RetroFan #27

You’ll put your eye out, kid!

July/August 2023 No. 27 $10.95

OUTRAGEOUS TOYS

TV’S Captain Kangaroo,

BOB inKEESHAN, a Vintage Interview JACK KIRBY’S COMEDY COMICS

And you thought you had problems getting dates…

fu was kungy d o b y r e v E

fighting!

SEVENTIES MARTIAL ARTS MANIA

Rockford Files • Don Drysdale’s TV drop-ins • Challenge of the Super Friends • & more!

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Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury Not Brand Echh and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu © Marvel. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein © American International Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

New from TwoMorrows!

ALTER EGO #183

ALTER EGO #184

BACK ISSUE #144

BACK ISSUE #145

Golden/Silver/Bronze Age artist IRV NOVICK (Shield, Steel Sterling, Batman, The Flash, and DC war stories) is immortalized by JOHN COATES and DEWEY CASSELL. Interviews with Irv and family members, tributes by DENNY O’NEIL, MARK EVANIER, and PAUL LEVITZ, Irv’s involvement with painter ROY LICHTENSTEIN (who used Novick’s work in his paintings), Mr. Monster, FCA, and more!

Known as one of the finest inkers in comics history, the late TOM PALMER was also an accomplished penciler and painter, as you’ll see in an-depth interview with Palmer by ALEX GRAND and JIM THOMPSON. Learn his approach to, and thoughts on, working with NEAL ADAMS, GENE COLAN, JOHN BUSCEMA, and others who helped define the Marvel Universe. Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!

BRONZE AGE SAVAGE LANDS, starring Ka-Zar in the 1970s! Plus: Turok—Dinosaur Hunter, DON GLUT’s Dagar and Tragg, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, Planet of Vampires, Pat Mills’s Flesh (from 2000AD), and WALTER SIMONSON and MIKE MIGNOLA’s Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure. With CONWAY, GULACY, HAMA, NICIEZA, SEARS, THOMAS, and more! JOHN BUSCEMA cover!

SPIDER-ROGUES ISSUE! Villain histories of Dr. Octopus, Lizard, Kingpin, Spidey’s mob foes, the Jackal and Carrion, Tarantula, Puma, plus the rehabilitation of Sandman!

Featuring the work of ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, CONWAY, DeFALCO, GIL KANE, McFARLANE, MILLER, POLLARD, JOHN ROMITA JR. & SR., STERN, THOMAS, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and more!

DUSTY ABELL cover!

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BACK ISSUE #146

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #31 KIRBY COLLECTOR #88

BRICKJOURNAL #81

MEN WITHOUT FEAR, featuring Daredevil’s swinging ’70s adventures!

Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!

Great Hera, it’s the 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BACK ISSUE, featuring a tribute to the late, great GEORGE PÉREZ! Wonder Woman: The George Pérez Years, Pérez’s 20 Greatest Hits of the Bronze Age, Pérez’s fanzine days, a Pérez remembrance by MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more!

With a stunning Wonder Woman cover

by Pérez!

MEN WITHOUT FEAR, featuring Daredevil’s swinging ’70s adventures!

Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!

THE COLLECTORS! Fans’ quest for and purchase of Jack’s original art and comics, MARV WOLFMAN shares his (and LEN WEIN’s) interactions with Jack as fans and pros, unseen Kirby memorabilia, an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER moderating the 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International, plus a deluxe wrap-around Kirby cover with foldout back cover flap, inked by MIKE ROYER!

Head to the city: Ellis City by GARETH and CATHY ELLIS, New Hasima by STEFAN FORMENTATO, and Fabuland City by STEVEN LAUGHLIN! Plus a wealth of other MOCs (”My Own Creations”) are showcased, along with: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions

by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

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An FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) special, behind a breathtaking JERRY ORDWAY cover! Features on Uncle Marvel and the Fawcett Family by P.C. HAMERLINCK, ACG artist KENNETH LANDAU (Commander Battle and The Atomic Sub), and writer LEE GOLDSMITH (Golden Age Green Lantern, Flash, and others). Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

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The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

Issue #27 July 2023

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Columns and Special Features

