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Pebbles Cereal History • The Untouchables • Search • Soviet Expo ’77 & more! 1

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Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury Catwoman © DC Comics. Astro Boy © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. Tarzan © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With Issue #21 July 2022

Columns and Special Features

Oddball World of Scott Shaw! Pebbles Cereal

3 46

Departments

Retrotorial

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon The Untouchables

Too Much TV Quiz

67 57

Voger’s Vault of Vintage Varieties Julie Newmar

RetroFad The Slinky

Celebrity Crushes

Retro Cartoons Astro Boy

Super Collector The Monkeemobile

Retro Television Search

RetroFanmail

ReJECTED

Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Soviet Expo ’77

Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Tarzan RetroFan™ issue 21, July 2022. (ISSN 2576-7224 ) is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. 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. Catwoman © DC Comics. Astro Boy © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. Tarzan © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. 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.

THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

“BARNEY! MY BLOOD SUGAR!”

An Insider’s History of Post's Pebbles Cereal BY SCOTT SHAW!

Barney “Rip-off” Rubble filches Fred Flintstone’s Fruity Pebbles! The Flintstones © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Animated cel courtesy of Heritage.

When I was eight years old, I was a major fan of Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward cartoons. The wonderful Rocky and His Friends was Ward’s only show at the time, but H-B already had The Ruff and Reddy Show, The Huckleberry Hound Show, and their latest, The Quick Draw McGraw Show. (Somehow, I’d missed those Loopy DeLoop theatrical cartoon shorts from H-B, although after seeing a few of them, maybe that was a good thing.) ABC was also starting to heavily promote the fact that H-B had a new weekly cartoon show coming up, one that would be aired at night and which was like The Honeymooners in a prehistoric setting and did not star funny-animal characters. And when an image of Fred Flintstone first appeared in San Diego’s newspaper—or was that TV Guide?—my first thought was, “Wow, he looks like my dad—as a caveman!” By the time The Flintstones premiered on ABC (September 30, 1960), I had turned nine. The show was everything H-B promised and more. I particularly liked its dinosaur designs because at that time, I had dual goals: to grow up to be a cartoonist or a paleontologist. And since I was a fat kid who lacked an internal editor, I really identified with Fred. When the first-aired episode “The Flintstone Flyer” was over, I clearly recall leaning forward, with my nose about six inches away from our black-and-white television, and whispering to myself:

“That’s what I’m gonna do.” So much for “paleontologist”—The Flintstones combined both of my favorite things! Of course, I wasn’t the only one who dug The Flintstones, the 1960 forerunner to 1989’s The Simpsons, and the public reaction was as similar as the two cartoon shows: both adults and kids absolutely flipped for it.

BOWLED OVER

1960’s most popular cereals included the old standards like General Mills’ Cheerios, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, and new fare such as Kellogg’s Special K, Cocoa Krispies, Sugar Smacks, and Sugar Pops; General Mills’ Trix and Cocoa Puffs; and Post’s AlphaBits. My favorite was Cheerios—I’d dump on the sugar—but I’d really eat anything that hid a cool giveaway item inside its box. As the Sixties went on, many new cereals were introduced, with new flavors, new gimmicks, and new spokes-characters. More failed than survived, but one new product in particular, created in 1963 by a corporation and a cartoon studio, changed everything in the cereal aisle. Of course, it wasn’t just any cartoon studio, it was Jay Ward Productions. After seeing pitch art from Hollywood’s top animation RETROFAN

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

studios, the Quaker Oats H-B’s Flintstones’ cast Company decided to work of cave-people fit the task with Ward and his creative perfectly. The primetime show team. That’s not surprising; aired on ABC until September the studio was getting noticed 1967 and had recently shifted for the syndicated Rocky and to Saturday mornings for an His Friends series (1959) and all-children audience. Not NBC’s The Bullwinkle Show only was The Flintstones a (1961), the hippest cartoon long-running, easily recogseries on TV. Ward asked the nized, and popular intellectual Quaker Oats folks to describe property, the show was the proposed cereal. “Sweet originally aimed at a primarily and crunchy” was the answer adult audience. Therefore, and that’s what Ward’s team the intended kids’ cereal came up with, a sweet old would be attractive to two sailor named Cap’n Crunch. groups: the adult parents who Adding a crew of kids and purchased the product and a pooch, the studio had all the children who consumed the elements necessary to it. Plus, The Flintstones series produce clever, complex, would remind both groups beautifully animated-in-Hollywood of the Flintstones cereal, and vice 60-second cartoon TV commercials versa. In fact, Weiss considered every that were as entertaining as Ward’s 22-minute episode of The Flintstones five-minute Rocky and Bullwinkle that aired to be the equivalent of 22 segments. Kids loved the cereal— one-minute commercials for Pebbles willing to sacrifice the roofs of their cereal! eager mouths for the Cap’n—and Fiendishly clever, eh? loved the commercials, too. They Weiss’ next challenge was how proved that advertising aimed at to differentiate the new cereal children has to be entertaining. It’s stand-out from Kellogg’s Rice just too easy to change channels Krispies. The rice pieces were already when you’re a bored child. smaller and flatter, but colors and Post Cereals’ Crispy Critters was flavors would make the difference, introduced the year before Cap’n so instead of one new rice-based Crunch, the basis for the Linus the Lionproduct, Weiss created two. One Hearted cartoon series in 1964. But would be fruit-flavored with color to neither the TV show nor the cereal match, while the other would taste lasted for long. But four years later... like chocolate with a rich brown color. Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles cereals These colorful, tasty new cereals were were created and developed in 1968 intended to make the competition by Post’s Product Group Manager look like Snap, Crackle, and “Pap”! Larry Weiss. His goal was to increase Finally, the dual brands Post’s market share in the competneeded names that were fun and Did the creepy Krinkles the Clown, Fifties’ itive children’s cereal market, so he appropriately prehistoric. Combining hawker of Post’s Sugar Rice Krinkles, imprint experimented with a cereal brand the appearance of the cereal pieces young Stephen King to later write It!? Post on the wane. The sales for Sugar and good ol’ Bedrockian logic, the took another wrong turn in the Sixties when it Rice Krinkles, a once popular cereal, cereal’s original working names replaced this bozo with an offensive stereotype were down, very possibly because its were “Flint Chips” and “Rubble on Rice Krinkles’ boxes, a diminutive “Oriental” Stones.” Not simple nor all that mascot was a creepy clown. Weiss named “So-Hi”—even offering a So-Hi considered Sugar Rice Krinkles to be appealing, they were changed to Rickshaw Racer as a free gift inside! © Post Consumer “Fruity Pebbles” and “Cocoa Pebbles,” the perfect candidate for a complete Brands. makeover. He met with DC Comics, thanks to a suggestion from the Marvel Comics, Archie Comics, and creative head of Post Cereals' ad Hanna-Barbera Productions, all of which owned time-tested agency Benton & Bowles, Frank Corey. characters with high levels of popularity and recognition to adults Weiss’ instincts were better than he realized. Since then, and children. Weiss pitched them the notion of a permanent Bedrock’s favorite citizens appeared in further reruns, animated TV spokes-character for his transformed version of an about-to-be-reseries, live-action films, toys, garments, and vitamins… and cereal. tired cereal, a concept that had never been applied to a re-branded And that’s why Pebbles remains the oldest surviving cereal brand product. based on a TV show or movie. 4

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

WHAT? NO CACTUS COLA FLAVOR?

