, giving you behind-the-scenes stories, cool factoids, and interviews. Starting in my last column and concluding in the next, I’ll instead be giving you the Retro Saturday Morning treatment of one of the most anticipated shows every fall from 1968 forward… the Saturday Morning Preview Special. In the September 26, 2008 issue of TIME magazine, Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane gave his own thoughts on the phenomena:

Celeb sibs Jimmy and Kristy McNichol, plus some of kids’ favorite stars of 1978, from an ad for that year’s ABC All-Star Saturday Preview Special.

“I was obsessed. Every year, the Friday before the new Saturdaymorning shows would premiere, the networks would do this big preview special, and I was always glued to the TV. As horrible as they were, they were entertaining at the time. There was a lot of showmanship from the networks based around the new lineup.” The problem with nostalgia for the Preview Specials is that they were only ever aired once. They were never rerun, never of fered in syndication, and never released on home video, DVD, or streaming. Because of the cross-platform licensing rights for clips and music, they never can be legally released. Some of them exist in parts and pieces on YouTube—a few of them exist completely there—but by and large, this set of shows is a missing part of television history. Very little has been written about them, and even Wikipedia has many of its crowd-sourced facts wrong. Until now. Now there’s RetroFan to the rescue. Utilizing this author’s amazing resources, here is as much information and material that could be dug up on the astonishing phenomenon of Saturday Morning Preview Specials! Beware, though… proceeding without caution can bring untold emotions, unfettered joy, and quite possibly, madness! RetroFan

August 2020

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

1978 ABC - Kristy and Jimmy McNichol Present The ABC AllStar Saturday Preview Special

Airdate: Friday, September 1, 1978, 8pm, 60 minutes Songs: “Love Will Find a Way” (Donny Osmond), “Here’s Some Love” (Donny Most), “He’s So Fine” (Kristy McNichol), “Girl You Really Got Me Goin’” (Jimmy McNichol), “Boogie Oogie Oogie” and “Last Dance” (Kristy and Jimmy McNichol) Written by Franelle Silver, Steven Adams, George Geiger, Lee Maddux, David Brown, Bruce Kirschbaum, Scott McGibbon Directed by Tim Kiley Produced by the Osmond Brothers, Toby Martin, Dennis Johnson, Bill McPhie Not a lot is known about this special, produced by the Osmonds, except that it was hosted by brothersister duo Kristy McNichol (an Emmy winner from Family) 32

RetroFan

August 2020

and Jimmy McNichol, and it featured appearances and performances by Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Donny Osmond, Joey Travolta, Adam Rich (Eight is Enough), Donny Most (Happy Days), and Haywood Nelson and Danielle Spencer (What’s Happening!!). Also appearing were Benji and the Pink Panther. Promoted on the show in clips were Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Fangface, Challenge of the Super Friends, Scooby’s AllStars, All New Pink Panther Show, and ABC Weekend Specials. Kids who didn’t want to watch that could view a rerun of Wonder Woman over on CBS instead. The special was taped in mid-August in Orem, Utah, at the Osmond Entertainment Center production complex. (ABOVE) Hosts Jimmy and Kristy McNichol. (INSET) Ad for the special. © ABC.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