Departments

3

Retrotorial

Retro Interview Captain Kangaroo’s Bob Keeshan

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Voger’s Vault of Vintage Varieties Teenage Monster Movies

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Challenge of the SuperFriends

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon The Rockford Files

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Scott Saavedra’s Secret Sanctum Danger in Happy Toyland

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Too Much TV Quiz TV teachers

46

RetroFad Kung fu

62

Retro Television Don Drysdale’s TV drop-ins

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RetroFanmail

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ReJECTED

13

67

46

Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Jack Kirby, Oddball Cartoonist

RetroFan™ issue 27, July 2023 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 4490344. Periodicals postage paid 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: $73 Economy US, $111 International, $29 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Captain Kangaroo © Creative Artists Agency. Not Brand Echh and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu © Marvel. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein © American International Pictures. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2023 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

BY MICHAEL EURY

Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow CONTRIBUTORS Michael Eury L. Wayne Hicks David Krell Andy Mangels Will Murray Scott Saavedra Scott Shaw!

Mark Voger DESIGNER Scott Saavedra PROOFREADER David Baldy SPECIAL THANKS Hake’s Auctions Heritage Auctions Marvel Comics Marc Tyler Nobleman VERY SPECIAL THANKS Bob Keeshan, gone but not forgotten

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RETROFAN

July 2023

RetroFan’s demographic may be Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, but the crazy, cool stuff we (of those generations) grew up with has multigenerational appeal.

Since we launched back in the summer of 2018, I have received a handful of messages from readers in their teens and twenties who were raised by parents who were RetroFans. These wise moms and dads instilled in their kids a passion for the joys of their own childhoods, keeping everything from Action Jackson to Zardoz alive.

But what about the folks from the Greatest Generation, whose number sadly dwindles each day? Those honored citizens survived the Great Depression, the attack on Pearl Harbor, World War II, and the polio epidemic. Plus every other hardship that followed. One might think that those hearty souls may regard The Beatles, Pet Rocks, and Slurpees as “folderol.”

Think again. Shown here is loyal RetroFan reader Robert L. Rummel, my father-in-law, who—at age 95!—may be this magazine’s oldest reader. I would happily give the dad of my beloved wife free copies of the magazine, but he subscribes! He’s enjoying learning about my generation’s pop culture. Coolest father-inlaw ever!

Born three-quarters of a century after Robert Rummel is Kit Frascella, one of RetroFan’s younger readers—and one of the most dedicated fans of The Monkees you’ll ever find. You may remember Kit’s byline from issue #25, where her Super Collector guest column, “Listen to the Band! Why I Love The Monkees,” appeared. Kit has met members of the band and even draws cartoons about them.

And to Kit Frascella I must offer RetroFan’s sincerest apologies for a production error that appeared in her article in issue #25, on page 76. In column one/paragraph two, the first line and the beginning of the second line were missing from the print editions, with a line space appearing where there should have been text. The files we sent to the printer were accurate, but a technical glitch led to the missing copy during printing.

In case you’re thumbing through your copy of #25 now, Kit’s second paragraph on page 76 should have opened with: “Music was a major staple in their [Kit’s parents’] childhoods. My mother has been a record collector since her youth and often played the sounds of her generation, most particularly artists from the Sixties era, to me when I was young.” (Page 76’s other goof, the caption’s naming of “Micksy”— rather than “Micky”—Dolenz, was ye ed’s typo, which slipped past four sets of eyes. Sigh.)

Even though occasional errors and shipping delays might ruffle a few feathers, RetroFan remains a happy home for readers of any age who enjoy pop culture from the mid-Twentieth Century. I invite any of you who don’t fit our standard demo to send a photo of yourself reading a copy of RetroFan to me at euryman@gmail.com, and we’ll make you famous (among our readership, at least) by running your picture in print.

But that’s the future. Let’s talk about the present—this issue—which is, as always, chock full of blasts from the past: teenage monsters, The Rockford Files, Super Friends history, kung fu, dangerous toys, Don Drysdale giving pitching pointers to Greg Brady, crazy Jack Kirby comics… what’s not to love? Ye ed is especially happy to include Wayne Hicks’ thoughtful portrait of Bob Keeshan, TV’s Captain Kangaroo, which opens this edition. Captain Kangaroo was the surrogate grandfather for so many of us growing up—what an honor it is to remember his legacy in our pages.