Fruity Pebbles, introduced as “Pebbles” in 1969, and Cocoa Pebbles, introduced in 1970, were tested on supermarket shelves on the West Coast. That was due to an internal concern at Post that the cereal might turn out to be a short-lived fad that would quickly burn out. Both Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles cereals were finally distributed across the nation by Post Consumer Brands on October 20, 1971. That was about a month after Hanna-Barbera’s The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show—a rather blatant prehistoric imitation of Filmation’s The Archie Show—began airing on CBS every Saturday morning. Coincidence? Aw, c’mon. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were always eager to exploit their cartoons whenever possible. Within The Flintstones’ first season, their studio was animating commercials for Kellogg’s cereal (featuring a lot of familiar H-B cartoon funny animals) and primetime spots for Winston cigarettes and Bayer’s One A Day multiple vitamins (which led to Bill and Joe making a Flintstones Vitamins deal with the corporation in 1968). Unlike Post’s puffy Sugar Rice Krinkles, both flavors of Pebbles consisted of smaller, flatter pieces of crispy rice that could be visually interpreted as rocks. Focus-group testing indicated that kids preferred Pebbles because they could fit more of its pieces in their mouths than Rice Krispies. Fruity Pebbles began with only three colors—orange, red, and yellow—and natural orange, lemon, and tangerine flavors, but were later flavored in natural orange and artificial lemon and cherry. Here’s the Atlanta-based business the Flaming Candle’s description of the experience of sticking one’s nose into a box of Fruity Pebbles: “This sweet fruity fragrance is bursting with flavor—tart lemon and sweet orange—soft lavender and corn cereal notes. It is sweetened with a base of vanilla blended with warm sandalwood.” (Uhh,

I don’t think you could possibly pay Barney Rubble enough to spew that much effusive dialogue...) The basic product retained the Sugar Rice Krinkles form, using the existing process and production facilities in Battle Creek, Michigan. The flavors, colors, and other details were developed by Post’s product experts. Cocoa Pebbles’ formula was set and has remained largely unchanged over the years. Fruity Pebbles also remained essentially unchanged for decades. In recent years, some additions and variations have been made to the Fruity Pebbles’ product formulation. Both Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles were reformulated as part of the early-2010s’ industry-led sugar-reduction effort. The original formulation contained 12 grams per 3/4 cup serving, while the 2011 reformulation (still current as of this writing in 2021) contains nine grams sugar per 3/4 cup serving. Here are the ingredients of Post Fruity Pebbles cereal: rice, sugar, hydrogenated oil (coconut and palm kernel oils), salt, contains less than 0.5% of natural and artificial flavor, red 40, yellow 6, turmeric oleoresin (color), blue 1, yellow 5, blue 2, BHA (to help protect flavor). Vitamins and minerals: sodium ascorbate (source of vitamin C), ascorbic acid (vitamin C), niacinamide, reduced iron, zinc oxide (source of zinc), vitamin B6, vitamin A

Post wisely tapped Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones for its rebooted Rice Krinkles cereal, now remarketed as Pebbles. (RIGHT) Fruity Pebbles box from 1972. (ABOVE) Original art for that box’s promotion. Illustration attributed to Bob Traverse. © Post Consumer Brands. The Flintstones © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Courtesy of Heritage.

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July 2022

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

BY WILL MURRAY

Lock up your gin joints, ya Windy City lowlifes, here come the Untouchables! (LEFT TO RIGHT) Abel Fernandez as William Youngfellow, Paul Percini as Lee Hobson, Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, and Nicholas Georgiade as Enrico Rossi. © Desilu Productions, Inc. and Langford Productions, Inc.

Desilu Productions is revered for its pioneering TV sitcom I Love Lucy and producing the enduring Star Trek original series. Between those hits, their greatest non-comedic successes were The Twilight Zone and—The Untouchables. In 1959, television trends were going in one direction––West. That was the season when all types of Westerns stampeded though primetime. One show bucked the cowboy trend. Ironically, this prodigious feat was also accomplished by reaching back to an earlier era.

The pilot—if you want to call it that—was filmed as a theatrical movie that ran on Westinghouse’s Desilu Playhouse. Starring Robert Stack, it was a semi-fictionalized story ripped from Roaring Twenties headlines, but inspired by U.S. Treasury Agent Eliot Ness’ 1956 autobiography, The Untouchables. The Untouchables were an elite squad of Prohibition agents whom the Chicago press had branded as “untouchable” because they couldn’t be corrupted by bribes. Countless criminals tried. None succeeded. RETROFAN

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Staff producer Quinn Martin was the one who pitched the project, suggesting it should be a two-part program. This was a budget-buster, a problem solved by releasing it theatrically overseas.

‘OLD STONE FACE’

Remarkably, Robert Stack was not the first actor considered for the role. Van Heflin turned it down. Van Johnson accepted the part, then his wife talked him out of it. Fred MacMurray and Jack Lord were also considered. At the time, Stack had a middling film career and had thrown himself into television in an attempt to break with his public image as the young swain who gave Deanna Durbin her first screen kiss. He didn’t want the role, either. “I remember how I waved the script at the agent and cried, ‘But Capone’s got all the jokes,’” Stack once said. “And my agent came back with the clincher, ‘Yes, but you’re the one the audience will care about.’” Two days before cameras rolled, Stack donned the three-piece suit tailored for Van Johnson. It didn’t quite fit, but that didn’t matter. The part did. Dramatizing Eliot Ness’ battle to bring Al “Scarface” Capone to justice, The Untouchables was a hit when its pilot was first broadcast

on CBS in April 1959 [aired in two parts on April 20 and 27, 1959, on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse on CBS—ed.]. Ratings increased when it was rerun that summer. Probably no one was more amazed than Robert Stack when asked to reprise Ness for a weekly TV series. Stack was initially reluctant. He was about to fly to Japan to make The Last Voyage when ABC called him. He had 12 hours to decide. While producer Quinn Martin struggled with casting their lead, he faced another problem: reconstituting the core Untouchables cast. Unfortunately, most of the actors who signed on for the original roles were too expensive or unavailable for an ongoing television series. Keenan Wynn’s Joe Fuselli had been killed off in the original. Only Abel Fernandez as Special Agent William Youngfellow stayed on. Other recurring roles were recast or another character substituted. One other actor did make the transition. Nicholas Georgiade, who had played one of Capone’s underlings, was inaugurated into The Untouchables in an unusual way. Even though based on historical events, the pilot been severely criticized for its perceived anti-Italian bias. So Quinn threw a bone to the Italian-American community in the first episode, “The Empty

A mess of Nesses! Robert Stack (ABOVE), immortalized here on the cover of the February 27–March 4, 1960 TV Guide, played top agent Eliot Ness on all four seasons of the crime series. But (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) actors Van Heflin, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, and Jack Lord were considered for the role. The Untouchables © Desilu Productions, Inc. and Langford Productions, Inc. TV Guide © TV Guide.

