RetroFan #17 by TwoMorrows Publishing

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape!

November 2021 No. 17 $9.95

JAWSMANIA

Dark Shadows’

LARA PARKER comes alive in an exclusive interview!

Aurora Monster Model Kits

It’s a

Mad Monster u’re Party and yoin vited!

The Haunting • Drak Pack • George of the Jungle • James Bama • TV Dads’ Jobs & more! 1

82658 00438

FEATURING Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury

RetroFan:

Pop Culture You Grew Up With! If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, editor MICHAEL EURY’s latest magazine is just for you!

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Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer Films actress CAROLINE MUNRO! Plus: WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO WRESTLER ERASERS, behind the scenes of Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty, Go-Go Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton Museum, and more fun, fab features!

MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, is profiled! Plus: TV’s Route 66 and an interview with star GEORGE MAHARIS, MOE HOWARD’s final years, catching up with singer B.J. THOMAS, LONE RANGER cartoons, G.I. JOE, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO BOY, TARZAN Saturday morning cartoons, the true history of PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, the MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO ’77, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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Exclusive interviews with Lost in Space’s MARK GODDARD and MARTA KRISTEN, Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, Hogan’s Heroes’ BOB CRANE, a history of WhamO’s Frisbee, Twilight Zone and other TV sci-fi anthologies, Who Created Archie Andrews?, oddities from the San Diego Zoo, lava lamps, and more with FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY!

Holy backstage pass! See rare, behind-thescenes photos of many of your favorite Sixties TV shows! Plus: an unpublished interview with Green Hornet VAN WILLIAMS, Bigfoot on Saturday morning television, TV’s Zoorama and the San Diego Zoo, The Saint, the lean years of Star Trek fandom, the WrestleFest video game, TV tie-in toys no kid would want, and more fun, fab features!

Sixties teen idol RICKY NELSON remembered by his son MATTHEW NELSON, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., rural sitcom purge, EVEL KNIEVEL toys, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Saturday morning’s Super 7, The Muppet Show, behind-the-scenes photos of Sixties movies, an interview with The Sound of Music’s heartthrob-turnedbad guy DANIEL “Rolf” TRUHITTE, and more fun, fab features!

An exclusive interview with Logan’s Run star MICHAEL YORK, plus Logan’s Run novelist WILLIAM F. NOLAN and vehicle customizer DEAN JEFFRIES. Plus: the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons of 1966, H. R. Pufnstuf, Leave It to Beaver’s SUE “Miss Landers” RANDALL, WOLFMAN JACK, drive-in theaters, My Weekly Reader, DAVID MANDEL’s super collection of comic book art, and more!

Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep you forever dreaming of Jeannie! Plus: The Invaders, the BILLIE JEAN KING/BOBBY RIGGS tennis battle of the sexes, HANNABARBERA’s Saturday morning super-heroes of the Sixties, THE MONSTER TIMES fanzine, and more fun, fab features! Featuring ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW!, and MICHAEL EURY.

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NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with ’70s’ Captain America REB BROWN, and Captain Nice (and Knight Rider’s KITT) WILLIAM DANIELS with wife BONNIE BARTLETT! Plus: Coloring Books, Fall Previews for Saturday morning cartoons, The Cyclops movie, actors behind your favorite TV commercial characters, BENNY HILL, the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, 8-track tapes, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Celebrating fifty years of SHAFT, interviews with FAMILY AFFAIR’s KATHY GARVER and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour’s GERI “FAKE JAN” REISCHL, ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH, rare GODZILLA merchandise, Spaghetti Westerns, Saturday morning cartoon preview specials, fake presidential candidates, Spider-Man/The Spider parallels, Stuckey’s, and more fun, fab features!

HALLOWEEN ISSUE! Interviews with DARK SHADOWS’ DAVID SELBY, and the niece of movie Frankenstein GLENN STRANGE, JULIE ANN REAMS. Plus: KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, ROD SERLING retrospective, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, TV’s Adventures of Superman, Superman’s pal JIMMY OLSEN, QUISP and QUAKE cereals, the DRAK PAK AND THE MONSTER SQUAD, scratch model customs, and more!

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, and more!

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The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

CONTENTS Issue #17 November 2021

Columns and Special Features

Retro Hobbies Aurora Monster Model Kits

7 3

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon James Bama: Man of Monsters

Retro Interview Lara Parker, Dark Shadows’ Angelique

24 15

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Drak Pack and Monster Squad

Departments

2 Retrotorial

22 RetroFad Jawsmania

Oddball World of Scott Shaw! George of the Jungle

Celebrity Crushes

Ernest Farino’s Retro Fantasmagoria “Whose Hand Was I Holding…?”

Too Much TV Quiz Theme song lyrics

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum TV Dads of the Sixties’ Jobs

RetroFanmail

ReJECTED RetroFan fantasy cover by Scott Saavedra

Retro Animation Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party?

RetroFan™ #17, November 2021. 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: $68 Economy US, $103 International, $27 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Aurora Frankenstein model photo courtesy of Mark Voger. Mad Monster Party © 1997 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions. Superman TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2021 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224

by Michael Eury EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Michael Eury Ernest Farino Rick Goldschmidt Rod Labbe Andy Mangels Brian Martin Will Murray Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw! DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Dan Curtis Productions Heritage Auctions Jim Pierson Anthony Tollin Mark Voger

I never went trick-or-treating when I was a child—or if I did, I have zero memories or photographs of those experiences. My formative years were spent in a small apartment, and since my parents both worked full-time, they didn’t have time to drag a costumed kid around each October 31st. When I was turning eight, we moved into a house and my baby brother was born, and so Mom and Dad were now occupied with a crying baby and a rambunctious grade-schooler—and their jobs. I certainly wasn’t a deprived child—I was showered with no end of love, comic books, and toys… and the Ideal Toys Batman helmet and cape I got in ’66 gave me lots of costumed playtime. Also, Dad worked at a grocery store, so while most kids relied upon annual door-to-door Halloween candy begging, I got candy (as well as cupcakes and ice cream) every week (and I had the flab and zits to show for it)! Still, subconsciously I must have felt some void from being denied this childhood ritual, since as a young adult I began to don costumes—for money! In the mid-Eighties, I dressed up as everyone from Popeye to Superman for movie spoofs while hosting a cable-access comedy show, and followed that up with a stint as a costumed singing telegram messenger, where I serenaded ladies as the dapper Mr. Wonderful and the wildman Seymour Swinger. And then, for many years my wife and I masqueraded at adult Halloween parties, finally discontinuing the practice a few years ago as we aged out of nighttime outings. So, back in RetroFan #2, I vicariously enjoyed the trickor-treating experience when writing about Ben Cooper Halloween costumes, the manufacturer of those cheesy but adorable plastic masks and paper smocks that regaled children for decades. That feature was a crowd-pleaser, so for those of you who would like to learn more about the venerable manufacturer of kids’ costumes, I’m happy to report that Jason Young has recently published a new book, An Old School Halloween, that digs deeper into the subject. Jason is also the author of The Wonderful Artwork of Wax Wrappers, NEXT ISSUE a “visual journey” of non-sports card wrappers, which has gone into multiple printings. RetroFans interested in ordering Jason’s books can find more info by visiting the Facebook group Oldtimes Blue Ribbon Digest. We’ll always dream of Jeannie... This is the annual Halloween edition of EXCLUSIVE BARBAR A EDEN RetroFan, the only issue each year our eclectic interview magazine flirts with a theme… although amid the The Battle monsters and monster-makers in the pages that of the Sexes TOMMY follow you’ll also find articles about Jay Ward’s ...COOK wacky cartoon George of the Jungle, the occupations of Ward Cleaver and other sitcom dads, and a few HannaBarbera’s TV Super-Heroes other fun features. There’s something for everyone of the Sixties The Invaders • Monster Times • ‘How to Draw’ Books • Cartoon Xmas Cards & more! here, so get ready for another groovy grab-bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with! January 2022 No. 18 $9.95

VERY SPECIAL THANKS James Bama Lara Parker

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RETROFAN

November 2021

with event organizer

FEATURING Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury

RETRO HOBBIES

A Horde of…

Monsters in My Bedroom! by Rod Labbe In November 1963 (not long before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated), the “Elm Plaza,” a brand-new shopping center, opened on the outskirts of my hometown, Waterville, Maine. “Oooo,” I blubbered, as we (my parents and two sisters) pulled into its expansive parking lot early one Friday evening. What an adventure! There’s a Mammoth Mart department store! And W. T. Grant! A book emporium… First National supermarket… Radio Shack… an S&H Green Stamps store… and the biggest bowling alley, ever! So many choices, but Grants, as we called the W. T. Grant department store chain, intrigued us the most since it had an attached “family restaurant.” Before settling in for a meal, we ogled the spacious aisles dividing Grants from front to back. You could get anything there! Furniture, clothing, toiletries, shoes, candy, appliances, and toys galore. One-stop shopping, at its very best. And I saw them… boxed monster model kits by Aurora Plastics, stacked neatly in an eye-catching exhibit: Frankenstein’s Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, and an about-to-pounce Wolf Man. I had some vague notion about model kits. People built them, right? Usually, boats and airplanes and cars and stuff. But monsters? A bold concept! I picked up Dracula, felt its heft, studied the atmospheric box-top illustration (painted by James Bama), and checked for a price tag: 98 cents. Within my allowance/budget! Too bad I knew zip about making model kits. Otherwise, I might be taking home a vampire! Little did I realize that Fate’s wheels were inexorably spinning. One innocuous school day, my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Pelletier, stood in front of our classroom blackboard and read from a mimeographed sheet. “Next month, St. Joseph’s

(ABOVE) Aurora monster model kits… the stuff from which nightmares and sticky glue spills were made! Courtesy of Heritage. All characters © Universal Pictures except for Godzilla © Toho.

RETROFAN

November 2021

retro hobbies

is holding its first annual hobby day,” she droned. “Grades five through eight are expected to bring in a hobby. Show us your talents. Show us your [yawn] skills. Use good, old-fashioned American ingenuity and do St. Joseph’s proud. First prize is a 20 dollar savings bond.” Well, at ten, I didn’t have any hobbies per se, other than watching scary movies, but winning a savings bond instantly attracted me. In order to compete, I needed a tangible hobby, but quick. Boom! Why not be different and build myself some monsters? This was a legit academic project, so the folks provided both funds and encouragement. Off we went to Grants again, where they bought me model glue and a gorgeous Creature from the Black Lagoon. We had another tasty meal, too. I could get used to this! Back home on familiar turf, I bounded upstairs to prepare a suitable working area (bedroom desk with light, newspapers, and an old washcloth). Slowly, I withdrew the Creature from his paper sack, tore away the cellophane, carefully lifted the lid, and was hit by what would become Creature from the Black Lagoon © Universal Pictures.

Okay, fine, no problem. Thinking cap in place, I retrieved my sister’s old “paint by numbers” set from her closet. Fishy greens and blues swirled onto the brush. A touch of red, a dollop of yellow and brown, and the Creature snarled, stalked, and glistened. Glistened… because this was oil-based paint. It never dried. Aargh! For my second excursion into Aurora horror, I selected the Phantom of the Opera. Mom and Dad threw in several bottles of Testor’s paint, and my artistic abilities flourished. Swish, swish, dab, spill, whoops, spill again, aargh! Paint everywhere! What happened? The Phantom’s face mouth, eyes, and nose were shapeless blobs. No problem! I’d just have him wear his handy-dandy mask. Any port in a storm, as they say. Frankenstein’s monster came next… easier to paint, and no eyeballs to speak of, merely slits. Definitely a plus. The simplicity of this kit made me breathe a bit easier. Just a tombstone, two stone markers, and Frankie himself. It’s still my favorite Aurora monster. Following an eternity of gluing, painting, and wiping (a supremely messy job), three gruesome monsters emerged, ready to crush, kill, and destroy. Would they impress fellow schoolmates or brand me a laughing stock? And would I win that precious savings bond? Fingers crossed! Hobby day arrived. I carefully packed up my terror trio and left for school. St. Joe’s basement auditorium buzzed with activity. Uh-oh. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who collected Aurora Holy Hobbies, Batman! This store ad for monsters. There were Wolf Mans, some of Aurora’s TV- and comic-inspired Mummies, Phantoms, sundry Creatures, model kits drove kids like Rod Labbe wild! lumbering Frankenstein “monstahs,” and Poster courtesy of Heritage. Superman, Batman an army of Draculas. They’d even (gasp) and Robin, Batmobile, Superboy, Wonder Woman painted the eyeballs! © DC Comics. Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk © Cowed, but not defeated, I found Marvel. Lost in Space © Space Productions. Voyage an empty shelf and bravely arranged to the Bottom of the Sea © Irwin Allen Properties, an all-too familiar scent: fresh styrene Frankenstein, “Creech,” and Phantom for LLC/20th Century Studios. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. plastic. maximum effect. © Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. EnterInside lay pieces of a metallic green Instant response… and instant defeat. tainment, Inc. Zorro © Zorro Productions, Inc. Creature and its directions, complete “Hey, the Phantom ain’t supposeta with origin story. Nirvana! be wearin’ his mask, you stoopid,” Time to get busy. I picked up two sneered an eighth grader, reducing me pieces of an arm and fit them together. Half an hour later, I sat to a mumbling mound of pre-adolescent jelly. “What’s with your back, sighed smugly, and beheld what I’d created: Creature Creature? Yuck! He’s all sticky and covered in dust! Guys, check out extraordinaire! Then, I read the directions more closely, and my this goofy kid’s crappy stuff. It’s a riot! Ha-ha!” euphoria withered like a leaky balloon. Gulp! I was supposed to My ten-year-old ego imploded. Turning tail seemed a viable paint him first? option. Instead, I laughed good-naturedly, while crying buckets How could I have missed such an essential step? Dumb, dumb, on the inside. Sufficiently abused, defeated, and again deflated, dumb. The euphoria I’d been feeling was probably due to sniffing I skulked home and hid my sorry monsters in the closet. I was airplane glue! done. 4

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retro hobbies

Welp, so much for “hobby day.” Maybe I should just collect If 1965 had been a great modeling year, 1966 manage to top stamps. No muss, no fuss, and no suffocating glue and slams it. Aurora really pushed the creative envelope, exploring diverse from the peanut gallery. areas like television, super-heroes, and movies: the Munsters Needless to say, I also kissed goodbye to the savings bond. Living Room, the Addams Family Haunted House, Wonder Life went on. Winter melted into spring, and I began noticing Woman, Wolf Man’s Wagon, Superman, Superboy, Batman, my best friend Donald’s hands were paint-spattered. “What’s Robin, William Castle’s the Vampire, Blackbeard the Pirate, with the paint?” I asked him, one afternoon. “You helpin’ your dad Zorro, Alfred E. Neuman (of MAD magazine), and Hercules and in his wood shop or sumpthin’?” the Lion. I almost couldn’t keep up! “Nope! Makin’ models,” he casually responded, as if this was The best of these were the Munsters Living Room and the most natural thing. “Monster models, to be exact.” the Addams Family Haunted House. I especially wanted the “You mean, like for hobby day?” I could feel my ears burning. Munsters, after seeing a full-page ad in Famous Monsters #38. Don had brought four monsters to school, and they were only Donald bought one first, so I was able to examine it up close slightly better than mine. “I thought you’d given those up.” and personal. “Yeah, sorta, but I changed my mind. They’re cool. I got six of Hmm. This obviously called for a lot of intricate painting— ’em so far.” smallish details, like Lily Munster’s face and “Six?” The number sent my temperature soaring. “That’s almost the entire collection!” “Yep. This fall, I’m gonna buy the Hunchback. You oughtta come over and see what I got. Might start you buildin’ models, too. There are new ones all the time, and it’s fun.” “Yeah. Heh-heh. I oughtta.” Okay, I’ll admit, I was one jealous kid! So jealous, in fact, my own monster mania shot off like a bottle rocket. I had to beat Don! During the summer of 1964, I formulated a strategy. First on the agenda: repainting the Creature. I used Testor’s enamel, and lo Author Rod Labbe in the fifth and behold, it dried! Procuring the Wolf Man, grade, the dawning of the Age of Dracula, and Mummy followed, each an artistic Aurora (model-making). challenge and one well met. For Christmas, I asked for and received King Kong and Godzilla, two bigger kits (retailing for $1.49) that absolutely thrilled me. Let the competition commence! Through intense practice, I’d developed into a slightly more skilled model-maker, (ABOVE) The Monster Craze collided with the reading and constantly consulting the model craze on Norman Mingo’s painted cover directions from front to back, painting each for MAD #89 (Sept. 1964). (LEFT) If you thought piece, being cautious and patient (the glue an Alfred E. Neuman Aurora model kit was just didn’t always set like it should), and adding a MAD cover fantasy, think again! MAD © E.C. the final touch: a generous dollop of Testor’s Publications, Inc. Both, courtesy of Heritage. red paint. All of my models were bloody messes! 1965 was even better, a collector’s dream year. I eagerly awaited the release of every new Eddie’s “Woof-Woof” doll. Usually, I spent Aurora offering. One by one, the Hunchback of approximately 24 hours total constructing an Notre Dame, Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde, Madame Aurora kit, but Herman and crew set a new Tussaud’s the “Chamber of Horrors” Guillotine, record: six days! Blame it all on my sorry “skills,” the two Men from U.N.C.L.E. (purchased or lack thereof. I just couldn’t master that evil, individually and designed to connect in an epic uncooperative brush. diorama), the Bride of Frankenstein, and the Salem Witch were 1967 saw a different me. I’d gotten into comics collecting and welcomed into the fold. monster magazines, and started high school… but Aurora was Frankly, I liked the competitive aspect of my model-collecting still part of my world. Christmas morning, Lost in Space, Batman’s hobby. Donald had thrown the gauntlet, and I went at it full bore. nemesis the villainous Penguin (bearing a striking resemblance But truthfully, the Bride’s absence in his collection bothered me. to Burgess Meredith), Tarzan, and Captain America sat under My best boyhood friend was losing interest. Not only would I our resplendent tree. Truth be told, I was more “obsessed” with eventually eclipse him, we’d stop discussing anything related to comic-book collecting. New product every week and no gluing (or model-making. painting) required. Yay! RETROFAN

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retro hobbies

My veteran monsters, like the Creature, slowly fell victim to any number of calamities. It wasn’t unusual to return home after school and find a broken model on my bed or desk, accidentally destroyed by mom when she’d vacuumed. I’d diligently restore them… half-heartedly, I’ll admit. 1968 revved into a tumultuous whirlpool. Two political assassinations, an escalating war in Vietnam, and college riots peppered news programs every night. What few kits I received were for Christmas—the Lost in Space Robot, Land of the Giants’ “snake scene,” the Incredible Hulk—and assembled with zero enthusiasm. On November 2, I’d turned 16 and other worries were on my mind, like the very real possibility of a high draft number in a few years. Don had already given up model making, and I followed suit… though I continued to collect comics. He’d stopped doing that, too. A chasm cracked open between us, barely noticeable, at first. The breach ultimately widened, and neither one of us could cross it safely. Disaster loomed. High school graduation came and went (1971), but rather than college, I opted to work. At least, for a short while. One day, perusing the hobby section in Grants, I spotted Aurora’s “Frightening Lightning” kits. They were reissues of the originals, with certain pieces that glowed. I was tempted to buy one. The reason I resisted? Maturity. Growing older, I’d rejected the trappings of childhood. I wanted to be an adult, someone responsible and serious. Spending money on plastic monsters and revisiting old “haunts” seemed counterproductive. A bright future awaited me, offering many surprises, trials, and triumphs. Why weigh it down with memories of the past? Why, indeed? That was almost 50 years ago. One by one, touchstones fell to Time, and casualties piled up like war dead. Today, I’m 69—far from being an adolescent, at least, outwardly. The maturity I so desperately desired barged through my door and settled in, an uninvited party guest who refuses to leave. I’ve experienced deaths of loved ones, including my parents, stood before Donald’s grave and shed tears, felt the crushing pain of disappointments, and love affairs gone fallow. Life is no longer carefree, when all I had to worry about was making sure I never missed an episode of Dark Shadows or The Avengers (Steed and Peel only, thank you). There are deadlines and consequences, worries aplenty, and the undeniable fear about Age and my own mortality. Adulthood has cheated me, stealing childhood away, and laughing about it. Like vivid photographs in a keepsake memory scrapbook, those fanciful younger days are clear as crystal, yet untouchable. I think of them at the oddest times, as winters melt to spring, when the first autumn tree blazes with color. On Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. St. Joseph’s school is gone; I watched its bricks tumble. Aurora Plastics liquidated in 1977, selling off their model molds to rival Monogram; in 1976, Grants went bankrupt, dissolved, and closed. 6

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Fester—uh, we mean, feast—your eyes on this ad for Aurora’s Addams Family House model. © Filmways Television Productions.

It’s a harsher existence. People smile less, and the pace of life races faster and faster. What are we all heading toward? I shudder to think. The house where I lived has fallen into disrepair. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, in dreams, I’m home, again. Mom and Dad are alive, and 2021’s a future year out of The Jetsons. Duchess, my long-dead Cocker Spaniel, is chasing butterflies as we run through the backfield beyond our fence, and all that I say and do is underscored by a strange urgency. I wake, confused and disillusioned. Things change. Times change. Still, I’m joyfully reminded. Boxed and built-up vintage models regularly sell on eBay, and other companies—like Polar Lights and Moebius Models—have championed Aurora’s grand legacy by reissuing almost all their classic kits to an adoring, appreciative, and graying public. Last week, I passed a downtown hobby shop, and an array of plastic monsters was in the window: Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, the Mummy, and King Kong. The sight transported my elderly psyche back to sunny kite flying Saturdays, late-night bike rides, The Beatles… and monsters in my bedroom. Ah, sweet nostalgia. One of these fine days, I might try my hand at another Creature from the Black Lagoon. And guess what: I’ll even paint him first! ROD LABBE is a New England-based writer specializing in Baby Boomer pop culture and all it entails.

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

James Bama Man of

Monsters by Will Murray

(LEFT) Detail from a familiar sight for many RetroFans: box art for the Frankenstein Aurora model kit as painted by James Bama, shown here in an undated photo. Frankenstein © Universal Pictures. Photo courtesy of Anthony Tollin.

I grew up in an epoch of monsters. They were everywhere. Popping up on TV. Lumbering through television, films, and even dominating comic books. One of my first clear memories of childhood was in the spring of 1961. A neighborhood kid took me to the local Rialto, where I saw my first Saturday matinee double feature, Mister Roberts and Gorgo. When I wondered about the dark orchestra pit beneath the screen, I was advised, “That’s where the monsters live.” I believed him. I was eight. I vaguely recall coming out of the theater and spotting a copy of Gorgo comics on the racks. I wouldn’t start buying comic books until year’s end, but before that, I started collecting the Spook Stories bubble-gum cards based on the Universal Monsters, which were all over TV, thanks to the “Creature Features” airing reruns. When I did start collecting comics, in addition to Superman and Batman, I grabbed things like Marvel’s Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish, which were chock full of giant monsters such as Jack Kirby’s Two-Headed Thing and Steve Ditko’s Hagg, Hunter of Helpless Humans. The Incredible Hulk was born at that time. I loved them all. The first magazine I ever purchased was Famous Monsters of Filmland. So naturally, I bought the Aurora Plastic Company Universal Monster kits, which began proliferating in 1961 A.D., early in the Monster Craze. Or should I say, Monster Revival, since many of its most memorable monsters had been created a generation before. RETROFAN

November 2021

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Back in the early Sixties, monsters were a big deal. In fact, they were stupendous, colossal in their grisly gargantuan grandeur….

Model Citizen

Which brings me to the subject of this column, James Bama (b. 1926), considered the greatest commercial illustrator of the 20th Century. I didn’t know his name when I first started building the Aurora monster model kits. But Bama was the artist who painted the

The stuff nightmares (and fun times) are made of! Bama’s iconic Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and Dracula portraits, gathered for this Aurora ad that appeared in the October 1962 edition of Boys’ Life magazine. Monsters © Universal Pictures. Courtesy of Heritage.

RETROFAN

November 2021

memorable box art. Even as a little kid I thought his work was great. More than great, it was perfect for the subject matter. Moody, intense, and very realistic––which is what an eight-yearold demands of his monsters. My younger brother and I used to alternate purchasing the kits. Frankenstein was his first one. I took Dracula. And all down the line over the following four years. Every time Aurora released a new kit, we had to figure out which one of us got to buy it. I felt it was a triumph when I got the Creature from the Black Lagoon kit. To me, that was the best kit Aurora ever manufactured. Modeled from emerald plastic, once assembled, it required only a few touches of paint before it was ready for display. As a boy growing up in New York City’s Washington Heights section during the Great Depression, Bama caught all of the classic Universal Monster films during their first runs. “When I was a kid,” he recalls to RetroFan, “that’s when all the monster movies came out. I think I was five years old when I saw Frankenstein. And they were very traumatic for me. They left a lasting impression. I had to sleep with my mother for three nights after I saw The Mummy. I was afraid to go to bed. And when I was in my thirties, I got to do all the monster kits for Aurora. Things I was terrified of when I was a little kid!” Bama recalls that there were five theaters within walking distance in his neighborhood, and a matron in white would police the kids during matinees. “That was the beginning of all those horror movies. I think my mother started taking me to those movies when I was five years old. They’re still very vivid. And they were good.” Bama’s favorite? “Probably King Kong, because of my dramatic relationship with it when I was a kid. I was terrified of King Kong. And to this day when he breaks through the stockyard, it scares me. It’s still the best King Kong.” Despite his natural affinity for to the spooky subject matter, the plum assignment found Jim Bama, not vice versa.

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

“I was working at Cooper Studios,” he recalls, “and there was an art director who came in looking for someone to do the monster kits. And they just gave them to me. That’s how it all started. I did Frankestein first. Then Dracula.” Initially, Bama painted the box art the way he imagined they should look. “I didn’t copy the models,” he relates. “They wanted them to look more exciting. I based them on movie stills. I saw all of those horror movies. I was the perfect guy for it. It was like reliving my childhood. I loved doing them. It was a fun part of my life, frankly.” Trouble started brewing right away. “I did them from movie stills and a lot of the parents complained that they didn’t look like the kits. When I did the Mummy, King Kong, and Godzilla, I painted them from the kit. When I did the Guillotine kit, some mothers complained about it being gross with the heads being chopped off. They had all kinds of problems like that.” Although he found painting from the assembled models less satisfying, the artist made them work, applying his own techniques. “I think I may have assembled a lot of them myself,” he recalls. “I used different lighting so they didn’t all look alike.” Before he quit, Bama painted box art to more than 20 Aurora kits––all of the Universal Monsters, as well as TV tie-ins such as The Munsters and the Addams Family House. The company made millions. But for the artist, it was largely a labor of love. “I got paid less than a pittance,” Bama remembers. “I think I got less than 300 dollars for each box. They never raised the price. Which I thought nothing of. And all of a sudden they’ve become a collector’s item and a cult kind of thing.” Eventually, Aurora ran out of Universal Monsters to plasticize. An oversized Gigantic Frankenstein kit dubbed “Big Frankie” sold poorly due to its high price––five times the 98cent cost of the regular kits. Bride of Frankenstein and the Witch bombed. Most boys preferred masculine monsters and couldn’t be bothered applying glue to their mates. So in emulation of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Rat Fink and Hawk’s “Weird-Oh” monstermanned hot-rod kits, the company turned to customized car kits like Frankenstein’s Flivver and Dracula’s Dragster. “When they started to do the monster hotrods,” Bama notes, “I did the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and Dracula. And I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally quit. I didn’t like the idea of making them into humorous things. To me, they were scary.”