So get ready for another groovy grab-bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with!

RETRO INTERVIEW

Good Morning, Captain!

Bob Keeshan, Television’s Captain Kangaroo

BY L. WAYNE HICKS

Years before he died, Robert “Bob” Keeshan said he would like to be remembered this way: “Oh, just that I made children feel a little better about themselves, in general. I certainly didn’t do it with every child, but that was my intent.”

There’s little doubt Keeshan made the world a better place for children. The veteran entertainer, who died in 2004 at age 76, provided a lifetime of memories during the 29 years he spent as television’s Captain Kangaroo.

Upon Keeshan’s passing, the New York Times noted the “roundfaced, pleasant, mustachioed man possessed of an unshakable calm” who served as “one of the most enduring characters television ever produced.”

CLOWNING AROUND

Captain Kangaroo debuted on CBS in October 1955. Make-up and a gray wig transformed a 28-year-old Keeshan into the grandfatherly Captain. Over the next several decades, Keeshan would age into the role. For nearly 10,000 episodes, the program educated and

entertained. Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh “Lumpy” Brannum) provided running lessons about flora and fauna. The puppets Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose (both performed by Cosmo “Gus” Allegretti) served as mischievous counterpoints to the Captain.

“The best teacher in the world, whether it be a kindergarten teacher or a college professor, is one who entertains, one who engages the mind of the student,” Keeshan said to me during a

(ABOVE) Children’s television host Bob Keeshan originally donned make-up to become the grandfatherly Captain Kangaroo, but over the decades matured into the role.

Captain Kangaroo’s colorful cast, including Mr. Green Jeans, Dancing Bear, Mr. Moose, and Grandfather Clock, became as beloved as the Captain himself. © Creative Artists Agency. Photos courtesy of the Captain Kangaroo Facebook page.

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retro interview

(LEFT) Keeshan as Howdy Doody’s Clarabell the Clown in a publicity photo.

(RIGHT) From the Time for Fun program, Keeshan as Corny the Clown. (BELOW) Keeshan, the young broadcaster. All courtesy of L. Wayne Hicks.

series of interviews I conducted with him in the late Nineties.

“You’ve got to entertain.”

For his success in doing just that, Keeshan collected a shelf full of accolades, including Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, and honorary degrees, as well as the adoration of millions of children.

He worked without a studio audience and instead spoke directly to the child watching at home.

Keeshan grew up in Queens, New York, in an era when broadcast entertainment came from a bulky radio. During his senior year in high school, he made the trip to Manhattan each afternoon where he worked as a page at NBC Studios, pulling down $13.50 a week. The job wasn’t complicated; he showed members of the audience for the network’s radio shows to their seats. Upon graduating, he followed his brothers into the military and enlisted in the Marines to fight World War II. Despite persistent rumors about Keeshan’s combat service, he never left the United States.

“They dropped the bomb when I was in boot camp, so that ended any threat to me,” he said. “I then spent my life running around closing schools, literally. They would send me to Japanese language school, and I’d be there for six weeks, and it occurred to somebody they no longer needed

Keeshan as a kindly toymaker on Tinker’s Workshop shortly before becoming Captain Kangaroo. Courtesy of L. Wayne Hicks.

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July 2023

interpreters because that was all over with. They sent me to signal school, and they decided they didn’t need that anymore. I spent a year or so after boot camp closing down schools that had been very active.”

Discharged, Keeshan returned to New York and his old job at NBC. He studied at Fordham University at night with the goal of becoming a lawyer. Gradually, though, the pull of broadcasting became too strong to ignore. Keeshan was asked to research and supply historical factoids to a writer working for a radio personality known as Buffalo Bob Smith. Keeshan would provide these random facts for a twice-weekly feature, such as how much a loaf of bread cost in 1918 or what a men’s suit would go for then. From there, he helped Buffalo Bob hand out prizes on a Saturday morning radio quiz show for children. When NBC offered Buffalo Bob a TV show in 1947, he brought Keeshan along to help with what became Howdy Doody. [Editor’s note: Say, kids, it’ll be Howdy Doody time in our pages next year in RetroFan #31!]