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Chair,” introducing Enrico Rossi, a barber who gets caught up in the power struggle between Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, and accountant Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik over Capone’s territory. After his fiancé is accidentally slain during the rubout, Ness recruits Rico into the Untouchables as Ness’ driver, and the group had its Italian-American member. That Georgiade was Greek was just one of those Hollywood things. Abel Fernandez’s Agent Youngfellow, a “full-blooded Cherokee,” was really Mexican. Bruce Gordon as Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti was another holdover from the pilot. He would prove to be as key to the show’s popularity as Stack. “Bruce Gordon turned in a fantastic performance as Frank Nitti,” Stack praised in his 1980 autobiography, Straight Shooting. “With Capone in prison, he became the regular villain once we started making regular series episodes. He was absolutely magic. Bruce managed that oneness with a part that rarely happens. He made Nitti unforgettable, a combination of chilling evil, ironic humor, and sex. In fact, he was a real crook; he stole most of our scenes.” In real life, the Untouchables had disbanded after Capone landed in stir. Going forward, Eliot Ness’ exploits would be sheer fantasy mixed with historical reality. Initially, Stack agreed to do 11 episodes, then narrate the rest. Co-star Jerry Paris, playing Agent Martin Flaherty, would carry the remainder of the season. Then Stack decided that would be unfair to viewers. “The minute the audience feels cheated,” Stack explained, “they blame it on the chief performer. That has happened to other stars with severe consequences to their careers. I realize that it would be a mistake to devote less than all my energy to the series.” Stack was derisively referred to as “Old Stone Face,” but he was perfect as the incorruptible Ness, playing him as a no-nonsense, inflexible arm of the law. “I’m trying to play Eliot without all the clichés like snapping my hat brim back every two minutes, putting my hands in my pockets, flipping coins,” he explained. “I just want to keep away from the obvious.” And that went for the other Untouchables, as well. “Actually,” Stack related, “the Ness era was so bizarre that we soon saw truth was really stranger than fiction, and our writers have to be careful to hold it down and script it tight and close to their chest. That’s the way those of us who act in the series play it. We avoid heroics. If one of our actors blows the smoke out of his gun barrel or does anything that smacks of the theatrics, we pick him up and carry him bodily to the nearest cold water spigot and hold his head under until he cools off.” Ness had a reputation as a straight arrow, and the show maintained that public perception.

(LEFT) The two-part The Untouchables pilot aired on the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse and then released as a film overseas. (ABOVE) The other star of The Untouchables was Bruce Gordon in a recurring role as the seemingly un-killable mobster Frank Nitti. © Desilu Productions, Inc. and Langford Productions, Inc.

“Eliot Ness would be a bore if you just made him up,” stated Quinn Martin. “It would be sort of like a ballet form of good and evil, as depicted by the TV Western. The fact that Ness actually existed is the real stuff of this series.” “Actually, the miracle wasn’t that he was so brave, but that he managed to survive,” noted Stack. “He was a tough character. He had to move his family several times and his car was wired a few times.”

TAKING LIBERTIES WITH HISTORY

Premiering in the Fall of 1959, The Untouchables shot up to #2 in the ratings, making third-place ABC a competitive network. Just as quickly, it came under fire for historical inaccuracies. The family of Al Capone unsuccessfully sued the production. The second episode, “Ma Barker and Her Boys,” drew the wrath of no less than J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. The Bureau had handled that case. A depiction of corrupt cops in “Syndicate Sanctuary” prompted an angry letter from a police organization. Another episode, “The Noise of Death,” focused on the decline and fatal fall of aging Mafia don, Joe Bucco. Quinn wanted Edward G. Robinson for the role, but it went to J. Carrol Naish. Because the Appalachian Mafia trial was ongoing, ABC was asked to hold the episode back until a verdict was reached. A two-part episode, “The Unhired Assassin,” also drew ire because it inserted Ness and his boys into the attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which resulted in the RETROFAN

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VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES

Stupefyin’ Julie Newmar got her claws in Batman, and her fans, as TV’s feline fatale BY MARK VOGER

Why does Batman act all weird in front of Catwoman? That was the question on our young minds as we watched Batman (Adam West) hem and haw while Catwoman (Julie Newmar) toyed with him like a… a… cat who has captured a mouse. I was seven and my little brother was four, so Newmar’s considerable allure was lost on us. All we knew was this simple formula: Batman equals good guy, Catwoman equals bad guy, er, girl. We’d previously seen Batman and his pants-less sidekick Robin (Burt Ward) vanquish the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Joker (Cesar Romero), and a host of others. So why didn’t he just throw the Bat-cuffs on Catwoman, who was, as little boys used to say back then, “only a girl”? (Please pardon the sexist talk. It’s an inconvenient truth that boys in the middle Sixties bought into the whole “weaker sex” thing. My brother and I have since matured into progressively-minded gentlemen. Or so we hope.) Catwoman was introduced in episodes 19 and 20 of ABC’s 1966–1968 action-comedy Batman at a time when the show was still fresh, new, and building momentum as a cultural force. (Everything was “Batman” in ’66. You had to be there.) West’s Batman usually addressed criminals with the scolding tone that a forest ranger might use on littering tourists. But in the presence of Newmar’s Catwoman—strikingly tall in her figure-hugging costume that glittered when it caught the light—he stammered. Even beneath that cowl, he seemed… sweaty. And Catwoman did a bunch of stuff to Batman that the Riddler, Penguin, and Joker never would have. She ran a fingernail—actually, a faux nail on her elbow-length glove—down the front of his

(LEFT) Meow! Sexy, statuesque actress Julie Newmar won lasting fame in the role of Catwoman in the 1966–1968 action-comedy Batman. Newmar’s portrayal paved the way for the character’s comeback in the comics after a dozen years in exile. © Warner Bros. and DC Comics.

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Voger’s Vault of vintage varieties

(ABOVE) Catwoman, then known as the Cat, wore civvies in her debut story in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Art by Bob Kane. (CENTER) Catwoman’s first cover appearance was in Detective Comics #122 (Apr. 1947). (RIGHT) The Golden Age Catwoman in a detail from the cover of Batman #42 (Aug.–Sept. 1947). Art by Jack Burnley and Charles Paris. TM & © DC Comics.

person, from his Bat-emblem to just above his utility belt. This was an outrageous liberty. One time, Batman came within millimeters of actually kissing Catwoman, but for Robin interrupting them. And they once split an ice-cream soda! (Could you picture Batman doing that with King Tut?) We urchins wondered: What power does she have over him?