special—the one-hour The Plastic Man Preview Hour— was run on Saturday, September 15, alongside The Best of Super Friends!, a rerun of the Out of the Blue premiere, and a Saturday version of Kids Are People Too. The official new season began the following week, on September 22nd! Writer Mark Evanier notes of the production and scheduling of the special, “I have no idea why the Plastic Man special aired the way it did. I know we put it together in record time—it was one of the fastest cartoon shows ever produced for television. I think from the time I wrote the script to the time it aired was about six weeks. We had finished production on Plastic Man for the time being. I got called in and I was told, ‘We need to write another episode of Plastic Man and you’re the fastest writer we’ve got.’ I had a bunch of outlines that I had written for the Plastic Man show and they hadn’t used them all. We looked over the leftover outlines and Joe Ruby said, ‘I like this one; let’s do this one.’ I described to Jerry Eisenberg, one of the producers, what the villain would look like— the guy with candle on his head. He designed the character literally before I wrote the script. I went home and wrote the script in one or maybe two nights. They recorded it the next day. It was the fastest show ever produced. We literally had no time and the animation was going on.” Unlike other specials, Evanier was not involved with anything past his animated segments; an uncredited writer wrote the live sections with Young and Brogan. “I turned in my script and I was done with it,” Evanier says. As for the comics-accurate opening, he notes, he rewrote the opening for the series—announced by Dick Tufeld—because the series opening wasn’t completed yet! “I just rewrote it for the special because the animation for the opening of the show wasn’t done yet. Somebody else animated that [series opening]. I just expanded it a little bit for no visible reason. The reason we did a lot of things on this show was because it occurred

to me to do them because I had a day to write this thing.” And was Evanier responsible for the Mickey Mouse cameo? He claims he wasn’t responsible, and only learned of it when the show was completed. “I didn’t see this thing until it aired on ABC the first time.” Plastic Man and ABC Saturday Morning Sneak Peek is the only special for which I was able to find ratings. It was 62nd for the week it aired… dead last among the three networks’ offerings. As Evanier wrote on his must-read website blog www.newsfromme. com, “Its Nielsen rating was close to a negative number and at the time, I felt like the only human being on the planet who’d seen it.” (ABOVE) Plastic Man’s first comic-book page re-imagined for his animated opening. Plastic Man © DC Comics.

1979 NBC – A Gary Coleman Saturday Morning Preview: The Thing Meets Casper and the Shmoo Airdate: Friday, September 7, 1979, 8pm — CANCELLED

This special was scheduled to air on September 7th, but due to a cartoonists’ strike that began on August 13th (regarding studios sending work overseas), the networks delayed many of their fall debuts. One casualty of the delay was this special, which was to have had Diff’rent Strokes star Gary Coleman cohosting with Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. Introduced on the show would have been Casper and the Angels, Fred and Barney Meet the Thing (the weirdest Marvel series ever), Li’l Abner spin-off The New Shmoo, and Filmation’s Flash Gordon. From my research, this special may never have aired. (CLOCKWISE, LEFT TO RIGHT) Casper the Friendly Ghost, the Thing, the Shmoo, and Gary Coleman, from promotional materials for NBC’s 1979 A Gary Coleman Saturday Morning Preview. © NBC.

RetroFan

August 2020

Fake Jan Gets Real An Interview with The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s Geri Reischl

Brady Bunch Variety Hour promotional still, signed by Geri Reischl to RetroFan’s super-groovy editor, Michael Eury. Courtesy of Geri Reischl. © Paramount Television/Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

RetroFan

August 2020

by Michael Eury H. R. Pufnstuf is considered by many to be the trippiest TV show from kid-vid producers Sid and Marty Krofft. You sure about that? Have you seen the Kroffts’ singing and dancing Bradys? Sure, the musical Brady Kids kept on movin’ through their share of sunshine days during The Brady Bunch’s original run, and oldest bro Greg even went out on his own as Johnny Bravo. The Brady parents didn’t shun the spotlight, either, from mom Carol’s miraculous Christmas morning solo to dad Mike’s turn (in green leotards) as Prince Charming in a backyard production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But the Kroffts’ The Brady Bunch Hour—also known as The Brady Bunch Variety Hour—defied categorization during its nine-episode run that began on November 28, 1976. Those hoping to see more sitcom antics from America’s grooviest family instead got a lot of stageshow slapstick… and songs… and dance numbers… and sparkling bellbottoms. Plus the shakin’, quakin’ Krofftettes! The show’s set-up was, the Bradys were chosen to star in their own variety show, prompting architect Mike Brady to spend more time with open-collared ruffled shirts and choreographed vocalizations than his T-square and blueprints. Gone was the split-level Brady home (recently the star of HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation), replaced by new beachfront digs. Also gone was Eve Plumb as Jan Brady, and that’s where our story begins… Enter Geri Reischl, now branded by many—especially herself—as “Fake Jan.” A veteran of numerous television commercials, Geri fit the part: lovely, with hair of gold (like her mother). Like previous TV cast changes (Darrin Stevens and Chris Partridge, anyone?), the new Jan replaced the old, and sure, diehard fans noticed. But they also noticed that… this girl could sing! Those who might have wanted to reject Geri as Fake Jan couldn’t help but be enticed by her fantastic voice. And it’s no wonder—she’s been singing since childhood, and over the years has performed on stage and screen with everyone from Red Skelton to Sammy Davis, Jr., from Marty Robbins to Donny and Marie. As a young actress,