At first, Keeshan merely wore a sports coat. Buffalo Bob dressed as a ringmaster to go along with the circus setting. To fit in, Keeshan became a clown named Clarabell.

He didn’t have any lines, but was armed with a horn to honk and a seltzer bottle to squirt. Keeshan spent five years in the make-up and costume.

Keeshan said he learned “almost everything I know” about television from Buffalo Bob. “Now, don’t confuse the live television and the technical aspects of it—all of which

retro interview

I learned from Bob Smith—with the philosophy. I mean, there couldn’t be two philosophies as different as Bob’s philosophy and mine. We looked at children in a totally different way. But as far as learning the craft of television and the timing and comedy, all of that sort of thing, Bob taught me everything. He was an absolute master at it.”

Buffalo Bob’s show was loud, fast-paced, and seldom concerned with teaching. “Bob’s idea of education was to sit at the piano and say, ‘You cross the street with your eyes, not with your feet,’ and that was fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But he certainly wasn’t pro-education as far as it was concerned. He just felt that he was there to entertain, which is a fine philosophy. Except I felt education and entertainment combined could be of a greater service to young people.”

BECOMING THE CAPTAIN

Keeshan and a few other Howdy Doody actors were fired in a dispute over wanting to take outside jobs. By then married and a young father, Keeshan struggled to find a job.

“I went nine months looking for work. I was about ready to go into the insurance business or whatever because I had a young son and my daughter was on the way,” said Keeshan, who eventually became the father of three and grandfather of six. “We were destitute. We were in dire straits. I just kept making the rounds and making the rounds.”

Luckily, a program manager at WABC in New York wanted to copy a Chicago television program for a lunchtime show featuring a clown. This time, as Corny the Clown on Time for Fun, Keeshan got to speak. He spoke to the children about a variety of topics, using the same gentle manner he would as the Captain. The station gave Keeshan a second daily show, this time in the morning, called Tinker’s Workshop. On this one, he played a kindly toymaker. Time for Fun lasted about 18 months. Keeshan remained on Tinker’s Workshop for six months before he had the opportunity to move over to CBS, which was looking to launch a morning children’s program.

“There was a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, called Uncle Al,” Keeshan said. “Uncle Al was very brash and loud—everything that I wasn’t—but he had an enormous audience at 8 o’clock in the morning. The research department at CBS was aware of this, and

so when I came on with Tinker and was doing well on WABC, our local ABC station, at 8 o’clock in the morning, somebody said, ‘Hey, there’s an audience there.’”

CBS invited Keeshan and four other producers to put together pilots. After watching all of them, the network chose Captain Kangaroo.

The pieces and the characters were assembled slowly. The Captain Kangaroo name was chosen for its alliteration, although Keeshan did wear a navy blue coat with massive deep pockets like a kangaroo’s pouch. Bunny Rabbit was there from the beginning. So was Mr. Green Jeans. Mr. Moose and Dancing Bear made their debuts later.

Keeshan said he thought the show would be a success from the start.

“I thought it was great from the first minute of the first day. I was prejudiced. I thought we had a very different and new approach to programming for young people, and if we remained faithful to our principles of catering to the intelligence and potentially good taste of the child, then we had an opportunity to do some very, very good programming. I was probably one of the few that thought it would really make it because it was nonconventional.

It did break a lot of rules. It wasn’t the commercial venture that most programming was then.”

Keeshan appeared on an episode of The Carol Burnett Show once, playing himself.

Burnett played a network executive

(TOP AND CENTER) CBS’ Captain Kangaroo promotional material includes a quote from Variety, “a gem of a kidoodler.” And it was! (RIGHT) Early still of the Captain with Bunny Rabbit. © Creative Artists Agency. Courtesy of L. Wayne

Hicks.

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listening to Keeshan pitch his idea for Captain Kangaroo. “She was wonderful, of course, as she is. She said, ‘Let me understand this.

You’re a captain, but not necessarily a captain of anything, and you have a bunny rabbit that actually communicates with you, and you have this moose who talks.’ She went down the characters: ‘A grandfather clock that speaks poetry.’ And she was getting herself more hysterical as she enumerated all the elements of the show, which sound ludicrous when approached from that direction, of course. But that’s probably pretty much the reception we would get today from a network executive.”