Paperback Covers

I had given up by that time, too. King Kong and Godzilla were the last kits my brother and I assembled. I would have loved to build a Gorgo kit, but had to settle for Godzilla. Glow-in-the-dark reissues came along in the Seventies, captivating a new generation. Bama didn’t care. By that time, he was one of the hottest cover artists of the early paperback revolution, working principally for Bantam Books where, once again, he got to indulge in his love of Universal Monsters.

James Bama and wife Lynn in 2017. Photo by and courtesy of Anthony Tollin.

His Bantam career started when he met art director Len Leone at a 1962 party. An offer to the paint the cover to a reissue of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea resulted. This led to hundreds of assignments, including reissues of Frankenstein, King Kong, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as more contemporary books. Bama recalls, “Len said, ‘How would you like to do a Rembrandt version of Frankenstein?’ He’d get me all worked up.” Naturally, Bama used Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster for reference. A photo of RKO’s King Kong looming over helpless Fay Wray tied to the sacrificial altar served for the King Kong novelization’s cover. His portrait of Dr. Hyde was the 1931 Fredric March incarnation, not the later Spencer Tracy version. Branching out into promotional art for TV, Bama painted the first commercial images for shows now considered classic. “I did the original Star Trek ad for NBC,” he reveals. “I did The Andy Williams Show, Star Trek, and Bonanza, which kicked off the 1966 NBC season. I went down to see a screening of Star Trek and I came home so excited. I told my wife, ‘Wait’ll you see this thing! It’s great!’ The funny story––which is true––is Bantam picked it up as a book cover. And [Bantam Books President] Oscar Dystel, who knew nothing about art but knew how to make Bantam the best company in the business, came in one day and said, ‘Why can’t we get our artists to do work like this?’ By that time, I’d probably done 200–300 covers for him. He didn’t even know it was mine!” RETROFAN

November 2021

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

In 1964, Leone tapped Bama to paint the cover to The Man of Bronze, the first of what became a phenomenally successful reissue of the original Doc Savage pulp novels by Lester Dent. Once again, it was familiar territory. “My uncle used to get pulp magazines,” Bama notes. “I was 12–13 years old, and I remembered the Doc Savages. It seemed like he was always in the jungle with jodhpurs on, his shirt torn. That’s all I remembered 25 years later. That’s why I conceived him that way. And when I look at the first Doc Savage Magazine cover today, I wasn’t that far off!” Once Leone realized that Bama had read Doc, he became the obvious artistic choice to launch the series. “They may have chosen me because I did the box covers for Aurora’s Universal movie monster model kits,” Bama speculates. The artist hired former TV Flash Gordon star-turned-model Steve Holland to pose for a photo shoot in a ripped shirt, riding boots, and jodhpurs, producing the iconic modern image of Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze. Standing alone, bronze muscles gleaming and looking formidable against a black background, Bama’s Doc was poised to sell paperbacks. Except that Len Leone didn’t like the hero’s natural red hair. Leone Bama turned chiseled screen star Steve Holland into the pulps’ Doc Savage in this iconic had been an art director for Fawcett pose for the Man of Bronze novel. Doc Savage © Condé Nast. Courtesy of Heritage. (INSET) When Publications during the heyday of worlds collide! As a gag, Bama took this photograph of Steve Holland wearing a Phantom of Captain Marvel and saw Doc as a the Opera mask while in the Doc Savage shredded shirt. Courtesy of Mr. Bama, via Will Murray. kind of super-hero. He asked for something more science-fictional, suggesting a widow’s peak. way. If you look at the poses where Flash Gordon stands with Bama painted in a more extreme blond haircut, and the his feet wide apart, his fists clenched, looking back over his Bantam Books Doc Savage was born. shoulder, it’s the same as my Doc Savage. There was always “I made it up because I didn’t have anyone with a widow’s the essence of Doc being symbolic, never working up a sweat, peak,” Bama admits. “The big advantage is drawing. I was a whiz never looking like he was in trouble, anticipating, but always in a at drawing, and I could make it look convincing.” A fan of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon growing up, Bama looked heroic manner.” to Raymond as much as the original Doc Savage Magazine cover The Man of Bronze Strikes Gold artist Walter Baumhofer for his inspiration. Between 1964 and 1971, Bama painted most of the Doc covers, “I think of Flash Gordon as a bigger-than-life super-hero his photorealistic, monochromatic approach propelling sales to who can conquer all odds––gorillamen and lizardmen and astronomical heights. Millions of Doc Savage paperbacks jumped prehistoric animals,” Bama reveals. “And I conceived Doc that 10

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November 2021

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

The Creature Walks Among Us! Doc Savage takes on the Sea Angel. Bama’s scaly menace was painted after he did the legendary Creature from the Black Lagoon painting for the Aurora model kit. Doc Savage © Condé Nast. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin.

off the racks. I was one of those attracted to the series, thanks to the lure of Bama’s electrifying covers. I bought them all. Those books changed my life, and directly led to my long writing career, which included new Doc Savage novels. Even there, the illustrator could not escape monsters. The Man of Bronze fought his share of fiends, and it was up to Jim Bama to bring them to life on canvas. Inasmuch as he preferred to paint from photographs, the artist was reliant on “scrap”––whether it was publicity stills or pictures he took himself. “I used a lot of movie stills to do paintings, and changed them enough so we didn’t get sued.”

One such cover was The Sea Angel. “That’s the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Bama reveals, “with some tentacles added to him. I’m a movie fan, so I know where to get reference. I had done the Aurora cover to the Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Mad Eyes was another. “That was an amoeba, some kind of jellyfish that I found. It was taken verbatim.” “The hardest one to do was Doc in the block of ice,” he recalls, referring to The Munitions Master cover. “I got a photograph of a block of ice and tried to figure out how he’d look in it.” For the spectral apparition of King John on The Sea Magician, “That was a movie still of Mel Ferrer playing King Arthur. The one with all the wires plugged in his head,” he notes, referring to The Midas Man, “was Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand. I did it from a photograph in Life magazine. I used myself on The Who Smiled No More. I was one of the guys carrying the sacks from the salt mines.” When Bama painted the dramatic cover to World’s Fair Goblin, set at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, it was another flashback to his childhood. “I went to that fair. I was 13 years old. So I remembered the Trylon and the Perisphere.” Atop the Perisphere is an apelike creature that looks suspiciously like King Kong. No coincidence. It was a silent homage to the artist’s favorite monster film. In the beginning of the series, Bantam’s cover reproduction did not do justice to Bama’s conceptions. “They didn’t have offset lithography then,” he reflects. “Registration was terrible. Some of those first covers, like The Red Skull, don’t look at all like the original painting. By the time they got into things like Dust of Death, they had beautiful reproduction. But the one with the lizards, The Fantastic Island, was terrible. And The Thousand-Headed Man. That snake in Thousand-Headed Man, that was a papier-mâché prop. I used to go to the TV prop houses. In New York, you can get anything.” Of the atmospheric Squeaking Goblin, Bama admits, “I didn’t like the one with the skeleton in the coonskin hat. But it worked. The one where he’s holding his throat and there are electric sparks all around him, I thought that was very effective.” Merchants of Disaster was the title. RETROFAN

November 2021

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

“Dust of Death was the best Doc Savage I ever did,” he adds. “And the next was Death in Silver. Those were the two that I thought were the best ones I’d ever done. The colors were so muted, yet it still worked. I find that when we get into more literal situations, like ships crashing in the ocean on The Terror in the Navy, to me that’s not Doc Savage. That’s True or Argosy. When I get into symbolic or unusual situations, it works. The other one was The Mystic Mullah. I was brought up with all these fantasies of Tong wars in Chinatown.” A photo of Boris Karloff from The Mask of Fu Manchu was the basis for the ghostly green Mullah. The hunchbacked villain for The Vanisher was based on a shot from the 1931 Universal Frankenstein film, depicting Dwight Frye as Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant, Fritz. “Wherever I could,” Bama states, “I tried to symbolically do a cover that referred to the story. Unless it was something I couldn’t do, like Fear Cay. I had him wrestling with a giant on a beach.” For paperback covers, Bama developed new techniques to compensate for the small image area, pioneering the all-black or all-white background.

(TOP) Bama’s extraordinary “World’s Fair Goblin” and (ABOVE) “Squeaking Goblin” Doc Savage prints. (LEFT) If the hunchbacked horror in Bama’s “The Vanisher” reminds you of a certain cretin from Dr. Frankenstein’s lab— you’re right! Doc Savage © Condé Nast. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin.

RETROFAN

November 2021

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

“I’m basically a designer and a vignette painter,” he states. “With art technique and realism, I evolved a look. I tried to keep my covers simple and put them in one color mood so they would read easily on the newsstand. If they read fast like Red Snow, people can see what’s going on right away.” Over the eight years he painted Doc, Bama’s portrayal of the Herculean Man of Bronze evolved. “When I first started,” he confesses, “I did Steve pretty much the way he was. I bulked him up a little. Then it took on a life of its own and he became more and more symbolic. I really didn’t do that intentionally. But I notice there was a tremendous discrepancy, because I was doing them from photographs I had taken, not for specific covers, but of symbolic moods. The one where Doc’s standing with the clouds behind him, the blue and orange around him like a big explosion, he just got huge. I would say that was a gaffe on my part.” Bama’s palette also grew more colorful. Vivid oranges and purples dominated the cover to Hex, on which a spooky old witch lurks in the background. It was another flashback to the artist’s Aurora days. Bama’s wife, Lynne, her attractive features aged and distorted, posed for the Witch kit box art. Eventually, the artist became disenchanted with Bantam Books for the same reason that he left Aurora Plastics. “I made millions of dollars for those people,” he points out. “They never offered me more money. I probably would have kept

doing Doc Savage indefinitely if they had treated me fairly. It was the hardest thing for me to leave.” After painting a final Doc Savage cover in 1971, James Bama struck out on a lucrative and satisfying period as a fine artist specializing in Western subjects. I think the Doc covers were successful because I had a feeling for it,” he concludes. “No one would read the stories but me. I came up with my own situations, my own sketches, and they left me alone. And I produced a good product because I enjoyed doing it, frankly. I never had a correction. I did Doc Savage with conviction. I did him as a real person. Larger than life, but real. I was in the right place at the right time and I think I have a childhood fantasy memory about it that other people wouldn’t have. I wish I had done The Shadow. It was a shame that I didn’t finish Doc Savage. “I loved this stuff. I still love this stuff. It’s my childhood. I’ve had a long, storied career. I tell my wife all the time that Doc Savage and the Aurora monster kits will outlive me.” WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze. com) series of novels, which stars Doc Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider, and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary artist Steve Ditko.

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November 2021

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

ED AND EXP COND SE ION! EDIT

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KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID

MAC RABOY

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RETRO INTERVIEW

Lara Parker

The Tender Beauty of Angelique by Rod Labbe

From actress to author, Lara Parker has continued the Dark Shadows canon as a novelist. © Curtis Holdings, LLC.

There are countless interviews that tread all-too-familiar waters, but my challenge as a writer has always been to explore those paths less traveled. So when I contacted Lara Parker for an epic (and exclusive) RetroFan profile, I proposed we do something a tad different from the usual “tell us how you became an actress” stuff. Lara agreed, and together, we tilled new soil. An adventure lay ahead! Establishing camaraderie was essential. Within minutes of our first phone conversation, we were laughing and carrying on like old friends. To be precise, Lara and I had never met, but being a fanboy, I’m familiar with her magnificent work on Dark Shadows, ABC-TV’s “gothic” soap opera (1966–1971), a bonafide cultural sensation. She portrayed Angelique Bouchard, amateur witch, the gorgeous villain everyone loved to hate. I should add that I’m an original fan of DS, having signed on in late April of 1967. I was 14 then, an unpopular eighth grader, and watching Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) Collins and his sundry relatives, friends, and adversaries go through their supernatural paces brought much-needed fun and escapism into my fractured life. Conducted in February 2021, the interview began, and together, we stood contemplating two distinct directions: the path less traveled or a road familiar and ultimately unchallenging. Which one to navigate? Rather than touch all the same (ABOVE) Lara Parker as Dark Shadows’ bewitching Angelique. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions. Courtesy of www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com.

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retro interview

“typical” bases, I suggested we discuss Lara’s experiences in the writing field and segue into her acting triumphs. She liked that idea. Lara has primarily been a novelist since Angelique’s Descent (Harper Collins, now Tor, 1998), an account of her character’s early life and how she became a witch. Its runaway success led to Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch (Tor, 2006), Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising (Tor, 2013), and Dark Shadows: Heiress of Collinwood (Tor, 2016), thus far. And there are more tales bubbling within her cauldron! I honestly cannot think of anyone more qualified to create them than the woman behind daytime’s favorite witch. Join us now for a special Halloween treat, as the Enchantress speaks! RetroFan: Watching Angelique weave her spells at Collinwood, I’d no idea that one day, she and I would actually be sitting across from one another and engaging in an amiable chat! Lara Parker: Life does move mysteriously, doesn’t it? Dark Shadows has brought so many people together over the years, and I especially enjoy talking with original viewers. RF: I was there at the beginning! Well, heh, almost the beginning. 1967. LP: Me, too [laughs]! RF: For this interview, we’ll be examining my favorite Lara Parker novels, Angelique’s Descent and Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch. Up for it? LP: Oh, yes! I don’t get asked about my writing often, so I welcome the opportunity. RF: You began with Angelique’s Descent, in 1998. How did that come to be? LP: Harper-Collins approached me about doing a series of novels based on the show. I’d been taking screenwriting classes at UCLA but had no idea how to tackle a full-length book. “Just do the best you can,” they said, “and we’ll get a real writer, a ghost writer, to whip it into shape.” Well, maybe it was presumptuous, but I found the idea of someone rewriting one word of a book I created, imagined, and slaved over insulting. There was some pushback to my writing it myself. People think blonde, blue-eyed actresses are superficial, and maybe I don’t strike people 16

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November 2021

as intellectual. Truth is, I majored Lara Parker as Angelique, from 1970’s “Parallel Time” in Philosophy and have immense storyline on Dark Shadows. The show regularly went through story arcs for several months, and “Paralrespect for education.

lel Time” followed “The Leviathans” when Barnabas discovers a room in Collinwood that shows an alternate timeline with different characters (all played by the same actors). The Angelique plot starts with her being dead, and the portrait had been painted to memorialize her. Later, she returns from the dead, switches places with her twin sister, and wreaks havoc! Dark Shadows ©

RF: Did you know what you were getting into? The scope and breadth of it? LP: No, and it became a little overwhelming. I read writers I admired and quickly realized their skills were beyond me. Still, Dan Curtis Productions. Courtesy of Jim Pierson. I forged ahead. I planned to set the novel in Martinique, where LP: What’s more common is for someone Angelique grew up, and did a lot to write his or her first book and not of research on sugar plantations and the be able to do a second. It’s a very small slave revolt. I was also able to draw from percentage of writers who finish their first my own experiences; the idea of the living book. Once you’ve done it, you become a goddess, for instance, came from a trip I much sterner critic. The first time, you’re took to Nepal. I sent my editor the first 50 thinking, Who am I trying to fool? For me, pages, and she was encouraging. The last Angelique’s Descent was an outpouring of 100 sprung directly from the show and passion, my attempt to create as a gothic Angelique’s point of view. writer. I could’ve rewritten and edited endlessly. That’s where a deadline is RF: Seems like everyone talks about blessing. The manuscript has to leave your writing a book, but doing so is something hands, eventually. else entirely.

retro interview

RF: There’s a big temptation to polish and tweak and polish and tweak? LP: Believe me, I’ve been there. You reach a point where you’re reinventing the wheel, and for me, that’s the third or fourth draft. I’ve reinvented that wheel many times. There’s an annoying little voice tugging at the back of my brain, You can make this better. Working under a deadline eliminates the option of going back and rewriting. It’s the best thing about keeping to a contract with your publisher. RF: You’ve demonstrated a real knack for the genre; I hear Angelique’s voice on every page. LP: Thank you. My imagination has always been active. I love thinking up very weird things [laughs]. RF: Are you limited to what you can do by the Dan Curtis estate [overseers of the Dark Shadows intellectual property]? LP: There are parameters. As long as I don’t stray too far from original canon, I’m allowed to create new characters and new locations. Time-travel is even an option. Bottom line, I would never

RF: What attracted me initially to Dark Shadows was the gloomy, gothic atmosphere, the acting, and the rather glorious idea that a vampire roamed Maine’s spooky woods. As a Mainer, I couldn’t help but be instantly intrigued. LP: You can imagine it, and imagination fills in the blanks.

RF: And your definition of horror? LP: Much more graphic. Horror is the depiction of blood and gore, of monsters and deformity. Terror seduces audiences, drawing them in; horror repulses them, pushing them away. The vampire’s complex existence straddles both realms—an immortal being, but also a dead one. Religions are built on the idea of living forever. Therefore, the vampire is a godlike figure, and he’s cadaverous, too, which we find revolting. The two forces at work create a dramatic tension that is undeniably seductive. Yet horror is where so many young filmmakers go, and sometimes to lesser effect. Let’s have blood and guts and all manner of mayhem. Viscerally, horror works like a rollercoaster ride. You’re glad when it’s over! I prefer more subtle fears, where you’re kept on edge, wondering and waiting.

RF: Is there a difference between terror and horror? LP: A distinct difference. I see terror as a higher aesthetic form. It’s the scratching of a tree limb outside your window, a moan under the bed, and soft footsteps in the hall. It creates dread and anticipation.

RF: But you’re dealing with a vampire! Isn’t it difficult to keep things muted, given what we already know about Barnabas Collins? LP: Not at all. Someone who sleeps in a casket and sucks human blood could be considered a monster, I suppose, but Barnabas Collins never wanted to be a vampire. He’s a tortured, tragic

do anything to damage the show’s reputation for excellence. RF: I’ve noticed you downplay the horror angle. LP: Dark Shadows wasn’t so much a horror show, in my opinion. I saw it as a mysterious, supernatural romance, so I muted the horrific aspects. There’s a certain boundary beyond where you don’t go. Instead, I sometimes take circumstances from the show and put a different spin on them. And I stay with a strong sense of story: lots of conflict, lots of suspense.

(LEFT) Poster for director Tim Burton’s 2012 Dark Shadows film, signed by original series stars Lara Parker (over actress Eva Green, the movie’s Angelique) and Kathryn Leigh Scott. (ABOVE) When casts collide! A Collinwood party scene in Burton’s movie allowed for cameos for some of the TV show’s beloved stars: (LEFT TO RIGHT) Scott, the film’s Michelle Pfeiffer, David Selby (see RetroFan #11 for Rod Labbe’s Rondo Awardnominated interview with the DS actor), and Parker. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions. Poster courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

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retro interview

personality, torn between the humanity he still has and blood lust. Very compelling. RF: I wonder how much of the Barnabas profile was due to scriptwriters or Jonathan Frid himself. LP: Jonathan chose to make Barnabas a guilt-ridden, manifestly ashamed, and anguished vampire. Because of Angelique, everyone he loved or who loved him would be destroyed. That’s the tragedy Anne Rice picked up on; her vampires are like real people with complex human emotions.

are tombstones going back to the 17th Century, right in the center of town. Barnabas takes David on a trip to Salem for Halloween and is shocked at how commercial everything has become. Seeing tourists celebrating one of our nation’s greatest tragedies by dressing up in costumes, and stores selling silly things like vampire kits, with fake fangs, fake blood, gives him the creeps.

RF: Where’d you go? LP: Antioch [College in Yellow Springs, Ohio]. First, I had to submit an application and a sample of my writing. I sent them something from Angelique’s Descent, and they turned me down flat! “This is a course in literary writing,” the acceptance committee said, “not genre writing.” So, I applied again and sent them a short story about my mother being in the hospital. That did the trick. RF: How long was the program? LP: Two and a half years. It’s called a lowresidency program. Every semester, you spend one week on campus, and classes run all day and into the evening. Very intensive. Afterwards, you communicate online with an advisor and students within your group. Much less expensive; you don’t need a place to live, for one thing, and the variety of courses is impressive. A grand learning process! I had to go back and rethink my entire perception of writing.

RF: Maintaining some human aspect, even as a vampire, means you’re ultimately vulnerable. LP: Vulnerable to love and heartbreak, rejections, disloyalty, and abandonment. Why are we so fascinated with the Greek gods? They had human failings. Zeus was a womanizer. Aphrodite was vain, and Dionysus a drunkard. Their personalities were flawed. Lara Parker guest-starred on Kolchak: The Night Stalker’s “The Trevi Collection” (Season 1, Episode 14, originally aired on January 24, 1975) with star Our God, as we worship Him today, is indestructible, Darren McGavin. © NBCUniversal Television. infallible. He has no human RF: Weren’t you also failings. If and when there’s teaching? a quality with which LP: Yes! I love teaching. My we identify, so many emotions can be RF: Does your development as a writer mentor, Jim Krusoe, recommended me, explored. That’s why Barnabas struck a surprise you? and I taught basic remedial English classes chord with fans. He brought humanity to LP: I wouldn’t say surprise… but I’ve grown, at Santa Monica College. Once again, I was the concept of a supernatural character. and there’s room for improvement. With analyzing great pieces of literature and each new project, I learn more. Just the trying to figure out why they worked, why RF: Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch has other day, I took another look at Angelique’s they’re so captivating to read. a premise combining historical elements Descent and wished I could cut some of with fiction. It’s my favorite of all your the overwriting. That’s what comes from RF: How did all of that fit in with your books. having so much enthusiasm and passion acting exploits? LP: The Salem Branch is a prequel, before for a subject; I piled on the descriptive LP: Acting is no longer a significant part of Angelique’s time in Martinique. She was language. my life, in the broader sense. When you’re connected to the dark forces, the devil, in older and audition and don’t land the part, ways that she could not escape. The Salem RF: After Angelique’s Descent, you it’s very disappointing. Acting is a series of Branch is by far my best-written book. It’s embarked on an exciting journey: higher highs and lows, with mostly lows. I found also my least popular. education. Specifically, a Masters of Fine something else: family life, teaching, being Arts. What motivated you? a wife and mother. I lived in Topanga with RF: Did you visit modern-day Salem? LP: I felt it was the right time to hone three children; we had a horse, did a lot of LP: I did. So much sad history there, my writing skills and discover just what I skiing and backpacking, and now, we have when America was young. The 1692 could do. Pursuing a higher degree in your a sailboat [laughs]. Thankfully, as a working witch executions are the famous ones; middle years isn’t easy, but I felt up to the actress, I made enough to support myself they hanged innocent people. There challenge. And you end up with an MFA and my family. after your name [laughs]! 18

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retro interview

RF: Which of your books sold the best? LP: Angelique’s Descent, and Salem’s Branch sold the least, despite it being better-written, in my opinion. Someone suggested to me that I get the rights back from Harpers for Angelique’s Descent, and I followed that advice. My agent was able to sell the rights to England, Spain, France, Hungary, and Tor Books. I did audio books of the first three. I’m a performer and didn’t find it particularly difficult. Time consuming, yes [laughs]. I did accents, the whole deal. RF: Is it difficult to scare people? I mean, outside of the cheap jump-scare, which is pretty hard to do in a book. LP: There’s an essay by Freud called The Uncanny, wherein he talks about what frightens us. Fear lies not in the unfamiliar; Freud claimed the uncanny lies in what’s familiar. Like a desk you’ve worked on that has carvings, and they come to life. Or you hear a sound from the closet, and slowly, the door creaks open. The homey and reassuring have darker sides. So much horror takes place on Elm Street in suburbia, which is no coincidence. Our familiar, safe world can be much more horrifying. RF: Horror in the everyday. Hmm. I think my toaster is haunted. LP: [laughs] You’re so funny!

RF: Do you use an outline? I find them difficult. LP: Outlines provide structure, so yes, I use them. I’ve a sense of story and plan out the plot, but I also like being surprised. Watching things take an unexpected turn is a thrill. When I finished The Salem Branch and sent it to Tor, they went over it with a fine-toothed comb and said, “You can’t use the word guillotine. It’s a Halifax gibbet, and they probably wouldn’t have had such a thing in Salem. Here, you said her eyes were blue, and now, they’re green.” There’s something on every page, and at first, it’s almost overwhelming. But that’s how you grow as a writer, and it’s nice that someone keeps you in line.

Sadly, Jonathan passed away before he had a chance to see the finished film. RF: And the retelling made sense to you? LP: It had a different tone than our show. We never turned around and winked at the audience. “Oh, look, ha-ha, Barnabas is a bat, he’s sleeping in Collinwood’s linen closet. He’s hanging upside-down from a chandelier.” Our show was not a satire or a spoof. Sometimes it came off as campy, because of the situations and the characters, but we never played it for laughs. Barnabas might’ve been a vampire, but he was human and believable, and the actors’ performances were totally realistic. Helena [Bonham Carter] told me, “We’ve been playing this show in our make-up room, and we’re hooked.” Then, she added, “but none of us take it seriously.”

The actress experienced an eyebrow-raising (make that “singeing”) experience during this DS scene. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions.

RF: The mechanics of writing. You’ve a handle on them? LP: Writing is also about crafting sentences and paragraphs. Along with character and plot, I’ve become aware of the importance of structure. “Her eyes filled with tears” is a cliché. How am I going to say she’s going to cry, without falling into those word traps? You’re writing at a certain pitch, so what do you use in place of a cliché, to say this in a new unaffected, clear and powerful way? Working on screenplays is excellent training; it encourages the visual. If they see the scene, the story unfolds cinematically. As for dialogue, I can still hear the voices of the Dark Shadows actors in my head!

RF: In 2012, Tim Burton’s big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows hit cinemas. Fans, including myself, looked forward to this, but the end product was a bizarre pastiche. Gets me steamed just thinking about it. LP: Such a wasted opportunity. We were eager to do the film, but at least give us some lines, some sort of significant exchange to make it more obvious for those watching that we’re from the show. Once on set, Jonathan was having difficulty standing. He didn’t want any help or a chair and just wanted to get on with it. I knew, with his physical restrictions, that we couldn’t do much.

RF: In my opinion, Burton and his wacky scriptwriter ruined the material and futzed around with longheld memories. A no-no! LP: Fan reaction was immediate and negative. They didn’t see the original as silly. Dan Curtis described Dark Shadows as gothic romance. Tim and Johnny [Depp] brushed over this with needless sophistication, like we were all in on the joke. Except nobody laughed.