ORIGIN OF THE PRINCESS OF PLUNDER

By the time Newmar became the first actress to play Catwoman, the character had already been around for 26 years, having debuted in DC’s Batman #1 in 1940. (Batman made his bow the previous year in—all together, now—Detective Comics #27.) In her premiere story, the villainess is known as the Cat, a beautiful but cunning cat burglar who wears “civvies” and plunders jewelry from the wealthy passengers of a luxury cruise. Sparks fly from the get-go between the Cat and Batman, not to mention some curious dialogue. “Quiet or Papa spank!” Batman commands the Cat when she protests after being collared by him. “I know when I’m licked,” she concedes as Batman searches her for pilfered jewelry. The Cat then proposes a romantic alliance: “You and I, the king and queen of crime!” When straight-arrow Batman balks, the Cat uses up one of her nine lives by jumping into the sea rather than face prison. Already, Batman is smitten: “Lovely girl! What eyes! Maybe I’ll bump into her again some time!” To which Robin replies warily: “Hmmm.” The story was produced by Batman’s co-creators, writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane. (Gosh, it feels good to say that out loud after 70-plus years in which Finger’s co-creator credit was unfairly denied.) This makes Catwoman one more Finger/Kane co-creation in a long line of indelible comic-book characters. Catwoman has recognizable ancestors in pop culture, from silent-era “vamp” Theda Bara, to Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter, to the Dragon Lady in Milton Caniff’s adventure strip Terry and the Pirates. Kane himself cited actresses Jean Harlow and Hedy Lamarr as direct influences. 32

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From here, the Cat’s evolution was incremental but steady. She is first called Catwoman in Batman #2 (Summer 1940); she acquires a costume in Batman #3 (Fall 1940); her costume is revised in Batman #10 (Apr.–May 1942) and #15 (Feb.–Mar. 1943); her first cover appearance is in Detective Comics #122 (Apr. 1947). Catwoman’s best-remembered “Golden Age” look has her in a purple cowl (with cat-ears, natch), costume, and heeled boots, paired with a green collar and cape. Her legs, without benefit of stockings or tights, peek out from her long purple skirt. Poor Batman didn’t stand a chance. Catwoman was not depicted in either of the Batman movie serials (of 1943 and ’49), but she continued to appear regularly in Batman comic books through Detective Comics #203 (Jan. 1954). After that edition hit the stands, she took a long catnap—12 years’ worth. Some ascribe this hiatus to the publication that year of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s comics-bashing book Seduction of the Innocent, which seemed to blame every societal ill on comic books. (Though Newmar originated the role, it should be noted that she might not have been the first to wear the costume. In a 1966 publicity photo, Kane posed with a girlfriend who was dressed as the Golden Age Catwoman. Kane, styled like a low-rent Hugh Hefner, pretends to be painting the lovely young lady. Depending on whether the photo was taken before or after Newmar’s bow as Catwoman that same year, Kane’s unnamed girlfriend might technically be the first person to have “officially” dressed as Catwoman.) The TV Batman team, led by producer William Dozier and writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr., was reviving comic-book villains that would satisfy the show’s emphasis on color-soaked visuals. When they wisely decided to revive the Catwoman, the character hadn’t been heard from in a dozen years. The team wanted Newmar in the role, and needed a quick answer. But Newmar didn’t know from Batman.

Voger’s Vault of vintage varieties

HOLLYWOOD TO BROADWAY

If there’s one word that must be used in describing Julie Newmar, it is “statuesque.” She is a statue—a walking (on mile-long legs), talking (in sex-kitten breathiness) monument to enduring beauty. I interviewed the actress on four occasions, in 1995, 1998, 2002, and 2008. She was born Julia Chalene Newmeyer in 1933 in Los Angeles, where she grew up in an artistically nurturing environment. Both of her parents had obtained a measure of fame: Newmar’s father once played professional football, and her mother was a dancer and fashion designer. Family notoriety didn’t end there. “I’m related to two presidents,” Newmar once told me. “I think one is [Ulysses] Grant and the other is [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, probably by fifth cousinhood or something.” Newmar reckoned she had six careers. As she put it: “First off, I was a pianist; secondly, a dancer; third, an actress; fourth, a mother—that counts, you know—fifth was real estate; sixth was writing.” Newmar’s earliest films were often musicals: She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952), her film debut as a chorus girl; The Band Wagon (1953), starring Fred Astaire; and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). She trekked east to make her mark on Broadway in Silk Stockings (1955–1956), Li’l Abner (1956–1958), and The Marriage-Go-Round (1958– 1960), for which she won a Tony Award. Recalled the actress: “My first big career break was on the Broadway stage in Marriage-Go-Round because I was associated with such high-quality people—Claudette Colbert; Charles Boyer; Joel Anthony, the director; Leslie Stevens,

the writer. All people who’ve won Academy Awards. I was fortunate enough to win the Tony for that first acting role. In retrospect, being associated with great people, they lend their luster to a novice or someone starting out, as I was at that time.” Newmar was asked what she learned from Colbert, an Oscar winner with a long career. “I think she taught me strength,” the actress said. “This was a powerful woman who knew how to ‘right’ things, how to make things work. Everything that she had was placed in the top drawer. She had instant mental access to put whatever support she needed into her career. Top drawer. A genuine star, as her career showed from beginning to end, every decade of her life.” Newmar repeated two of her Broadway roles in movie adaptations: Stupefyin’ Jones in Melvin Frank’s Li’l Abner (1959), and Katrin in Walter Lang’s The Marriage-Go-Round (1961). Recalled the actress of shooting Li’l Abner: “I was dancing on these berms. They built little hills on the stage because that’s the way the comic strip [by Al Capp] was drawn. Dancing up and down on those skinny little heels about the size of your little finger, you know?” Did the actress, whose height was her calling card, need those skinny little heels? “Yes. I needed them because—it’s what high heels do for the legs, you see.” One can only agree. Newmar’s first regular TV role was in My Living Doll (1964–1965), a one-season wonder starring Bob Cummings. Decades before the manufacturing and marketing of so-called RealDolls, Newmar played an alluring robot in the sitcom

There was palpable sexual chemistry between Julie Newmar and Adam West. © Warner Bros. and DC Comics.