FROM COAST TO COAST

In announcing Captain Kangaroo, a CBS press release trumpeted the program would feature “beautiful music, lovely dancing, unusual games and toys, live animals, simple studies of nature and many other delights of childhood.”

In those early years, ratings reports would regularly list Captain Kangaroo as the second most popular program for children, behind The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC. But the two shows, which made their debut on the same day, didn’t compete. The Disney program aired in the afternoons.

Watch out for falling ping-pong balls, Captain! © Creative Artists Agency. Courtesy of L. Wayne Hicks.

The grandfatherly Captain Kangaroo was a popular subject for children’s books. (ABOVE) Original cover artwork by Mel Crawford for Whitman’s 1959 book, Captain Kangaroo’s Picnic. Courtesy of Heritage. (INSET) Two Little Golden Books starring the morning TV host. © Creative Artists Agency.

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Initially, Keeshan had to do each program twice a day, Monday through Friday. After wrapping up the 8 a.m. broadcast for the East Coast audience, Keeshan and crew had 40 seconds before 9 a.m. to reset the stage and launch into the show for Midwest viewers.

The audience on the West Coast saw a kinescope of the program.

The success of Captain Kangaroo prompted CBS to add a Saturday episode.

Keeshan’s Captain character served as a comic foil to Bunny Rabbit, who was perpetually tricking him out of carrots; and Mr. Moose, who lived to dump ping-pong balls on his head. Initially, though, the writer who came up with the idea suggested using golf balls. Keeshan nixed that.

“Mr. Moose enjoyed it so thoroughly,” Keeshan said, “as did every child and every parent at home enjoy it. They were laughing with the moose. They weren’t really laughing at me. I liked being in that position, of being outwitted by Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose, because there’s a vulnerability to us as adults. We’re not perfect, and it’s important for a child to understand a parent is not perfect.

That it is possible to be smarter than a parent once in a while.”

As the show evolved, new characters joined the cast. Dancing Bear was originally intended as a one-off, but attracted so much mail the character was brought back again and again. An animated segment featuring the heroic Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog was added to give the cast a chance to step off-camera and take a break.

“It gave us three and a half or four minutes to regroup ourselves,” Keeshan said. “Animation, as we had envisioned it originally, would have been about a third of the program material.

retro interview

As it actually turned out, it was probably less than a tenth of the program material. But it gave us physical relief in doing the show.”

Technological advancements changed the show tremendously.

The advent of videotape eliminated the need to perform the same program twice each morning. Captain Kangaroo was able to be produced using taped segments, and Keeshan could get back to clowning around. He suited up as the Town Clown.

“It literally was almost an hour of make-up and costume and of course that couldn’t be done on live television,” he said. “But once we started to tape the program, then we were able to take an afternoon of production and get me into make-up and costume and do maybe five or six two-, three-, four-minute sequences, which were then edited into the program.”

No longer tethered to the demands of live television, Captain Kangaroo saw an increase in its production values. “Ultimately we were doing the show more like they do motion pictures and television because we would do three minutes here and a minute and a half there, and we could always do a 20-second segue. All of this came together in the editing suite. We could mix and match shows. For example, we could do a story—a fairy tale of some kind, or our interpretation of a fairy tale—which would require large sets maybe and guests and so on, expenditures which we could never have afforded it when it was done just for the one live show.

But now, because we were able to tape it and edit it and perfect it, it went into the library. That might then be amortized over 12 runs over three years or something of that sort.”

(TOP LEFT) The big stuffed pockets of Captain Kangaroo. (CENTER) Bob Keeshan on set circa 1970.

(RIGHT) The Captain and Mr. Green Jeans with Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose (noted ping-pong ball dropper).

(LEFT) Captain Kangaroo and an unidentified rabbit. © Creative Artists Agency.

(TOP TO BOTTOM) The Dancing Bear, Captain Kangaroo, and Mr. Green Jeans.

Captain Kangaroo waiting to go live in the early days of the show. The word “yawn” is spelled out in small blocks on the shelf.