she made guest appearances on TV series including Gunsmoke and The Bold Ones, and was featured in the horror movies The Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and I Dismember Mama (1972). She’s also known for two Hollywood near-misses: Geri was one of the final contenders for what became Linda Blair’s head-spinning role in The Exorcist, and was cast as Blair in the pilot for the Diff’rent Strokes spin-off Garrett’s Girls (soon retitled The Facts of Life) but had to forfeit that role for contractual reasons. But it’s the offbeat sitcom-variety show mash-up The Brady Bunch Hour for which she’s most adored by fans. I had the pleasure meeting Geri Reischl at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Hunt Valley, Maryland, in mid-September 2019, when we recorded the interview that follows, and was instantly enchanted by just how darn friendly she is. Fake Jan is a real delight… one groovy chick! RetroFan: So, Geri, how old were you when started acting? Geri Reischl: I was six years old. RF: …and singing? GR: I started singing around the same time. My mother noticed I loved to sing, because I would stand up in the booths at restaurants and start singing to everybody when I was two years old. So, I started my whole career when I was six. RF: You were in a lot of commercials as a kid… GR: Yes, I did over 40. I did everything imaginable, from clothes to food to toys,

Mattel’s Heather, of its Rock Flowers doll line, was patterned after Geri Reischl. (INSET) Geri capped off her childhood career as the “Mattel toy girl” with this 1971 commercial for Rock Flowers. Each figure in this line of 6.5-inch bendable dolls, competitors to Topper Toys’ Dawn dolls, included a 45rpm single with music by the Rock Flowers, a girl band created by Partridge Family music producer Wes Farrell. © Mattel.

just about everything, but I was mainly known for my commercials for Mattel Toys. I would say I was their Mattel Toy girl. RF: What were some of the products you promoted? GR: For them, I did Barbie, I did Skediddle Kiddles, I did all kinds of their baby dolls. The very last commercial I did for then was called Rock Flowers. I was 12 and they said I was getting a little bit too old for the toys, so they gave me a going-away commercial, and one of the dolls was Heather. They made her in my likeness. If you see her— my hair was extremely long then—you’ll see the long, blonde hair on the doll. And there were three different dolls. One

had kind of auburn hair, one was African American, so they made Heather look like me. The other ones people remember, I was in commercials for Crispy Wheats ’n Raisins cereal. I did those for three or four years. We had different characters from the Wizard of Oz in our commercials. I was Dorothy for all of those. We had the Good Witch and the Bad Witch, we had the Munchkins, and we had the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. We had everybody there. RF: Did you work doing commercials with other actors and actresses that people would know outside of their commercials? GR: Um… I can’t really remember, but I do know we would always be up for the same commercials. Pamelyn Ferdin, Kathy Richards, who is now Kathy Hilton. I did go out with a lot of them. I don’t remember doing a lot of them with anyone who went on to do things other than commercials. RF: Let’s talk about Jan Brady. Given the era of RetroFan magazine, many of our readers are Brady-o-philes. As we discussed in a preliminary talk, you wear the moniker “Fake Jan” as a badge of honor, which you should. GR: Yes.

