RetroFan #19 Preview

March 2022 No. 19 $10.95

Pardon me...?

WATERGATE AT FIFTY

HAMMER...

HARRYHAUSEN...

BOND...

BURROUGHS...

e thes g i D y kook les... ctib colle

CAROLINE MUNRO INTERVIEW

Wacky Packages!

Bob Kane’s other dynamic duo...

COURAGEOUS CAT and MINUTE MOUSE!

Will the real Ghostbusters please stand up?

Go-Go Dancing • Pauline Peril • Rare Pro Wrestler Erasers • Red Skelton Museum & more!

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FEATURING Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury Caroline Munro photo: Dutch National Archives. Wacky Packages © Topps. Nixon illustration © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

Issue #19 March 2022

11

Columns and Special Features

Departments

3

Retrotorial

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse

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Ernest Farino’s Retro Fantasmagoria On the Set… Movies in the Sixties

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Retro Interview Caroline Munro

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Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

The Close Shaves of Pauline Peril

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2 30 RetroFad Go-Go Dancing

44 Retro Collectibles Wacky Packages

50 Too Much TV Quiz

71 Retro Toys The Bandai Pro Wrestler Erasers of 1987

74 Celebrity Crushes

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Watergate’s 50th Anniversary

RetroFanmail

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Ghost Busters vs. Ghostbusters

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ReJECTED RetroFan fantasy cover

by Scott Saavedra

RetroFan™ issue 19, March 2022 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 4490344. Periodicals postage pending at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RetroFan, c/o TwoMorrows, 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, $29 Digital.

Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Caroline Munro 1974 photograph courtesy of Dutch National Archives. Wacky Packages © Topps. Nixon illustration by Murphy Anderson, from From Beyond the Unknown #17 © DC Comics. Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse © Trans-Artists Productions. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2022 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

BY WILL MURRAY I started reading Batman in 1962, during the infamous monsters and aliens phase of the character. It didn’t take long to get the hang of what Batman was all about. As co-creator/artist Bob Kane once put in, “He’s just an average millionaire philanthropist out there fighting master criminals.”

I can’t tell if Kane had his tongue in his cheek there. He was usually dead serious in interviews. No matter.

I don’t remember when I saw my first Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse cartoon. Or whether it was before or after my exposure to Batman and Robin. Sixty years ago is a long time. I do dimly recall that, when I saw the other dynamic duo charging out of their Cat Cave in their Catmobile to the rather adult opening music that was clearly inspired by Peter Gunn’s jazzy theme, I made the connection that this was Batman and Robin for little kids.

Since I was young, I had no understanding about how creators developed and sometimes recycled their ideas. I simply accepted that whenever I tuned in to afternoon TV, a Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse cartoon would duly appear. And when I went to my local drugstore, there would be Batman and Robin. They were different characters and existed in different worlds, but the parallels were obvious. And suspicious.

(ABOVE) Our heroes are in hot pursuit of the Frog and Harry Gorilla in this Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse pan-production cel, and (BEHIND TITLE) a background painting cel. © Trans-Artists Productions. Courtesy of Heritage. (TOP) From the Golden Age of Comics, Batman co-creator Bob Kane poses with a Batman illustration he may or may not have painted.

(BOTTOM) Kane later in life. Batman and Robin TM & ©

DC Comics. Photos courtesy of Will Murray.

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Looking back on it from an adult perspective, there is much to marvel at. For one, why didn’t DC Comics sue Sam Singer, who produced the program? Or at least the show’s creator, Bob Kane.

But that would be awkward, since Kane produced Batman and technically licensed it to DC. Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse might be safely classified as a parody, much the way Mighty Mouse was seen as a takeoff on Superman.

More remarkable still was the fact that original television superhero cartoons did not exist in 1960, when Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse first appeared. Mighty Mouse Playhouse had been running since 1955, but it simply recycled theatrical cartoons. I suspect the TV success of the Mouse of Tomorrow inspired Kane and Singer to pull off the same trick with a cartoon spoof on Batman and Robin.

Did I think Batman was an imitation of Courageous Cat? Or vice versa? I wish I could recall. Maybe I just figured it was one of those things, like all those television cowboys who had their own programs and were different, yet somehow all the same.

WHO HE IS AND HOW HE CAME TO BE

The story of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse is a fascinating one.

And to my knowledge, it has never been fully told.

Long ago, I interviewed Bob Kane. He described the concept in typically unabashed terms: “Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse were a miniature Batman and Robin. I readapted Batman and Robin.”

“Readapted” is a peculiar word choice, but that was Kane, an inveterate and shameless copyist. He was nothing if not upfront about it.

Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse in a production cel from their series. (INSET) Boy, C.C.’s costume looks a lot like the Golden Age Starman’s, doesn’t it? Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse © Trans-Artists Productions. Cel courtesy of Heritage.

Starman © DC Comics.

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After telling a reporter that Batman was a combination of Zorro, The Shadow, and the Green Hornet, Kane added defensively, “I know it sounds like I’m copying, but everyone saw what I saw. I was re-interpreting. It was my vision, my interpretation.”

Back to Courageous Cat’s origin.

“I was in Hollywood,” Kane told me, “and I was always interested in animation. I met this animated studio head—his name was Singer—and we were out one night and he said, ‘We’re looking for some new stuff. Do you have anything in mind?’ I said, ‘Why don’t we do a cat and a mouse in the kind of stylized cartoony image of Batman and Robin? We’ll have a Catmobile. And the Frog will be one of the villains, like the Penguin, and speak like Edward G. Robinson.’ It was very simple: I used the same format as Batman and Robin.”

Kane had started out as a “big-foot” cartoonist, so it was no great leap for him.

Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse debuted as a cartoon included on The Tommy Seven Show on New York’s WABC Channel 7. The first episode was broadcast on Wednesday, September 14, 1960.