RF: Though I know Burton and Depp pushed this as a love letter to the original show, it made me wonder if they genuinely respected the material. LP: Simply, it wasn’t Dark Shadows. RF: Characterizations changed, too. I loved your Angelique for her impetuousness. She worked from emotion. Eva Green’s a skillful actress, no doubt, but I anticipated something of you in the role. She was all wrong—too hard and way too calculating. LP: I wouldn’t say Eva Green was all wrong, just different. The characters on Dark Shadows were multi-layered. Circumstances motivated their actions, but they also had secrets, resentments, RETROFAN

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retro interview

and hidden desires. Because of this rich complexity, there were several depths to plumb. That’s the tender beauty of Angelique’s character. She had reasons for doing spells and incantations, and they had to do with people, like Barnabas, who’d wronged her. But Angelique wasn’t the only one struggling. Barnabas suffered tremendously. He had human traits, and they fought constantly with instinctive bloodlust.

and at first, I played Angelique in the same manner. Jonathan took me aside about a week into the storyline and said, “You’ve got to forget about being the heroine. You’re a pretty little witch girl. Ingénues come and go, but you’re the villain everybody loves to hate. Take it and play it.” RF: Wow. Awesome advice! LP: Jonathan knew the key to this

RF: Angelique’s tender beauty. Pure poetry. I like it! LP: No other way to describe her. RF: When I interviewed Tim Burton for Fangoria regarding Dark Shadows, I asked him straight out if he’d included Willie opening Barnabas’ coffin an iconic scene. He very neatly dodged the question, and that told me everything I needed to know. LP: I’m not surprised. There was no gripping connecting story, just a series of elaborate set pieces. We weren’t about style and flash. It’s the story, not individual spots that try to outdo what’s come before. Every scene we did presented a conflict. You were on the edge of your seat, wondering what might happen next.

Angelique has been turned into a vampire by warlock Nicholas Blair as punishment. From the Dark Shadows “Adam is Created” storyline. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions. Photo courtesy of Jim Pierson.

RF: Nothing can beat the eternal triangle of Josette, Angelique, and Barnabas. It was electric. LP: When that happened, Rod, I felt accepted. Previously, I’d been the ingénue, RETROFAN

RF: We’re all dying to hear Lara Parker’s personal story. You hail from Tennessee and trekked to the Big Apple and subsequent stardom. A rocky journey? LP: The life of an actor is never easy; there’s insecurity and disappointment around every corner. Once in a while, you stumble on something good. That’s what happened to me and Dark Shadows. I’m so very, very fortunate and thankful the show came into my life. Ask any actor—such instances are rare. RF: What about your Southern childhood? A memorable time? LP: Delightful. It was in some ways provincial, but I had an eye on the future and where I could go. I acted at a young age, went to Vassar for two years and graduated from Southwestern College, with a major in Philosophy.

RF: Such agonizing suspense! Like when Jeremiah’s ghost tormented Angelique. LP: Dan’s writers kept us jumping; they made you gasp. And there’s no denying the overall strength of their storyline. You’d think writing a soap would be easy, right? But Dark Shadows wasn’t your typical soap, not by a long shot.

LP: That’s famous… it almost got out of control [laughs]! The prop master kept adding more lighter fluid, and when I lit it, boom! My eyelashes were singed!

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character. You’re blonde and blue-eyed, and the audience will be taken aback. I finally grasped that people liked it when I appeared. I savored those moments. I must admit, I went through a period of adjustment. I wanted to be Josette, the heroine, the one he loved. Jonathan helped me see the light. And let’s face it, those spell-casting scenes were great fun! RF: I remember one where you built a house of cards and set it aflame.

RF: Was Vassar a culture shock, after a provincial childhood? LP: Somewhat. Nothing too debilitating [laughs]. I graduated from high school at a very young age and always felt different, a little separated from my peers. RF: You went on to grad school to find your muse? LP: Life never turns out like you planned. After Southwestern College, I applied to the University of Iowa for graduate work and did a year there in Drama. My goal was to become a drama teacher… but I ended up married and having a baby, so I moved to Missouri with my husband and child. I took acting courses, and he and I and another couple founded a small theater company which still exists, in Arrow Rock, Missouri, and put on period dramas, such as Sheridan and Shaw. I

retro interview

didn’t get to play any roles that first year; with an infant in tow, I made costumes! RF: I gotta ask—what’s it like, as an artist, having created a character so identified with you? LP: I’m reminded of that most when I attend the Dark Shadows conventions. Ever go? RF: Once, the 2003 Fest [Dark Shadows Festival; darkshadowsfestival.com]. My sisters and I toured Ground Zero first, which was a sobering sight, as you might imagine. LP: We’d held a Fest at the World Trade Center in August of 2001, only a month before. RF: Ah, what an existence! Sometimes it’s downright scary, and I don’t mean in an entertaining way. LP: I prefer imagined scares. They’re better for the spirit.

I’d been in Memphis celebrating Christmas with my family and got a call to come out and do the part. No audition, no reading, nothing. Just do the show, an ideal assignment. I’m sure the casting had to do with Angelique, and that was fine by me. A slice of life in the cutthroat fashion industry. I played a contemporary witch named Madelaine, who also happened to be a model! RF: Darren McGavin struck me as an amiable sort. How was he to work with? LP: Not so amiable. A leading actor or

the line, being the main character, so I understood his feelings, overall. RF: And you had your head put in a bucket of water! LP: The big reveal. My face is blue, and I’m monstrous. Not very comfortable, but it was what the story needed, I guess. [Editor’s note: See RetroFan #11 for our look at Kolchak: The Night Stalker.] RF: Most of the interviews you do probably start out with, “How’d you get cast on Dark Shadows?” To shake things up, I’m gonna ask it at the end! LP: [laughing] I’d just arrived in New York, and Dark Shadows was the second professional audition of my life. I was paralyzed with fear. Absolute fear. They had me do a love scene with Jonathan on camera, and he helped me struggle through. Such a generous man. I’ve never forgotten his kindness.

RF: The 2003 Fest fulfilled all RF: So, you became Angelique, and my expectations. An involved a star was born. undertaking and efficiently run. LP: I absolutely love and adore LP: Jim Pierson [of Dan Curtis Angelique. She made her debut Productions] arranged and put on at the cusp of the women’s the conventions and coordinated movement… an empowering everything, including booking the character who gave new meaning venue at a big hotel. Thousands to the term, “a woman scorned.” of people attended. Those fests were yearly events, and we did RF: You can say that again Lara Parker performs her own words in this dramatized them out of love of the show. No [laughs]! reading. © Curtis Holdings, LLC. compensation, just plane fare and Gee, I wish we weren’t limited hotel costs. We’d talk to fans till two by time constraints! I could talk and three in the morning and sign for hours. This has been a real hundreds of autographs. actress carries the show, and he seemed eye-opener for me, Lara. Your admirers to think things weren’t going well. The in Retro-land will love it. A happy RF: Because you’re family. director shot a master, and then we Halloween to you. LP: True. We’re famous enough to attract alternated close-ups. There was half an LP: This has been a fun talk. Happy a huge following but not so famous that hour between each one, and my character Halloween, Rod! any discomfort arises. Our relationships had been screaming and angry, so I From 1986 through 2014, New Englandare unique. Lovely memories, too. The thought I should scream during Kolchak’s based writer ROD LABBE regularly last year alone, we’ve lost four of our reaction. Nope! Darren McGavin did not contributed to Fangoria magazine. His group: Johnny Karlen, Diana Millay, Chris appreciate my help. He didn’t know I’d other magazine credits include Famous Pennock, and Geoffrey Scott, wonderful done anything supernatural or witchy Monsters of Filmland, FilmFax, friends beloved by fans. Heartbreaking. prior. I was just a supporting player. Scary Monsters, Gorezone, and The Fantastic Fifties. Thus far, Rod’s received RF: You played a vicious witch on Kolchak: RF: What, he actually said something to 12 prestigious Rondo Hatton Award The Night Stalker. Classic stuff. Give us you? nominations for his work profiling the the inside scoop on “The Trevi Collection” LP: Yes. “Please don’t do that, I don’t stars of Dark Shadows and for other (Season One/Episode 14, original airdate need you to do that.” It was a little horror topics. January 24, 1975)! condescending. Sometimes, you just LP: It was serendipity, one of those jobs don’t click with a co-star. I wish I’d known that literally falls into your lap. him better, in retrospect. He had a lot on RETROFAN

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RETROFAD

Batman warned us. He wisely armed himself with a can of Bat-Shark Repellent in his 1966 theatrical movie and narrowly escaped the jaws of an exploding shark. And we laughed. No one was laughing nine summers later when Jaws, a man-versus-maneatingshark shocker that cost a paltry $7 million to Batman TM & © DC Comics. produce but scared up over $470 million at the global box office, frightened people away from sunny beaches (“You’ll never go in the water again,” warned a promo line) and into darkened theaters. No one, that is, but Universal Pictures, theater managers, and the young director Jaws made famous, Steven Spielberg, as folks lined up to see again and again what is now regarded as the first summer blockbuster. I was there—no, not on the cursed beach of the fictional Amity Island, New York, where waders’ gams became a great white’s yams, but at the Gem Theatre in Kannapolis, North Carolina, for a packed house during Jaws’ opening weekend. To this day, when I re-watch Jaws, I still shut my eyes when (spoiler alert!) the dead guy’s head comes a’bobbin’ from underneath the shark-decimated boat. That unexpected scare made everybody jump out of their skins, including the frantic woman behind me who screeched “Good Lord-a-mighty!” as she bounded from her seat and flailed her concessions all over this poor schmuck in the seat in front of her. Like chucking bloody chum into shark-infested waters, two weeks before the film’s release, Universal Studios flooded the airwaves with Jaws commercials, whipping moviegoers into a feeding frenzy. A perfect storm of script, performances, direction, music, and marketing, Jaws was the movie-house equivalent of a roller-coaster ride, one you couldn’t wait to board again as the end credits rolled. Enthusiastic word of mouth helped Jaws go “viral” long before our current social-media platforms were created. You couldn’t escape Jaws, even if you didn’t go to the movies. Peter Benchley’s horrifying 1974 novel upon which it was based was a bestseller, enjoying bang-up paperback sales in the summer of ’75. Also available, and officially licensed through Universal Studios, were Jaws T-shirts, beach towels, posters, and a soundtrack album. Racked alongside Benchley’s novel were the “biting humor” paperbacks 101 Shark Jokes and Jaws Jokes and Other Funny Fish Stories. Receiving radio play was Dickie Goodman’s 1975 comedy single “Mr. Jaws,” a mock “interview” with the shark and other characters from the movie, their “replies” being audio clips from pop songs. Chevy Chase donned a shark head for a “Land Shark” sketch on NBC’s Saturday Night 22

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Live. “Bruce” the mechanical shark, the oft-malfunctioning (during filming), 25-foot “star” of the film, became a media darling, the subject of no end of television, magazine, and newspaper reports. Jaws was such a success as a movie and a cultural phenomenon that theaters were flooded with imitators, making the Seven Seas the deadliest place on Earth: Orca the Killer Whale, Piranha, Alligator, The Jaws of Death, Great White, and an adaptation of another of Benchley’s books, The Deep. Shelley Winters, still waterlogged from The Poseidon Adventure, and the lauded John Huston and Henry Fonda were lured into the embarrassingly bad octopus thriller, Tentacles.

Artist Roger Kastel painted the iconic Jaws image, used on this movie poster and elsewhere in licensed merchandise. Kastel’s painting has been frequently lampooned. Poster courtesy of Heritage. Jaws © Universal Pictures. MAD © EC Publications, Inc. Superman and Action Comics © DC Comics. SpiderMan and Ghost Rider © Marvel. The Electric Company © The Children’s Television Workshop.

Saturday Night Live © NBC.

by Michael Eury

The Spy Who Loved Me © Danjaq, LLC.

If you believed Hollywood in the mid- to late-Seventies, Fifties and repackage it in Weird Wonder Tales under a “Deadlier wildlife clearly had a beef with humans, and it wasn’t limited Than JAWS!” cover. Superman encountered Green Lantern rogue to the water: Grizzly (killer bear), The White Buffalo (killer bison), the Shark, and Marvel pitted its flame-skulled, motorcycling Nightwing (killer bats), The Swarm (killer bees), Squirm (killer Ghost Rider against a maneater. Were that not enough to stretch worms), Rattlers (killer snakes), and H. G. Wells’ Empire of the Ants the Marvel Universe’s elastic borders of credibility, there were (duh) were among the horror flicks with refugees from nature flying sharks in Ka-Zar’s Savage Land! The world of pop culture documentaries as movie monsters. The film that started it all was in danger of (yes, I’m going to say it) jumping the shark with quickly begat its own sequels, Jawsmania. starting with 1978’s Jaws 2. In fact, this issue’s RetroFad played a role in introducing Jawsmania infected not “jumping the shark” to our lexicon. On the September 20, 1977 only moviedom’s critters but episode of Happy Days, Fonzie, clad in his leather jacket and its humans as well. Novelist swimtrunks, made a waterski leap over a shark in a tank in the Ian Fleming’s steel-tusked ABC series’ cringe-worthy attempt to capitalize on Jawsmania. criminal Sol Horror was This infamous moment was a point of no return for the oncereimagined as the supervenerable sitcom juggernaut and signaled that Happy Days had villain Jaws, as portrayed with scenery-chewing gusto by the passed its expiration date. As such, “jumping the shark” has towering Richard Kiel in the James Bond thriller The Spy Who been used to describe negative turning points for long-running Loved Me and its follow-up, Moonraker. Even the porno biz stuck a programs or concepts. toe (and other bare body parts) into the waters with 1976’s Gums, Jaws’ own sequels strayed farther offshore with each outing. about a sex-crazed mermaid’s attacks on skinny-dipping men. Steven Spielberg was a star by the time 1978’s Jaws 2 was made, Surprisingly for a horror movie targeted toward adults and Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time, Supergirl) was tapped and teens, Jaws was popular with children. It almost didn’t to direct this serviceable but predictable entry that once again turn out that way, as the film’s gory shark placed Roy Scheider in familiar waters. Jaws 3-D (1983) was a attacks threatened to earn it a prohibitive “R” gimmicky cousin of a teen-slasher movie. With 1987’s Jaws: The rating (no one under 17 allowed without adult Revenge, the fourth film in the franchise, Ellen Brody, now the accompaniment), leading producer Richard D. widowed wife of Scheider’s shark-battling Sheriff Brody, was the Zanuck to lobby for the film’s “PG” rating since last woman standing from the original main cast (“This Time It’s Jaws contained no sex and limited foul language. Personal,” claimed the tagline). With all due respect to the very Kids joined their parents in viewing Jaws… capable actress Lorraine Gary, Jaws: The Revenge was about as and also became a target market for Jawsmania. exciting as a Rocky sequel thrusting Adrian Balboa (“Yo, Adrian!”) Rubber and plastic sharks, from a licensed into the boxing ring. Jaws figure to knock-offs like the “Maneater,” But that wasn’t the death knell for the Jaws phenomenon. filled cheapie toy bins. Ideal Toys released a A funny thing happened along the way. Those kids who Jaws game in 1975, a nod to the board game accompanied their parents to Jaws back in 1975 became adults Operation, where players fished items like and introduced their kids to the film—and its sequels. Even those a boot and an anchor out of a great white’s of you who were born long after Jaws’ release have probably mouth before its jaws clamped shut. MAD magazine offered watched it multiple times on cable, home video, DVD, and now, readers “Jaw’d,” while competitors Sick and Cracked each did via streaming. Some of you grew up with it, humming along spoofs they called “Jawz.” Two different cartoon comedies with John Williams’ eerie half-step theme (“Buh-dum buh-dum starring sharks made their Saturday morning debuts in the fall of buh-dum buh-dum”) and reciting the “We’re gonna need a bigger 1976: Hanna-Barbera’s Jabberjaw, featuring a shark that was also boat” line along with Roy Scheider. To a generation or two, Jaws in a rock band, and DePatie-Freleng’s lesser-known Misterjaw, a is as revered a summer family film as A Christmas Story and It’s a hat-wearing shark that shouted “Gotcha!” when he, well, gotcha. Wonderful Life are at yuletide. Mego re-released its Aquaman super-hero action figure in a And as such, the Jawsmania that chomped into America deluxe playset with a great white shark as an throughout the Seventies and adversary. Costumer Collegeville marketed a Eighties spawned an institution Jaws 2 Halloween ensemble, complete with where Bruce the shark became a plastic shark mask, for trick-or-treaters (see an amusement park ride, RetroFan #2). where cable networks sponsor In comic books, sharks popped up where you “Shark Weeks” of oceanography expected them, battling action heroes from the films and Jaws knock-offs, and Bionic Woman to Tarzan, and where you didn’t where Sharknado, a ridiculously expect them, such as the covers of DC’s spooky cheesy made-for-cable movie anthology The House of Secrets and Marvel’s kidcombining two unstoppable friendly Electric Company tie-in Spidey Super Stories. menaces (sharks and twisters) Saturday morning TV’s Jabberjaw (with his band, Old villains like Tiger Shark and Killer Shark into one, produces high ratings the Neptunes) and Misterjaw kept the kiddies in returned. Luke Cage got a jagged-toothed foe and sequels. Where’s your can named Piranha Jones. Jawsmania invited Marvel stiches. Jabberjaw © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Misterjaw of Bat-Shark Repellent when © DePatie-Freleng. to dust off an anemic smuggling story from the you need it? RETROFAN

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

“You Knew the Show Was Dangerous When You Saw It”

George of the Jungle by Scott Shaw!

Watch out for that… you know. Animation cel of Jay Ward’s loinclothed lamebrain. © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

I think that Jay Ward Productions’ George of the Jungle was the last truly great Saturday morning cartoon show of the Sixties… maybe ever! Only 17 episodes were made for a single season airing on ABC from 1967 to 1968, but the series was well-received, the characters are still well-known and beloved, and the writing, voiceover cast, designs, and animation are all funny and outstanding. Of course, I’m kinda biased. I’ve been a big fan of the show since I was 16, which was 50 years ago. Apparently it was never aired in San Diego, because I never saw a single episode of Crusader Rabbit—a primitive TV cartoon series that was created and produced by Jay Ward and cartoonist Alex Anderson in 1947 as “Television Arts Productions” (although NBC’s Jerry Fairbanks stole the title of “Supervising Producer”). I did have a Crusader Rabbit coloring book, which greatly intrigued me. Who were those characters? They looked pretty cool to me, especially Crusader Rabbit’s uniquely parallel bunny ears.

Moose and Squirrel Save the Day

But I was right there at Ground Zero for the first broadcast of Rocky and His Friends on November 19, 1959, on San Diego’s ABC affiliate, XETV/Channel 6, which broadcast from a studio in Mexico, right after Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. I was mystified by the presence of a laugh track on a cartoon. Rocky and Bullwinkle’s “Jet Fuel Formula” rocked my little world forever, as did the rest of the show. I became an obsessed fan of the series. Due to the physics of transmission, my folks’ B&W RCA television 24

RETROFAN

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was capable of receiving signals from Los Angeles television stations in those pre-cable days, at least early every morning. Rocky and His Friends aired four times every Sunday morning, with a different “Rocky and Bullwinkle” segment’s story arc in all four time slots. I made myself a chart so I could keep track of all of the hilariously convoluted stories. Yeah, I was that hooked. Like Hanna-Barbera’s The Ruff & Reddy Show (1957) and The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958), Jay Ward’s new funny-animal series was hip and full of modern-day references that kids understood, partially because there were contemporary elements and slang in them that I didn’t need my grandmother to interpret for me. Up to this point in time, kids of my generation had practically memorized every Warner Bros., MGM, Fleischer Bros., and Terrytoons cartoon ever broadcast on television, and even though they were indeed classics, we were all getting pretty bored with seeing the same shorts over and over. But finally, the cavalry had arrived to rescue us in the form of Rocky and His Friends. I loved the series and all of its permutations, including The Bullwinkle Show (1961), The Dudley Do-Right Show (1969), as well as the insanely clever Fractured Flickers (1963), a live-action series consisting of re-dubbed classic silent movies. I’ll never forget the FF makeover of Lon Chaney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, “Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader.” But when Hoppity Hooper hit the airwaves in 1964, I felt something was missing. I’d just turned 13 and sensed that the series was playing to a younger,

less-hip audience… and indeed, that was the case, a demand of General Mills, the show’s sponsor. I wasn’t as interested in HH but I was nuts about the televised commercials for Quaker Oats’ new cereal, Cap’n Crunch, obviously produced by Jay Ward. Within a few years, I was knocked out by the TV spots starring Quaker’s latest cereal stars, Quisp and Quake [see RetroFan #11]. I was just as knocked out by a new syndicated series that, in my opinion, looked like a Jay Ward cartoon, was written like a Jay Ward cartoon, was even cheaper than a Jay Ward cartoon, as was as funny as a Jay Ward cartoon… but Ward had nothing to do with it. But Roger Ramjet was produced by Ken Snyder and created by the legendary puppet show Shrimpenstein! cocreators Jim Thurman and Gene Moss. Both of their series still mean a lot to me. So, where was Jay Ward when we needed him? H-B’s last decent funny-animal characters were in The New Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Series. Yeah, that’s the official name of the show that starred Wally Gator, Touché Turtle, and Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har. The studio’s further output was plummeting in quality. I wasn’t wild about other studios’ Milton the Monster, Courageous Cat, Kimba the White Lion, or older stuff like Clutch Cargo (although I dug its comic-strip style) and the wretched Spunky and Tadpole. I was watching them but I wasn’t learning much. Other than the

Beatles cartoons and Iwao Takamoto’s designs on H-B’s The Space Kidettes on NBC, there wasn’t much out there to inspire me.

The Super-Hero Invasion

And then, thanks to the overwhelming success of ABC’s Batman in 1966 and its resulting Batmania, the super-hero genre suddenly became the Prime Directive of SatAM network programming. Fall 1966 saw Filmation’s The New Adventures of Superman on CBS, and during that season and the next the genre exploded especially on that same network, under the guidance of Fred Silverman. He stocked his 1967 schedule with some fairly good cartoons from Hanna-Barbera, simplistic but visually impressive results for what Bill Hanna called “planned animation.” The shows, almost all designed by Alex Toth, were: Space Ghost (sold as “Batman in space”), The Herculoids (sold as “Tarzan in space”), Shazzan!, Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor, and my personal favorite among H-B’s super-hero wave, Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles, for its campy scripts, cool character designs, and outstanding layouts (come back next issue for more info!). Silverman finished up the morning with Filmation’s Aquaman [see RetroFan #3] and more Superman, and reruns of H-B’s Jonny Quest [see issue #7]. Meanwhile, NBC was jumping into the super-hero business, with DePatie-Freleng’s Super 6 (another favorite of mine, at least in

Could toonmaster Jay Ward (1920–1989) pull another cartoon hit out of his hat after Rocky and Bullwinkle? Rocky and Bullwinkle © Ward Productions, Inc. and Classic Media. Cel courtesy of Heritage.

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terms of design), Al Brodax’s Cool McCool (created by Batman’s Bob Kane), and two tepid super-hero shows from H-B, Birdman and Samson and Goliath. Finally, on the “third network” every Saturday morning and multiple times on holiday weekends, ABC served up H-B’s outstanding adaptation of The Fantastic Four, GrantrayLawrence’s Spider-Man, Rankin-Bass’ King Kong, and Filmation’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was a very diverse line-up from a wide variety of studios. Best of all, ABC picked up another new series, a new show from Jay Ward Productions, George of the Jungle. Jay’s cavalry was back for a second rescue! Even though I fully realized that the intended market for the incredibly numerous SatAM super-hero shows had taken over television, I watched most of ’em. (Even TV Guide acknowledged it with an article about the trend, brilliantly illustrated by Wallace Wood.) I’d sit close to the TV screen with a sketch pad and lots of sharpened pencils at hand, and try to teach myself how to draw everything from H-B’s The Flintstones to Format Films’ artsy The Lone Ranger—also on CBS in 1966 [and coming to these pages in issue #20—ed.]—which struck me as an animated version of Marvel’s Western comics that featured cowboy heroes fighting

costumed villains and monsters in a style that very similar to the classic Tarzan cartoonist Jesse Marsh’s. Nice stuff.

A Missed Opportunity

Ward and company poked fun at beefy Elmo Lincoln, Hollywood’s first Tarzan, with George of the Jungle, shown this page and opposite in images from original model sheets created in 1967. Tarzan © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. George of the Jungle © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

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But George of the Jungle was something special. I knew that from the first day it aired, which was five days after my 16th birthday, September 9, 1967. It was like a late birthday present. And in a few months, I got something else from Jay Ward—a job offer. Although I’ve worked at Hanna-Barbera Productions and am known for my love of The Flintstones, I’m equally influenced by the cartoons by Jay Ward Productions, although I only worked on the studio’s characters just once, drawing a limited edition collectible cel for Universal, replicating the final shot in Rocky and Bullwinkle’s segment opening in Rocky and His Friends. They were so expensive that even I don’t own one! But it’s impossible to measure how much Jay Ward’s cartoons had a massive influence on my senses of humor, art, and subversion. My high school counselor didn’t take cartooning seriously, so the only art class I was allowed to take was as a student teacher at the junior high I’d attended. I was assigned to assist the same teacher I had my single art class, Miss Yaekel. Although most of her students were scared of her, we got along fine, because she did respect my passion for drawing funny stuff. She even asked to share my sketchbook—which included “The Interplanetary Drag Race,” a story heavily influenced by the then-new George of the Jungle’s “Tom Slick” segments. Unknown to me, the person she shared it with was another of the school’s art teacher, who was the ex-wife of a director working at Jay Ward Productions named Jim Hiltz. Unknown to me, she sent my sketchbook to Jim, who

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reduced the quality, if not the funniness. In fact, a few years later when General Mills passed on the George of the Jungle and Super Chicken pitches, Jay Ward was actually relieved that he didn’t have to deal with Gamma anymore. (On the other hand, Bill Hanna once considered sending ink and painting to a Mexican prison!) Instead of relying on Mexican cartoonists to deliver the goods, almost every segment in the entirety of George of the Jungle was conceived and animated at Jay Ward Productions.