RF: Tell me how you got that role on the Brady Bunch variety show, and why wasn’t Eve Plumb returning as Jan? RetroFan

August 2020

THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Kustom Kulture King, Fink-Father, and Automotive Oddity

by Scott Shaw! Even if you’re a “nice kid” who keeps out of trouble and gets good grades, by the time you reach the age of nine or ten, you start to rebel against your parents in subtle ways… and eventually, in obvious ways, too. I was that “nice kid,” although one more interested in reading, drawing, and planning to grow up to be a paleontologist or a cartoonist rather than a cowboy or a policeman. The bullies called me a “weirdo,” an insult I chose to embrace. Then, late in 1957, everyone was suddenly interested in weirdos… in the form of Universal Studios’ classic monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Invisible Man, Mummy, Wolf Man, and other ghoulish guys ’n’ gals. The Universal Monsters were collected in a late-night anthology slot usually known as Shock Theater in the schedules of dozens of TV stations. In its wake, outrageous monster-themed magazines, comic books, trading cards, decals, and other grisly-but-goofy goodies were sucking up schoolboys’ loose change. And those selfsame monsters also offered our first pre-teenage attempt to defy our folks. The monster craze persisted and thrived, like a lizard growing as big as a skyscraper after being exposed to radioactive waste. It was around the time Aurora Plastics launched its first three Universal monster model kits— Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolf Man— and Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “The Monster Mash” Top 40 radio hit for the first of many times (it really was a graveyard smash!) that my junior high school buddies and I started to attend car shows at downtown San Diego’s Community

Concourse, where we first encountered the man who would push the monster theme into weird new areas and with a new wild and wacky vibe, one that would irritate our parents to no end, especially our fathers. Why? Because although that man’s name was Ed Roth (1932–2001), to his fans he was, without a doubt, our “Big Daddy”! “The kids idolize me because I look like someone their parents wouldn’t like,” Ed once said. “…The first monsters I designed had a lot of shock value for kids who wanted to freak out their parents.”

A Weirdo is Born

Ed Roth was born in Beverly Hills, California, on March 4, 1942. His own big daddy, Henry, a strict cabinetmaker who moonlighted as the chauffeur of silent film star Mary Pickford, and his mother, Marie, were immigrants from Germany. Ed grew up in Bell, California, with his younger brother, Gordon, in a German-speaking household. Although he had to learn English in elementary school, Ed was a good student at Bell High School who (unsurprisingly) enjoyed his auto shop and art classes, and like most budding cartoonists, spent most of his free time drawing monsters, hot rods, and airplanes, which his mother encouraged. Henry taught both sons how to use the tools in his workshop; that’s where Ed learned how to make wooden molds to create fiberglass components for his custom show cars. At 14, Ed bought a 1933 Ford Coupe in 1946, his first car. After graduating high school in 1949, he attended East Los Angeles College with a major in engineering to further his understanding of automotive design. But Cover to 1964’s Big Daddy Roth Magazine #1. Cover art attributed to Pete Millar. TM © Ed

RetroFan

August 2020

The oddball world of scott shaw!