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RETRO CARTOONS

‘The Pinocchio Syndrome’

ASTRO BOY They were separated by half a planet and more than a century. But their stories were still similar. A seemingly inanimate figure is brought to life through extraordinary means. Naive and idealistic, the individual embarks on a series of amazing adventures, to try to find his place in the world, and how to be a real boy. The first individual is, of course, Pinocchio, created in the late 19th Century by Carlo Collodi. The second character, though, is an iconic Japanese character that became one of the first stars of anime to make an impact in America. He began life as Mighty Atom, but you probably know him as Astro Boy. From 1963–1966, the original Astro Boy animated series ran in syndication on TV stations across America, usually five days a week in the afternoon. Long-time science-fiction fan Steve Luttrell of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, recalls, “I remember that the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia used to run Astro Boy right before [news journalists] Huntley and Brinkley. You could go from anime to grainy 16mm footage of warfare in Vietnam within four minutes.” Ken Steacy, a Canadian writer-artist who would become associated with Astro Boy, tells RetroFan, “I recall visiting relatives in New York City in the early Sixties, and being parked in front of their black-and-white TV long enough to catch the last few minutes of an Astro Boy episode. At that point, I had yet to join the ranks of the Merry Marvel Marching Society… but was a fan of Rupert the Bear and Tintin (and remain so to this day!). Something about the simplicity of the character [Astro Boy] design and the sparse animation intrigued me, but it wasn’t until a quarter century later

BY BILL SPANGLER

that I developed a much greater Go, Astro, go! An amazing appreciation of [creator Osamu] cel of Astro Boy taking Tezuka’s character.” to the air, from Tezuka Mighty Atom was part of Productions’ 1980 Astro a large cast that populated a Boy cartoon reboot. Astro Boy manga called Ambassador Atom © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. or Captain Atom (depending on the translation). The series was created by a writer-artist named Osamu Tezuka. Eventually, Tezuka would be dubbed by many as the God of Manga, but Ambassador Atom was considered only a mild success. Tezuka’s editor recommended that he focus on Mighty Atom’s adventures. The change turned a modestly performing series into an institution. Tezuka produced Astro Boy stories for a variety of publications from 1952 to 1981. He also created Jungle Emperor Leo, better known in America as Kimba the White Lion, and more adult features such as Black Jack.

HE’S GOT FIREPOWER OUT THE…

Astro Boy was constructed by Doctor Tenma to replace his son Tobio, who had recently died in car accident. Robots were common in this world, but Astro was still something different. He could fly, and his body contained a variety of weapons, including a machine gun that extended from his butt. That’s right, his butt. In many versions of this story, Astro ends up as the property of a circus, similar to the circus in Disney’s Pinocchio. That relationship doesn’t last very long, either. Astro becomes a ward of the Ministry of Science, whose scientists create a robotic family for him to live RETROFAN

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retro cartoons

(TOP LEFT) A 2003 reprint edition of Osamu Tezuka’s 1951 first Astro Boy manga, Ambassador (Captain) Atom. (TOP RIGHT) An Astro Boy import. (BOTTOM LEFT) Gold Key Comics published Astro Boy #1 (and only) in 1965. (bottom right) NOW Comics’ The Original Astro Boy #3 (Nov. 1987), featuring a painted cover by Ken Steacy. © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd.

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retro cartoons

with. His sister Uran (short for “uranium”?) is probably the bestknown member of that family. Tezuka told an interviewer that Astro Boy was intended to be a “21st-Century reverse-Pinocchio, a nearly perfect robot who strove to become more human and emotive and to serve as an interface between man and machine.” As his career evolved, Tezuka established an animation studio. One of its initial projects was a television series featuring Astro Boy. This show proved to be a landmark, as the first animated series to run on Japanese TV and the first Japanese series to run in America. Selling the series to America required several changes. Astro’s original identity was now Astor Boynton, and Professor Ochanomizu, Astro’s mentor at the Ministry of Science, was now known as Professor Elefun, for reasons that are apparent as soon as you see his nose. In addition, the American producers added a theme song which was added to the Japanese version. This series of Astro Boy adventures consisted of 104 segments in black and white, with very limited animation. Despite these drawbacks, there are some striking visuals. Some are meant to produce jokes, such as scientists’ necks that stretch and squash as they watch temperature gauges go up and down. Other robots in the circus Astro winds up in do bizarre things (one robot is shaped like a mailbox with arms and legs, and takes letters out of a door in his body and reinserts them through his mouth). There’s a different sort of surrealism in a later episode, as Astro imagines running through a nightmarish landscape, searching for his mother. (Which brings up an interesting question: Who was Astor Boynton’s mother?) As color television became more common in the mid-Sixties, the black-and-white Astro Boy cartoons were phased out. In the early 1980s, Tezuka and his animators brought the character back, in full color. This new series kept the general outlines of Astro’s origin, and his time as a circus performer. His original last name was still Boynton, but now his first name was Toby, a variation of Tobio.

This series also introduced his arch-enemy, a robot known as Atlas. A scientist constructs Atlas based on Dr. Tenma/Boynton’s plans, which cause some people to refer to him as Astro’s half-brother. Not only do the animators import Atlas from Tezuka’s original manga, but whole stories are adapted into the new medium. A story called “The Greatest Robot on Earth” became a two-part TV episode. In this particular outing, a formidable robot controlled by a character known as the Sultan challenges other robots across the globe to see who is the most powerful. Naturally, Astro Boy is on this list. The Sultan’s robot was originally known as Pluto, but his name was changed to Bruton for the animated version. The other robots had names like Hercules and Mont Blanc. Astro eventually convinces Bruton that there are more things in life than fighting. “The Greatest Robot on Earth” stayed in a lot of readers’ memories. Eventually, Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki got permission to adapt the story back into manga form, with a more modern look. This version is called Pluto, and was published in America as a six-volume set in 2009. Although the characters here have a more contemporary and realistic look, they’re easily recognizable in most cases (Astro Boy is simply called “Atom” here). As of late 2021, the color Astro Boy was available on the streaming service Tubi. Episodes of a third animated series, which premiered in 2003, are available on YouTube.

ASTRO BOY AT NOW COMICS

Artist Ken Steacy used to watch and enjoy the French-language version of the Astro Boy color cartoon with his two boys. He became even more intimately involved with the character in 1987, when NOW Comics, one of the companies in the burgeoning independent market, approached him about doing an American version of Astro Boy. NOW’s series launched with The Original Astro Boy #1 (Sept. 1987).

The master cartoonist and creator of Mighty Atom (Astro Boy), Osamu Tezuka, in a self-caricature from the early Eighties. © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. Courtesy of Heritage.

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RETROFAD

The Slinky

Slinky® and © Just Play, LLC. Slinky photo by Roger McLassus/Wikimedia Commons. Toy Story © Disney/Pixar.