Entitled “Disguise the Limit,” it opened with Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse roaring out of the Cat Cave—its mouth is shaped like a cat’s head—in their fire engine-red Catmobile, which is equipped with supercharger coils 30 years out-of-date at the time the show aired. Like the Batmobile, the Catmobile has a huge stylized head mounted in front. Instead of a bat’s black head, it’s a black cat-head with green feline eyes. The difference is hard to distinguish. They forgot to draw whiskers.

Title cards dispensed with, the story unfolds with the canine mayor of Empire City dedicating a statue to Courageous Cat. When

ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA

HOW THEY DID IT! COMPILED AND CAPTIONED BY ERNEST FARINO

Continuing our collection of behind-the-scenes photos, we present a selection from movies of the Sixties. We hope we’ve included one or two of your favorites. (Another installment will appear in a future issue.)

Some feel that photos of this nature “spoil the fun,” but, partly because of my own interest in filmmaking and later involvement professionally, I’ve always enjoyed that glimpse behind the curtain that conveys… well, How They Did It! So… Roll camera… mark it… annnnd… Action!

On The Set… Movies in the S ixties

This issue: Bond, Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Hammer

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Ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

© Eon Productions.

© Eon Productions.

JAMES BOND

Sean Connery and Ursula Andress—the first “official” Bond girl—frolic in the waters of Jamaica.

Author Ian Fleming and star Sean Connery on Ken Adam’s nuclear reactor room set. Fleming was initially unhappy with the casting of Connery, but changed his mind once he saw him on screen.

Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), disguised as a hotel maid, attempts a last-ditch effort to steal the Lektor decoding machine and kill Bond.

© Eon Productions.

Sean Connery and Ursula Andress filming Dr. No in Jamaica.

(BELOW) Director Guy Hamilton gives last-minute instructions to Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore).

Sean Connery and Tania Mallet (Tilly Masterson) enjoy a picnic lunch during the filming of the Mustang-vs.-Aston Martin chase in the Useren Valley, Switzerland, on the Furkasstrasse between Reap and Zumdorf, on Monday, July 6, 1964.

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RETRO INTERVIEW

Halt the Flow of Time!

STARCRASHING WITH

CAROLINE MUNRO

BY ANTHONY TAYLOR

Starting as a model at the age of 17, Caroline Munro lists parts in several of the most well-known movie franchises in history on her resume. She’s appeared in two James Bond films, two classic Hammer horror films, both of Vincent Price’s Dr. Phibes movies, one of Ray Harryhausen’s best-loved Sinbad movies, and hundreds of other memorable roles. Dark-eyed and beautiful, Munro never fails to mesmerize onscreen, but in person she’s a woman of great warmth and humor. Still working whenever she feels the urge, Caroline enjoys spending time with her family and her fans, appearing at conventions, signings, and events worldwide on a regular basis. Most recently she has appeared in 2019’s The House of the Gorgon, and in a live stage reading of the un-produced Hammer Films Vampirella script, which also featured her daughter Georgina Dugdale in the title role.

RetroFan: Casino Royale had an amazing cast, but was a bit of a circus from a production standpoint. What do recall about your time working on it?

Caroline Munro: Oh, yes, everyone was in that, Deborah Kerr, Ursula Andress, Dahlia

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Caroline Munro in her starring role as Stella Star in Starcrash (1978), as the popular Lamb’s Navy Rum model, and as she is today. All images in this article are courtesy of Anthony Taylor.

working was an amazing experience… it really straightened the learning curve.

When I finished my scenes, I would just sit and watch everyone else and it was a great experience. And I loved the fabulous costumes by Paco Rabanne!

Lavi. It had five or six directors. I was an extra! It was a total traffic jam, but an enjoyable one, I’d say. I was a guard girl.

They photographed quite a lot of stuff with me in the clothes, God knows why. I did a lot of my learning on the set. I didn’t come up through theater, so I got a lot of my training on the job. Being able to watch Woody Allen and all these incredible actors

RF: When did you start as the Lamb’s Navy Rum girl? You were the face of their ads for a while.

CM: I think I started in 1969 or ’70, and I went on to do it for 12 years! And we didn’t have a contract. They used to just phone up and ask, “Would you like to do another one?,” and I said, “Yes, please!” And I got paid peanuts in the beginning, literally.

Obviously it went up a bit later.

Before me, they’d had sailors—dark, navy rum is associated with sailors—but they weren’t selling as much as they’d like so they thought they’d try using a woman in the ads. On the first shoot, they said, “We’re RETROFAN

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retro interview

going to do something slightly daring.

We’re going to paint a little ship on your shoulder.” That seemed to work, so we went on with that until in the end, I just wore wetsuits. Very unzipped! And they were all over London on the billboards and in the underground.

RF: How did you get involved with Hammer Films?

CM: Sir James Carreras used to travel about on the trains and had seen posters of me modeling for Lamb’s Navy Rum. He got in touch and offered me a screen test, and then a contract for two films, which wound up being Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and Dracula A.D. 1972, which was a turning point for me—I decided to pursue acting full time while working on that movie.

RF: Kronos was written and directed by Brian Clemens, with whom you had a long association. How did that come about?

CM: I met him during casting for the film, and he thought I might be right for Karla.

He was an amazing director, writer, and producer.

RF: He also wrote the screenplay for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

CM: Yes, about a year later. He did such an incredible job on Kronos… I was really impressed with it when I went in to loop my dialogue after we shot.

Maybe it wasn’t recognized at the time.

They planned a series of films with Kronos but they never made another. I suppose it didn’t do as well as they’d hoped. I’ve heard that Quentin Tarantino quite likes it, and I think it’s been very popular on DVD. RF: Tell me about filming Captain Kronos.

CM: Well, I was in it every day. I thought it was very funny and in character. My first scene in the film was where Karla had danced on a Sunday, and she’s been pilloried. They brought in bunches of eggs and tomatoes for the “villagers” to throw at me, and Brian set the scene up and yelled “Action!”, and the extras pelted me. I had raw eggs in my hair, tomatoes all over me. Luckily, they didn’t throw them too hard—they were very nice about it. And it was great for my hair!

RF: And then on to Sinbad. Brian Clemens must have really liked you.