Just Call for Super Chicken

must have shown it to the studio’s production manager (or who knows, maybe even Bill Scott or even Jay Ward?). A few weeks later, an envelope arrived at our house, addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Shaw” and sent from Jay Ward Productions at 8200 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. My knees buckled when my father read to me that I’d been invited to “work” for Jay Ward as an unpaid intern. I was only 16, still in high school, and lived 200 miles away from the studio. What followed was like a bizarre reworking of an episode of Leave It to Beaver, with my parents patiently attempting to coax me into understanding that the circumstances made their offer impossible. I eventually got over it, which was good training for the constant instability of freelance cartooning. Although I had a few pleasant social conversations with the Ward studio’s Bill Scott, I never contacted the studio or Jim Hiltz after I’d become a professional, if for nothing else, to thank them for giving me hope when I was a kid. I still really regret not doing it. The only thing about Rocky and His Friends that bugged me as a kid—but not enough to diminish my enjoyment—was the sheer shoddiness of the productions. Paint flashes, voices coming out of the wrong character, feet not touching the ground, missing facial details… all of these were very frequent in most of the segments of the show. Little did I know that it was due to the fact that the animation, inking, and painting were done in Mexico with very little supervision. This was due to a very complicated deal made with the show’s sponsor, General Mills, and its advertising agency, D-F-S. In short, the cereal manufacturer determined that the animation was to be done at a studio in Mexico, Gamma Productions, that also animated all of the Total Television shows like Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo. The goal was to reduce the budget, which it did. (When Gamma ran out of cel vinyl paint, they resorted to using house paint.) Unfortunately, it also

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s use the WABAC machine to travel back to 1959, when Chris Hayward and Lloyd Turner first created Super Chicken for Jay Ward Productions. In their “Super Chicken vs. Yeggs Benedict” pilot script and storyboard, Super Chicken’s secret identity was “J. Pullet Wealthy,” and Fred was called “Lawrence Lion.” Yegg’s Benedict’s henchman was named “Denver Omelet.” Around the same time, Watts Gnu was a puppet show that became a pet project of Jay’s that never found a home. Ward’s most notorious failure was an hour-long collection of live-action comedy skits, a Laugh-In four years before its time called The Nut House. The concept wasn’t even Jay’s! As Bill Scott said, “CBS approached our studio. They wanted a fast and zany show. So that’s what they got.” Unfortunately, the focus group testing revealed that over 80 percent of the audiences disliked the live-

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Ursula, George and the Tooki-Tooki Bird, and the elephant Shep in a presentation cel sold at the Dudley Do-Right Emporium. Signed by Jay Ward. © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

action, but dug the short animated segments that were directed by Pete Burness. Jay went back to what he did best: making funny cartoons. At this point, Jay Ward Productions’ primary income was from Quaker Oats for their various advertising campaigns. General Mills ordered another 26 half-hours of Hoppity Hooper. But Jay Ward was very frustrated. He loved doing those commercials, with a contract that allowed his team to be creatively unencumbered, but he felt that Hoppity Hooper, aimed at a younger audience than Rocky and Bullwinkle, wasn’t challenging his creative team’s abilities. Jay was always pitching new series, a few of which were green-lit, then vanished into the ether before production even began, including an unmade series titled Sir Melvin. Here are some of the unsold concepts and shows that Jay Ward unsuccessfully attempted to sell: Clobbered Classics, Colonel Swagger of the Office of Odds and Ends a.k.a. Colonel Beanbottom, Secret Agent X-6 7/8, Simpson & Delany, and The Picadilly Squares. Jay was very frustrated, so much so that it began to be a joke around the studio. At the Bullwinkle Block Party, he rigged a miniature wishing well with a sign that read: “MAKE A WISH—Throw $200,000 In And Wish For A Jay Ward Productions Series.” But Jay Ward believed in Super Chicken and refused to relent and continued to tinker with the cartoon’s concept. By 1964, Super Chicken was “Nelson G. Cluckerfeller,” portrayed by Don Knotts, Fred was played by Louis Nye, and Marvin 28

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Miller was the narrator. The voice casting was brilliant, but the soundtrack was re-recorded by Bill Scott and Mel Blanc. It was the only time he worked for Jay Ward. Then, Bill Scott re-recorded Super Chicken’s voice, now sounding like Jim Backus doing his “Thurston Howell III” routine. Next, Super Chicken became “Hunt Strongbird, Jr.,” a take-off on a CBS executive’s name. The cartoon was a two-parter about Henry and Edsel Fraud, who escape Devil’s Egg Island disguised as Orville and Wilber Wright, only to repeatedly be thwarted by Super Chicken. This pilot was designed and storyboarded by Al Shean. It was first pitched as The Super Chicken Show, with two SC cartoons with a third unrelated one sandwiched between them. New (unsold) premises for the slot included Farcical Fables (which eventually became Aesop and Son), The Picadilly Squares, and Colonel Swagger/Beanbottom. There was no Super Sauce transformation yet (keep reading), and the Chicken Coop was literally a flying wooden chicken coop.

Tickle Me, Elmo

Allan Burns and Chris Hayward’s original George of the Jungle pitch concept starred the annoying and nerdish, dimwitted schlub son of one of England’s richest noblemen. His family sent him to Africa rather than have to endure his behavior at home. He didn’t swing around the jungle—instead, he got around on a motor scooter (and it wasn’t a cool Vespa, either!). George’s sidekicks

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were Lamont the mauve-crested dinglebird (later replaced by the Tooki-Tooki Bird) and Harry the ape. Swinging into tree trunks was already his shtick. Burns and Hayward left to write for liveaction TV shows soon after. “Bill Scott took it over and gave it his twist on it (which was very good) and it became a slightly different show than what I had done.” – Allen Burns The Tarzan that Jay Ward and company were making fun of was the first Tarzan movie, Tarzan of the Apes (1918), starring Elmo Lincoln. Both Burns and Scott were big fans of silent movies, as Ward’s Fractured Flickers demonstrated. Apparently, no one at ABC or Standards and Practices noticed that “Tooki” was sexual slang. General Mills commissioned pilots for both concepts. The George of the Jungle pilot was scripted by Bill Scott, based on an idea by Jim Critchfield, and was designed, storyboarded, and laid out by Shirley Silvey and directed and laid out by Gerard Baldwin, with help from Duane Crowther. For some unknown reason, General Mills passed. Jay Ward immediately pitched it to ABC, who bought it early in 1967 and ordered 13 episodes, then upped it to 17. The production schedule made it necessary to subcontract two shorts—“Little Scissor” and “Rescue is my Business”—to be animated from another Hollywood studio, Fred Calvert Productions.

Jay Ward’s Super Chicken wasn’t the only cartoon that spoofed the swashbuckling literary/film hero the Scarlet Pimpernel—Warner Bros.’ Sylvester and DePatieFreleng’s Pink Panther are among the toons that did Pimpernel parodies. But they didn’t have Fred! Super Chicken and Fred in the Chicken Coop. © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

With ABC’s Batman igniting a campy super-hero fad in 1966 and the resulting explosion of super-hero TV shows, the time was right. After all, George and Henry were unlike modern super-heroes, but instead like the unusual heroes their creators read about in their youths: Tarzan, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Tom Swift. Late in 1966, Jay Ward pitched the George of the Jungle and Super Chicken pilots to ABC’s Richard Zimbert and Ed Vane. Due the fact that both characters were heroes, it jibed perfectly with the latest trend. They were asked to add a third character to fill the open slot in the show and Tom Slick was born after a very short gestation period. Jay’s deal with ABC included a decent but far-from-lavish budget and a grueling schedule, but overriding everything, the network’s creative approval would be significantly diminished. As a small concession, Super Chicken finally became “Henry Cabot Henhouse III.” RETROFAN

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Paul Harvey was hired to design and direct George of the Jungle’s title sequence. He was a commercial designer who’d worked for UPA and Elektra Films. That weird squawking jungle bird with the wiggly tongue was drawn for production exactly like it was in the thumbnail storyboard. Shirley Silvey fleshed out his thumbnail storyboard and the layouts. The main title’s animators included Phil Duncan, Rudy Zamora, Duane Crowther, and Rob Scribner. Phil did all of the segment intros by himself. The psychedelic opening titles, individual segment intros (that lion’s definitely stoned!), and final credits constituted three-andone-and-a-half minutes that they didn’t have to animate. Those elements were the show’s high point when it came to animation, so none of the viewers complained. In general, George of the Jungle represented a huge leap in sophistication and hipness in terms of the character designs, backgrounds, and overall color palette. The show had a few budgetary and production problems. Jay’s earlier stuff was often just characters standing around saying hilarious stuff to each other, but George of the Jungle, starring three different action heroes, required a lot more movement. Ward was paid $38,500 for each episode. Whenever Jay tried to cut down their animation costs, he was never happy with the results and often redid scenes. Tight schedules from ABC and too-sketchy linework from Xerox (hand-painting had vanished from SatAM cartoons) were also problems that plagued the production. The studio’s TV commercials for Quaker displayed what his Hollywood team could achieve, which made it harder for him to accept the cost-andquality cuts of kids’ television.

(ABOVE) Long before “Young Adult” was a book genre, boy inventor Tom Swift was piquing the imaginations of juvenile readers. (RIGHT) He inspired Ward Productions’ Tom Slick, shown here racing his Thunderbolt Grease Slapper in a 1967 animation drawing by Lew Keller. Tom Swift © Stratameyer Estate. Tom Slick © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

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Watch Out for That Tree!

George of the Jungle premiered on ABC on September 9, 1967 in the 11:30 AM time slot. It began with this snappy theme song, which gave us the show’s catchphrase, “Watch out for that tree!”: “George, George, George of the Jungle, “Strong as he can be. (Tarzan yell) “Watch out for that tree!   “George, George, George of the Jungle, “Lives a life that’s free. (Tarzan yell) “Watch out for that tree!   “When he gets in a scrape, He makes his escape “With the help of his friend, An ape named Ape. “Then away he’ll schlep on his elephant Shep “While Fella and Ursula stay in step… “With George, George, George of the Jungle, “Friend to you and me. (Tarzan yell) “Watch out for that tree! Watch out for that... (Tarzan yell) “Oooh! …tree!   “George, George, George of the Jungle, “Friend to you and me!” Parodying vintage films adapting the Tarzan of the Apes novels of pulp-master Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as other classic movies, George of the Jungle managed to avoid any racial controversy regarding the Jay Ward-style African tribesmen. The solution was simple—Jay’s team made ’em all Jewish. Like

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Tarzan, George protects his jungle and the beasts that live there and encounters poachers, witch doctors, and cults… but all in a Jay Ward sorta way. The George of the Jungle characters: George is Mbwebwe Province’s physically powerful, mentally lacking, good-natured, gullible, never-described-as-“bright” jungle king. Swinging from vine to vine, he’s slammed into half of the trees in the forest, which accounts for his usual dazed condition. Ape is George’s best friend, an intelligent, civilized, and sophisticated gorilla who’s the voice of reason, speaking like British-born actor Ronald Colman. Ursula/Fella are beautiful female twins who live with George as his mates. They rarely speak and the only time they’ve been seen together is in the show’s main title sequence. Shep is a full-grown bull elephant that thinks he’s a puppy dog. And so does George. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the design of George, Ursula, and Fella’s treehouse changes from episode to episode, although they all were laid out by the same artist. George’s villains include: Tiger Titherage and Weevil Plumtree; Dr. Chicago; Ungawa the Gorilla God; Tiny Tony Tuxedo the Tip-Top Tailor from Tanganyika, a.k.a. “Little Scissor”; The Duke of Wellington and his wife Cynthia; Gerry Mander; Seymour Nodnick; and various witch doctors who sound like Phil Silvers.

You Knew the Job Was Dangerous When You Took It With quick-fire shots of funny images with very little animation, Super Chicken’s intro segment was directed by Bill Hurtz and designed and laid out by Shirley Shivley. It featured a cameo photo-appearance by Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s Monster.

Original scene cel of the Tom Slick cast: Marigold, Tom, and madcap mechanic Gertie Growler. © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

The images were brilliant, but it’s the Super Chicken theme song that everyone remembers: “When you find yourself in danger, “When you’re threatened by a stranger, “When it looks like you will take a lickin’ (>Buk buk buk< ) “There is someone waiting, Who will hurry up and rescue you, “Just call for Super Chicken! (>Buk ack!<)   “Fred, if you’re afraid you’ll have to overlook it, “Besides, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it (>Buk-ack!<) “He will drink his super sauce “And throw the bad guys for a loss “And he will bring them in alive and kickin’ (>Buk buk buk<)   “There is one thing you should learn “When there is no one else to turn to “Call for Super Chicken! (>Buk buk buk<) “Call out for Super Chicken! (>Buk-aaack!!!<)” The Super Chicken characters: Super Chicken, a.k.a. wealthy Henry Cabot Henhouse III, is a costumed hero with super-powers who looks like the swashbuckling Scarlet Pimpernel. The source of his nonspecific super-powers is his “Super Sauce,” which spectacularly RETROFAN

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Storyboards by Lew Keller for the Tom Slick opening credits. © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

transforms the wealthy playboy into an overconfident but surprisingly clever cluck. Fred, an African lion who wears a sweatshirt, is like Super Chicken’s version of Seinfeld’s “Kramer.” He’s a goofy pal who simply hangs around—occasionally referred to as a “butler,” although that doesn’t seem to be the case—making observations that could either be very smart or very goofy. Fred’s the pilot of Super Chicken’s egg-shaped flying vehicle, “The Chicken Coop.” He also often fetches Henry’s Super Sauce. (Get it?) I always had the impression that Fred showed up at a party, crashed in Henry’s mansion, and forgot to move out. And as the song says, Fred provides Super Chicken’s catchphrase, “Fred, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it!” Super Chicken’s villains include: Appian Way; The Zipper, Rotten Hood; The Oyster; Prince Blackhole of Calcutta; Merlin Brando; Wild Ralph Hiccup; The Geezer; Salvador Rag Dolly; The Easter Bunny; The Noodle; The Fat Man; Briggs Bad-wolf; The Laundry Man; The Muscle; Dr. Gizmo; and The Wild Hair. That last Super Chicken short, director Bill Hurtz’s “The Wild Hair,” included one of the most subversive gags I’ve ever seen in a TV cartoon. In order to defeat a giant living toupee, Super Chicken launches a campaign to get the monster to worry so its 32

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hair would fall out. (Typical Jay Ward logic, eh?) One of the gags is when Super Chicken phones the hair-that-walks-like-a-man and says he’s from the Army’s draft office. Of course, that gag wasn’t so funny if the viewer realized that thousands of young men were getting killed in Vietnam. Since it was the final Super Chicken episode, it’s apparent that it was overlooked by ABC’s Standards and Practices, as did George’s Tooki-Tooki Bird.

There’s No Such Word As ‘Fail’ in Auto Racing

Since Super Chicken and George of the Jungle had been developed and refined for years before, it makes sense that their concepts and cast seem more “solid,” creatively speaking. But since he was conceived specifically to fill remaining slot in the three-slot heroshow, Tom Slick feels like it wasn’t completely “cooked” creatively. That said, the concept was closely tied to the hot rod culture of Southern California, which had gained national coolness thanks to guys like Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (see RetroFan #10), George Barris, and CARtoons magazine. The segment was also creatively indebted to Blake Edwards’ The Great Race. Tom Slick’s racecar, “The Thunderbolt Grease Slapper,” may have been named thusly because it was slapped together once ABC made it clear that they wanted to buy Ward’s George of the

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Jungle as a series with three segments. The character was named after the fictional young inventor Tom Swift, the star of a series of boys’ novels. The too-subtle-for-kids gag was if Tom Swift was still around, “he wouldn’t be a backyard inventor, he’d be a racecar genius,” definitely not Victor Appleton’s “Tom Swift, Jr.” The Tom Slick theme song’s lyrics: “Tom Slick. “Tom Slick. “Let me tell you why “He’s the best of all good guys “Tom Slick. “Tom Slick. “In the Thunderbolt Grease-Slapper, once he’s on your tail, “He won’t quit because you know there’s no such word as ‘fail’ to “Tom Slick. “Tom Slick!”

The Tom Slick characters: Racecar driver Tom Slick is as wholesome as they come, resembling the adult Ron Howard but with a voice like Dudley Do-Right. He always plays fair, which drives his opponents crazy. Marigold is Tom’s sweet, supporting, and spaced-out sweetheart. She rarely has much to say other than to fret over Tom’s safety. Gertie Growler, reminiscent of Jonathan Winters’ “Maudie Frickert,” is an elderly automotive mechanic and ironic “wiseguy.” She and the baddies have all of the funny dialog. Gertie’s constant “patient,” the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper, is an all-terrain racing vehicle which mechanical genius Tom Slick often customizes into almost anything that moves fast. It has been a blimp, a train, a boat, a submarine, a skateboard, a snowmobile, a desert vehicle, and a swamp buggy. The unnamed and unimpressed crowd of race spectators who appear in almost every episode of Tom Slick are kind of a hive-character in itself, flatly intoning “Yay” in unison but without a scintilla of enthusiasm. (Ken Snyder’s Roger Ramjet, a very funny, low-budget series, goes even cheaper, with the word “YAY!” filling the screen rather than animating anything!) Baron Otto Matic is Tom Slick’s primary rival and all-around bad guy, the automotive equivalent of Snidely Whiplash. He’s easily irritated, usually demanding, and consistently a bad loser. His assistant Clutcher has the body of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the voice of TV comic actor Frank Fontaine’s Crazy Guggenheim. He’s hilariously subservient, yet frustratingly incompetent, always taking a klop! in the skull, administered by Baron Otto Matic’s heavy wrench, wielded with ridiculous accuracy at preposterous distances. Other racing nemeses include: Lobo Fanguzzi; Fred G. Frankenstein; Count Lew Gozzi; “Lucky” Pool; Floyd Britches and Brenda; Felini Scalappini; Steve McQueasy; Harley Angel; Amsome Snobsworth V; Wilma Willow; Ringo Starfish; Sweet Willy Rollbar; The Sneaky Sheik; Sonya Nar; Sepulchra; Prince Monte Carloff; and Dranko the Dragster from the planet Merth (referencing cartoonist Bob Dranko).

George is On My Mind

Our hero obviously did not heed his theme song’s warning on the cover of Gold Key Comics’ George of the Jungle #2 (Oct. 1969). Cover art attributed to Paul Fung, Jr. © Ward Productions, Inc.

George of the Jungle comic books were published, cover-dated February and October 1969. They were created through the New York offices of Gold Key, the comics imprint of Western Publishing. Unlike most of Western’s output based on animated characters, these didn’t really capture the cartoons that they were based upon. (If only they’d hired artist Al Kilgore or some of Jay Ward’s cartoonists who did a wonderful job drawing a number of giveaway promotional mini-comics packed in Cap’n Crunch, Quisp, and Quake cereal boxes….) George of the Jungle wasn’t picked up for a second season. Instead, ABC aired the show’s original 17 episodes for two more years. After it aired for the final time in September 1970, George, Henry, and Tom went AWOL for almost 20 years. After George of the Jungle was finished, all the business that Jay Ward Productions had on a regular basis was from the world of advertising. Jay liked doing commercials, but what he didn’t like was dealing with Madison Avenue know-it-all CPAs. And even the material his team was creating for Quaker was routinely becoming less special with every memo from the cereal RETROFAN

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More images from original model sheets created in 1967. George of the Jungle © Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

FA ST FAC TS George of the Jungle

company’s ad agency. Ads for Shakey’s Pizza were added to the studio’s schedule. Meanwhile, Ward wasn’t having much luck with the new cartoon series he was pitching, which included Elementary, My Dear Rocky (a nutrition-themed half-hour special), Orville Wrong of the Laffingyette Escadrille, Ragnar the Chicken (a Viking), The Magic of Christmas (a TV special), Captain Cutlass, Space Granny, Once Upon a Safari, Hawkear the Scout, Fang the Wonder Dog, and Rah Rah Woozy. Three of the pitches— Hawkear the Scout, Fang the Wonder Dog, and Rah Rah Woozy, the latter, the funniest of the three, eerily foreshadowing Pinky and the Brain with its genius lab mouse secretly creating gadgets to aid his college’s football team— made it to the pilot stage but never sold, although they 34

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` No. of seasons: One ` No. of episodes: 17 ` Original run: September 9, 1967– December 30, 1967 ` Writers: Alan Burns, Bill Scott, Lloyd Turner, John Marshall ` Layout Artists: Shirley Silvey, Sam Cornell, Bob Kurtz, Don Jurwich, John Marshall, Al Wilzbach, Rosemary O’Conner, Don Ferguson, Willie Ito, Lew Keller ` Animators: Bob Bachman, Fred Madison, Gary Mooney, Jack Scherk, Alan Zaslove, Bob Goe ` Background Painters: Jack Heiter, Bob McIntosh, Walt Peregoy, Gloria Wood, Bob Inman ` Musicians: Stan Worth and Sheldon Allman

Voice Cast ` Bill Scott: George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, Tom Slick, Gertie Growler ` June Foray: Ursula, Marigold ` Paul Frees: Ape, Fred, Baron Otto Matic, misc. villains and characters ` Daws Butler: Clutcher, misc. villains and characters ` William Conrad and Hans Conried: Narrator of pilots

were occasionally screened in special presentations at museums and art house theaters during the Eighties. Ward even did an unaired TV special starring Bullwinkle that honored Arbor Day, but the project wasn’t as fun as Jay had hoped for. Not giving up, Ward turned to selling concepts for live-action sitcoms, including Officer, You Dropped Your Purse (about a lady cop), Uncle Lefty, and Prince Fred. None of them sold. For The Garry Moore Show, the Ward studio created “Flicker Songs,” sort of a musical version of Fractured Flickers, and some animated blackouts directed by Bill Hurtz and Jim Hiltz. In 1966, Jay Ward produced and Bill Scott wrote The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy, a feature film composed of clips from the film library of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, which was later released with Jay Ward’s Intergalactic Film Festival. He also assembled The Golden Age of Buster Keaton, The Vintage W. C. Fields, and Those Marvelous Benchley Shorts. Ward and Scott monetized the studio’s library to create more anthology features: Jay Ward Movie Madness, The Jay Ward Total Catharsis, and Jay Ward’s Film Festival. In 1980, ABC expressed interest from Ward in a football-spoofing TV special called The Stupor Bowl, featuring Rocky, Bullwinkle, and even Dudley Do-Right. A filmed storyboard was well received by the network, but unfortunately, the NFL had a very negative reaction to Ward’s

The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

portrayals of football team owners as an idiot, a sexpot, a gangster, and a brat. Then ABC proposed a one-hour series, The New Bullwinkle Show, that would feature most of Jay Ward’s stars of the past, plus some new ones, mentioned above. It was announced in the showbiz trades that Friz Freleng would produce the show, but the network never made a commitment and The New Bullwinkle Show was quickly (and sadly) forgotten. From that point on, although he still had an interest in creating new projects, both animated and otherwise, Jay Ward spent most of his time hanging out in Dudley Do-Right’s Emporium, a cool gift shop on Sunset Blvd. near the studio that sold all sorts of items, including Xeroxed storyboards for the pitches of George of the Jungle and Super Chicken. In 1997, Disney had the license to adapt certain Jay Ward characters. This resulted in a hit liveIf you knew the cartoon, you action George of the Jungle “got” this poster for the 1997 feature film starring Disney live-action movie. Brendan Fraser, Leslie © Ward Productions, Inc./Disney. Mann, and John Cleese. Poster courtesy of Heritage. To coincide with the film, two new sets of toys were released, both in the style of the Jay Ward cartoon show: a playset of PVC figures and plush dolls of George, Ape, and Shep. An inevitable direct-to-video sequel, George of the Jungle 2, directed by the maestro of DTV sequels, Alex Zamm, followed in 2003, but without the original version’s stars. In 1998, VHS tapes of the George of the Jungle cartoons were released. Some were renamed and reissued a few years later, aimed at children. These tapes included the show’s original 30 second-interstitial segments as well as the full-length cartoons. In 2007, Canada’s Nelvana Productions acquired the rights to you-know-how and produced an unsatisfying makeover of George of the Jungle, a concept that worked just fine without any meddling. Then, like a cockroach, it returned in 2015 for new episodes. When I think of this incarnation of George of the Jungle, it’s with the same distain that kaiju fanatics hold for the 1998

Godzilla with Matthew Broderick. On February 12, 2008, Classic Media released a complete DVD collection of the 1967 series, which included as a bonus feature the original pilot cartoons for both George of the Jungle and Super Chicken. However, the DVD omitted the interstitials. Most of Jay Ward’s staff thought that George of the Jungle represented the best work they ever did. Its viewers and fans certainly still agree. And now that I’ve lived in the Los Angeles area for the past 40 years, I’m still waiting to get another letter from Jay Ward Productions inviting me to take on a non-paying job as an intern. Sign me up, Jay! Thanks to Keith Scott’s The Moose That Roared (St. Martin’s Press, 2000) and Darrell Van Citters’ The Art of Jay Ward Productions (Oxberry Press, 2014) for quotes and obscure information. And if you’re a big Jay Ward fan yearning to learn more about the studio, these two volumes comprise the verbal and visual history of Jay Ward Productions as completely as is humanly possible. For 48 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW! has written and drawn underground comix, mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and video games. He has worked on such characters as Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew (which he co-created with Roy Thomas), Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Comic-Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He can be reached at shawcartoons.com. RETROFAN

November 2021

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CELEBRITY CRUSHES

WKRP’s Bailey Quarters by Brian Martin

Jan Smithers

“Baby, if you ever wondered, “Wondered who really did it for me. “It wasn’t Jennifer, it was Bailey, “On Cincinnati’s WKRP.” When WKRP in Cincinnati debuted in 1978, it was ostensibly the story of much-travelled program director Andy Travis, played by Gary Sandy. However, anyone watching soon realized that the series had a whole number of quirky and interesting characters, most of whom received a fair bit of attention and storylines. That being said, some received more of the spotlight than others. One of the characters in the limelight was secretary Jennifer Marlowe, portrayed by blonde bombshell and sex symbol Loni Anderson. Anderson was undoubtedly gorgeous, and her character was portrayed as arguably the most intelligent person on the entire show. But for me, and as I have discovered talking to other WKRP fans over the years, the other main female on the show was the subject of my Celebrity Crush. Bailey Quarters was a quiet, rather mousey character portrayed by Jan Smithers. Bailey was the understudy to Richard Sanders’ bumbling news department head Les Nessman. Though not a prominent character early on, maybe it was her understated role that attracted me to her. Or maybe what drew me to her was the fact that she was portrayed as much more conservatively dressed, and less flamboyant. Maybe she was just more real, or more likely, someone a regular guy might have a chance with. The fact that I was only in my early teens at the time didn’t deter my attraction at all. Regardless of the reason, Smithers began to play a more prominent part in proceedings as the series continued, engaging in an on-again, off-again relationship with Howard Hessman’s iconic DJ Doctor Johnny Fever. In a blow for

female equality she began to campaign for more and more responsibility in the news department, much to the chagrin of her boss, Mr. Nessman. After a long fight for every spot she requested to take over, Les came up with a… well, this was a sitcom… perfectly valid reason why he could not relinquish that spot. She persevered, though, and using logic and facts, not stereotypical sex appeal, and got what she wanted and deserved, moving up to write stories and eventually appear on air reading the news. As for my crush, I think it started with the fourth season episode “Rumors,” where Johnny is forced to stay at Bailey’s apartment for a few days, precipitating the titular rumors (and in the timehonored sitcom tradition, thoughts in Johnny’s head due to misinterpretation of Bailey’s words), and when she finally gets tired of them, she decides to fight fire with fire. So the next morning she comes in dressed totally inappropriately, and tells station MCP and self-proclaimed ladies’ man Herb Tarleck, portrayed by Frank Bonner, that she woke up, had nothing on, and could only find Johnny’s T-shirt. Add in her accompanying salacious facial expressions, and that may have literally kickstarted puberty for me! I honestly cannot remember seeing Jan Smithers in anything else since, but reruns kept her in my mind, and the fairly recent release of the complete WKRP series on DVD means I can view Bailey Quarters in her prime any time I want. BRIAN MARTIN lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, where they spell “Rumors” as “Rumours.” Beyond Jan Smithers, another of his passions is comic books, and he frequently contributes to ye ed’s other TwoMorrows magazine, Back Issue.