BY MICHAEL EURY

James discovered that these coils My formative years were spent in a would “walk” down stairs. His son, small, one-level apartment, with no Tom, was agog over the phenomstairs. So the magic of “a wonderful enon, as were Tom’s buddies. toy” that is “fun for a girl and a boy” It was a sick child and a smart and could walk down steps all by wife, however, that inspired Richard itself was lost upon a kid whose James to stop thinking like an home was on the first floor. engineer and start thinking like an Still, it was the TV advertising entrepreneur. “I gave one coil to a jingle whose siren call pronounced, boy in bed with the mumps,” James “Everyone wants a Slinky” that coiled recalled. The kid’s parents were itself into my psyche and demanded impressed with how the simple I spring into step with Slinkymania. device helped buoy their child’s One of my earliest TV memories is a spirits and told James he should black-and-white commercial from market his spring as a toy. James’ the mid-Sixties where a little girl is wife Betty saw the merit in taking yanking her caterpillar-shaped Slinky his springs to a commercial level toy across her living room carpet. The and urged him to proceed. At first slithering plaything that expanded James was discouraged, since “the and contracted like Myron Floren’s ‘toy people’ wanted no part of” his accordion on The Lawrence Welk Show, springy plaything as he tried to hawk stymied her pet dachshund. This his product to disinterested stores. Slinky “Cater-puller” was supposed to Betty suggested that her husband be cute, but to me resembled a Zanti make his toy more attractive to Misfit from The Outer Limits. It would children by painting the wire in bright have been horrifying if it weren’t primary colors, and even coined the for the perky jingle chiming in the name “Slinky” after flipping through background. The intoxicating theme the dictionary. (An aside to all you song worked—I wanted a Slinky! married men: Listen to your wives!) And the girl’s poor puppy probably Richard and Betty James persuaded needed a doggie shrink. Philadelphia’s Gimbels Department Maybe the whole U.S.A. needed Store to give the Slinky a shot in (TOP) Richard T. James’ original patent design. its collective head examined when late 1945, with Dick himself demon(BOTTOM) Everyone knows it’s Slinky’s creator, you consider that the Slinky—which strating the product live. Shoppers, Richard T. James. has sold hundreds of millions of like the kid with the mumps, were units—is a simple spring. enthralled by this “walking” The Slinky was discovered by accident in 1943. Philadelphia spring. Within an hour and a half the 400 Slinkies the shipbuilder Richard T. “Dick” James, commissioned by the U.S. husband-and-wife duo had invested in had not Navy, was working with round elastic wire in an attempt to walked, but blown off the shelf. Gimbels wanted create a device that would buffer ships’ delicate navigational more Slinkies! Richard quit his day job, he and instruments from choppy ocean waters. Legend has it that James Betty borrowed $500 for startup costs, and noticed the gyrations of a coil spring that toppled from a shelf they formed James Spring & Wire Company and began to shimmy across tabletops before “walking” its way to of Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania. They the floor. Its acrobatic movements mesmerized him. “The coils of hurried more Slinkies into production, round wire wouldn’t stand up,” James said in an interview. While frantically keeping apace with climbing he was unable to produce the shock absorber the Navy wanted, demand during the Christmas season. James had samples of flat wire produced and began “tinkering This American Dream had its with wire springs.” nightmares along the way. Patent disputes RETROFAN

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RETRO TELEVISION

BY ROBERT GREENBERGER In February 1972, America wasn’t yet worried about bugging offices. Instead it was emerging from a turbulent, violent period that frayed the social fabric. We still trusted our government and our major corporations, so there wasn’t much need to think about the surveillance state or the coming changes computer technology would bring to America. As a result, an NBC telefilm, Probe, seemed like a far-fetched concept. The brainchild of Leslie Stevens, the concept posited that a private firm, World Securities, protected and insured banks, national treasures, art collections, and other valuables. Their Probe Division outfitted their agents with high-tech gear, allowing a team at Probe Control to guide them on their investigations. Each agent had a surgically implanted ear jack, allowing two-way communications, along with a dental implant that allowed nonverbal signals (once for yes, twice for no, or continuous for emergency). The crown jewel, as it was, was the scanner, a tiny device that allowed Control to see and hear what was happening while studying vital signs, and the camera could perform infrared scanning, allowing for night vision. It could be worn as a ring, pendant, or cufflinks. Stevens, the mastermind behind The Outer Limits, certainly understood thinking forward as well as the paranoia that can come with too much power or the fear of the unknown. He was well paired with producer Robert H. Justman, recently coming off Star Trek, who also knew a few things about the future. Stevens brought along with him associate producer John Meredith Strong, whom he met on McCloud. According to Strong, he and Stevens conceived of a series called 1999 that featured a secret group operating in the Earthside Missile Base, solving cases involving strange phenomenon. World Securities Corporation fronted as an insurance firm. From there, the series morphed into Probe. The NBC two-hour film starred Hugh O’Brian, making his triumphant return to television after his Fifties hit, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. It was glossy, boasting a strong score from Dominic Frontiere, with guest-stars Sir John Gielgud and Elke Sommer (and future “Angel” Jaclyn Smith), and showed a lot of promise. In keeping with U.N.C.L.E. and other acronyms of the day, in the film, Hugh O’Brian’s character explains that Probe actually

(TOP) No, that’s not a Zoom meeting—it’s the cast of TV’s innovative one-season wonder, Search (1972–1973). Special thanks to RetroFan Jim Alexander for providing the Search promotional photos accompanying this article. © Warner Bros. Television. (ABOVE) Ad for Probe, the telefilm directed by Russ Mayberry, which aired on February 21, 1972. When it continued as a series, its name was changed to Search to avoid duplicating the title of PBS’s science program, Probe. © Warner Bros. Television.

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retro television

Sir John Gielgud (LEFT) as Harold L. Streeter and Burgess Meredith as V. C. R. Cameron, from the Probe pilot. © Warner Bros. Television.

means “Programmed Retrieval Operations,” with the “B” and “E” remaining classified. O’Brian wound up becoming a part owner of the series, which was being produced by Warner Television, but he only appeared in eight of the episodes. For reasons unknown, Search became a wheel show. Beginning with ABC’s Warner Bros. Presents in 1955, numerous television series would rotate leads or storylines. They were unrelated, a practice NBC used regularly with The Bold Ones (1969–1973), Four in One (1970–1971), and The NBC Mystery Movie (1971–1977). The Peacock Network’s 90-minute The Name of the Game (1968–1971), for which Stevens produced seven episodes, set all the characters in the same world, which became influential for the new series. The Name of the Game featured intrepid reporter Jeff Dillon, played by Tony Franciosa, who was recruited to the new show. Doug McClure, who spent 1962–1971 as Trampas on the popular TV Western The Virginian (also briefly produced by Stevens), was also signed for a role in Search. To handle the agents and to bring some gravitas to the proceedings, Burgess Meredith was brought in as Probe Control Director V. C. R. Cameron, while the technicians he oversaw were all relatively new performers—Angel Tompkins, Albert Popwell, Byron Chung, A Martinez, Amy Farrell, Ginny 50