The Monkees’ Monkeemobile, and his famous custom car, the Mantaray. But Miller stayed the course, making weirdo shirts weirder than ever. Along with T-shirts, a related monster fad that Ed would embrace was grisly decals featuring hip depictions of a wide variety of creatures. The top artist in this field was a young man named Don “Monte” Monteverde, a professional artist and pinstriper who left a job as a Disney in-betweener to Roth’s bubble-topped hot rod Beatnik Bandit, on display at the National Automobile draw outrageous images of creatures, fiends, Museum, Reno, Nevada. (INSET) Carded original Hot Wheels’ Beatnik Bandit, includand flaming skulls to affix to bicycle fenders. His ing a Roth sticker of authenticity. Beatnik Bandit TM & © Ed Roth, Inc. Photo by Nick Ares. Hot decals were very popular with kids, especially Wheels © Mattel. Hot Wheels scan courtesy of Hake’s Auctions. because they were so easily affordable. Monte’s style would also be a strong influence on Roth’s when Ed became frustrated with the lack of cars in his lessons, in approach to designing monsters. He also may have had a hand in 1951 he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Air Force. creating Ed’s most famous character. Honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1955 and back in Ed began to take his T-shirt business as seriously as his real the Golden State, Ed met Sally, who he soon married. To support love, custom cars. Still drawing and airbrushing them without his growing family—Sally eventually bore him five sons!— help, Roth began to advertise them in Petersen Publication’s Car Ed took a job at Sears-Roebuck in its display department. He Craft magazine as “Weirdo Shirts” selling for $4.50 each. These moonlighted with freelance gigs pinstriping (adding gracefully shirts, with the mass-produced images silk-screened onto them, flowing linework and patterns to accent a car’s body design) were sold through the mail, but Ed was also selling personally cars and motorcycles. Ed rented a garage for his late-night and airbrushed versions at the car shows he frequented. Those weekend business, pinstriping cars for $50 to $150 each. Ed began events also gave Ed a chance to bond with his eager adolescent to experiment with fiberglass, a new material that was essential acolytes—like me. in building custom cars. In 1955, he customized a 1930 Ford Model A Tudor, swapping out its engine for one with an Oldsmobile, and Maywood Madness called it Little Jewel, which won a number of car show trophies. He In 1959, Ed Roth moved his operation to Maywood, California. It also began to delve into a popular new fad, probably inspired by was a run-down neighborhood, but the price was right and the the wave of monster-driven movies airing on television—“weirdo new location had plenty of room for building cars and massT-shirts.” producing weirdo shirts. Ed proudly announced the move in a Car As his family grew, Ed needed more money coming into Craft ad, which immediately attracted a nutty mixture of visitors: the household, so he partnered with another well-known, gearheads, pre-teen fanboys, policemen, musicians, FBI agents… experienced, and eccentric pinstriper, Jesse E. Crozier, better and outlaw bikers. This last group, who shared Roth’s sense of known as “The Baron,” and Crozier’s grandson, Tom Kelly. outrageous rebellion, would have both positive and negative Ed also continued to work on his “Weerdo T-shirts” (note effects on Ed and his career. The first result was that they the misspelling, his branding), joining a thriving trend that other convinced him to buy his first motorcycle, a new Harley-Davidson automotive artists were mining. Those young Turks included Sportster. Many more would follow. drag-strip cartoonist Pete Millar, futuristic vehicular designer Roth’s sense of car design was surreal and futuristic. He loved Dean Jeffries, and Detroit cartoonist Stanley Miller, Jr., a.k.a. bubble-tops, asymmetrical configurations, and lots of chrome. “Mouse!” Their styles shared certain elements—bug-eyed Many of his creations looked more like rolling sculpture than creatures resembling mutated beatniks driving impossibly automobiles, trading practicality for the cool quotient. exaggerated torqued-out hot rods (usually drawn with Ed’s show cars were wildly surrealistic (and subtly subversive) remarkable accuracy) that belched fire and clouds of exhaust. The but they were also quite small. They weren’t created to be useful craze got its first national exposure in the August 1959 issue of Car passenger vehicles—they were built to impress car-show ticket Craft magazine. On June 2, 1962, ABC’s Leave It to Beaver featured buyers and fellow gearheads—although the majority of them an episode titled “Sweatshirt Monsters,” in which Beav and his were street legal and capable of being driven. Ed, however, was 6 foot, 4 inches tall, and it was impossible for him to fit inside most pals dare each other to wear their weirdo sweatshirts to school. of ’em. Millar went on to edit B&W comic magazines full of “inside” In 1958, Roth pinstriped and bought Tweedy Pie from its humor about car culture, while Jeffries’ career led him to design original owner, Bob Johnston. Ed displayed it at car shows to such famous custom vehicles as The Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, 54