Hey, lovelorn, quit sobbing into your pillow and writing diary entries—instead, share your Sixties/Seventies/Eighties Celebrity Crush with RetroFan readers! You can become famous, get three free copies of the magazine, and earn a whopping $10 as well. Submit your 600-word-maximum Celebrity Crush column to the editor for consideration at euryman@gmail.com. RETROFAN

November 2021

ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a history of violent death and insanity, is being investigated by Dr. Markway. His research aims to prove the existence of ghosts. With him are the insecure Eleanor, whose psychic abilities make her feel somehow attuned to whatever spirits inhabit the old mansion, the clairvoyant Theodora (“Theo”), and the skeptical young Luke. It becomes clear that they have gotten more than they bargained for as the ghostly presence in the house manifests itself in horrific ways. (Doug Sederberg/IMDb) The following is adapted from the original screenplay by Nelson Gidding: No one can say what suggests evil in the face of a house, yet Hill House is overwhelmingly evil. Enormous and dark, it is so covered with decoration as to appear diseased. Inside Eleanor’s bedroom—Theo sits up in the big double bed idly leafing through a book. Eleanor locks the door and gets into bed. Theo burrows under the covers. Later, in the middle of the night: Shadows and moonlight on a section of wallpaper shift the pattern into the visage of a not-quitehuman face. From behind it comes the steady SOUND OF A VOICE BABBLING, the words too low to be understood. Eleanor’s face is rigid with fear and as white as the pillow. ELEANOR (whispers to Theo) Are you awake? Don’t say a word, Theo. Don’t let it know you’re in my room. From behind the “face” in the wallpaper—a small gurgling laugh. ELEANOR (lowering her hand) Hold my hand, Theo. Unseen, below the frame, Theo evidently takes her hand. The VOICE continues babbling but then, abruptly— absolute SILENCE. ELEANOR Is it over? Do you think it’s over? (her eyes flinch with pain) Theo, you’re breaking my hand! Then– the SOFT CRY OF A CHILD—infinitely sad, heartbreaking. ELEANOR’S VOICE (her thoughts) This is monstrous. It thinks to scare me. Well, it has. And poor Theo, too. (wincing) I honestly think she must be breaking my hand. No matter. I will take a lot from this filthy house, but I will not go along with hurting a child. No, I will not. I will, by God, get my mouth to open right now and I will yell— STOP IT! 38

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ELEANOR

A light flashes on. Eleanor bolts up, all alone, now seen to be on the chaise lounge on the far side of the room. She looks in consternation to her hand— held rigidly, clenched around— nothing. CAMERA PANS across the room to Theo, alone on her side of the big double bed—far away on the other side of the room.

THEO What? What, Nell? What…? ELEANOR Good God... Eleanor remains frozen for an instant, then brings her shaking hand in toward her chest and slowly opens her fingers.

” ? . . . g n i d l o h I s a w d an

“Whose h

Ernest Farino takes a look at what many consider to be the scariest ghost story ever made…

A Robert Wise Film / Screenplay by Nelson Gidding From the Novel by Shirley Jackson

SPOILER ALERT! Scary scenes described here. (See the movie, then read the article… )

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Do you want to see something really scary?” So says Dan Aykroyd to Albert Brooks in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed he was referring to Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting, based on the novel by Shirley Jackson. After working professionally on make-up effects for “scary” films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Men in Black 3, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Amityville Horror, Pet Sematary II, Hellboy, 13 episodes of American Horror Story, and over 100 more films, you’d think my make-up artist friend Bart J. Mixon would be numb to the shocks. But as he wrote as recently as October 2020 on Facebook, “The Haunting is the only film to actually frighten me…” And none other than renowned director Martin Scorsese referred to The Haunting as “absolutely terrifying” in The 11 Scariest Horror Movies of All Time (The Daily Beast, Oct. 28, 2009). I saw The Haunting when it premiered on network television in the Sixties. I have been unable to pin down the date of the broadcast, but it would have been in the mid-Sixties on one of the Saturday Night at the Movies-type series. I would have been in my early teens—i.e., still very impressionable—but I remember the whole family was thoroughly creeped out. Turns out we weren’t the only ones…

The Book

Moreso even than The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson is probably even better known for her short story The Lottery. First published in the June 26, 1948 issue of The New Yorker, the short story generated more mail—estimated at around 300 letters— than any work of fiction the magazine had published up to that time. Remarkably, in 1963 (the year The Haunting film was released), Jackson said of The Lottery, “I hate it. I’ve lived with that thing 15 years. Nobody will ever let me forget it.” But it’s become “psychologically iconic” (to coin a phrase) and has been required reading for decades. Like many, I first read it in high school and was struck by my first exposure to a rather chilling “O. Henry”style surprise ending. RETROFAN

– Shirley Jackson, The Lottery In 1999 Paula Guran provided insight into the backstory of the book in her essay Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House on the DarkEcho Horror website. Guran wrote that Jackson “decided to write ‘a ghost story’ after reading about a group of nineteenth century ‘psychic researchers’ who studied a house and somberly reported their supposedly scientific findings to the Society for Psychic Research. What Jackson discovered in their ‘dry reports was not the story of a haunted house, it was the story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and background.’ Excited by the prospect of creating her own haunted house and the characters to explore it, she launched into research. She later claimed to have found a picture of a California house she

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, published in hardcover by Viking Press (New York, 1959, 246 pages), at a cover price of $3.95 (about $35.00 today), was a finalist for the National Book Award and is considered one of the best literary ghost stories of the 20th Century.

Shirley Jackson.

“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”

November 2021

believed was suitably haunted-looking in a magazine. She asked her mother, who lived in California, to help find information about the dwelling. According to Jackson, her mother identified the house as one the author’s own great-great-grandfather, an architect who had designed some of San Francisco’s oldest buildings, had built. Jackson also read volume upon volume of traditional ghost stories while preparing to write her own, and said, ‘No one can get into a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on; either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether.’” Jackson finally settled on a story of three strangers who are invited to Hill House by Dr. Montague (“Markway” in the

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

movie) to scientifically prove the existence of the supernatural. Turns out, the house is haunted—really haunted—and one of the two women, Eleanor, is especially affected by the unfolding strangeness of the experience. Cristina Arreola commented on the website Bustle in 2018, “It’s terrifying on a supernatural and psychological level, and it’s an absolute must-read for anyone who’s obsessed with horror.” Stephen King, meanwhile, said that Hill House has one of the best openings he’s ever read, calling it “the sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for.” Writer Carmen Maria Machado wrote in The Atlantic that while at a writers’ retreat she was told that her own story reminded readers of Shirley Jackson. “When I went back home to Philly, I picked up a copy [of The Haunting of Hill House]. And I just devoured it. I read it in one sitting. It scared the sh*t out of me. Even though the events that appear to be supernatural activity are few and far between, those scenes are so chillingly written— as if Jackson was describing a phenomenon she’d seen before and really understood. The book’s particular brand of surreality felt, to me, like that experience of walking home from a party a little bit drunk, when the world somehow seems sharper and clearer and weirder.”

Handsome leading man Richard Johnson was considered for the role of James Bond in Dr. No but turned it down because he didn’t want to sign a multi-picture contract. Johnson later played a similar role, Bulldog Drummond, in the 1967 film Deadlier Than the Male. He was married for a year to sultry actress Kim Novak in the Sixties.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” – Shirley Jackson

Jackson’s final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, was published in 1962 and has been acclaimed as her masterpiece (it sold 30,000 copies)—“a brilliantly strange, claustrophobic tale of two sisters who barricade themselves in against the torments of the outside world.” Following that work, Jackson herself came down with crippling agoraphobia, anxiety, and writer’s block. Becoming severely overweight, her health deteriorated significantly and she died of a heart condition in 1965 at the age of 48. You can read about Shirley Jackson in much greater depth in former New Republic editor Ruth Franklin’s biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright, 2016).

“Fear is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” – Shirley Jackson

The Movie

Production began at the MGM studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England (about 15 miles northwest of London), on October 7, 1962. Other films made at Borehamwood include several of the Star Wars films, many of Stanley Kubrick’s films including Lolita and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many more.

Julie Harris gives the standout performance in the film as the fragile, insecure, tormented Eleanor Lance. Her accomplishments are many, including for five Tony Awards (of ten nominations) for her work on the Chicago stage, three Emmys (of 11 nominations), a Grammy Award and an Oscar® nomination for her first film role in A Member of the Wedding. She was a recipient of the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors and was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1994. Harris’ appearances ran the gamut from Requiem for a Heavyweight to an episode of The Love Boat, and, outside of The Haunting, she is often remembered for her role opposite James Dean in East of Eden and a seven-year stint on the TV series Knots Landing. She was married and divorced three times, and had a son from her second marriage.

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

By the time of The Haunting Lois Maxwell had already appeared in Dr. No and From Russia With Love as Miss Moneypenny, and would continue that role in a total of 14 consecutive Bond films until A View to a Kill in 1985. Maxwell summed up her Bond career in this way: “I always said I’d have Roger Moore for a husband but Sean Connery for a weekend lover.”

(ABOVE) Claire Bloom was launched into stardom as a result of being handpicked by Charlie Chaplin to star opposite him in Limelight (1952) at age 19, only her second film. Bloom appeared in many classical films, including Richard II opposite Laurence Olivier. She married actor Rod Steiger and they appeared together in The Illustrated Man and Three Into Two Won’t Go (both 1969). More recently she had a brief cameo in Ray Harryhausen’s final film, Clash of the Titans (1981), as Hera (reuniting opposite Olivier as Zeus), and had a recurring role in the British TV series Doc Martin (2013). She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2013 for her services to drama.

Russ Tamblyn is best known as a dancer, but began as a young actor in films such as the excellent film-noir thriller Gun Crazy (1950). He went on to appear in tom thumb (1958), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), West Side Story (1961), and many more. No doubt a highlight on both our résumés, Tamblyn starred in Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991), co-written by Yours Truly.

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(RIGHT) Horror film fans probably remember Diane Clare for her starring role in the Hammer Film The Plague of the Zombies (1966). She also appeared in Witchcraft (1964) and an episode of The Avengers (1965).

(LEFT) Rosalie Crutchley appeared in a staggering 167 films and TV episodes over her long career, often appearing sinister or villainous. Appropriately, she played Madame Defarge in both the film of A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and a later BBC television version in 1965.

Valentine Dyall was sometimes described as “the British Vincent Price” for his deeply resonant and mysterious voice, which he put to frequent good use as a narrator and voiceover artist (such as the narrator for Ray Harryhausen’s film First Men “In” the Moon in 1964). He appeared primarily in television.

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Robert Wise was a versatile director, moving with equal accomplishment from film noir (The Set-Up, 1959) to science fiction (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951, The Andromeda Strain, 1971, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979), to musicals (West Wide Story, 1961, and The Sound of Music, 1965). Wise began his remarkable career as a film editor on none other than Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece, Citizen Kane. Wise once remarked, “You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.” As for The Haunting, Wise said that he was immersed in reading Shirley Jackson’s novel when screenwriter Nelson Gidding burst into the room with a question. Wise jumped out of his chair, and realized that “if the book can have that much of an effect on me, I simply have to make this movie…”

Production Begins…

The New England locale from the original book was maintained, but the film was produced in England. Wise had approached United Artists but they turned him down. Wise owed MGM a film under an old contract but they would only give Wise a $1 million budget. So Wise took it to England. During a trip to the United Kingdom for a Royal Command Performance of West Side Story, Wise pitched the project to MGM’s Borehamwood Studios subsidiary. They offered a budget of $1.050 million (about $9.2 million today). This was combined with the rebates generated by the EADY Plan. Created in 1950, the EADY Plan had theaters pay a certain percentage of box-office receipts to a central agency. At the end of the year, the percentage is distributed in proportion to the boxoffice receipts of each qualifying film, amounting to as much as 40% of the cost of production. To qualify, at least 80% of salaries must be paid to British nationals. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom were cast (partly) because they were both British nationals and thus helped satisfy the EADY Plan requirements. Also, the film must be photographed in Great Britain. Thus, an example of the behind-closed-doors machinations that often contribute to the final form of any given film.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) Actress Fay Compton, Claire Bloom, and Julie Harris at a “kick off party” at the Savoy Hotel in London for The Haunting on October 10, 1962. (Compton is not in the film, and was a guest at the party).

At the same start party, the caption reads: “Claire Bloom wears a pocket watch supported on a chain around her neck as she drinks a toast to the new film.”

Unlike many “horror” films today, Robert Wise chose to basically show—nothing. By pulling the viewers’ imaginations into the proceedings as an unwitting participant, the film’s mood and overt scares are all the more effective. What we imagine is far creepier than anything that could be shown explicitly on the screen. As Nelson Gidding wrote the screenplay, he leaned towards the idea that the goings-on were actually the disturbed thoughts of the lead character, Eleanor Vance. As Gidding told Tom Weaver (I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror Filmmakers, McFarland, 2001), “If she was having a nervous breakdown, Hill House might actually the hospital where she is held, Markway is her psychiatrist, the cold, banging, and violence are the results of shock treatment, and the opening and closing of doors reflected the opening and closing of hospital doors.” Wise and Gidding travelled to Bennington, Vermont, to meet Shirley Jackson, who told them that it was a good idea but that the novel RETROFAN

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Every member of the cast enjoyed working with Robert Wise, a strong director with great instincts and no ego. Julie Harris remembered him as a “calm gentleman” who never got ruffled, and Claire Bloom found working with him “marvelous.” Richard Johnson later said he received invaluable film acting advice from Robert Wise. Wise told him to keep his eyes steady, to blink less, and to try not to time his acting (Wise said he would take care of that in the editing room). Johnson also credited Wise with helping him to craft a much more natural acting performance.

was definitely about the supernatural. Some ambiguity remains, but the fact that Theo experiences the banging on the door and later all four characters observe the door bulging in, it’s pretty clear that the manifestations of ”haunting” are intended to be real phenomena. It was also during their visit to speak with Jackson that Wise and Gidding chose the title for the film. As they did not want to keep the book title, they asked Jackson if she had considered an

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alternative title. She suggested simply The Haunting, which Wise and Gidding immediately adopted. Cinematographer Davis Boulton had been a well-known still photographer in England. Wise recalled, “He worked exclusively with the lighting and did a marvelous job of it. All handling of the camera was left to the operator, Alan McCabe, who worked with me on the setups. I was very pleased with their work.” Wise continued, “The widest angle Panavision anamorphic lens available at that time was 35mm or 40mm. I wanted the hallways to look long and dark, so I asked [Panavision president] Bob Gottschalk if he didn’t have a wider lens. He said they had a 28mm, but that it had a lot of distortion. I told him that was exactly what I wanted for certain places. He didn’t want me to use it, but I kept insisting until he gave in—on the condition that I would sign a paper saying that I knew the lens was in an experimental state and I wouldn’t complain about the distortion. We used it most effectively for certain shots.” Color had become obligatory for major productions, but Wise insisted on Panavision black-and-white, and had this condition written into his contract. As he later noted, “I felt that the subject lent itself to the wide format [2.40:1 ratio] and that it had to be in black-and-white.” That black-and-white had been specified in his contract prevented Turner Entertainment from colorizing the film for video release (a similar clause in Orson Welles’ contract for Citizen Kane, defining the production as “a black-and-white film,” also legally prevented Turner from colorizing that film).

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

All of the film’s interiors were designed by British artist Elliot Scott and built on Borehamwood stages. Scott had previously designed I Accuse (1958) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), and he and Wise saw eye-to-eye on the picture’s visual style. (RIGHT) “That’s a Wrap!”—After 58 days of filming, principal photography was completed on March 30, 1962. (BELOW) Julie Harris chose to keep her distance from the rest of the cast as a “Method”-like device to enhance Eleanor’s isolation and inward turmoil. Claire Bloom later said that she didn’t pick up on this during the filming and thought she had said or done something that offended Harris. After the film, Harris visited Bloom and explained things, and the two women became friends.

THEO’S WARDROBE Mary Quant, a rising star on the British fashion scene in the Sixties, was hired to design the chic and stylish wardrobe for Theo (Claire Bloom). Theo is described by Shirley Jackson as “gorgeous, icy, sophisticated, independent, dressed in black haute couture and very clever. Theo would probably like to be the center of attention.” Theo’s fashions certainly stand out in contrast to the demure Eleanor, who remarks, “If Theo is wearing velvet I must be Eleanor in tweed.” That contrast alone is a prime example of how careful wardrobe selection can inform and affect the characters in a film. In the Sixties, André Courrèges was a French fashion designer known for his streamlined, futuristic look that exploited modern technology and new fabrics. Additionally, John Bates, one of the most influential British designers of the Sixties, was regarded as “the unsung inventor of the mini skirt.” He dressed Diana Rigg in The Avengers TV series and models Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton and singer Dusty Springfield all wore his designs. In 1965 Mary Quant took the shorter dress styles of Courrèges and Bates even shorter, and by 1966 was

designing dresses and skirts that were six or seven inches above the knee. She is thus credited with taking a style that had not really taken off and making it popular. Her style soon became known as “The Chelsea Look”—simple, neat, and young, made from cotton gabardines and almost always featuring little white girly collars—and it soon became copied and was popular everywhere. Mary Quant also sported the sharply cut geometric “five-point cut” hairstyle by Vidal Sassoon, one of the most famous cuts of the era. The hairstyle and the short skirts “made” the Sixties fashion look.

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

This is a favorite scene of mine—as Eleanor and Theo engage in getting-to-know-you girl talk, Eleanor innocently asks, “You married?” Theo stares at her for a long moment, very still, processing the extraordinary naïveté of this person, and quietly says, “No…” And Eleanor still doesn’t get it—she thinks she has simply crossed the line into someone’s personal life and blurts out, “Sorry. I’m stupid and wicked and untrustworthy and not good for anything at all.”

DELETED SCENE It has become well known by now that Claire Bloom’s character of Theodora (“just Theo”) was a lesbian. In the final film, this aspect of her character comes across in very subtle ways, so subtle that many viewers don’t even pick up on it (and certainly I, as a young boy, never registered something like this). However, her lesbian nature was originally depicted more overtly, and a scene early in the film was written by Nelson Gidding and filmed by Robert Wise. From page 10 of Nelson Gidding’s script: EXT. A GREENWICH VILLAGE APARTMENT UP ANGLE AT THE WINDOW – DAY THEODORA leans from the second floor window shouting down at CAMERA. THEODORA Okay, okay, so take your precious weekend. I won’t be here when you get back. The cloud of rage across her face contrasts with the delicacy of her features framed in a halo of blonde hair. She wears tight Levis and a black turtle-neck sweater. INT. THEODORA’S APARTMENT – DAY She marches over to the open door. Artistically lettered across it a sign reads: China - Ceramics - Objets d’Art Lovingly Repaired by Theodora She slams the door so hard a china figure bounces off a work table and shatters. She glares around, breathing hard. There are sketches on the walls, a half-finished mosaic cocktail table, an old espresso machine in the 46

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process of being rehabilitated. Now she goes to work on the room in earnest. She kicks over a potter’s wheel, and smashes a clay nude of herself which her friend has in progress. From the table she grabs up a framed photograph and bitterly contemplates the inscription across the bottom. INSERT - THE PHOTOGRAPH It is of an attractive girl also wearing a turtleneck sweater. The inscription reads: To Theo, All of whose special gifts I admire, L.C. BACK TO THEODORA She smashes the frame and rips the picture to shreds. Then she scrawls across the mirror in lipstick: “I hate you.” As she catches sight of herself in the mirror, she takes a long look, deflates, and adds, slowly: “You too.” Julie Harris said that film censors demanded that Theo never be shown to touch Eleanor, in order to minimize the appearance of lesbianism. However, they touch several times, including when Theo is sitting on her bed. Towards the end, Eleanor’s naïveté comes around and she angrily confronts Theo, saying, “You’re a monster, Theo. You, you’re the monster of Hill House.”

Claire Bloom in the above-described deleted scene in her art studio, expressing her rage at being jilted by her lover, a photo courtesy of RetroFan’s French friend Laurent (who, like “just Theo,” prefers “just Laurent”). Laurent’s astonishing website devoted to The Haunting, compiled over the past 20+ years (!), is a must-see for any fan of this great film: www.the-haunting.com

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

The Breathing Door

One of the most effective and often-remembered sequences in the film is when all the characters are in Eleanor’s bedroom when the door—well, let’s let screenwriter Nelson Gidding tell it:

The House

Can a house be “born bad”…? Shirley Jackson described Hill House in this way (slightly abridged): “No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. A house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.” The location for the exteriors of “Hill House” was Ettington Park House, a Post Medieval gothic revival house remodeled in the 19th Century 400 miles south of Wards Hill. Today it is a hotel. The earliest parts of the present house were built for the Underhill family in the 16th and 17th Centuries. A number of alterations and extensions, including a new entrance hall and dining room, were made in the 1740s–1760s. Major alterations were made 1810–1811, and further work was in progress in 1820. A major program of restoration has been carried out since the building was turned into a hotel in 1983. In 2010 Cinema Retro magazine hosted a screening of The Haunting at Ettington Park. Richard Johnson was a special guest and said that he had never actually set foot in the hall during filming—that 2010 screening was the first occasion he had actually been inside the premises (such is the “magic of movies”).

STRAIGHT DOWN SHOT ON ROOM The NOISE of the next attack on the door hits with such fury the three of them seem forced back by the concussion. ELEANOR (whispering) It can’t set in. It can’t get in, don’t let it get in. Abruptly the door is quiet. The door knob rattles under a little caressing touch. Markway steps close to the door again, pressing his head against it, listening. Now the door is attacked without a sound, seeming almost to be pulling away from its hinges, ready to buckle and go down. CLOSE UP - ELEANOR’S EYES darting around for an avenue of escape. RETROFAN

November 2021

ELEANOR

(whispering} Oh, God. It knows I’m here…

OPTICAL EFFECTS For years I thought this shot was a “split screen” optical in which a hand-drawn matte dividing the scene more or less down the middle combined two separately photographed elements: Eleanor in the foreground and Markway and Theo in the background. This was sometimes done in films to combine extreme foreground and background planes, although certainly “deep focus” cinematography was common by then (largely spearheaded by cinematographer Gregg Toland in Citizen Kane in 1941). I briefly thought this shot might have been accomplished by the use of a “split diopter” lens, one which, like bi-focal eyeglass, has two levels of focus ground into the glass. But that approach is usually betrayed by a softness at the point of the split. In any case, I recently re-watched the Blu-ray disc of The Haunting, which is an excellent transfer, and paid even greater attention to the shot. Rather than a split screen the shot is actually a traveling matte. There is an almost imperceptible “jiggle”—almost microscopic—of the Eleanor image. Not a flaw, and very much within acceptable tolerances of film registration, but looking at the left side of her image in particular, one can detect this tiny movement. Which is the giveaway that her entire image has been added on top of the background scene. What had appeared to be “drapery” that Markway steps out from behind is not drapery, or anything to do with the set. Rather, it’s Eleanor’s hair, reading “dark” because it’s not in the direct lighting. 48

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As effective as it is, the bulging of the door effect was simplicity itself: no CGI (which didn’t exist in 1963, actually) or optical effects. A full-size prop door was made of layers of laminated wood and a burley Grip (a stage hand, who are almost always burley) slowly pushed on it from the other side.

ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Tom Howard was the Visual Effects/Optical Supervisor, and was a prominent figure in British visual effects in those days. Moreso than, say, miniatures, Howard was known as an optical and/or “blue screen guy,” which supports the viability of the traveling matte idea. His extensive credits include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Where Eagles Dare, and many others. There’s another shot a bit later, inside the house, where Eleanor appears to walk forward, the room behind her gradually darkening (fading out). This shot, too, was a traveling matte with Julie Harris “walking in place” on a small treadmill on the stage. Likewise, as Eleanor drives up the path to the front gate when she arrives, the first two to three shots are “real” (the camera mounted on the hood of the car with real backgrounds visible outside the rear and side windows), but suddenly there are two to three shots in which the background trees and the overall view appears markedly different. These, too, are traveling mattes. The reason for the switch will never be known, but, having faced many “fix-up” tasks myself on films, my guess is that those last couple of shots were either added later (and since they were no longer on that location had to be staged in studio), or the negative was damaged, or something like that. Some of the exterior house shots were split screens, used to add the spooky time-lapse cloud elements, but many of the Hill House exteriors were filmed with Eastman’s black-and-white infrared film. As my late friend George E. Turner, a visual effects historian, wrote for The American Society of Cinematographers (Elegant Chills: The Haunting), “infrared emulsion is not sensitive to visible colors of the spectrum, but instead registers longer waves that lie invisibly beyond these colors. Solid objects reflect and absorb infrared light differently from ordinary light. Green grass and foliage are reproduced as almost white, skies come across very dark grey to black, and other everyday objects usually yield unexpected results. When used with a small aperture and a deep orange or red filter such as Wratten 25, 88A or 89B, infrared produces a strong night effect in daylight, with strange tone variations appropriate to an ‘evil’ house.” Another remarkable “in-camera” effect utilized additional make-up and a shifting of filters (not infrared film stock) during the scene when the group step into “a genuine cold spot,” subtly changing their skin tones to a paler shade. This technique goes back to Paramount’s 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Fredric March. Director of photography Karl Struss, ASC, described the technique during a 1976 dinner at the American Society of Cinematographers. He had advocated that Jekyll’s change should have been mostly psychological, a mental rather than a physical change, with subtle make-up, and said that “the first time Jekyll changed, we used a technique I had devised years before to show the healing of the lepers in Ben-Hur

[1926].” Instead of the commonly used orthochromatic film, Struss said that he “had begun using [blackand-white] panchromatic film, which is sensitive to all colors. The leprosy spots were red make-up, which registered when shot through a green filter, but when we gradually moved a red filter over the lens, the makeup disappeared. The Hyde make-up was also in red and didn’t show at all when the red filter was on the lens, but when the filter was moved down very slowly to the green, Mr. Hyde appeared.” Similarly, a gradual replacing of the filter over the lens in the “cold spot” scene created a very subtle change in the pallor of the skin of the players. This technique only works in blackand-white, for obvious reasons.

A rather remarkable optical effect shows the aging of Abigail Crain from age six (Janet Mansell) to age 80 (Amy Dalby). Nowadays it would he done with a digital “morph,” an effect that can even be done on home computers. But in 1963 it was done with a series of slow dissolves, such as was often used to transform Lon Chaney, Jr. into the Wolf Man or revive Dracula in countless Hammer horror films. What makes this remarkable is the precision of the alignment and the smoothness of the transitions. The illusion was so effective that it generated a full page in LIFE magazine. © LIFE.

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

The Spiral Staircase

The rickety staircase—described in the script as “an iron spiral staircase that climbs the wall three stories into the tower. There are thousands of moldy, dung-colored books on the other three walls”—features prominently in the film. Towards the end, a mesmerized Eleanor climbs the staircase, followed by Markway, their combined weight threatening to pull the iron spiral from the walls. In several shots the camera seems to glide up the stairs, curving around to follow the spiral shape of the staircase. The simple solution was to engineer a small dolly the width of the stairs, the grooved wheels running along both railings. Onto this a lightweight camera (possibly an Arriflex) was mounted, the final rig affording a wonderful vertigo-inducing ride up and down the spiral staircase. For the actual photography, the “dolly” descended the staircase, taking advantage of gravity, and the film was reverse-printed in the optical printer to create the “going up” version.

The “Second Mrs. Crain” was played by Frieda Knorr. After being startled by an unseen horror, she backs away and stumbles at the tops of the stairs, falling backwards, tumbling down the stairs in a violent fall. She comes to rest at the bottom of the. As Nelson Gidding wrote, “Her head dangles backwards over the last step in a peculiar attitude, her neck broken. The scream still frozen onto her mouth, her eyes wide open, she stares up into CAMERA.” The fall itself was accomplished by veteran British stuntwoman Connie Tilton, who also depicted the “companion” (Rosemary Dorken) hanging herself from the top of the spiral staircase. Tilton did stunt work in British-made films such as Gorgo (1961), Operation Crossbow (1965), and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), doubled for Vivien Leigh in a 40-foot jump in Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), fell off London Bridge for Sophia Loren in The Millionairess (1960), and doubled for Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). When the cast of The Haunting congratulated her on her stunts, Tilton shrugged and said, “It’s a living.”