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Golden, Ron Castro, and Cheryl Stoppelmoor, the latter better known today as Cheryl Ladd. Strong initially conceived the title shots and recounted how, as a joke, he edited them into a huge penis-like missile taking off to Mars with the title Probe right behind it; fear and laughter was heard in the network screening room. “I told the story to the NBC press when they had their big junket for all their new series without blinking an eye, because I thought it was funny (and innocent), and Tony Franciosa was with me because he was being [added] to the show of contract players and he was embarrassed or speechless.” Meredith didn’t think the series would ever be picked up, losing a dinner bet to Strong at the famed Beverly Hills restaurant the Bistro. He finally agreed to appear in it when he realized the Probe Control scenes would be shot one day a week. Strong also said securing Meredith cost him 13 bottles of Chateau Laffite 1941. Between the pilot and the series, PBS pointed out that they had a science series called Probe, and as a result the NBC series was quickly retitled Search. It was given the 10 p.m. berth on Wednesday nights, facing off against ABC’s The Julie Andrews Show and CBS’s latest detective show, Cannon. Each week saw a new case handed to the Probe Division, and Cameron would brief the agent du jour, usually in the dark opera-

retro television

tions center. Like the Enterprise bridge, there was a main viewscreen where information on the case was presented, and where later the agents’ activities could be seen. O’Brian was Hugh Lockwood, a former astronaut, and agent Probe One, the best of the lot. James Franciosa was a former NYPD cop, Nick Bianco, who specialized in criminal activity, dubbed the Omega Probe. Beach bum-cum-electronics genius C. R. Grover (Doug McClure) was the backup Probe, usually pressed into service on short notice, upending his personal life. Sadly, there was zero crossover with the agents, so they were never all seen in a single episode. At Probe Control, each technician had a specialty such as medical telemetry, languages, logistics, etc. Cameron oversaw everything, trying to keep the inevitable flirting between operative and pretty technician to a minimum, focusing them instead on the mission—and their budget. The set, conceived by production designer Fred Harpman on his first job, was filled with thencutting-edge computers on loan from Control Data Corporation, so extras were manning those machines in the background, suggesting a robust operation. The wealth of information they could access suggested the internet long before it went public. As befit shows of the era, it boasted an illustrious cadre of guest-stars including Dabney Coleman, Sebastian Cabot, Jeff Corey, Edward Mulhare, Mary Frann, Nehemiah Persoff, Nicholas Colasanto, James B. Sikking, JoAnna Cameron, Michael Conrad, Jo Ann Pflug, Stefanie Powers, and William Smith. Styled after the globetrotting espionage novels and films of the era, Search tried to make it appear the Probe agents were in Europe, the high seas, tropical islands, and so on. Today, the themes about man and machine, privacy rights of the agents or the people being investigated, and similar concerns would fuel a lot of the stories. None of those issues ever came up back in the Seventies, and the show avoided topical matters, going for the more generic threats that fueled so many dramas of the time, from Mission: Impossible to Hawaii Five-0. The scripts were professional, but never really took advantage of the tech or the moral issues. In a 1972 interview on The Bobbie Wynant Show, Burgess Meredith touched on Search’s potential. “Our program uses the tech for the side of good, but imagine if it is used on the side of evil? It’s terrifying what [the government] can find out, what they can look into.” After starting off strong in the ratings, negative reviews and William Conrad’s engaging performance in the competing Cannon saw Search suffer, never ranking higher than 38 in the Nielsen Ratings. A typical review of the premise came from Don Page of the Los Angeles Times, who declared: “Unquestionably, there is a lot to say for Search… like contrived, ludicrous, gimmicky and dull.” Rather than understand the potential of the tech, the critics saw it as mere child’s play. For example, Bettelou Peterson of the Detroit Free Press wrote, “The gimmicks carry the show [but it] is played for snickers rather than laughs.” Of course, these same critics were dismissive of Star Trek for being gimmicky and outlandish without trying to pay attention to the stories. On the other hand, anecdotal buzz was positive, according to Strong, who told the Probe Control fan group, “I got some amazing response to the show… and we were all very proud of it. And we all work in this business, move from job-to-job, from movie-to-movie, RETROFAN

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The

SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

1977 Soviet

Pinback button from the Soviet National Exhibition. Collection of the author.

Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Convention Center.

National Exhibition BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA

The Soviet invasion of the United States depicted in the 1984 movie Red Dawn featured enemy paratroopers landing near a small-town school, killing a teacher, shooting at a classroom, and blowing up an empty school bus with a rocket launcher. I agree that educated children are one of our nation’s greatest resources, but it would have been smarter to have neutralized local law enforcement and locked down the adult power centers and other important resources before wasting ordinance on empty school buses. If they had rounded up the kids and held them as prisoners to keep the adults in check, they might not have had to fire a shot. But I’m no general. I didn’t buy the premise of the movie at all, but as fantasy it was entertaining. Besides, the Soviets had already invaded America. Not a shot was fired. No empty school buses were blown up, and, as in Red Dawn, things didn’t work out as planned for the invaders. I know, because I was there.

The exhibition ran from November 12–29 and was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in fun-in-the-sun California (as opposite from Siberia as you can get). It is still listed as a highlight for the facility to this day. Some 310,000 people attended, and my dad decided that he and some of his older kids would be among them. So off we went one fine November day to visit the invading Soviets. I didn’t know what to expect. Would the Russians (which is what we called them even though the Soviet Union was made up of multiple republics and nationalities) be utterly alien to me? Would there be spy stuff happening? Would I meet a beautiful but tragic ballet dancer who yearned for both freedom and the comforting arms of a string-bean high school student? Clearly, my idea of the Soviet Union was abundantly influenced by Western media.

ПРИВЕТ! [HELLO!]

During World War II, the Russians were our allies. And then they weren’t. From 1947 until 1989, the world’s only two superpowers, Us and Them, were in an existential face-off. However, since we were not in an active shooting conflict it was known as the Cold War (come for the popular culture, RetroFan, get a history lesson). The Cold War made people nervous because of the potential for a Hot War to blow up the world with nuclear weapons of which both sides had plenty. This tension impacted our entertainment (which is why we’re all here, right?).

In 1977, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (U.S.S.R.) was celebrating its 60th anniversary (just a year earlier, the United States had celebrated its 200th birthday). To help mark the occasion, the Soviets held a National Exhibition in Los Angeles, their first such show since the one held in New York in 1959. The event’s name was “The U.S.S.R.’s National Exposition Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution,” but was more commonly referred to as the “Soviet National Exhibition.”