RetroFan

August 2020

ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA

A Fistful of Pasta The Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone

by Ernest Farino

RetroFan

August 2020

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Intermission. What—already? Not in-between features; this was back in 1968 when longer movies stopped in the middle for a break. And on one Saturday afternoon in 1968 at the Irving Theater in Irving, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), my friends Roger and Bill and I staggered out into the lobby after the first half of the movie. And we were speechless (and to those who know me, that’s really something). I wandered over to the water fountain and had a drink. That’s all I can remember. The movie was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And what we didn’t know—yet—was that, as stunned as we were by what we had just seen in the first half, the best was yet to come… Being primarily focused on monster movies and Ray Harryhausen and Toho’s Godzilla movies, we hadn’t paid much attention to “oaters” (as Variety called them) and had heard only vague rumors about these “Italian Westerns.” One of them, something with the word “Dollars” in the title, involved an old guy who was a coffin-maker, and… well, the information kind of dried up after that. Of course, the first two films in what later became known as “The Dollars Trilogy” were A Fistful of 62

RetroFan

August 2020

Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. And the man who made them was someone named Sergio Leone (pronounced Lee-O-nay, incidentally, not Lee-own). I soon learned more about Leone and his films. Prior to the Westerns, he had worked as an assistant director of some 50odd films, including William Wyler’s 1959 epic Ben-Hur, for which Leone was one of the assistant directors on the famous chariot race sequence. His first feature as a director was The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seemingly endless stream of “sword and sandal” epics of the early Sixties. That film demonstrated little of what would become Leone’s distinctive visual style, but was clearly a great opportunity (even though the film itself is rather dull). And then Leone convinced producer Alberto Grimaldi to back a Western, and in making A Fistful of Dollars, Leone reinvented an entire genre. He cast a tall, good-looking novice actor named Clint Eastwood after having seen him on the American TV series Rawhide. Leone later remarked that it was more about Eastwood’s presence than anything—he “moved like a cat”—which fit right into Leone’s concept of the laconic loner, a cowboy anti-hero who

(TOP) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly graphic. Images of (LEFT TO RIGHT) Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach taken from the main title of the movie itself. (LEFT) The U.S. three-sheet poster for A Fistful of Dollars. Since United Artists bought the first two films together, they knew what was coming, so they came up with the slogan “It’s the first motion picture of its kind. It won’t be the last!” (ABOVE) Sergio Leone directing Clint Eastwood and Margarita Lozano (as Consuelo Baxter) in a scene from A Fistful of Dollars (1964). © United Artists.

RETRO TOYS

in the Good Ol’ U.S.A.

by Robert V. Conte In the fantastic genre of “movie monsters,” few iconic characters have reigned supreme at 65-years-young. Sure, Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and King Kong are considerably older, but few horrific characters can surpass the immense success of one of the most merchandised monsters in the world—GODZILLA! The King of the Monsters (KOTM) first appeared on screen in 1954’s Gojira in Japan (released two years later in the United States as an edited, repurposed version starring Raymond Burr). The fire-breathing, radioactive beast—reawakened from mankind’s nuclear testing to wreak havoc upon the world—would outperform other B-movie behemoths from the era. Films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms quaked in comparison to the might of Godzilla’s box-office success worldwide. To date, 35 movies (including three animated features) have been made—the most films in motion-picture history to feature the same character!

There are two known variants of Ideal’s 1963 Godzilla Game. Some have play instructions printed on the inside box, while others include a separate printed sheet inside it. There is ongoing debate among collectors over which version was available first, but both are extremely hard-to-find in complete and good condition. © Toho Co., Ltd.

Godzilla is owned and licensed by Toho Company, Ltd. and, throughout the last six decades, thousands of toys, apparel, and other collectibles have been produced. Kaiju (meaning “Japanese monsters”) collectors are intimately familiar with the vast magnitude of products sold in Japan. To chronicle and discuss them at length would result in a book as mammoth as Godzilla himself! This article specifically focuses on Godzilla’s history in the United States, including the first official items in the early 68

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August 2020

Sixties through the end of Toho’s arrangement with UPA in the mid-Nineties.