(ABOVE) Aside from “Theodora–?” (no last name) and “Eleanor Vance,” the names on the blackboard in Dr. Markway’s office are all friends or family of screenwriter Nelson Gidding. Albert Trepuk was his stepfather, Charles Stern, Ruth Murray, Rufus Matthewson, and Paul Kirschner were friends, and Joshua Walden was his then–14-year-old son.

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ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

“Hill House has stood for �� years and might stand for �� more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. “And we who walk here... walk alone.” – Eleanor Lance

Special thanks to Laurent: www.the-haunting.com All pictorial matter reproduced herein derives from the voluntary, non-compensated contributions of pictorial or other memorabilia from the private collections of the author, and from the select private archives of individual contributors. The Haunting © 1963 Turner Entertainment Co. and Argyle Enterprises, Inc. ERNEST FARINO directed an episode of the SyFy/Netflix series Superstition starring Mario Van Peebles, Steel and Lace starring Bruce Davison, episodes of Monsters starring Lydia Cornell and Marc McClure, ABC’s

Land of the Lost starring Timothy Bottoms, and extensive 2nd Unit for the miniseries Dune starring William Hurt, Noah’s Ark starring Jon Voight, and Supernova starring Luke Perry. A two-time Emmy®-winning Visual Effects Supervisor for SyFy’s Dune and Children of Dune miniseries, Farino supervised the visual effects for the Tom Hanks/HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon and James Cameron’s The Terminator, The Abyss, and T2. His Archive Editions published Mike Hankin’s Ray Harryhausen–Master of the Majicks.

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Too Much TV If your old man used to gripe that you’d never learn anything with your nose glued to the boob tube, here’s your chance to prove him wrong. (Father doesn’t always know best.) Each theme song lyric in Column One corresponds to a classic sitcom in Column Two. Match ’em up, then see how you rate! COLUMN ONE

1) “A hot dog makes her lose control.” 2) “I know that you can lend a helping hand.” 3) “And there ain’t nothing we can’t love each other through.” 4) “She was a sister who really cooked.” 5) “She’s mine alone, but luckily for you…” 6) “You’re gonna say she’s all that you adore.” 7) “He’ll give you the answer you endorse.” 8) “He’s a one-boy, cuddly toy.” 9) “Never heard the word impossible.” 10) “A whole lotta lovin’ is what we’ll be bringing.” 52

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RetroFan Ratings

“Hey, Wilbur, it’s singalong time!”

10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know theme song lyrics too! 7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan Dy-no-mite! You wasted your childhood with the rest of us! 4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned RetroFan Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til you spend more tube time! 0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan Ya big dummy! Put down that book and go watch some classic TV! COLUMN TWO

A) Laverne & Shirley B) Maude C) Chico and the Man D) Mr. Ed E) The Patty Duke Show F) The Courtship of Eddie’s Father G) Gidget H) That Girl I) The Partridge Family J) Family Ties Chico and the Man © Warner Bros. Television. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father © MGM Television. Family Ties, Laverne & Shirley, That Girl © Paramount Television. Gidget, Maude, The Partridge Family © Sony Pictures Television. Mr. Ed © Filmways Television. The Patty Duke Show © United Artists Television. All rights reserved.

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ANSWERS: 1–E, 2–C, 3–J, 4–B, 5–H, 6–G, 7–D, 8–F, 9–A, 10–I

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SCOTT SAAVEDRA'S SECRET SANCTUM

Ward Cleaver and TV Dads of the Sixties’ Jobs by Scott Saavedra Ward Cleaver went to his office job in the morning and came home at the end of the day. Sometimes he would come home early and his wife June would, without fail, say, “You’re home early.” He would wear a sweater around the house and read only magazines and newspapers despite the presence of many books in the home. He would strive to guide his sons to a straight and narrow path because that was his duty. It was all pretend, though. Ward was father of Wally and Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver and husband to June for 234 half-hour episodes of Leave It to Beaver (1957–1963). He wasn’t a real dad or even a real person, but he was a fine example of the Fifties- and Sixties-era father as anyone could ask for. In real life dads were human, flawed, even weird. Once, I was playing with Army men at a friend’s house when his dad suddenly came in and, deeply unhappy that we were playing with war toys, asked us very aggressively if we’d ever seen a man hit by ordinance. He had. We hadn’t. The military wasn’t recruiting eight-year-olds, so… yeah, no… no, sir. But TV dads of the time had the rough edges smoothed over. Ward could be stern, but fair as a parent. And as a breadwinner, he did well enough that June could stay at home and raise the boys, make meals, and look well-put-together in her housedress. When I was small my mother also wore housedresses as a stay-at-home mom. Like so many families (on TV and in life),

we were a single-income home. My father worked as a… uh, I really didn’t know at the time. As a kid, very little thought was given to what my—or any—dad did for a living. He went to work and then came home. On Fridays he’d come home with a treat. Maybe small bags of Planters Peanuts (which I still love) or a package of four Hershey bars for his five children (math, I guess, was not his strong suit). I did know that a grade school friend’s father was a vice president at Mattel Toys. That’s the kind of information that sticks in a kid’s head. Otherwise, I had zero idea about what other dads did for a living. As such it wasn’t odd in any way if I saw a TV dad who didn’t seem to have a specific job. This was more the case for sitcom dads. Adventure show dads usually had more defined work. Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene, Bonanza, 1959–1973), who outlived three wives (!) and was only 13 years older than his two oldest boys, was a rancher with a cook. Schuyler “Sky” King (Kirby Grant, Sky King, 1951–1962) was a father figure to his niece—life status of parents unknown—and a rancher with a plane. Lucas McCain (Chuck Conners, The Rifleman, 1958–1963) was a widower (another dead spouse, there will be more), single parent, and rancher with a rifle. (Quick family story about Chuck Conners: He winked at my wife Ruth’s namesake, Aunt Ruth, in the Market Basket grocery store in Palm Springs. We still talk about this at family gatherings.) RETROFAN

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I used to think that TV sitcom dads of the period worked at largely unspecific jobs. That’s certainly how it seemed to me as a young viewer and pretty much how I remembered it. But in fact decades of reruns pored over by devoted generations of fans and scholars have made it possible to find out what kind of work the best-known TV sitcom dads of the Sixties did. There was one fictional father who was a particularly tough nut to crack—I’m looking at you, Ward—but with millions of eyeballs having watched these shows no fact stays hidden for long. We begin our job search at the top of the heap with America’s favorite TV sitcom dads.

Best Fathers to Know

According to numerous Best TV Dad lists that crop up around every Father’s Day there are three television dads of the Sixties who always make even the shortest, most modern-programmingbiased line-up: Andy Taylor, Mike Brady, and Ward Cleaver. Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith, The Andy Griffith Show, 1960–1968) was a small-town sheriff, widower, and single dad. He was written to be patient, thoughtful, and competent. He wanted to raise his son to be prepared for life: “I don’t want him to be the kind of boy lookin’ for fights, but I don’t want him to run from one when he’s in the right.” It probably didn’t hurt that his son Opie (Ron Howard) was the best TV son ever. Andy did some of his finest parenting while at the Mayberry Courthouse or out and about during his workday. Mike Brady (Robert Reed, The Brady Bunch and spin-offs, 1969– 1974 and beyond) was certainly a bit cooler than the other dads, but not by much: “Greg, it may be the hip thing to call parents

Mike Brady (CENTER) is an architect and Andy Taylor (RIGHT) is a sheriff. What does Ward Cleaver (LEFT) do? 56

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by their first names, but around here, we’re still Mom and Dad.” Mike was an architect and had an additional office at home. His workplace did appear on camera and we even met his boss. The premise of The Brady Bunch is well known: a lovely lady and a man named Brady blend their two families together. It’s here that the whole dead spouse thing rears its ugly head again. Mike was a widower and his new wife Carol was originally supposed to be divorced, but that was still not okay for wholesome television family entertainment so her former husband was a corpse, too. Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont, Leave It to Beaver, 1957–1963) was, quite simply, a classic dad (I would go so far as to say he was the classic Fifties/Sixties dad), spouting classic TV dad advice: “There’s nothing old-fashioned about politeness.” He wore a suit, carried a briefcase, and went to a downtown office to… do… work. What kind of work was never exactly mentioned beyond maybe a reference to commissions being down or something. Basically, he was tired at the end of the day so we know he worked hard, but beyond that… pfft. So two out of these three top beloved TV dads had specific jobs and Ward, well, he had his own office in which to do whatever. In an interview for the Television Academy Foundation, the Beaver himself, Jerry Mathers, shared his theory about why we didn’t seem to know what his TV father did for a living. “I think what [the writers] wanted to do was maybe hold it off in case they wanted to write a show where he was an insurance salesman, a real estate salesman, who knows what.” Ward Cleaver did have a co-worker, Fred Rutherford (Richard Deacon, better known as Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show).

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Herman Munster digs graves, the Darrin Stephenses dig advertising.

He was father to Wally’s friend Lumpy. Fred’s familiar good-bye to Ward was, “Well, see ya ’round the salt mines.”

Office Space

Not only did most of our favorite TV dads of the period have reasonably specific jobs, some even had actual places of work that were a regular part of the show. My memory is that the aforementioned Andy Taylor was seen at work way more than he was at home. Since Opie often visited his father at the Courthouse with its jail cells, he could hang out with criminals and the town drunk (I loved Otis, but where was he getting his booze, wasn’t Mayberry in a dry county?) any time he felt like it. He almost certainly got an education not available to most kids. Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke, The Dick Van Dyke Show, 1961–1966) spent plenty of time at the office as the head writer of a comedy program with a rich set of characters. It’s true that Rob was a dad and had a home life, but I really didn’t give a fig for his son Ritchie, played by Larry Mathews (sorry, man), and more enjoyed the back-and-forth between Rob and Mary Tyler Moore as his wife Laura. I’m just going from memory, but of all the sitcoms from the Sixties Rob Petrie seemed to have the best work/life balance. Also, he was pretend-married to Mary Tyler Moore. Darrin Stephens (Dick York and Dick Sargent, Bewitched, 1964– 1972) was a reactive dad and spouse (with the Dick York version getting especially exasperated) whose work relationships—he was in advertising—were an important part of the show. He brought his work and his boss home with him often. Mostly, he deferred parenting duties to his (magical) wife Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery).

Nice Work If You Can Get It

If you’re noticing that most of the jobs in discussion are white collar, then you’ve been paying attention so far. I just live in

society, I don’t really understand it, but all of these white-collar workplaces strike me as being more aspirational for the majority of viewers than a reflection of their circumstances. Broadcast programmers must have noticed that, too, since by the Seventies blue-collar work was beginning to be more represented and divorce was no longer taboo. Maude Findley (Beatrice Arthur, Maude, 1972–1978), while most definitely not a blue-collar worker, had a divorced daughter living with her and her fourth husband (Maude’s first husband died and she divorced the other two—I guess that’s a kind of progress). There were TV dads who definitely had jobs, though the actual place of work was rarely if ever seen. Stephen Douglas (Fred MacMurray, My Three Sons, 1960–1972), another sweater-wearing, hang-around-the-house widower, was an aeronautical engineer. Henry Mitchell (Herbert Anderson, Dennis the Menace, 1959–1963) was an aerospace engineer, had an office, and a shared secretary. Bill Davis (Brain Keith, Family Affair, 1966–1971) was an engineer with a manservant, Mr. French (the completely wonderful Sebastian Cabot), who was English. The set-up behind Family Affair was especially grim as both parents of the kids in the show had to die so that comedy laughs could be had. Again, a reminder: a trail of dead parents was a more appealing set-up for a comedy program—to broadcast executives—than divorce. In the Sixties, I knew exactly one kid with a divorced parent (the Mattel exec) and none—not a one—with a deceased father or mother. Just sayin.’ And speaking of dead parents, widower Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, 1969–1972) had to raise his son Eddie (Brandon Cruz) completely on his own and run his magazine publishing company with only the help of his employees and a housekeeper, Mrs. Livingston (Miyoshi Umeki). Staying with the dead (or, more correctly, undead) theme, Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne, The Munsters, 1964–1966) was a gravedigger (a rare bluecollar TV dad job) and formerly deceased.

Stephen Douglas (LEFT) performs vital engineering work and Rob Petrie (RIGHT) writes.

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If we add in animated cartoon dads (and why not?), Fred Flintstone (The Flintstones and various incarnations, 1960–1966 and beyond) was a bronto-crane operator, another blue-collar occupation. George Jetson (The Jetsons and various incarnations, 1962–1963 and beyond) had a two-day one-hour-a-day work “week” turning a Referential Universal Digital Indexer off and on. I have no earthly idea what category such a stupid job could be put into.

Repeat Fathers

Watching television in the Sixties meant watching repeats from the Fifties, especially if you sat in front of the Boob Tube as much as I did. Dads from Fifties had jobs too. Danny Williams (Danny Thomas, Make Room for Daddy a.k.a. The Danny Thomas Show, 1953–1964) was a nightclub performer, Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz, I Love Lucy, 1951–1957) was a nightclub performer, and Jim Anderson (Robert Young, Father Knows Best, 1954–1960) was in insurance. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–1966) began as a radio program (first broadcast in 1944), then a television show, with the two running concurrently for a couple of years. Ozzie Nelson (played by Ozzie Nelson) wandered around the house in a sweater sounding somewhat befuddled and handing out dad advice but never leaving to go to any kind of job. However, Ozzie Nelson, the character, did have a job. Prior to the TV show a movie, Here Comes the Nelsons (1952), served as kind of a television pilot. In the film, Ozzie was an advertising executive whose job focus was ladies’ private undies. This was never followed up on the TV show and the job was never mentioned again. Because the real Ozzie Nelson was a former bandleader who starred in a television show, viewers surmised that his television character with the same name did the same work. It was an easy assumption to make, even though early episodes made a point of informing audiences that the Nelson

Tom Corbett (LEFT) lost his wife and found a show. Bill Davis (RIGHT) lost a brother and sister-in-law but kept a man-servant. 58

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family—Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky Nelson [see RetroFan #15—ed.]—were just playing completely and utterly unrelated characters named Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky Nelson. Further compounding the mixed signals, the television Nelsons’ home exterior was the actual Nelsons’ home exterior. The interior set of the Nelson’s home was designed after the Nelsons’ actual home interior. Granddaughter Tracy Nelson has said that TV Ozzie was actually a lawyer, which is fine if it was ever mentioned on the show. With The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet being one of the longest-running sitcoms of all time at 435 episodes (beaten only by The Simpsons with 639 episodes and counting!), I don’t feel like watching them all to try and find out. Given the popularity and longevity of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, it is likely the source of the cliché of the TV dad without a known job who is

WARD CLEAVER, A BIOGRAPHY Ward Cleaver was born in 1910 and hails from Shaker Heights, Ohio. He father was a farmer. Nothing is known of his mother. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Construction Battalions (better known as the Seebees). He graduated from “state college” with a philosophy major. It is also where he met June Evelyn Bronson, who would later become his wife and mother to their two boys, Wallace and Theodore. Ward regularly went to an office where he worked. He enjoyed golf and was handy with an outdoor grill. He attended church. He chewed gum but only once. He died in 1977. He was 67. Ward may have been a fictional character, but many of his appealing qualities came from the second actor to portray him, Hugh Beaumont (Max Showalter was Ward in the Leave It to Beaver pilot episode). Beaumont was born February 16, 1909 in Lawrence, Kansas. His father was a traveling salesman. He was a conscientious objector during WWII but served as a medic. His film career began in 1940 and he moved to television by 1950. After Leave It to Beaver ended Beaumont continued to work in film and television. He was also an ordained minister in the Methodist church. He had two sons and a daughter. He died in 1982 at the age of 73.

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Ward’s home office was most often used to have serious talks or phone calls.

always home. One wag pointed out that Ozzie only left the house for ice cream. However, if we take the whole of the Ozzie and Harriet radio-film-television career as canon—and that’s what I feel like doing—then Ozzie was an advertising executive with a distinct specialty in women’s undergarments.

What About Ward?

So… Ward Cleaver. Is he truly a TV dad with a job of unknown specificity? Yeah, I believe with a pretty high level of confidence that the exact nature of his work was never explicitly presented on the program. And the internet backs me up on this (there are a lot of Leave It to Beaver fans out there). However (there’s always a “however”), an episode of Leave It to Beaver was broadcast that gives us not only a look of Ward at work but a solid—some might

say definitive—clue to his field of endeavor. “The Merchant Marine” was episode 30 of the fifth season of Leave It to Beaver and first broadcast on April 23, 1962. The situation creating the comedy begins with Wally getting a talking-to by Ward in the den. The den is also Ward’s home office, but it is only ever used as a place for a good dressing-down or making a phone call. In this episode, the mad-dad bit happens off-camera while we see the Beaver help June with dinner dishes. Beaver is worried for Wally’s personal safety, but in fact Ward is never seen yelling at the boys or smacking them in the head. One very endearing quality of the show was its low-key nature. But in this episode, Ward admits that he “gave it” to Wally “pretty good.” He looks very honked-off when he enters the kitchen seeking a postbeatdown cup of coffee. “Why are you staring at me?” he sharply demands of the Beaver (jeepers), who gets the heck out the kitchen, but quick. Beaver finds Wally unhappy as well. This is actually worse than anything I experienced as a kid. My dad was not a yeller or a spanker in my memory. If we’d get out of hand he’d say to my mom (whether she was nearby or not), “Kay, get my belt,” and we’d double-time quick to shut down our antics. It worked every time until my second-youngest brother Neil pointed out that dad was already wearing his belt, didn’t need Mom to get it, and never hit us anyway. That forever ended a bit of fondly remembered parental theater. What leads us to Ward’s office is a mix-up (of course). June and Ward think that Wally wants to join the Merchant Marines after getting in such horrific trouble. They think

SINGLE MOMS WITH JOBS In matters of being a breadwinner it definitely was a man’s world for TV comedies in the Sixties. However, there are always exceptions, and, yes, both shows are about widows. Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet, Petticoat Junction, 1963– 1970) ran the Shady Rest Hotel with her three daughters. Petticoat Junction was the first victim of the Rural Purge that removed all of the country-character-centric shows then on the three networks to make room for more sophisticated fare (see RetroFan #15). Julia Baker (Diahann Carroll, Julia, 1968–1971) lost her husband in the Vietnam War, which was a storyline more torn from the headlines than any other show mentioned thus far. Julia had one son and worked as a nurse not in a hospital but in a doctor’s office at an aerospace firm. Rare for a show of the period there was not a laugh track (one was added after its original network run). Rarer still, Julia was a non-servant black female lead. RETROFAN

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The proof.

Ward’s rough takedown really shook up Wally (it annoyed him, mostly). Ward is really bothered by this while at work and his co-worker, Fred Rutherford, hears the woeful tale and offers up some unnecessary advice. The big gag is that it is Fred’s son, Lumpy, who wants to join the Merchant Marines because it is his father that’s so, so unreasonable (I’ve now forgotten what about but Lumpy probably deserved the punishment). While the two are talking in Ward’s smallish private office, a revealing detail on the office wall can be seen. Two framed documents. The smaller of the two can’t be read but appears to be a diploma and the larger more visible one says, and I quote: “The Stock Exchange, Certificate of Membership, Ward Cleaver.” The what? Beaver’s dad is a stockbroker! It may not be a fact confirmed by word in the show and viewers of the day could have blinked and missed it, but somebody with the program decided that, sure, Ward sold penny stocks or something. Mystery maybe kind of solved. So, yeah, that’s that. But one fresh thing did puzzle me while watching this episode. The Leave It to Beaver opening title sequence produced another conundrum while introducing our main characters. In this version of the opening credits, the Cleaver menfolk are seen doing yard work. Ward is trimming the bushes, Wally is mowing the lawn, and Beaver is… also mowing the lawn. Mom brings out refreshments and all are smiling. So… wait, the Cleavers are a single-car family but they have two lawnmowers? I don’t recall that being a middle-class aspiration. 60

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What Did You Do In the Office, Daddy?

All this talk of dad jobs prompted me to ask my adult children if they were aware of what I did job-wise when they were kids. My oldest, Edward, remembered that I was an artist who made comic books. He thought that was pretty cool. My youngest, Kate, said that she saw me move things around on the computer to make books and magazines. Both correct answers. She also recalled that in 7th grade some of the other students wanted to know if I worked in the fields (no doubt due to our Hispanic surname). A reminder that we don’t live in TV Land and all the kids aren’t Opie and the Beaver. Ward Cleaver, where are you when we need you? A special shout-out to total internet stranger and eagle-eyed Straight Dope (straightdope.com), message-board contributor, us66man, for noticing the Stock Exchange certificate on Ward’s office wall. Where would I be without you? Nowhere, that’s where. So I sincerely thank you and I don’t mind saying it because there’s nothing old-fashioned about politeness. SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a Retro Explorer operating from his Southern Californiabased Secret Sanctum. He is a writer (more or less), artist (like, for this article), and graphic designer (you’re soaking in it). Check out his Instagram thing, won’t you, at instagram/ scottsaav/

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Rankin/Bass Productions Historian Examines the Cult Film’s Growing Popularity by Rick Goldschmidt After writing a 2011 book and multiple magazine articles about Rankin/Bass Productions’ Mad Monster Party? [yes, officially with a question mark—ed.], and after co-producing a few related DVD and one Blu-ray releases, I’ve observed that the monster-bash kid’s film is gaining popularity as time goes on. In case you haven’t yet discovered it, Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party? (MMP) was a 1967 stop-motion movie, originally a theatrical release from Embassy Pictures, that gathered “The Worldwide Organization of Monsters” on the Isle of Evil and featured the voices of Boris Karloff, Allen Swift, Gale Garnett, and Phyllis Diller. Karloff played Baron von Frankenstein, joined by take-offs of classic screen monsters: Frankenstein’s Monster, a.k.a. “Fang”; Count Dracula, a.k.a. “Drac”; the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a.k.a. “Quasimodo”; plus the Mummy, the Werewolf, the Creature [from the Black Lagoon], the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the King Kong-like “IT,” and supporting characters Yetch and Skeleton, as well as humans Felix Flanken (the Baron’s nephew) and Francesca. Turner Classic Movies now shows MMP in primetime, instead of the wee hours of the morning as it originally did. DVD and BluRay sales have picked up over the years. MMP is a Halloween must-see for me (and others) as I hand out candy to neighborhood kids.

In MMP’s initial release, as Rankin/Bass composer/conductor Maury Laws said, “It was snuck out” into theaters beginning on March 8, 1967. It was actually shown over a three-year period in Saturday kiddie matinees through 1967–1969, receiving its official review in the New York Times in early 1969.

An Invitation to the Party

After the premiere of Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [see RetroFan #12] on the NBC General Electric Fantasy hour on December 6th, 1964, the phone at Rankin/Bass Productions in New York City was ringing off the hook. “People were calling us up saying, ‘Could we have one of those?’ ‘Could you make us similar?,’ etc.,” said producer Arthur Rankin, Jr. The TV special caught the attention of legendary film producer Joseph E. Levine and in May of 1965, a three-motion-picture deal was signed between Rankin/ Bass Productions and Levine’s company Embassy Pictures on New York’s Sixth Avenue in the Time/Life building. Arthur Rankin, Jr., Jules Bass, and Maury Laws attended the luncheon/signing. The trio of Levine-produced Rankin/Bass films that would follow were The Daydreamer (1966), a mix of live action and puppets based upon the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen; the traditionally

(ABOVE) Some of the creepy, kooky cast from Rankin/Bass Productions’ 1967 cult classic, Mad Monster Party?, from theater lobby cards. Courtesy of Heritage. © Miser Bros Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives.

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animated The Wacky World of Mother Goose The Daydreamer is seeing a BluRay (1967); and the stop-motion monster-bash release from Kino Lorber in 2021 with my Mad Monster Party? (1967). commentary as well as film historian Lee Levine had produced many low-budget Gambin. The film is actually quite good for Mad Monster Party? films prior to this, including Santa Claus many reasons, including a star-studded Voice Cast Conquers the Martians [see RetroFan #12] cast, but one can see what probably ` Boris Karloff: Baron Boris von and some Hercules films. According to disappointed Levine. The main character, Frankenstein Maury Laws, “I know Levine wanted to up Chris Andersen, lets his friends down ` Allen Swift: Felix Flanken, his game and produce something on the repeatedly through the film, which causes Dracula, Fang, Werewolf, level of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. He was the film to not be the happy funfest of the Quasimodo, Invisible Man, Jekyll looking for Rankin/Bass’ The Daydreamer typical Rankin/Bass TV specials or the Walt and Hyde, IT, Yetch, Skeleton, to be that picture. When he saw the Disney films. Visually and creatively, it is Chef Machiavelli, Mr. Kronkite, finished [Daydreamer] film along with The a success, but psychologically, it may have other supporting characters Wacky World of Mother Goose, that sort of been a disappointment. ` Gale Garnett: Francesca soured the deal and Mad Monster Party? It is too bad that Mad Monster Party? ` Phyllis Diller: The Monster’s Mate didn’t have a chance [to receive Levine’s wasn’t the first of the trio released. enthusiastic and full support]. Previously, Rankin/Bass Productions © Miser Bros Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives. “[The record release of] our had never really made a Halloween TV soundtrack for the film was shelved, special. So much hard work and planning went into this until [Percepto Records’] CD release of film that I am sure they felt they had done all they could it in 1998,” Laws said. “Robert Goulet with monsters. Boris Karloff’s work for the film was actually sang our theme song for The performed October 6th and 7th of 1965. He also appeared Daydreamer on The Ed Sullivan Show. in The Daydreamer. Later he would go on to do an awardThe plan was to release the film winning voice performance for Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch directly after that, but Levine was so Stole Christmas. It took years for Karloff’s performance in disappointed, it didn’t happen.” The soundtrack for Mad Monster Party? was quite a departure for composer Laws and lyricist Bass, a musical journey into the world of jazz, and it stands out as one of the greatest in the Rankin/Bass catalog. “The movie was sort of a spoof, so for the theme, sung by Ethyl Ennis (also a RCA Victor recording artist), we sort of spoofed James Bond’s Goldfinger for fun,” said Laws.

FA ST FAC TS

(ABOVE) LEFT TO RIGHT: An unidentified Levine associate, Arthur Rankin, Jr., Jules Bass, Joseph E. Levine, Maury Laws, and another unidentified Levine associate. (LEFT) Rankin working on Mad Monster Party? in his New York office in 1965, with the unused Jack Davis poster art on his desk. (RIGHT) The voice actor behind most of the monsters, Allen Swift. His voice was also familiar to RetroFans in The Howdy Doody Show, as the original Burger King, and in other Rankin/Bass holiday TV specials such as his role of Santa Claus in ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. © 2012 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives.

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Mad Monster Party? to be recognized. His daughter, Sara Karloff, and I became good friends. She didn’t see MMP in the theaters and wasn’t familiar with it until I sent her a copy. Since then, we have appeared together at the Chiller Theatre Toy, Model, and Film Expo in Parsippany, New Jersey, and I even dug up her dad’s MMP contract!

(LEFT) MMP movie poster, featuring Frank Frazetta art. Courtesy of Heritage. (BELOW) Detail from the original, unused poster for Mad Monster Party?, featuring art by character designer Jack Davis. © 2018 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt.

Putting the MAD in Mad Monster Party?