CM: I guess so! He told [producer] Charlie Schneer and [director] Gordon Hessler 24

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(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Munro being dressed for Casino Royal (1967), in a promotional photo [from carolinemunro.org] as Carla from Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, and a poster for the movie where Munro can be seen struggling with a cross in the background. Captain Kronos © Hammer Films.

that he thought they should consider me for the part of Mariana, and they said no!

They wanted someone with a big name, someone American, but I think Brian was very keen on me and took them to see some footage from Kronos.

And I did get the part, which was wonderful! I love that film, it’s so beautiful.

Ted Moore was the cinematographer and

he was so talented. There were sets, but we also went on location and shot in real caves, so what you see are these amazing caverns with this beautiful lighting. I think it was a stunning-looking film.

John Philip Law made a very dashing and beautiful Sinbad. And Tom Baker was just brilliant. I think this was a pivotal role that helped him land the part of Doctor

retro interview

Who. I ran into him not very long ago at a record shop in London, and he said, “Hello, kid! How are you doing?” We were both shopping, he was looking at DVDs and I was with my daughter. I just loved working with him, we got along fabulously.

RF: Was Ray Harryhausen with you on the set?

CM: Ray was there for every shot! And when we shot sequences that he would add animation to later, he would take the helm from Gordon Hessler and direct those scenes himself. He knew exactly how his creatures would be and live and breathe.

It was an unusual way to work, but very successful. He had storyboarded everything in advance and he would come and show those to us so that we’d know exactly

how everything would look on screen. He’s such a talented artist, the drawings were wonderful! He’d say, “Now this is it, this is what you’re going to come up against,” and he’d give us the dimensions of how tall the creatures were, and we’d go from there.

We’d get childlike and imagine what we were supposed to be seeing. And, of course, I must have done it right because Luigi Cozzi saw that film and loved it and hired me for Starcrash because of it. So via Brian and Ray, I wound up getting Starcrash.

RF: And you also played Victoria Regina Phibes in The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again.

CM: Yes. I was under contract to Hammer, and they weren’t that keen on me doing the

first film, but I wanted to work with Vincent Price. They let me do it, but I’m not credited in the film at all because of the Hammer contract, which is fine. I just wanted to watch Vincent work.

I didn’t have any lines, as I was playing a corpse!

It was actually quite hard… I know it seems like you’d just lie there, but you become so conscious of not moving or breathing while the cameras are rolling and it was very difficult. There would be long periods in a shot where I couldn’t breathe, and it was slightly claustrophobic in the coffin.

RF: How did you like working with Vincent?

CM: He was adorable. One morning I came into the makeup room, and Vincent had

spent the entire evening before making this wonderful Pâté and fresh bread for the makeup girls and all of us. He was just brilliant. I wish I’d had some dialogue with him, had the opportunity to actually act with him. He was such a lovely man… I have his cookbook. He signed it for me!

RF: In Dracula A.D. 1972 you got to work with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

And you had a role with a bit more substance, Laura Bellows.

CM: I did! It was a small part, but very emotionally charged.

I worked with Alan Gibson, the director, who was fabulous. I wasn’t sure at first, I was a bit nervous with him because he was quite strong and demanding, but I

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) Munro as Margiana in Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), a promotional photo for the movie, and a poster featuring Munro and co-star John Fhillip Law as Sinbad. © Columbia Pictures.

absolutely took that little role and became her.

For that time on the set, I was this rather quirky, ditzy young lady, and I loved doing it. And Christopher was astounding. He’s RETROFAN

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Move Over, Lois Lane, It’s…

The Close Shaves of

PAULINE PERIL! A LOOK AT AN ODDBALL COMIC BY SCOTT SHAW!

If you loved the Swingin’ Sixties, the Sizzlin’ Seventies, and Women’s Lib, but never partook in the more controversial side of the counterculture, this is the funnybook for you... or your grandkids.

If you’ve watched Quentin Tarentino’s Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood, you already have a very good idea of what pre-disco Hollywood Boulevard looked like between 1967 and 1973. Although I lived in San Diego, I was often taking car trips north to Los Angeles to shop for vintage comics at Burt Blum’s Cherokee Books (a sleazy shop with lots of Golden Age comics), Malcolm Willits’ and Leonard Brown’s Collector’s Bookstore (the fancy-schmancy equivalent of Cherokee), Bond Street Books (for shopping bags full of dirt-cheap “reader” copies), and Larry Edmunds’ Bookshop, which specialized in entertainment-related material, but no comic books. And only a few blocks to the west was one of the biggest and oldest comicbook publishers in America, Western Publishing—possibly, the biggest and the oldest, at least at the time.

By September 1968, I was eager to get my hands on any underground comix I could find. Their outrageous approach to funnybooks made a huge impression on me, the biggest effect since I began reading Marvel Comics in junior high. But mainstream comic books were changing, too, reflecting social issues of those turbulent times in a bid to appear “relevant” while “safe,”

although (like everywhere else) the middle-aged management at the big publishers were now sporting pork-chop sideburns, wearing bell-bottom slacks, and vainly attempting to be hip. Despite the parental editors, writers, and artists always arriving at a corny solution, there was also an influx of young fans-turned-creators who introduced new characters and story themes that addressed issues that were in the news. In 1969, while on my college’s newspaper staff, I even did a full-page article, “Comics Get Relevant!,” citing superhero yarns about overpopulation, Women’s Liberation, racism, the justice system, and Jack Kirby’s The Forever People, a DC Comics series about hippies from Apokolips. (The next year, Len Wein and Herb Trimpe even did “The Underground Gambit,” a horror story for Marvel’s Chamber of Chills about a mainstream cartoonist who, thanks to a wig, has a secret second career drawing underground comix!) However, whenever Western Publishing (Gold Key Comics) ventured into the counterculture, it was with entertainingly, ridiculously lame concepts, like The Modniks, Mod Love, Mod Wheels, and Zody the Mod Rob, which I wrote about in the

(ABOVE) Gold Key Comics’ The Close Shaves of Pauline Peril #1 (June 1970) and 2 (Sept. 1970). Cover art by Jack Manning. © 1970 Western Publishing Company, Inc. Lois Lane © DC Comics.