The Golden Age of Godzilla Licensing…

Godzilla did not have domestically licensed consumer products until 1963—nine years after the character’s debut. Arguably, there are two reasons: First, the original film was not intended to become a platform to sell tchotchkes to children; it was meant to be an allegory on the ravages of nuclear weapons (Japan suffered greatly from the real-life bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II). Second, the first sequel, 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again, was initially released in America as Gigantis, the Fire Monster in 1959. Its U.S. producers and distributor, Warner Bros., either was not permitted to—or elected not to—use the name “Godzilla,” instead opting for its own moniker. For over 25 years, Gigantis would be the least-known KOTM film until it appeared on cable television and released on home video in the Eighties. Ironically, the first-ever U.S. item featuring Godzilla— though not licensed from Toho—was a 1961 Horror Monsters trading card featuring a publicity still showing “Gigantis” and his first nemesis, “the Angurus Monster.” Godzilla’s first U.S. licensing agent was the Weston Merchandising Company, founded in 1960 by G.I. Joe co-creator Stanley Weston (1933–2017). Weston was a pioneer who saw the potential of teaming intellectual properties (IPs) owned by multiple companies, as he famously did in 1966 with Captain Action [see RetroFan #7], the super-hero action figure that could also change into myriad licensed characters (if only the Captain had a Godzilla outfit…!). He was encouraged to represent Godzilla after learning one of his key clients, Universal Pictures, would distribute 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla in the United States. Reportedly, Weston seized this opportunity under the condition he would also sell King Kong licenses on behalf of RKO Pictures. Godzilla’s first licensed product was a board game. Ideal Toys, one of the most iconic makers of family entertainment including Betsy Wetsy dolls, Mouse Trap, and Rubik’s Cube, produced the Godzilla Game in 1963. A companion to the company’s

RETRO TRAVEL W. S. Stuckey’s original building was a simple roadside stand, but by the time of this color postcard, it had been replaced by a much larger complex on U.S. 341, on the outskirts of Eastman, Georgia. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

by Tim hollis

If you grew up going on long family road trips during the Fifties, Sixties, or Seventies, most likely you remember pulling over at one of the more than 300 Stuckey’s stores that lined the major highways. Now, that is not to imply that those three decades were the beginning and the end, or that Stuckey’s is no longer around—on the contrary, those yummy treats and kitschy souvenirs can still be found. But those were the years when the chain was at its peak, and had its market practically all to itself. Oh, there were imitators, but even most of those had their roots in Stuckey’s own corporate structure. Especially in the days when the nation’s interstate highway system was in its infancy, travelers would have to drive for miles and miles before finding a business where they could “eat and get gas,” as the old gag put it. Stuckey’s was a pioneer of building on the interstates, and until bigger fish such as McDonald’s, Exxon, and Holiday Inn took the bait, often Stuckey’s was the only choice. A legend has circulated for so many years that even the Stuckey family is unsure how much of it is true. It claims that the way Williamson Sylvester Stuckey would pick out the spots for his stores was to set out from a major starting point such as Atlanta 76

RetroFan

August 2020

or Nashville. Stuckey would have his chauffeur drive until he felt the need for a restroom. The story goes that wherever that urge occurred, that is where the next Stuckey’s store would open. Whether the locations were chosen by Stuckey’s bladder or more scientific research, it proved to be a successful formula. (Lending credence to the more formal research idea, it is significant that many Stuckey’s that were located on older U.S. highways also happened to be where future interstates were going to form interchanges by crossing those routes. Obviously, someone was studying maps of things that did not yet exist.) From the scant research that was done while the major players were still alive, we can learn that W. S. Stuckey first went into business during the Great Depression, when he began buying and selling pecans in the region around his hometown of Eastman, Georgia. His profit was a grand one cent per pound, but it was a start. In one interview, Stuckey recalled, “We By the early Sixties, ads such as this one were appearing in a variety of national magazines. Stuckey’s was well on its way from being merely a chain of Southern roadside stands to becoming a tourism institution. © Stuckey’s Corporation.

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RETROFAN #10

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