РАЗВЛЕЧЕНИЯ ХОЛОДНОЙ ВОЙНЫ [COLD WAR ENTERTAINMENT]

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scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

Serious movies like Fail Safe (1964) and the equally dark but funny Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) were both about accidental nuclear death and destruction… not such a far-fetched topic so soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, during which President Kennedy confronted the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, over the issue of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. But even silly (yet completely wonderful) movies like The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!, which told the story of a Soviet submarine (full of swell guys) running aground on the coast of a small American community (full of swell folks) in 1966, had an undercurrent of danger. Any moment, the small incident could turn into a larger and possibly deadlier one. Kids were not immune to awareness of the Soviet threat. “Duck and Cover drills” were used from the Fifties until around 1961, when I was a toddler. My introduction to the Soviet menace was likely via Rocky and Bullwinkle’s Boris and Natasha, nefarious spies with broad Russian accents from Pottsylvania, an Eastern European country very likely in the Soviet sphere of influence. I loved those characters, but clearly Boris and Natasha and their boss, Fearless Leader (and sometimes Mr. Big), were bad guys. In the Sixties, Marvel Comics’ Iron Man stories were certainly more attune to the Communist threat than, say, Superman and Batman. The first Crimson Dynamo (gosh, that’s a tip-top character name!) and Black Widow were two notable Soviet creations that encountered Iron Man (a stanch anti-Communist and wealthy ladies’ man) and were soon turned to the cause of Freedom. And Nikita Khrushchev (or an unnamed simulation) turned up in the occasional comicbook story, including appearances in Patsy Walker #99 (Feb. 1962) and Life with Archie #24 (Nov. 1963). The tense relationship between the Klingons (warmongering space bad guys) and the Federation of Planets (decent but willing-to-fight-for-space-freedom good guys) were a much-enjoyed feature of the original Star Trek television series in the Sixties. And if you missed that

relationship as a metaphor for the ideological conflict between the East and West, then the Star Trek episode “The Omega Glory” (Season 2, Episode 23), with its battle between the Red Chinese–esque Khoms (Communists) versus the fair-skinned Yangs (Yankees), would drive home the point with less subtlety. For good measure, the Constitution of the United States makes a cameo in that episode too.

ПОЗНАКОМЬТЕСЬ С СОВЕТАМИ [MEET THE SOVIETS]

The wait in the line to see the Soviet National Exhibition was about an hour or two. But once inside the large space, my eyes immediately focused on the Soyuz spacecraft hanging from the ceiling. It was quite large. At least in my memory. Seeing a photo years later, I could tell that being inside the craft was probably crushingly claustrophobic. The possibility that it could come loose and smash everything below was very present in my mind

Archie, the typical teen, beats up Nikita Krushchev and Fidel Castro. Iron Man battles Commies (note the Crimson Dynamo’s clunky Soviet hardware). And, hey, kids… comics about the dangers of Communism. © Archie Publications, Inc. © Marvel. 58

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ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

TARZAN BY ANDY MANGELS

Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning! Don your pith helmet and loincloth as we take a trip into the deepest jungles of Africa! Do you hear that infamous yodel ringing through the trees? Do you catch glimpses of a nearly naked man swinging through the foliage on vines? That’s Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, and he’s been a staple in film and on television since 1918. But with the live-action Tarzan an almost ubiquitous part of Saturday or Sunday viewing in the Seventies and beyond, the Ape Man has barely ever been translated into animation! Hang on tight to that vine as we swing into an examination of Tarzan’s Saturday morning heroics!

ORIGINS OF TARZAN

Tarzan’s origins date back to 1912, when the character first appeared, cover-billed, in the October issue of pulp magazine The All-Story, which promised “A Romance of the Jungle.” He was the creation of newcomer writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had created the John Carter of Mars/Barsoom stories only a few months prior (Feb. to July 1912) as his first published work. Tarzan of the Apes

(TOP) Promotional art for Filmation’s Tarzan animated series. (INSET) Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes first appeared in All-Story, a noted pulp magazine. Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. (ERB)

was serialized in The All-Story, and then republished as a novel in 1914. The character of Tarzan—the infant son of a British aristocrat who was orphaned in the jungle and raised by wild apes—was a tremendous hit, and Burroughs soon found himself writing further adventures. Wanting to capitalize on Tarzan’s immense popularity with the public, Burroughs decided to parlay his character into as many kinds of media as possible: films, comics, and merchandise. New books followed almost yearly, with The Return of Tarzan (1913) and The Beasts of Tarzan (1914) leading further into the jungle; by 1965, Burroughs had finished 24 Tarzan novels in total. The first film adaptations were silent, starring Elmo Lincoln in Tarzan of the Apes and The Romance of Tarzan (both 1918), but Tarzan blossomed significantly when portrayed by Olympian swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, who portrayed the hero in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and 11 other films! Following four silent serials, a 1933 serial starred Buster Crabbe, and a 1935 serial, The New Adventures of Tarzan, starred Herman Brix/Bruce Bennet, bringing fans into theaters every weekend. Tarzan of the Apes came to newspapers in the United Feature Syndicate daily comic strip in January 1929, illustrated by Hal Foster, and a Sunday full-page was added in March 1931, drawn by Rex Maxon. The comic strip would survive until 2002, including such art luminaries as Burne Hogarth, Dan Barry, Russ Manning, Gil Kane, Mike Grell, and others. [Editor’s note: Check out our sister magazine, RETROFAN

July 2022

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

(ABOVE) Three panels from Hal Foster’s beautifully rendered Tarzan comic strip (Mar. 26, 1933). (RIGHT) Trade advertisement promoting the Tarzan radio show. Illustration by noted Tarzan book artist J. Allen St. John. © ERB. Back Issue #136, on sale this month, for a look at artist-writer Mike Grell’s Tarzan Sundays as well as other comic strips including The Amazing Spider-Man, Howard the Duck, Friday Foster, Star Trek, and many others!] Starting in 1947, Western Publishing started packaging Tarzan stories for Dell Comics, followed by Western imprint Gold Key Comics from 1962–1972, after which DC Comics took the reins until 1977, followed by Marvel Comics. On the radio airwaves, Tarzan was the star of three serialized series: 1932–1934, 1934–1936, and 1950–1951. Listeners could thrill to audio adventures that were largely adapted from the books. But radio was being edged out of its home entertainment monopoly by television, a newcomer to households. By the mid-Fifties, over a dozen Tarzan films, plus various serials, were being aired on syndicated television stations, usually on Saturdays or Sundays, to appeal to kids that were out of school. Although ‘movie Tarzan’ Gordon Scott would film three episodes of a prospective new television series in 1958, Tarzan didn’t reach the air until 1966, when producer Sy Weintraub brought the

(ABOVE) Elmo Lincoln was the first film actor to play Tarzan in the silent Tarzan of the Apes (1918). (RIGHT) Behind the scenes with (LEFT TO RIGHT) Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Johnny Weissmuller. © ERB. 68

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show to NBC, starring Ron Ely. Weintraub had begun producing the films in 1959 with Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, and he changed the character to more closely reflect the novels. Gone were the monosyllabic grunts of the previous Tarzan; now, Tarzan was an educated adventurer who was no longer beholden to longtime girlfriend Jane. The former jungle lord now had near-James Bondian adventures around the globe. Fifty-seven episodes of the Ely series were shot and aired before Tarzan retired in 1968. RETROFAN #21 For the first time in 56 years, there were no new adventures Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO TARZAN Saturday morning cartoons, the true history of of Tarzan in theaters, on the radio,BOY, or on television. But with the PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, theSaturday MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO and more fun, fab character constantly appearing on television in ’77, reruns, features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURit was only a matter of time before the jungle leaves would rustle RAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY. again… (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

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The one arena that Tarzan was missing in was animation. In fact, by 1968, none of Burroughs’ properties had been animated. Tarzan had been parodied in several Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon shorts,