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Pearl White performing stunts in 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, Pamela Austin starred in this groovy 1967 version, and Betty Hutton had a head for the role in 1947. The Perils of Pauline © 1914 General, 1947 Paramount Pictures, 1967 Universal Pictures.

Photos and posters courtesy of Heritage.

first issue of RetroFan. (Someone was convinced that the word “mod” was a sales-getter.) The exceptions to the trend were Dell Comics’ earlier brilliant beatnik titles, Yak Yak by Jack Davis and Kookie by John Stanley and Bill Williams.

I kept my eye on anything that involved cartooning, especially comic books and magazines: Marvel, DC, Charlton, ACG, Archie, Harvey, Tower, and Gold Key... or shall we say, Western Publishing Company, Inc. Since 1938, Western Publishing Company, Inc. had supplied funnybook content for Dell, a major publisher of magazines and books. Their business agreement was that Dell would handle the finances and choose the licenses (often based on samples and mock-ups), and Western would handle the creation of each issue, which meant all of the contents, including covers, back-up stories, text features, “filler” features, and advertising. Western was a printing company—its primary business was making playing cards!—so it handled the production, too.

Dell’s circulation numbers were huge because their specialty was high-quality comic books for younger kids, and in service of that, they licensed a lot of popular comic strip and animated cartoon characters, cowboys, television series, and feature films.

Cartoonists Walt (Pogo) Kelly and Carl (Uncle Scrooge) Barks became Dell’s best-known creators, and it’s hard to find a Dell comic that wasn’t intelligently written and well drawn. Western eventually maintained two offices, one in New York City (where Dell was located) and one in Los Angeles (where the studios were located, facilitating approvals on adaptations of movies, television series, and animated cartoon characters). The licensed properties also appeared from Western under a number of imprints in other print material, including coloring books, jigsaw puzzles, card games, activity books, and paper dolls. If one of the properties that 34

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Western licensed—such as The Flintstones—caught on with the public, the first wave of licensed product was always paper goods.

They could design, draw, color, and print those items within a few months, while booking time with overseas manufacturers to make figural toys took more than a year.

In 1962, the two outfits split over financial issues, as often happens in the business world. Dell continued to publish comics, and since they’d lost so many licensed characters, Dell hired editor/ artist L. B. Cole to oversee the creation of new concepts. The initial line-up was similar to EC Comics—very copy-heavy, with adult themes—but when sales lagged, Dell brought on a new editor, bought a number of licensed properties, and even added oddball super-heroes to their line-up. But in 1973, Dell finally threw in the towel.

Western also did a number of projects that didn’t involve Dell... or Gold Key, for that matter. They included March of Comics (shoe store giveaway mini-comics), Kite Safety (hosted by everyone from Donald Duck to Fonzie), and The Flintstones At the New York World’s Fair (working with Warren Publications).

Western already knew how to create comics, and was in a much better position to thrive. It hung on to most of the licenses and determined what it would publish, all under a new imprint, Gold Key, which had a much more “modern” approach to cover designs and top-quality material between their covers. Indeed,

RETRO COLLECTIBLES

BY L. WAYNE HICKS Throughout most of the Seventies, the sophomoric humor of Wacky Packages appealed to children and outraged corporate attorneys. The parodies of popular products provided a cynical look at what corporate America peddled to consumers, lampooning the likes of Band-Aid (“Band-Ache,” with skin shown being ripped from an arm) and Spam (“Cram,” which depicted a mother shoving the lunch meat into her son’s mouth).

“The whole concept of making fun of these iconic products just seemed so incredibly rebellious,” said Greg Grant, who operates the WackyPackages.org website. “But it was a rebelliousness that a 7-year-old could engage in.”

Topps Chewing Gum Inc. began peddling gum in the Thirties, and after World War II thought of new ways to entice customers.

The Brooklyn-based company wrapped a slab of gum in mini comics featuring the character Bazooka Joe. Topps flattened out the gum to fit inside packages containing cards featuring baseball players. Pop culture entered the picture in the Sixties when Topps expanded its offerings to include cards of Batman, Superman, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others. Sports cards remained the company’s mainstay, however, and it was rare for non-sports cards to enjoy staying power beyond a year or two.

Until Wacky Packages came along, that is. Wacky Packages— affectionately called Wacky Packs—became one of the biggest fads for children of the Seventies. In fact, decades later, as the new 44

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millennium approached, Entertainment Weekly magazine would rank Wacky Packages the No. 1 craze for kids of the last 1,000 years.

Introduced in 1967, Wacky Packages were not an immediate hit. The first set of 44 beautifully illustrated cards were die-cuts where you could punch out the image, wet the back, and stick it onto something. Some gags were simple, often relying on a tweak to a product’s name. The soft drink 7up, which at the time used the phrase “You Like It – It Likes You” on its bottles, became “6up” with the slogan “You Hate It – It Hates You.” Others skewered products with a sharper stick. To the dismay of its parent company, Ritz Crackers was transformed into “Ratz Enjoy These Crackers” and featured a rat on the box chowing down.

In a roundabout way, Wacky Packages owe their existence to popsicles. Woody Gelman and Ben Solomon had created the advertising character Popsicle Pete in the Forties to help push the frozen treat. Their work attracted the attention of Topps, which hired them to create what would become Bazooka Joe. But it was their outside venture, a publishing line called Triple Nickel Books, aimed at boys, that captivated a 12-year-old from Brooklyn named Len Brown. He wrote to Gelman, offering “a whole bunch of different suggestions” for other books. A few days later, a phone call from Gelman inviting Brown to dinner interrupted the boy’s stickball game. “He became like a father to me,” Brown said, and went to work as Gelman’s assistant at Topps in 1959, just before his 18th birthday. “It wasn’t much of an office in those days,” Brown said. “It was in an old warehouse where they actually made the Bazooka bubblegum. We had offices downstairs and the bubblegum was made upstairs until they moved the manufacturing plant to Duryea, Pennsylvania.” Walking from the train station at 36th Street toward the Topps building, “You could actually taste the sugar in the air.”