I actually learned of Mad Monster Party? in the early Seventies when watching a washed-out print on a small Chicago TV station, Channel 44. I later learned that the film first appeared in the Chicago television market on WGN-TV. Most fans did not see MMP at a Saturday matinee in the theaters, although some did and remember it fondly. Like other Rankin/Bass Productions, Mad Monster Party? was primarily discovered on television. I am often asked in interviews: What drew you to Rankin/Bass? How did you become the Rankin/Bass historian/biographer? I always talk about my dear, late friend, cartoonist Jack Davis (1924–2016), who actually pointed me toward my professional relationship with Rankin/Bass. My degree is in art/Illustration, and beginning in the early Nineties Jack and I would talk about the business by phone. I knew he designed Mad Monster Party? and I always loved the film, so I asked Jack about what happened to his working relationship with Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass. He said he was still doing work for Arthur periodically. In fact, Jack designed a sequel for Mad Monster Party? [the traditionally animated cartoon Mad Mad Mad Monsters, shown in the September 23, 1972 installment of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie—ed.]. Arthur was trying to launch an MMP follow-up in CGI called Mad, Mad Monster Reunion. I felt that Rankin/Bass Productions’ work should be preserved in a book. Jack Davis told me to get ahold of his fellow MAD magazine cartoonist Paul

Coker, Jr., which I did, and Paul gave me Arthur Rankin’s Bermuda phone number. I called up Arthur and said there should be a book. He said, “Send me two chapters!” I did, and the rest is history, with The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass (Miser Bros. Press) first being published in 1997. As an artist, the look of a film has to really grab me. Jack Davis’ Mad Monster Party? designs grabbed everyone, including Jim Henson, who based his Muppet character “The Count” off of Jack’s MMP Dracula design, complete with a monocle (something Jack attributed to Dracula). I noticed all of the incidental characters very early on and saw Jack’s trademark bird in the old lady’s hat in the drug store, etc. MMP’s Francesca is busty, like all of Jack’s movie poster women. The film had Jack Davis written all over it. Later, I got ahold of Jack’s unused poster art, which I like the best, and made it available to the public. The movie poster art that was used for the film was a series of Frank Frazetta roughs that were published Comedienne Phyllis Diller, voice of the Monster’s Mate, became friends with Rankin/Bass historian and biographer Rick Goldschmidt.

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(TOP) Francesca is unimpressed with Yetch. © 1997 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives. (ABOVE) Recording artist Gale Garnett, the voice of Francesca, as seen on the cover of her 1965 RCA Victor album The Many Faces of Gale Garnett. Also an actress, Garnett can be found in episodes of television’s Bonanza, Hawaiian Eye, The Real McCoys, and Have Gun, Will Travel. (Ethyl Ennis, singer of MMP’s title track, was also an RCA Victor artist.) © RCA Victor. Courtesy of Rick Goldschmidt.

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AND HERE’S TO YOU, MISTER LEVINE! Executive Producer Joseph E. Levine (1905–1987) had a busy 1966 and 1967! Besides executive-producing the three Rankin/Bass films during those years, he produced 13 more. A few were surprise hits, including The Producers and The Graduate, with modest Levine budgets. One film, Nevada Smith (released through Paramount), was co-executive-produced by an uncredited Steve McQueen. Nevada Smith benefited from a much larger budget than other standard Levine fare. As the author recently reviewed Steve McQueen’s body of work, he discovered Rankin/Bass writer Romeo Muller derived the name of his sheep in Rankin/ Bass’ The Little Drummer Boy (1968) from “BaaBaa,” a third-season episode of McQueen’s TV Western, Wanted Dead or Alive. Levine was so busy with films during this period that one could easily see how Mad Monster Party? got lost in the shuffle.

unbeknownst to him at the time. Frazetta saw a one-sheet hanging at a movie theater and made a hot phone call to the producer to get paid. When Arthur Rankin paid me a visit in 1997, he signed my linenbacked Frazetta one-sheet and thought it was Jack Davis’ art. I believe Arthur wanted to use Jack’s art, which he had very early on in the project, when the project was called “The Monster Movie” (at one point, the film was also known as “Mad Monster Rally,” the title used in early storyboards), but Joseph E. Levine made a last-minute change. Years later, a more-finished color piece from Frazetta turned up, and it is included in my book. Arthur Rankin and I shared a love for Jack Davis’ art. Arthur was the art director at ABC television in the Fifties and knew talent when he saw it. Len Korobkin wrote the script for MMP, and Jack Davis recommended his pal Harvey Kurtzman (1924– 1993) to Arthur to punch up the script with one-liners with his typical MAD-type humor including “Veeblefetzers” in the drug store. I believe the title of the film was a suggestion from Harvey to sort of take a jab at MAD, which he had departed by then and was a bit resentful towards. Even the question mark after the “Mad Monster Party” title had to have come from Harvey. I did interview Harvey Kurtzman for my book, but he couldn’t remember much about the history and at the time was suffering from Parkinson’s. “I turned in the entire script and I never met Harvey Kurtzman,” said Len Korobkin. “Some have said that Forest Ackerman [of Famous Monsters of Filmland acclaim] had a hand in the script, but that is not true. In fact, I was called back to add some scenes, because Levine wanted the picture to

be longer. This is where the chef scene and the zombie birdmen with Yetch came from.” If I have heard any complaints about the film, it is that Mad Monster Party? is too long and somewhat boring, especially in the scenes Len was asked to add. Arthur Rankin thought so, too, and years later made his own edit of the film for VHS and gave me those deleted scenes. But I am such a monster fan, that I love it all. The beautiful Bass/Laws score brings it all together. For me, the only other monster-bash film that rivals this one is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I don’t think any monster animated film even comes close. When I called Phyllis Diller (1917–2012) up to interview her for my book The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass, you could hear the excitement in her voice! She absolutely loved the film. “I got to sing a song! Ha-ha!” said Diller. “I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and we had a rented piano brought in and I learned that wonderful song, ‘You’re Different.’” Phyllis was an accomplished musician and artist, and we shared our musical bond and became friends. She did another interview for me, for a 1999 documentary hosted by Billy West for the VHS release of the film. When I coproduced the MMP soundtrack CD in 1998, I ran copies of it over to Phyllis’ agent Milt Suchin’s office. She was blown away by it. She wrote me a very complimentary letter about my Mad Monster Party? book as well. She was a big fan of Rankin/Bass Productions and felt the MMP film captured all of her trademarks. Allen Swift voiced all of the monsters and incidental characters and Boris’ nephew Felix Flankin. RCA Victor recording artist Gale Garnett was the voice of Francesca. Allen and I really hit it off when we did our interviews for my first book. He appeared

in many Rankin/Bass Productions including ’Twas the Night the actual screen-used Animagic figures from Rankin/Bass Before Christmas and the Rankin/Bass-produced off-Broadway Productions. They were featured in a Japanese exhibit, and I play called A Month of Sundays. He based all the voices in Mad included photos in my book. As I began this article, I recalled Monster Party? on famous screen actors, ones he an episode of the Japanese TV series Princess impersonated as a youngster. Felix was based on Comet (1967–1968) that features a dragon from Jimmy Stewart, Yetch was based on Peter Lorre, Rankin/Bass’ The New Adventures of Pinocchio etc. I asked Allen to be in the Mad Monster Party? and a talking IT (King Kong) from Rankin/Bass’ documentary for Lion’s Gate, which he graciously Mad Monster Party? who ends up saving the day! did but died shortly after. “I had so much fun Princess Comet features a young girl who comes doing all of the voices in Mad Monster Party?,” said to Earth to look for her lost Prince. Kong has Swift. “It was like going to work to play and I got much more screen time in this and is quite funny paid for it.” Gale Garnett eventually moved to as he talks too! Tad Mochinaga animated this Canada and became an author. Her most famous and saved both puppets, which are featured in recording was “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” which my book Frosty the Snowman’s 50th Anniversary © Miser Bros Press/Rick she also wrote; it was performed by many famous Scrapbook. IT really gets a workout in this episode Goldschmidt Archives. crooners of the time. of Princess Comet and I am surprised he survived Many fans ask: What happened to the in such good condition. He is about 22 inches tall Animagic figures used in the production? In April of 2019, I (INSET), about the same size as the Abominable Snow Monster was featured in the premiere of MeTV’s Collector’s Call with from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (Thanks to my friend Mark Lisa Whelchel, and a 30-minute episode was dedicated to my Caballero for refreshing my memory on this!) YouTube has the collection. Arthur Rankin, Jr. Spanish-dubbed version, Senorita Cometa, posted. I can only gave me a wood-carved Fang confirm the existence of IT in Japan from Mad Monster Party?, but and Dracula Salad Fork and it is very possible others survived in the collections of the actual Spoon set (LEFT) that was made animators. for him as a gift by the Animagic Speaking of puppets, when I wrote my Rudolph the Red-Nosed puppet makers during the Reindeer article for RetroFan #12, it was before auctioneer Profiles making of the film. He actually in History auctioned sent it to me as a Thanksgiving off the Animagic present around 1999. This set figures of Rudolph the was appraised on the TV show Red-Nosed Reindeer in the ballpark of $25,000. As and Santa Claus in far as I know, these are the only November of 2020 for Mad Monster Party?-made figures to survive in the United States. I $368,000. I assisted believe many of them may have survived in Japan. with the very cool When I wrote my book The Making of Santa Claus is Comin’ to catalog for this auction. Town and The Daydreamer (Miser Bros. Press, 2018), I discovered From 2006–2008 I that the late director/animator Tad Mochinaga kept many of appeared at shows with

IT’S ABOUT TIME

retro Animation

Before the three-picture deal with Joseph E. Levine, in 1965 Rankin/Bass Productions (known as Videocraft International at the time) released its first feature film, the stop-motion Willy McBean and His Magic Machine, through Magna Pictures Distribution Corp. Jack Davis also did the poster art for this film, and Len Korobkin was given credit for Additional Dialogue. Korobkin had written episodes of Videocraft’s syndicated TV series The New Adventures of Pinocchio (stop motion, 1960–1961) and Tales of the Wizard of Oz (traditional animation, 1961). Willy was conceived by Antony Peters, credited for Continuity Design. This film was shot simultaneously with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, with many of the same voice actors, but with some additional actors added, like James Doohan (Star Trek). Peters’ lettering, well known from Rudolph, was also used in the titles of this film. Len Korobkin died April 26, 2021. This article is dedicated to his memory.

Dell Comics produced this 1967 one-shot movie adaptation (without the title’s question mark on the cover logo, although it appears on the story inside). The interiors are written and drawn in traditional comic style by uncredited creators. In 1999, Black Bear Press also released a Mad Monster Party? comic adaptation. Four issues were planned, but only one was published. Courtesy of Heritage.

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retro Animation

these puppets when they were owned by my friend Kevin Kriess from Time and Space Toys. The puppets stayed in my home when we took them on television news shows and to the Brookfield Zoo and bookstores. It wasn’t until recently that I realized these are the publicity-photo and NBC Display Animagic figures from New York and not the screen used figures that were featured in the Tad Mochinaga display. Tad’s Santa has a shorter beard and the beard is decaying in two lines on the sides of his mouth. The same lines and beard you can clearly see in the actual TV special. The publicity Santa has a much rounder and larger beard, something you never see in the TV special. I learn something every day as the Rankin/Bass Productions historian!

The Party Isn’t Over

As stated earlier, Mad Monster Party? is growing in popularity. I have heard raves about it from many movie producers over the years. A few even came to a Mad Monster Party? event held in October 2012, at the Van Eaton Galleries in Van Nuys, California. At one time, Frankie Avalon’s and Annette Funicello’s families took out an option on a remake, and later, Variety reported that the writers of the film Analyze This were writing an MMP treatment. Over the years I have assisted with several products based on the Mad Monster Party? characters. First there was a Boris Karloff statue sculpted by Tony Cipriano and licensed by Karloff Enterprises. Many of those sold from rankinbass.com, when the internet was expanding in the late Nineties. Funko made a series of eight plastic figures that I assisted with around 2009. Diamond Toys Produced three figures sculpted by Tony Cipriano again around 2011. The line featured Boris, Dracula, and Fang, with accessories. The problem with this line was that if you removed the figures from the packaging, their plastic legs didn’t support the bodies and they leaned over. Despite this, it was a popular line which many fans wanted to continue, but it never did. Trick or Treat Studios produced a series of six Mad Monster Party? Halloween masks, which included Yetch, a Zombie band member, the Creature, Uncle Boris, Fang, and Dracula. I display these at all of my appearances and the fans love them! In October of 2017, my friend, artist Shag (Josh Agle), released a beautful Mad Monster Party? print, and I appeared at both his West Hollywood and Palm Springs stores. The stores were packed with fans and we even brought along some actual Animagic figures to display. Mad Monster Party? music composer Maury Laws and the author. © 2008 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives.

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One of Goldschmidt’s out-of-print and highly sought-after MMP masks.

Don Duga, the storyboard artist on Mad Monster Party?, was very helpful to me with my books. He saved the Jack Davis designs and some of his storyboard art, materials that Rankin/Bass had long discarded. Don taught animation at the School of Visual arts in New York until computers took over about ten years ago. When my first Rankin/ Bass book was released in 1997, Don and Arthur Rankin spoke at an event at the School of Visual Arts and signed books. Don really enjoyed the MMP musical sequences and remembers the sequence for the Mummy as a favorite. “That was actually choreographed by a famous dancer named ‘Killer’ Joe Piro, who was famous for doing the modern dances at the Peppermint Lounge in New York,” said Duga. Mad Monster Party? has always been a favorite project of his, and he continued to do art based on the film for years. The animation in the film was directed by Tadahito “Tad” Mochinaga. While Jules Bass was given the screen credit of director and Arthur Rankin the producer credit, Arthur was the only one of the two who visited Japan, where the stop-motion animation was produced, to oversee things. The puppets were made by Kyoto Kita and Pinchan Ichiro Komuro. I can’t overemphasize the importance of the work of this Japanese crew. There is a charm with Rankin/Bass Animagic that can’t be replicated in CGI or any other forms of animation. This is the unique quality everyone identifies with Rankin/Bass Productions, a very believable universe of stop-motion puppets that each have a personality of their own. I am hopeful that in the near future we will see a new, higherresolution version of the film, released by Kino Lorber on BluRay. I am ready to lay down the commentary with Lee Gambin. I think if the film can continue to get national exposure on Turner Classic Movies, particularly if they screen it at Halloween in primetime, that will help immensely. I believe Mad Monster Party? will continue to bring families together in front of the television for many more Halloweens in the future! Unless otherwise noted, images accompanying this article are courtesy of Rick Goldscmidt/Miser Bros. Press. Miser Bros. Press co-founder RICK GOLDSCHMIDT is the historian/ biographer for Rankin/Bass Productins and the author of several books on the revered holiday films and other movies produced by the company. www.miserbros.com and www.enchantedworldofrankinbass. blogspot.com

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

Monster Squad

drak pack by Andy Mangels

The concept of history’s greatest monsters walking, creeping, and howling in the shadows of the night… together… may have been mostly a construct of Hollywood, rather than scary folklore or novels and pulp writing, but the topic of monsters mashing together was popular long before the 1962 novelty song “Monster Mash” delighted listeners. As we face another Halloween, lets open the crypt door and peer through the cobwebs to see how Saturday mornings were invaded yet again by Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man… in Monster Squad and Drak Pack!

Monster Mash-Up History

As first discussed in RetroFan #2’s spotlight on Groovie Goolies (check elsewhere to find how to get back issues), three monsters reigned supreme in the realm of cinema horror. Immortalized onscreen by Universal Studios in feature films between 1931 and 1941, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man—as portrayed by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr., respectively— thrilled audiences alongside other creatures and spooks such as the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, the Bride of Frankenstein, and more. RETROFAN

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

The “creature features” were a huge hit for World War II-era producers at its head were Raymond S. Allen, William P. D’Angelo, and post-war audiences, and Universal soon created a “shared and Harvey Bullock. universe” for sequels and spin-offs. The first team-up out of the Allen had been a writer in Hollywood since 1956, toiling on gate was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942), followed by House scripts for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Andy Griffith Show, The of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), which brought Danny Thomas Show, a 1964 Archie TV film based on the comics, The together into the same film Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Flintstones, Hogan’s Heroes, and Love, American Style. D’Angelo cut and others. The comedic film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein his teeth in the Sixties as a writer, director, and producer for such (1948) showcased a monster romp, with the monsters facing off series as No Time for Sergeants, Love, American Style, and Room 222, against two of filmdom’s most popular screen comedians. though his biggest success was as an associate producer for the Although Universal moved away from the monster films, mammoth hit series, Batman. Speaking of Gotham City’s superin England, Hammer Films staked their own series of films hero, Harvey Bullock is the name of one of the Gotham P.D.’s most utilizing the same characters, often starring Peter Cushing and famous characters, but it’s also the name of a writer and series Christopher Lee, among others. The Universal features were creator since 1954, who worked on The Real McCoys, Rango, Gomer offered to television stations in a 1957 syndication package from Pyle USMC, and many Screen Gems, and the monsters were now enjoyed by kids, safe in of the same shows that Harvey their homes. Raymond Allen wrote for. Bullock. In August 1962, Bobby “Boris” Pickett released a novelty song As D’Angelo-Bullockcalled “Monster Mash,” in which he mimicked the voices of Boris Allen (DBA) Productions, Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The song quickly shot up to #1 on the the trio produced five Billboard music charts. Monsters were now verging on being both other live-action Saturday kid-friendly and funny, instead of nightmare-inducing. morning shows for NBC From September 1964 to May 1966, CBS aired the sitcom The mornings: Run, Joe, Run Munsters (see RetroFan #2 and 6), which featured a family with a (1974–1975), Westwind Frankenstein-like father, a vampire wife and vampire father-in(1975–1976), McDuff, The law, and a werewolf son. Concurrently with The Munsters, ABC Talking Dog (1976), Big aired a similar macabre sitcom called The Addams Family (1964John, Little John (1976), 1966), though its characters were based on the morbidly funny and The Red Hand Gang humor of cartoonist Charles Addams rather than (1977). Although this horror monster tropes. As detailed elsewhere in output would seem this issue, Embassy Pictures released Mad Monster to rival Filmation and Party?, a stop-motion animated musical feature film Krofft for live-action from Rankin-Bass which featured their own version shows, none of the DBA of almost every major movie creature as part of a Productions shows were “Worldwide Organization of Monsters.” With Aurora terribly popular, and monster model kits being advertised to kids in several didn’t even air all William P. comics and in the pages of the pun-filled newsstand of their episodes prior to D’Angelo. magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland (1958–2017), cancellation. horror was now friendly. The credited creator Filmation Associates created the first Saturday of Monster Squad was morning show to capitalize solely on the idea of the Stanley Ralph Ross, a monsters working together, creating the Groovie talented writer that had Goolies animated series for CBS in September 1970 (see RetroFan #2). In that show, Drac, Frankie, Wolfie, and their Stanley ghoulish family and friends haunted Horrible Hall and had wacky Ralph Ross. slapstick adventures and told groan-inducing “spooky” jokes. CBS ran Groovie Goolies through Fall 1972, and again, in late 1975 to Spring 1976. Filmation even shot a live-action segment of Drac, Frankie, and Wolfie for the December 16, 1972 ABC special The Saturday Superstar Movie: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies. Neither the success of Groovie Goolies—nor the perpetually syndicated The Munsters and The Addams Family—were lost on NBC, nor with a newer Saturday-morning production studio…

Children of the Night… The Creation of Monster Squad

Whatever its suspicious relationship to past monster-mash-up series was, Monster Squad was assembled in 1976 by D’AngeloBullock-Allen Productions, which was a relative newcomer to providing content for Saturday morning television. The trio of 68

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

(LEFT TO RIGHT) The stars of Monster Squad: Fred Grandy as Walt, Michael Lane as Frank N. Stein, Henry Polic II as Dracula, and Buck Kartalian as Bruce W. Wolf. © D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions.

also developed and written ABC’s live-action Batman series, and ABC’s Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter, among others. The plot for Ross’ new series was easily explained by narration in the opening credits: “My name’s Walt. I work as night watchman here at Fred’s Wax Museum to put myself through criminology college. It used to be very lonely, until recently, when I plugged in my Crime Computer. Suddenly, oscillating vibrations brought to life three legendary monsters: Dracula, the Werewolf, and Frankenstein! Creatures hated and feared for centuries, now determined to make up for their past misbehaving by fighting crime wherever they find it. Together, we’re the Monster Squad!” Why Walt had created a prototype Crime Computer, which he hides in a large Egyptian sarcophagus that is surrounded by an exhibit of monsters, is never quite clear. Although Walt often

stayed behind to monitor crime from a variety of crazy supervillains—who would apparently go unchallenged if the newly christened Monster Squad didn’t exist—the three monsters would keep in touch with him through communicators, using the codenames “Chamber of Horrors” for Walt, “Nightflyer” for Dracula, “Green Machine” for Frank, and “Furball” for werewolf Bruce. Travelling to crime scenes in their all-black Monster Van, the creepy commandos used their respective super-powers to battle enemies who always had a goofy pair of henchmen with them. In a career-spanning interview with EmmyTVLegends.org in February 1998, Stanley Ralph Ross recalled, “I wrote every single story for that show. What happened was, I wanted to get all the scripts done at once. I wrote all the stories on a weekend. Bill RETROFAN

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

[D’Angelo] took me down to his place in Newport on a Friday, and I wrote through Sunday night. I wrote like 70-some-odd pages over the weekend. Now we brought in the best writers we could find, guys who wouldn’t normally write those kind of shows… Sherwood Schwartz’s brother Al Schwartz, Chuck McCann, just a bunch of different people who you wouldn’t normally get to do this. And the deal was, all they had to do was write a first draft, and I would do all the second drafts… I was writing it for teenagers, kids 13 and up, because it was very hip. It was a really hip show.” Continuing, Ross said, “I wrote the beginning and the end. The first drafts are the hard part—called ‘scratch paper writing,’ the blank paper writing. So, as long as they adhered to my stories… What happened was, I had a stack of stories, and after they watched the pilot, I said, ‘Okay, guys, here are 13 stories. Each of you pick one. It doesn’t matter make a difference which one you pick. They’re all the same. Just pick one. Follow it exactly as I have written it… Follow it scene by scene. Do not deviate.’ Only one guy deviated, and the rest of them were terrific.” The stars of Monster Squad were mostly character actors of the era. Youthful-looking Fred Grandy, who had appeared previously on Love, American Style and other sitcoms, was cast as Walt. In a 2019 interview on the Reel Talk with the Hollywood Kid Podcast, Grandy recalled of Monster Squad that the show was “one of my favorite jobs, to tell you the truth. First of all, this was the brainchild of a guy named Billy D’Angelo, who had produced the Batman series with Adam West. And it was very similar. We had one set and they just repainted it every week. It was a half-hour comedy which we usually shot in two days. We did 13 episodes and I think we did them all in a month. I mean, it was lickety-split.” About his wardrobe as Walt, Grandy recalled, “I dressed like Pat Boone. I had… a bowtie, and a cardigan sweater. A regular guy back then. You wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that stuff now.” Henry Polic II was a relative newcomer to Hollywood when he got the role of Sheriff of Nottingham in Mel Brooks’ 1975 ABC series When Things Were Rotten, a parody of Robin Hood. After that series ended, he was almost immediately cast as Dracula in Monster Squad. In an August 1976 interview with The Miami News, Polic said he was happy to be buried under make-up as Dracula and be unrecognizable. “I am a character actor and I feel that I am very successful when people don’t know which part I played on a show or in a play. This may sound odd, but I believe recognition will come when it’s due me.” Polic also admitted to the newspaper that he would not be able to watch Monster Squad when it aired; not only did he not own a television, but during its time on the air, he would be in Spain, filming The Return of Beau Geste. A proud Armenian and a veteran of World War II, the five-foottwo-inch Buck Kartalian had been a bodybuilder and professional wrestler prior to embarking on an acting career. Best known to genre fans as the cigar-smoking Julius, ape guard of the caged humans in Planet of the Apes (1968), Kartalian was cast as the werewolf, a.k.a. Bruce Were Wolf, without even auditioning. In Justin Humphreys’ book, Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget, Kartalian said about producer William D’Angelo, “I’d done a war show, The Gallant Men, I think he was the producer of that. I worked with him one or two other times on a couple of 70

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Decrypting Monster Squad

other shows. One day, he calls me in. So, I go in, and there’s three other guys there. He says, ‘Okay, on the new series, called Monster Squad, you’re the Wolfman… [laughs]’ And I’m looking at him, and I said, ‘What? Are you playing games here? What do you mean, ‘I am?’ He says, ‘You are.’ I said, ‘You don’t want me to read?’ And he said, ‘What read? You got the part!’ Of course, I was in total shock the next couple of days. No one comes over and says, ‘Hey, you got the part.’ If you want to read for one line, you’ve got to read.”

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

(OPPOSITE PAGE AND THIS PAGE) Dracula, Bruce, and Frank in the Wax Museum (one of the show’s two standing sets). © D’AngeloBullock-Allen Productions.

Cast as Frank N. Stein was the towering Michael Lane, who, at six-foot-eight, had also previously been a professional wrestler and a boxer. He had also previously been the Frankenstein Monster in the little-seen Allied Artists film Frankenstein 1970 (released in 1958); the film also featured the famed Boris Karloff as Baron Victor von Frankenstein. Lane appeared in dozens of Western and adventure TV shows, but knew the producers from his work on episodes of Batman and Love, American Style. To say that the style and plots of Monster Squad borrowed liberally from the style and plots of Batman would be polite, not a surprise given the producers and Stanley Ralph Ross’ involvement with that series. But this being Saturday morning budgets, most of the villains were portrayed by other character actors, who were given directions to pour on the camp, but present it as straightfaced as possible. The biggest names among them would be scenery-chewer Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space acclaim, and ever-present sultry seductress Julie Newmar [coming in RetroFan #21!—ed.], who portrayed the Astrologer and Ultra Witch, respectively. Also an actor, Ross himself appeared in the “Music Man” episode as telethon host Jackie Joey. Shot on film during July 1976, most episodes of the series only featured two sets: the standing wax museum set, and another created just for the episode. The writers were hobbled by Television’s Standards & Practices in terms of scary content or violence, so they attempted to make up for the lack of excitement

with bad puns and moments of adult humor, plus slapstick and sight gags. The mandated lack of violence did have a few workarounds: in one episode, Dracula and the Wizard have a swordfight with invisible swords, while in another, the Skull attempts to stop Werewolf by literally throwing a silver bullet at him. With episodes that featured tickle torture, ray guns that turned the heroes into cardboard, and obesity as a punchline, the final episode of Monster Squad would contain what may be a first for Saturday mornings: a hermaphroditic villain character Albert/Alberta, portrayed by Vito Scotti, who was costumed and made up as literally half-man and half-woman! In the days before modern non-binary gender identification, the villain’s henchmen, Half Wit and Half Nelson, even have trouble with whether to call their boss “Ma’am” or “Sir.”