Among the artists who worked for Topps was Jack Davis, a prolific illustrator who also drew for EC Comics and MAD magazine.

A massive fan of MAD, future cartoonist Art Spiegelman, had published his own fanzine called Blasé when he was about 15 and managed to swap copies of it with Gelman in exchange for some of

(OPPOSITE PAGE AND ABOVE) Totally mad RetroFad: Topps’ zany Wacky Packages drove kids and corporate attorneys wild!

Davis’ original art. A noted collector, Gelman hung onto © Topps. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions and the fanzine and recruited Wayne Hicks.

Spiegelman to work at Topps when he turned 18. Gelman suggested that Spiegelman produce bubblegum cards featuring products—actual products, treated seriously. Andy Warhol had just turned Campbell’s soup cans into pop-art paintings, and Gelman may have been thinking along those lines. Spiegelman, with Brown backing him, managed to convince Gelman that children were more likely to buy cards featuring parodies of products in the same vein that MAD routinely poked fun at ad campaigns.

“The message of Wacky Packages is a similar one that came from MAD magazine, which was, everyone’s lying to you,” said Bill Griffith, who wrote some of the parodies published in 1974 before going on to launch the comic strip Zippy. “Your parents are lying to you. The government is lying to you. All the people that make toothpaste and detergent, they’re all lying to you. They’re making up phony claims and they’re selling you things you don’t need.

Wacky Packages are a very healthy reaction against consumerism.”

“It was creating a kind of cynicism about consumer culture that I think was pretty healthy for kids of all ages,” said Spiegelman, who recruited Griffith, Jay Lynch, and other underground comix artists to write Wacky Packages. A creative consultant for Topps until 1989, RETROFAN

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retro Collectibles

Spiegelman would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 graphic novel Maus.

Interest in Wacky Packages exploded in 1973. Topps had dropped the die-cut format and released most of the 1967 series as stickers that could be peeled from their backing.

Suddenly, Wacky Packages were everywhere. Each package sold for a nickel and contained two cards, a stick of bubblegum, and a checklist of which cards in that series you still needed to collect. Topps’ initial series of 30 cards were quickly followed that year by four more releases.

The media took note. New York magazine devoted the cover of an October issue to Wacky Packages, although the writer of the article had a difficult time explaining their popularity to adults. To some grown-ups, the magazine noted, Wacky Packages occupied a spot “on the humor map in a murky limbo between banana peels and knock-knock jokes.”

Writer Michael Chabon, whose 2000 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, reflected on Wacky Packages in an essay published in his 2009 book Manhood for Amateurs.

Nine years old when the Wacky Packages craze hit in 1973, he recalled collecting the cards, trading them with friends, and sticking them on his three-ring binder and school locker. The cards, with their imagery of lice, maggots, and brains, appealed to kids like himself who enjoyed gross humor. “What was so shocking about Wacky Packages,” he wrote, “was that they were a product of the adult world.”

The writers behind Wacky Packages were adults, but they tapped into juvenile sensibilities. They sketched out a rough design for the parody. If Topps approved the idea, the sketch would be given to Norman Saunders, a veteran illustrator whose decadeslong career at that point included painting thousands of magazine covers and other series of bubblegum cards. David Saunders, his youngest son, said his father once told him that doing the Wacky Packages were the highlight of his career because he felt part of the creative team. “I think the most incredible thing for Dad was seeing on the newsstand the cover of New York magazine with Wacky Packs on the cover. It was just a real thrill to see that. Many, many millions of them were sold. That was really something for him because he was just a freelance independent artist.”

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Future Maus creator Art Spiegelman was a Wacky Packages contributor. Art tells RetroFan that this photo, circa 1973, shows him with “my then-live-in Wacky Packs muse,” Michelle Gross, in their San Francisco apartment’s kitchen, “where a lot of Wacky Pack reference materials were consumed regularly.” Courtesy of Art Spiegelman.

Saunders, who painted almost all of the Wacky Packages, occasionally wrote some of the gags as well. At least one wasn’t for the public. “Norm Saunders at some point drew a really nice package of Ivory Snow as a Wacky Pack,” Spiegelman said. “This is the time when Marilyn Chambers was outed as both the Ivory Snow girl and a porn star. He did a package called ‘Ovaries Show.’ That was just for the camaraderie of the Topps office.”

The writers of Wacky Packages followed certain guidelines.

The parody had to replicate the shape of the original product.

retro Collectibles

(ABOVE) Jay Lynch’s rough sketch for Mr. Mean, and the actual Wacky Packages card. © Topps. Courtesy of Wayne Hicks.

(LEFT) Did you know that Zippy cartoonist Bill Griffith, seen here at his drawing board in a Seventies photo, contributed to Wacky Packages? Courtesy of Bill Griffith.

If elements were added to the parody that were not part of the original—such as a vampire when Tang was mocked as “Fang,” the breakfast drink for vampires—that addition could not be the dominant element.

“They had lines that we shouldn’t cross,” Griffith said. “Like if you show somebody whose head is chopped off, you couldn’t have

blood coming out of the guy’s neck. It was okay to have their head chopped off, but it had to be a clean cut.”

Griffith said he was paid $35 for each Wacky Package he wrote. By 1974, when he was freelancing for Topps, the market for underground comix had temporarily dried up, and the money he earned from writing the parodies kept him going. He was living in RETROFAN

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SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

WATERGATE! The Golden 50th Anniversary of Our Long National Nightmare

BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, is the only president to have a writing credit in MAD magazine (#145, Sept. 1971). The two-page spread is called “That Sinking Feeling…” and features the president’s own words as he discusses the Vietnam War with quotes from 1968 to early 1971. A photograph of a triumphant Nixon with arms spread high and palms open to the sky is first shown standing firmly on a small rock protruding out of a body of water. As his pledge “to win the peace” evolves into more and more reasons to remain embroiled in Vietnam, he slowly sinks underwater until, completely submerged, he says the failure to end the conflict is his “deepest disappointment.” Glub blub.

He was also the only U.S. president to resign from office. He did this humiliating thing to avoid the humiliation of being impeached by the House of Representatives, then stand trial, possibly be found guilty by the Senate, and removed from office. This would also have been a first.

It was the Watergate Scandal (most commonly referred to as just Watergate) that brought down Nixon, and 2022 marks the awesome golden deluxe 50th anniversary. I guess that means it’s time for a jaunt down memory lane!

FIVE GUYS

America’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General John Mitchell, resigned his office effective March 1st, 1972 to become Director of the Committee to Re-elect the President (a.k.a. CRP or “CREEP” to those unfriendly to Nixon). He had signed off on a plan to illegally enter the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) offices located at the Watergate Complex (the complex contained six buildings; two were offices, three were co-op apartments, and

one was the Watergate Hotel). The goal was to take photos of documents and place listening devices on a couple of phones. This break-in was conducted successfully.

Five men in suits once again broke into the DNC’s offices on the evening of June 16, 1972. The men in suits had so much trouble trying get into the offices they ended up just removing the door. After midnight, an attentive security guard noticed that a supposedly locked parking garage door had been taped to allow it to open and close freely. He removed the tape and returned some time later to find the tape replaced. He called the police.

There were two lookouts at the Howard Johnson’s across the street keeping an eye on the five burglars to warn them in the event of trouble, but one lookout found the television broadcast of Attack of the Puppet People more interesting than staring at a building (uh, I guess). The cops who arrived were part of the so-called “bum squad” and dressed like hippies (so they could, you know, buy marijuana cigarettes and such like without arousing suspicion).

This allowed them to enter the office building without causing alarm for the lookouts. After a brief search, the hippies arrested the men in suits, who gave up without a fight.

Bob Woodward, a Navy veteran and reporter who had been with the Washington Post for about a year, was assigned to cover the arraignment of the five men. They were charged with second-degree burglary. Nothing much about the arrested men

(ABOVE) Richard M. Nixon, 37th President of the United States, was embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of any American leader. Library of Congress.

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acknowledge that Watergate jokes are likely to bring icy stares,” reported Roy Reed in the New York Times (Sept. 8, 1973).

Nixon-positive jokes did even worse.

That didn’t stop the flow of Watergate humor from gushing forth. National Lampoon’s Lemmings, an off-Broadway show, addressed Watergate. And various books and records hit the shelves as well.

Comedian David Frye impersonated multiple politicians, but is best known for his spot-on Nixon simulation. He released a Watergate album, Richard Nixon: A Fantasy, in 1973, but had trouble getting ads on the air, and Woolworth’s wouldn’t stock it.

Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip ran in about 300 newspapers at the time and was a source of headaches for many editors. His was the most aggressively political strip since Pogo (without the benefit of cute critters or, even, very good art—just saying) and would sometimes end up on Opinion pages when his Watergate jokes got a bit too sharp. Some papers would just remove Doonesbury altogether. It was a rich and fraught time to be a political critic.

A handful of newspapers across the country dropped the May 29, 1973 episode of Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip wherein the fictional drawn character Mark Slackmeyer proclaims former Attorney General John Mitchell, “Guilty, guilty, guilty!” Ironically, the Washington Post, publisher of important reporting on Watergate

by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, was one of the papers to not publish the strip, claiming that there cannot be “one standard for the news pages and another for the comics.” (Huh.) The strip has since been reprinted multiple times and both the Washington Post and Trudeau won Pulitzer Prizes for their Watergate work. © Universal Press Syndicate. Courtesy of Archive.org.

On the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, the popular late-night host famously did a nightly monologue with many of the jokes drawn from current events, including Watergate.

Said Carson, “Just trying to make humor about what has happened… that is considered, when you do that, almost un-American.”

PERFECTLY CLEAR

The special prosecutor and House Judiciary Committee did not trust Nixon’s transcripts and wanted the tapes.

Nixon refused. The matter went to the Supreme Court, and they unanimously agreed; the White House had to give up every tape asked for. In late July, the Judiciary Committee approved three articles of Impeachment.

Article one: Obstruction of Justice. Article two: Abuse of power. Article three: Defiance of the Committee’s subpoenas.

(LEFT) Watergate will outlive us all. One of the many great bonkers scenes from a disaster-ridden future that were a staple of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth. From DC Comics’ Kamandi #15 (Mar. 1974). TM & © DC Comics. (RIGHT) An unusually political (and heated) moment from the publisher of Archie comic books. Panels from The Mad House Glads #92 (Mar. 1974). © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

Ghost Busters vs.

Ghostbusters BY ANDY MANGELS Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning. It’s 1975, and ghosts, werewolves, and mummies are invading your Saturday mornings, but they aren’t animated, despite the fact that they were from cartoon giants Filmation. But how did the stars of the original The Ghost Busters—Spencer, Tracy, and Kong—slapstick their demented way into the future… and how did they stand in the way of one of the world’s most popular franchises? That’s what we’ll cover this time around as it’s The Ghost Busters vs. Ghostbusters vs.

Ghostbusters vs. The Real Ghostbusters!

BIG SCREEN TO SMALL SCREAM

As first discussed in RetroFan #6’s spotlight on The Ghost Busters (see this issue’s ad to find how to get back issues), the concept of paranormal investigators has been lurking around Hollywood since cinema began, and entertainment versions included the 1909 Broadway play The Ghost Breaker (adapted into 1914 and 1922 silent films), the 1940s Bob Hope-starring The Ghost Breakers, and the 1951 Monogram Pictures release Ghost Chasers. Ironically, it was the true crime radio series Gang Busters (1936–1957) and the sitcom F Troop (1965–1967) that inspired Filmation head Lou Scheimer to commission plans for the animation studio’s next live-action hit for CBS in 1974.