It’s Alive… Monster Squad on the Air

The Monster Squad was announced to the press by NBC’s director of children’s programming, William H. Hogan, in mid-March 1976. The characters made their debut appearance on The Great NBC Smilin’ Saturday Morning Parade (see an article on this and other Saturday morning preview specials in RetroFan #9) on Friday, September 10, 1976. In an introductory scene, host Freddie Prinze and cast members of The Kids from C.A.P.E.R. met the Monster Squad cast. RETROFAN

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

Monster Squad debuted with NBC’s new season on Saturday, September 11, 1976, sandwiched between McDuff, The Talking Dog and Land of the Lost. The debut episode was its seventh-produced show, “The Astrologer,” not “Queen Bee” as online sources assert. Although Monster Squad lasted the entire season, the series was not the… *ahem*… monster hit that NBC was hoping for, and it disappeared the following year as the whole Saturday morning schedule was retooled. In his 2019 interview on the Reel Talk with the Hollywood Kid Podcast, Grandy said that the show was “very funny. It was very hip. And we found out that even though it was not probably targeted to the right audience because it was a Saturday morning show and by that time, I think the audience out there had become so acclimated to watching animation and cartoons that liveaction on Sunday [sic] morning seemed a little foreign to them. Promotional photo for the first and only season of Monster Squad. © D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions.

But it was a tremendous hit with a lot of burned-out frat boys who were waking up from the night before… And so, it had a kind of cult following, and I enjoyed it a great deal. In terms of the gueststars, I didn’t know it at the time, but it was obviously for me, a preview of things to come once I started on Love Boat.” Grandy would go on to the biggest fame of anyone involved on the series. In 1977, he was cast as Gopher on The Love Boat, a role that lasted for nine seasons and shot him to television prominence. In 1986, with Love Boat barely in his wake, Grandy ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, representing Iowa. He served four terms there, but his direct political career ended in 1994. Throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s, he hosted conservative radio and TV talk shows, and worked with far-right anti-Muslim groups. Today, he occasionally acts, and is the only surviving cast member of Monster Squad.

FA ST FAC TS Monster Squad ` No. of seasons: One ` No. of episodes: 13 ` Original run: September 11, 1976–September 3, 1977 (NBC, Saturdays)

Primary Cast ` Fred Grandy: Walt ` Henry Polic II: Dracula ` Buck Kartalian: Bruce W. Wolf ` Michael Lane: Frank N. Stein ` Edward Andrews: Mayor Goldwyn ` Paul Smith: Officer McMacMac ` Richard X. Slattery: Officer McMacMac

Villain Cast ` Alice Ghostley: Queen Bee ` Barry Dennen: Mr. Mephisto ` Ivor Francis: The Tickler ` Billy Curtis: The Ringmaster ` Marty Allen: Lorenzo Musica/ Music Man ` Edward Andrews: No Face ` Jonathan Harris: The Astrologer ` Julie Newmar: Ultra Witch ` Arthur Malet: The Wizard ` Geoffrey Lewis: The Skull ` Avery Schreiber: The Weatherman ` Joseph Mascolo: Lawrence of Moravia ` Vito Scotti: Albert/Alberta Also starring Stanley Ralph Ross, Sid Haig 72

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

Those Meddling Kids… No, Those Other Ones!

“From the monsters of the past, comes a new generation, dedicated to reversing the evil image of their forefathers. Under the leadership of none other than Count Dracula—known as ‘Big D’—three teenagers formed a do-gooder group named ‘The Drac Pack.’ With special powers, they can transform into super mighty monsters and use their skills against all evildoers… especially the diabolical Dr. Dred and his renegade rowdies Toad, Fly, Mummyman, and Vampira, a group known as ‘O.G.R.E.,’ the Organization of Generally Rotten Enterprises. It’s right versus wrong, good over greed, niceness against naughtiness… that’s the dedication of the terrific trio Frankie, Howler, and Drac, Jr., the Drak Pack!” So intoned narrator John Stephenson at the beginning of Hanna-Barbera’s 1980 series Drak Pack, which seemed to... *ahem*… borrow… *ahem*… heavily from Monster Squad. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had been producing animated fare together since 1939, when they met when they both worked for MGM’s animation division under Rudolf Isling. After creating the successful Tom and Jerry and Droopy theatrical shorts, among many others, the pair headed founded their own studios in July 1957; Hanna’s name came first due to a winning coin toss. H-B Enterprises, Inc. morphed into Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1959, and the pair—and an ever-growing team—would become one of the most successful suppliers of television animation ever. Borrowing heavily from The Honeymooners, they created the primetime hit The Flintstones in 1960, and went on to create such hits as The Yogi Bear Show, The Jetsons, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Speed Buggy, Super Friends, and many more. Alongside Filmation Associates, Hanna-Barbera ruled Saturday morning airwaves for decades. Although they had previously dabbled with monsters in Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles [coming next issue!—ed.], the Scooby-Doo franchise, Goober and the Ghost Chasers, and The Funky Phantom, when CBS announced their Fall 1980 Saturday morning schedule in early spring of that year, it was revealed that HannaBarbera would feature actual monsters on the new Drak Pack

series! It’s unclear who actually created the series, although H-B producer Doug Paterson shepherded it along the spooky highway from designs to airing. The plot of the series was pretty much explained in the opening narration. Three teenage boys—Drak, Jr., Frankie, and Howler—are the descendants of the monster trio of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man. How undead creatures had mated and produced offspring was never quite explained, but the boys were normal enough until they did the “Drak Whack”: they clapped their right hands together and yelled “Whacko!” Then, as if by magic, they would transform into superpowered costumed versions of their forefathers. Drak, Jr., the great-grandnephew of Dracula, could fly, change shape, cling to walls, and use telekinesis. Frankie was greenskinned, extremely strong (especially when angry), and could spark electrical blasts from his neck bolts. Howler had an ultrasonic howl, and super-breath, like the Big Bad Wolf of fairy tales. Count Dracula himself would often appear to counsel the teens, but they referred to him as “Big D” (yes, that’s what she said). Dracula was the president of the Transylvania Retired Spooks, Spectres, and Spirits Society, and favored his injury-prone pet spider. Travelling to fight evil in their flying car known as the Drakster, the Drak Pack fought against the blue-skinned Dr. Dred and his creatures from O.G.R.E. The acronym for the villainous group stood for Organization of Generally Rotten Enterprises… except for when the writers forgot and said that the “E” stood for

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

(CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE) Count Dracula, Drak, Jr., Frankie, Howler, Vampira. © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Count Dracula cell courtesy of Heritage.

“Endeavors.” The villains operated out of OGRE Island, where Dred had his Dredquarters. Dred’s evil plans over the run of the series included stealing color from his adversaries, stealing treasures and priceless artifacts, stopping time to commit robberies, changing the weather, using shrink rays, and even creating an evil amusement park. The animators worked from character designs by Chris Cuddington—who also directed the series—but most of the production work was done at Hanna-Barbera’s Australian satellite studio, known as “Hanna-Barbera Pty. Ltd.” The studio had been founded in 1972, and lasted until 1983, eventually changing names to become Taft-Hardie Group, then Southern Star Group, and finally Endemol Shine Australia. Comic legend Jack Kirby actually designed some of the elements for Drak Pack as well, including the flying blimp known as the Dredgible. The voice actors for the series were mostly Hanna-Barbera regulars, and most of them used voices that impersonated 74

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popular actors. Drak’s voice was done by Jerry Dexter, a radio announcer who played Aqualad in the 1967 Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure (see RetroFan #3). Dexter affected a voice that mimicked that of Don Addams’ character on the Get Smart TV series. William Callaway, famous as Aquaman on Super Friends, played both Frankie and Howler. Alan Oppenheimer, who would become infamous later for voicing Master of the Universe’s Skeletor, here gave Dracula the same kind of thick Hungarian accent

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

Vampira, Dr. Dred, Mummyman, and Toad (IN FOREGROUND) decend from the Dredgible as Fly buzzes overhead. © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.

(ABOVE) Detail from TV Guide ad promoting Drak Pack and the rest of 1980’s Fall Saturday morning CBS line-up. (LEFT) Early Dredgible design by the legendary artist Jack Kirby. © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.

that film star Bela Lugosi had in the original Dracula film. Hans Conried, infamous as Captain Hook in Walt Disney’s Peter Pan and Snidely Whiplash in Jay Ward’s Dudley Do-Right, again twirled his moustache for evil purposes as Dr. Dred. Julie McWhirter modeled Vampira’s dialogue after actress Eva Gabor, while Don Messick’s Toad was clearly voiced as if he were bug-eyed actor Peter Lorre. Comedian Chuck McCann rounded out the villains, voicing the wrapping-covered Mummyman.

Although a Screen Actors Guild strike that involved voice actors threatened productions of many projects in Hollywood during the summer of 1980—and a few sources cite that the Fall Saturday morning schedule was delayed from September 6th debuts to November 8th debuts—research into TV Guide listings and newspaper listings show that Drak Pack did indeed begin airing its 16 episodes on September 6, 1980, sandwiched between The All-New Popeye Hour and The New Fat Albert Show on CBS. RETROFAN

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

Although it went to a second season on CBS, no new episodes were ordered, and Drak Pack had its last airing on Saturday on September 19, 1981. The series then moved to Sunday mornings from September 20, 1981 to September 19, 1982.

Plunder in the “No Face” episode of the series, and the pilot transporting Dracula’s coffin in the movie! Drak Pack, meanwhile, had almost no footprint on popculture history. No comics were Monstrous Legacy produced, nor any licensing of any Although the series was only on the air for a short kind, despite the two-year run. time, Monster Squad was ideal for merchandising, Drak Pack: The Complete Series was and several companies planned and/or released eventually released on DVD by VEI toys. These included a small version of the Monster and Millennium Entertainment on Van for Ideal’s Micro Mighty Mo line, though an September 6, 2011. eight-inch Mego-sized line of dolls and a larger van Today, team-ups between from the same company were cancelled before monsters and shared universes production. Milton Bradley offered a board game, are common in comics, film, and HG Toys released a puzzle, Rand McNally published television, with occasional monster a Monster Squad coloring book, GLJ Toys sold a Frank mash-ups in animation as well. bop bag, and Collegeville put out costumes for Universal created a syndicated Dracula and Wolfman. animated series called Monster Force © Hanna-Barbera Productions. With almost no syndication of any of the in 1994. Showtime’s 2014 series D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions shows, a deal to release Penny Dreadful brought together many horror trope characters, Monster Squad and the others on DVD through BCI Eclipse was as did both the British and American versions of Being Human. discussed—your author here would have produced the sets—but The CGI-animated Hotel Transylvania film and resultant TV series it was contingent on a deal that would have included getting the showcased the descendants of the monsters just as Drak Pack Batman TV release rights. Instead, Monster Squad had to wait until had. The Underworld film series, and projects like Buffy the Vampire June 23, 2009, when Virgil Films and Entertainment released the Slayer and True Blood couldn’t have existed—and thrived — 312-minute DVD set, Monster Squad: The Complete Series. without the jumbling together of horror icons. Today, the mention of Monster Squad is more likely to evoke Monster Squad and Drak Pack may be mostly forgotten pieces memories of the August 1987 TriStar feature film The Monster in the monster mash history, but they were indelibly a part of Squad, which was also a commercial our collective spooky Saturday morning failure, but has since become a cult memories. classic. That film featured a preteen group of kids known as the “Monster Artwork and photos are courtesy the collection Squad” who face down a group of of Andy Mangels, unless otherwise credited. Drak Pack villains led by Count Dracula. Despite ` No. of seasons: Two the name and conceit of a group of ANDY MANGELS ` No. of episodes: 16 (second season monsters, the two Monster Squads do is the USA Today all reruns) share one other element in common: bestselling author ` Original run: September 6, actor David Proval played henchman and co-author of 1980–September 19, 1982 (CBS, 20 books, including Saturdays and Sundays) the TwoMorrows book Lou Scheimer: Primary Voice Performer Creating the Filmation Generation, as Cast well as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, and a ` Jerry Dexter: Drak, Jr. lot of comic books. He recently wrote the ` William Callaway: Frankie, bestselling Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Howler Bionic Woman series for Dynamite and ` Alan Oppenheimer: Count DC Comics, and has written six Fractured Dracula, a.k.a. “Big D” Fairy Tales graphic novels for Junior ` Hans Conried: Dr. Dred High audiences, for Abdo Books in 2021. ` Don Messick: Toad, Fly, Additional He is currently working on a book about Voices the stage productions of Stephen King ` Chuck McCann: Mummyman, and other projects. Additionally, he has Additional Voices scripted, directed, and produced Special ` Julie McWhirter (Dees): Vampira Features and documentaries for over 40 ` Marian Zajac: Additional Voices DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. ` John Stephenson: Narrator www.AndyMangels.com and www. WonderWomanMuseum.com

FA ST FAC TS

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I received the latest issue [#13] and just read the interview with Mark Goddard. What an interesting fellow! I really enjoyed hearing his take on work and life, and I feel like I encountered a kindred spirit when he talked about his work as an educator. Since that is my profession, and I’ve always been drawn to the “underdog,” I was particularly moved by his comments. I’m always excited when the new issue arrives. Thanks for keeping retro current! TERRY HANEY

WOW! Another awesome issue of RetroFan! Loved the double interviews of Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen. I wanna see that Jupiter Experience side show. I bet they don’t have what I have, an original TV Guide from 1965 with Guy Williams and June Lockhart on the cover, and a complete set of the 1967 Lost in Space View-Master slides. Also loved the articles on Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane, The Twilight Zone, and Who Created Archie Andrews? Attached are my personal autographed photos of Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen. CHRIS KRIEG

Receiving RetroFan magazine is always a big event in our house! Read ’em, save ’em, and read ’em all over again! Keepers, one and all! Thank you for a FANTASTIC magazine!! BILL SMITH

To start off I would just like to say I love the magazine and have bought every issue and recently started up a subscription. I really enjoyed the article “Misty Regions,” on anthology television series of the Sixties, in issue #13. I even found a few I didn’t know existed that I will definitely track down. I consider The Twilight Zone the best television show of all time, so it’s always great reading up on it and learning something new. I did, however, notice an error on page 18 in the caption regarding my favorite episode, “To Serve Man.” The late, great Richard Kiel actually portrayed the Kanamit, not 78

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Ted Cassidy. Richard Kiel is probably most remembered as “Jaws” from the Roger Moore James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. I always look forward to the next issue, so keep up the excellent work! JASON ROBINSON D’oh! How could I have missed that?? Not only is “To Serve Man” my favorite Twilight Zone episode, too, but The Spy Who Loved Me is my favorite Roger Moore Bond film, partially because of the menace of Richard Kiel’s Jaws (to which I’ve given a nod in my “Jawsmania” RetroFad column this issue). And back in issue #14 I penned the “Keeping Up with the Cassidys” guide in our lettercol in response to a different writer confusing Jack and Ted Cassidy. Everyone involved is embarrassed over this goof. Thanks for pointing it out, Jason, for the record.

I really enjoyed the San Diego Zoo article and am looking forward to Part Two, especially the Zooarama coverage. I have never seen an episode, but it was hosted by the late San Diego treasure, Bob Dale, and more Bob is always good. Finally, if it didn’t find its way into Part Two, could you see if Scott Shaw! has any stories about his father, as head of security, versus Ken Allen, the Zoo’s very intelligent orangutan with a real gift for escaping his enclosures, including a brand new “escape proof” enclosure, in a matter of hours. DOUG ABRAMSON Ken Allen definitely got a spotlight in issue #14’s Part Two, Doug!

My first subscription issue of RetroFan arrived this week! I’m impressed with your durable packaging. As always, I enjoyed the entire issue. But the standout piece for me was easily the interviews with Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen. I was, and still am, a huge Lost in Space fan. LIS may have its detractors, and it has been unfairly compared to Star Trek simply because they were both science-fiction programs of the same era (and I would point out that not everything Star Trek produced was pure gold;

“Spock’s Brain,” anyone?). But even as a kid, I recognized the appeal of LIS, which both interviewed cast members mentioned. It was about family. The show could have been about one lone astronaut lost in space and it would have been very different. I recognized the family dynamics at work. I saw kids relating with their loving parents. That they were fighting aliens and meteor showers and that ever-present quicksand pit was just an overlay to the heart of the show, that family bond. Many years ago I had the opportunity to meet Mark Goddard at a convention. He was (and judging from the interview, still is) a genuinely sincere man, appreciative of his fans. Since he was the first celebrity I’d ever talked to, I was starstruck and couldn’t think of anything to say. So, if you read this, Mr. Goddard and Ms. Kristen, know that you both were part of a show that influenced me and ignited the imagination of a kid in ways you’d never believe. I’m sincerely grateful to you. Thank you. I also enjoyed the retrospective on sci-fi TV anthologies. One picture pulled a name out of my memory. I remembered seeing the name Janos Prohaska involved in many of my favorite shows, and I regarded him as the “go-to” guy for monster portrayals. Is there any chance of seeing an article highlighting his career? I’ll bet he was a man with a lot of interesting stories. MICHAL JACOT No Prohaska plans for RetroFan, Michal… but if any of our columnists are interested in writing about him, they’ll let me know.

This email is in response to J. Howard Boyd’s call for help regarding the “Pizza Death” song. He says he “definitely” remembers Erin Moran, Scott Baio, and Marion Ross on a “Fifties” nostalgia special. Sadly, his memory is incorrect. The song was “performed” in 1976 on the short-lived TV series The Rich Little Show. This show aired on NBC. The guests on this episode were Tom Bosley (who “narrated” the song) and three Sweathogs from Welcome Back, Kotter. I remember Ron “Horshack” Palillo was one of the three Sweathogs who sang the song. I can’t remember which Sweathog was missing. No Erin Moran, no Scott Baio, no Marion Ross. The reason I remember this pretty well is because I used my tape recorder to record the song, which I believe I still have! Incidentally, The Rich Little Show was released on DVD and is available through Amazon. Hope this clears things up! P.S.: Boyd also writes about Folgers coffee being “good to the last drop.” I believe that was the tag line for Maxwell House coffee, not Folgers. JOHN HOWARTH Thanks for your letter, John. You’re right about the coffee commercial taglines: Maxwell House is “good to the last drop,” while “the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

Your reply to Howard Boyd’s query led me to run a web search on “Pizza Death.” A YouTube video clip of the song was once posted but presumably removed for copyright violations (although it should be available on the Rich Little Show DVD box set you mentioned). The missing Sweathog in that sketch was apparently Vinnie Barbarino, or breakout star John Travolta, as Welcome Back, Kotter online fan sites cite Lawrence HiltonJacobs and Robert Hegyes as being in the skit. Which reminds me… We’ve really got to do a Welcome Back, Kotter feature here in RetroFan…

Just read my copy of #13 today and was very impressed with everything inside. Outstanding stuff! Usually if an article mentions any sort of radio program I’ll probably have something from it. I’m sharing this photo of the back cover of a Bob Crane album [the 1962 LP Laffter Sweet and Profane] I have from his radio days… the record was entertaining!

I met both Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen in 2015 in Seattle at a show called the Galacticon, which turned out to be a complete promoter’s mess but great for fans. Half the guests cancelled or were cancelled for lack of ticket presales and no local advertising to promote the location or remaining guests, which meant that only a few hundred fans attended this two-day show. The guests were bored, but that meant lots of one-on-one time with them for the fans, like with me [see photo below]!

In reference to Rod Serling: In 1973–1974 he created a radio show called Zero Hour, in which he narrates in the Twilight Zone style. It was at first very well received, so much so that CBS created its own radio show which more people may recognize, The CBS Radio Mystery, created by Himan Brown (Inner Sanctum creator—

thus, the same creaking door intro), which ran from 1974–1982. A sample of Zero Hour was posted on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OHRSm-8urzU. Will Murray’s Archie article was impressive! He had contacted me in reference to it and did a very thorough job of researching. It’s among the best Archie history summaries I’ve seen to date. One little correction, though: Harry Lucey was Betty Tokar’s brother-in-law, not brother. SHAUN CLANCY Thanks for the photos and the Archie correction, Shaun. RetroFans, Mr. Clancy— who brought us issue #8’s interview with June Lockhart—will be back next issue with an interview with actor Tommy Cook, promoter of the Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match!

Had to laugh when you covered lava lamps. I remember seeing and liking them, in the late Sixties, just not to the extent of actually buying one. It was a combination of factors. I wasn’t much of a “swinger” at age nine, nor would I spend $30, a fortune back then, on something other than comic books. Frisbees, in contrast, aren’t so time-specific. Born a year after Wham-O introduced them, they were always around. For me, they led to social interaction: ringing the neighbor’s doorbell to note it’d gone into their backyard. Though I was far from a big Hogan’s Heroes fan, I did enjoy the look at Bob Crane’s radio career prior to that classic sitcom. Showed a talent striving for bigger things and succeeding. He was a radio celebrity but persevered until others were interviewing him. Can’t help thinking of his sad passing as I always pass by the Winfield Place apartment complex, five minutes away, on my way to the market. Wasn’t a great follower of the horror anthology shows of the Fifties and Sixties, even in syndication, but enjoyed your look at them this issue. Now, all have a certain charm: never knowing which rising celebrity of that era would be appearing in any given episode. Also really enjoyed the format of your presentation: almost more photos than text. Terrific as an occasional way to provide an overview on a wide array of series and performers. Where else in 2021 am I going to see Wally Cox, Peter Lorre, and Pat Buttram? Plus, I got to see what Vic Perrin looked like. If he was the Outer Limits’ control voice, I believe he was also Dr. Zin on Jonny Quest. [You are correct!—ed.] As I suspected, the real thrill, this issue, was the Lost in Space coverage. As to why it’s fondly remembered and still in syndication, I think both Mark and Marta got it correct: it was a show from the heart and all about a family. If nostalgia plays a role, that would only be for the folks, like me, who caught the original airings, not all the generations who’ve enjoyed it since. From the sound of it, both were somewhat disappointed, at the time, about the comedic direction the show took, rarely giving their

characters showcases for what they, as actors, were capable of. But… it’s 50 years later, and they’re still remembered, admired, and beloved for what they contributed. How many people can say that? I echo a greater fondness for the first season, where it was played far more dire and straight. It worked better as an ensemble show where everybody had something to contribute. At least Mark’s character was always given a meaningful audience identification role as someone confrontationally outraged by Smith’s constant betrayals. I, too, would have enjoyed seeing Don and Judy as a couple. Yet with no intimacy allowed, by CBS, how was that ever going to happen? The only demonstration of physical affection was a brief kiss on the hand while fixing the Chariot. Loved meeting the both of them at conventions and, more recently, seeing them, in character, on the Lost in Space BluRay, for a table reading of a final resolution script. If they didn’t realize what the show meant to people during the original run, they must surely know by now. Finally, the accompanying two-page Jupiter Experience was reason enough to break out the magnifying glass and explore all the visuals up close. The cast dummies in velour were fun; both for the ones whose likenesses seemed fairly close (Professor Robinson and Will) and the other extreme where the face (Maureen) or hair (Dr. Smith) was noticeably off. Still, based on the second season clothing, no problem telling them apart. The flight deck would look more real to me if it were shooting sparks. Loved the treasure trove of Lost in Space toys and merchandise. Favorite shown: the gum cards. It had photos, which I really wanted to see and own. I remember the Aurora models, the board game, and the Remco Robot. Almost bought it for the first season cast color shot on the box. My favorite commemorative item, back then, was the View-Master slides from “Condemned of Space.” Now my favorites are the episodes themselves and the various soundtrack releases of the many episode scores (some by Johnny Williams). If I’d known I’d have all this, as an adult, able to watch and listen to it anytime, it wouldn’t have been quite so traumatic to miss an episode in 1965. Anyway, thank you profusely for the coverfeatured Lost in Space cast members. Hope you’ll get Bill Mumy and Angela Cartwright for an upcoming issue, as well. Even Jonathan Harris’ son or Guy Williams’ two children to chat about their parents. All very much of continued fascination. JOE FRANK

Tell your friends about us, and share your comments about this issue by writing me at euryman@gmail.com. MICHAEL EURY Editor-in-Chief

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ReJECTED! Just keep telling yourself, "This isn’t a real cover... this isn’t real a real cover..."

by Scott Saavedra

Signed by the Star of JAWS!

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FROM TWOMORROWS & JON B. COOKE

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #81

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

BACK ISSUE #131

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #26

Career-spanning interview with TERRY DODSON, and Terry’s wife (and go-to inker) RACHEL DODSON! Plus 1970s/’80s portfolio producer SAL QUARTUCCIO talks about his achievements with Phase and Hot Stuf’, R. CRUMB and DENIS KITCHEN discuss the history of underground comix character Pro Junior, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his wife, HEMBECK, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

BACK ISSUE #132

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #27

Extensive PAUL GULACY retrospective by GREG BIGA that includes Paul himself, VAL MAYERIK, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, TIM TRUMAN, ROY THOMAS, and others. Plus a JOE SINNOTT MEMORIAL; BUD PLANT discusses his career as underground comix retailer, distributor, fledgling publisher of JACK KATZ’s FIRST KINGDOM, and mail-order bookseller; our regular columnists, and the latest from HEMBECK! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Winter 2022

BACK ISSUE #133

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

THE KIRBY LEGACY AT DC! Explores Jack Kirby’s post-Fourth World Bronze Age DC characters! Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, and Kirby’s Odd Jobs (Atlas, Manhunter, and more). Plus: the SIMON & KIRBY Reunion That Wasn’t! Featuring BISSETTE, BYRNE, CONWAY, GIBBONS, GOLDEN, GRANT, RUCKA, SEMEIKS, THOMAS, TIMM, WAGNER, and more. Demon cover by KIRBY and MIKE ROYER!

1980s MARVEL LIMITED SERIES! CLAREMONT/MILLER’s Wolverine, Black Panther, Falcon, Punisher, Machine Man, Iceman, Magik, Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., Wolfpack, and more! With BOGDANOVE, COWAN, DeFALCO, DeMATTEIS, GRANT, HAMA, MILGROM, NEARY, SMITH, WINDSORSMITH, and more. Cover by JOE RUBINSTEIN. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

STARMEN ISSUE, headlined by JAMES ROBINSON and TONY HARRIS’s Jack Knight Starman! Plus: The StarSpangled Kid, Starjammers, the 1980s Starman, and Starstruck! Featuring DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, ROBERT GREENBERGER, ELAINE LEE, TOM LYLE, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Jack Knight Starman cover by TONY HARRIS.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Fall 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Winter 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Nov. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2022

2021

“KIRBY: BETA!” Jack’s experimental ideas, characters, and series (Fighting American, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, and others), Kirby interview, inspirations for his many “secret societies” (The Project, Habitat, Wakanda), non-superhero genres he explored, 2019 Heroes Con panel (with MARK EVANIER, MIKE ROYER, JIM AMASH, and RAND HOPPE), a pencil art gallery, UNUSED JIMMY OLSEN #141 COVER, and more!

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ALTER EGO #172

ALFREDO ALCALA is celebrated for his dreamscape work on Savage Sword of Conan and other work for Marvel, DC, and Warren, as well as his own barbarian creation Voltar, as RICH ARNDT interviews his sons Alfred and Christian! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PETER NORMANTON’s horror history From The Tomb, JOHN BROOME, and more!

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ALTER EGO #171

PAUL GUSTAVSON—Golden Age artist of The Angel, Fantom of the Fair, Arrow, Human Bomb, Jester, Plastic Man, Alias the Spider, Quicksilver, Rusty Ryan, Midnight, and others—is remembered by son TERRY GUSTAFSON, who talks in-depth to RICHARD ARNDT. Lots of lush comic art from Centaur, Timely, and (especially) Quality! Plus—FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, and more!