Founded in the early Sixties by animators Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland, with ex-disc jockey Norm Prescott, Filmation Associates had been riding high in Saturday morning animation since the 1966 debut of their The New Adventures of Superman series. Although the majority of their shows were animated spinoffs based on live-action licensed properties—Fantastic Voyage, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Batman, The Brady Kids, Star Trek, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, and The New Adventures of Gilligan, to name a few—Filmation eventually branched out to live-action original series. Their first such show was Shazam! in 1974 (see cover story in RetroFan #4), and the series was a huge hit.

Live-action series were becoming popular on the traditionally animation-dominated Saturday mornings because animation

(TOP) Get ready to rumble! Animated Ghostbusters on the left and the Real Ghostbusters on the right. (LEFT) Lou Scheimer. (ABOVE) The stars of Filmation’s live-action Ghost Busters, (LEFT TO RIGHT) Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, and Bob Burns as Spencer, Kong, and Tracy, respectively. Ghost Busters and Filmation’s Ghostbusters © Classic Media Distribution. The Real Ghostbusters © Columbia Pictures Television.

budgets were very high; a live-action budget on a show with a small cast and limited sets could be produced for almost the same amount, and with a much faster turnaround time. The Krofft shows such as H .R. Pufnstuf (1969; see RetroFan #16), The Bugaloos (1970), Lidsville (1971), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973–1975), and Land RETROFAN

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do the show, and they’ll pay for half of it, we’ll pay for half of it, and everybody will be happy.’

“But Ed said, ‘No, we don’t need them.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s go down and talk to them and offer a deal.’ Ed said, ‘We’ll use your version.

It’ll save me all kind of headaches because then I won’t have to deal with the people that did the movie, and we’ll get the money like we do on our other shows.’ I told him that was silly because they had the right to do the screen version—which everybody knew—and our version, even though they stole the concept, didn’t have the same caché. Ed was sure that they would never do their own show because they weren’t an animation company.”

The mistake Scheimer had mentioned in Filmation’s deal with Columbia had come back to bedevil them. Forbidden by the company owners from approaching Columbia, Scheimer had to watch as Columbia took their Ghostbusters animation plans to rival company DIC, who, unlike Filmation’s American-based animation, took all their shows overseas to animate. “Now it had come back to bite us,” Scheimer recalled. “Their show was to be based on the feature film, with characters, concepts, logo, and theme song carrying over.”

Nevertheless, the second week of August 1985, Filmation announced that 65 episodes of its Ghostbusters (changing the title from two words to one, matching the movie) would be offered to

(ABOVE AND BELOW) Production art for Filmation’s animated sequel to their live-action The Ghost Busters.

These new adventures star the sons of the original human leads along with Tracy the gorilla. Many new characters have been added as well. © Classic Media Distribution.

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andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

toy lines, and five new shows were ready to jump into the timeslot of any show that was packing up.

Columbia launched their syndicated version of The Real Ghostbusters with 65 episodes in September 1987. ABC continued to air the Saturday-morning show with 13 new episodes for its 1987 second season. The series switched to a one-hour format for ABC’s third season in 1988, retitled Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters (a name and format it would keep through fall 1991). This later version added a series of Slimer! cartoon shorts, aimed at a younger audience, but wacky and clever enough to still appeal to older viewers. The Real Ghostbusters eventually garnered a primetime special on October 29, 1989 during ABC’s extended fourth season.

By 1991, ABC’s sixth season of airing Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters, only four final new episodes were ordered by the network, but by then a grand total of 134 half-hour episodes had been created, as well as 13 half-hour Slimer! episodes. The Real Ghostbusters was a hit in worldwide syndication, and also led to hugely successful toy lines, multiple comicbook series, fan clubs, and web pages that keep the ghostbusting spirit alive—or undead—today.

On the other side of the battlefield, after nearly 36 years of award-winning and popular animation, Filmation was unexpectedly closed down after they were purchased by a new parent company on February 3, 1989. Other than a few scattered worldwide VHS videotape releases, nothing would be heard of their Ghostbusters again for almost two decades.

In 1997, Sony released a new syndicated animated series called Extreme Ghostbusters. Although it is a continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise, featuring a team of college kids being led by Egon

FAST FACTS THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS/SLIMER! AND THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS f No. of seasons: Six network, One syndicated f No. of episodes: 134, plus 13 Slimer! f Original run: September 13, 1986–August 30, 1991 (ABC & syndicated, Mondays–Saturdays)

PRIMARY VOICE PERFORMER CAST Lorenzo Music: Peter Venkman (Seasons One–Two) Dave Coulier: Peter Venkman (Seasons Three–Seven) Maurice LaMarche: Egon Spengler Frank Welker: Ray Stantz, Slimer, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and more Arsenio Hall: Winston Zeddemore (Seasons One–Three) Buster Jones: Winston Zeddemore (Seasons Four–Seven) Laura Summer: Janine Melnitz (Seasons One–Two) Kath Soucie: Janine Melnitz (Seasons Three–Seven)

Slimer (LEFT), the popular ectoplasmic mascot of the animated series, takes top billing in a reconfigured one-hour series for Saturday viewing. © Columbia Pictures Television.

Spengler (returning voice actor Maurice LaMarche), the series had little to do with The Real Ghostbusters. Extreme Ghostbusters aired 40 episodes from September 1997 to December 1997, though the shows were reportedly rerun until 2000, as part of the syndicated Bohbot Kids Network (BKN). The final two episodes saw the other Real Ghostbusters characters return, with the original voice actors.

In the world of comic books, First Comics produced a shortlived series for Filmation’s Ghostbusters in 1986, while Now Comics produced both The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer! comics from 1988–1993. Marvel Comics’ U.K. division published a long-running The Real Ghostbusters series that reached 193 issues, plus 30 volumes of Slimer! adventures, and various specials. Today, IDW has the Ghostbusters franchise license for comics, and they have done numerous comics featuring The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters storylines.

BUSTING A LEGACY

On April 17, 2007, following the success of DVD releases of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, BCI Eclipse released The Ghost Busters: The Complete Series DVD Set as part of a series of the Filmation library on DVD. The three-disc set was produced by the author of this very article, Andy Mangels, and included all 15 episodes, plus multiple crew interviews, rare footage, a gallery of photos, and all 15 scripts as PDFs. The animated Filmation’s Ghostbusters was released in two boxed sets (February 27 and July 3, 2007). All three sets are now out of print and demand big dollars in online sales.

On November 25, 2008, Time-Life Video released an enormous 25-DVD boxed set of The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection. The episodes were remastered for picture and audio clarity, and over 12 RETROFAN

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RETRO TOYS

The Bandai Pro Wrestler Erasers of 1987

BY JOHN “THE MEGO STRETCH HULK” CIMINO

s an eover come k ta l a r u lt pop cu wrestling’s o r p ere! d n a e z cra rs everywh i* to h c s e e ll k o c ’s s n a scinate Out of Jap e that still fa n li e r u g fi e obscur

*Keshi (Japanese: 消し or ケシ), a.k.a. keshigomu (消しゴム, literally “erase rubber”) is the Japanese word for eraser. In modern usage “keshi” refers to a collectible miniature figure, often of a manga or anime character, made of colored PVC gum rubber. It should be noted that the Pro Wrestler Keshi line (also called the Puroresurā Keshi line) is referred to as the Pro Wrestler Erasers in the U.S.

® & © Bandai. All photos accompanying this article are courtesy of John Cimino.

THE KESHI CRAZE BEGINS

Japan released the first waves of random keshi figures of many popular pop-culture characters such as Ultraman, Godzilla, Inazuman, and even American comic-book characters including Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man (among many others) during the Seventies. As these pocket-sized (usually two inches) gum-rubber figures became increasingly more known, in the late Seventies they were eventually exported outside of Japan as free prizes in random packages of Bonux (a Proctor & Gamble washing powder) in France and the Ukraine. However, it wasn’t until 1983, when Bandai released the Kinkeshi toy line, that the genre got a massive boost in popularity.

The Kinkeshi were based on the anime and manga stories of a wrestling super-hero known as Kinnikuman (King Muscle), created

by Yoshinori Nakai and Takashi “Yudetamago” Shimada, and boasted a total of 418 figures. In 1985, it was licensed and produced

by Mattel for the American market as M.U.S.C.L.E. (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere), but they made a (ABOVE) A complete set. (TOP ROW) American wrestlers Animal Warrior, Hawk Warrior, Bruiser Brody, Ric Flair, and Hulk Hogan. (BOTTOM ROW) Japanese wrestlers Hiroshi Wajima, Akira Maeda, Riki Choshu, Jumbo Tsuruta, and Tatsumi Fujinami.

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RETRO TRAVEL

Remembering Red

BY MARK KRATZNER AND DOUG CARROLL One of America’s clowns, Red Skelton, is back home again in Indiana, and he brought along his immortal characters such as Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kadiddlehopper, Junior the Mean Widdle Kid, Deadeye, George Appleby, and others with him.

Well, Skelton did not physically return to the Hoosier State in 2013, but his show-business mementos and memories are back where it all began for the late entertainer.

Before he died in 1997 at the age of 84, Skelton confided in his widow, Lothian Skelton, that he wanted his memorabilia and artifacts to go home to Vincennes, Indiana, where life began for the redheaded performer.

Display highlighting Red Skelton’s early years in radio.

His vocal creations inspired famed Warner Bros. cartoon characters Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam.

Now the relics of Skelton’s legacy of laughter from more than 70 years of being a comedian, actor, and clown, along with his talents as an accomplished painter, music composer, author, pantomime artist, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and American patriot, are on display daily at the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy in Vincennes. And, just like Skelton’s style of humor, the museum was created to appeal to patrons of all ages.

Located on the Wabash River between Terre Haute and Evansville, Vincennes is known as Indiana’s first city plus the site of a Revolutionary War battle, the largest federal memorial outside of Washington, D.C., and the birthplace of Red Skelton.

He was a comedian on stage, radio, motion pictures, and television from the Twenties through the Nineties. Skelton is known for his clean humor and patriotism accompanied by silly characters with a natural gift to find humor in everyday life or tell a story without saying a word.

The Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy opened on what would have been the comedian’s 1ooth birthday, July 18, 2013. His family home is near the museum. Photo credits: Mark Kratzner, Curator of the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy. From the museum collection.

He was born Richard Bernard Skelton on July 18, 1913 to a widow with three sons in a house that remains standing less than 1,500 feet from the museum entrance. Red’s father died YOU placing ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, two months earlier from aIF stroke, his family in abject CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS poverty and making Skelton’s life story all the more remarkable ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! and worthy of a museum.

When Red Skelton died in 1997, the president of Vincennes University, Dr. Phillip M. Summers, wanted to honor him with a hometown theater. Dr. Summers contacted Skelton’s widow for permission and plans expanded to include a museum.

The 850-seat Red Skelton Performing Arts Center opened in 2006 and the city sponsored annual festivals to raise funds to construct the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy, which opened on his 100th birthday in 2013.

The museum embraces Red Skelton’s career, family life, and personal interests, and guests begin their tours with a 14-minute introduction film. Once inside the museum, patrons can RETROFAN #19shows and relive Red’s early stage career in old-time medicine Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer Films actress CAROLINE Vaudeville through his stint as a master of ceremonies forCAT Great MUNRO! Plus: WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL Depression-era walkathons.

GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO WRESTLER ERASERS, bethe scenes ofis Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty, Among the museumhind highlights Red’s development ofGo-Go a Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton Museum, and more fun, fab doughnut-dunking routine that gained him national attention features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 and featured guest appearances on the Rudy Vallee radio (Digital Edition) $4.99 program, in addition to performing at President Franklin D. https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_152&products_id=1641

Visitors embrace Red Skelton’s message of laughter.

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