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retro interview

The roster of celebrities invited to visit Captain Kangaroo’s Treasure House constituted an epic collection of talent. Pearl Bailey, Dolly Parton, Carrie Fisher, Pete Seeger, Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach, and Walter Cronkite all made guest appearances. In turn, Keeshan guest-starred as himself on various other programs, including on variety shows hosted by Parton, Tony Orlando, and Sonny and Cher.

During the turbulence of the Sixties, Captain Kangaroo served as a stabilizing force in the lives of children.

“I think that’s a good way to put it,” Keeshan said. “That’s what we thought of ourselves as. There was no way in the world that we could deal with those very complex issues in terms that a four-year-old would appreciate and understand, without risking all kinds of insecurities being given to the child. This is a dreadful world that we live in, and what is important to a young child is stability.”

The Sixties saw Captain Kangaroo switch to color, although it would take until 1971 before the character began wearing that bright-red jacket with the deep pockets. By then, Sesame Street, with its colorful cast of Muppets, had taken to the air and quickly became must-see TV for the young. Airing on public television stations beginning in 1969, Sesame Street owes a certain debt to the Captain. Many of the key figures behind the new show had learned from Keeshan—just as he had from Buffalo Bob Smith.

Keeshan said Sesame Street improved over time, but he thought the early years of the program concentrated too much on trying to get four- and five-year-olds interested in counting and reading.

“Fred Rogers and I both have a philosophy,” Keeshan said. “At this age, you’re not dealing so much with the cognitive needs of the child, which are important. Don’t downgrade them in any way. But the emotional development of the child is critical at this age. This emotional development to both of us is far more important. That’s what the Captain was. The relationship between Mr. Green Jeans and the Captain and the Dancing Bear and Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose were all demonstrations of how we get along and how we develop in the world.”

HOPPING AROUND

The relationship between CBS and Keeshan wasn’t nearly as cordial. By the early Eighties, the network had cut the hour-long program in half and moved it to the wee hours of the morning.

CBS then gave Keeshan a whole hour in 1982, but moved him to Saturdays. Two years later, the network reduced Captain Kangaroo to a half-hour again. That was enough for Keeshan. Toward the end of 1984, after nearly 30 years on the air, he called it quits—at least temporarily. After a brief hiatus, Keeshan brought back Captain Kangaroo, this time on PBS. Because of a lack of funding, only about a third of the content of the new programs was new; the rest came from the archives.

“In the last three years on public television, I have had a very difficult time,” Keeshan told a congressional subcommittee looking into children’s television in 1989. “I thought that in coming to the public sector I would be afforded more time to meet creatively the needs of the nation’s children. To the contrary, I cannot afford to spend much time in meeting the needs of children. I’m spending my time looking for underwriters for the program, looking for money.”

As an elder statesmen of children’s television, Keeshan made frequent trips to Capitol Hill in the Eighties. He testified before committees investigating violence on television, the effect video 8

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Captain Kangaroo merchandising included records, comic books, coloring books, and View-Master reels. © Creative Artists Agency.

retro interview

Bob Keeshan, approximately five years before his 2004 passing.

Photo by and courtesy of L. Wayne Hicks.

(TOP) Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helps Captain Kangaroo promote a UNICEF fundraising drive during Halloween. (ABOVE) Two giants of children’s programming: (LEFT) Mr. Rogers and (RIGHT) Captain Kangaroo.

(RIGHT) Keeshan’s Captain Kangaroo costume changed in 1971 as he adopted this red jacket, which he wore in over 6,000 episodes. Courtesy of Heritage.

games were having on children, and (as a former smoker himself) keeping cigarettes out of the hands of young people.

Keeshan never dreamed of taking on big acting challenges. He was content to play himself, happy to entertain children. Even after moving Captain Kangaroo to PBS, Keeshan hosted a half-hour show (as himself, not the Captain) called CBS Storytime for 26 episodes.

Keeping up with his long-standing tradition of exposing his viewers to good stories, Keeshan presented animated adaptations of children’s books.

Keeshan and Captain Kangaroo left PBS after six years. An attempt to bring the program back with a different actor in the Captain’s coat didn’t work. Saban Entertainment, which had brought the show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to American television, trotted out The New Captain Kangaroo in 1997.

“I was not involved with that at all,” Keeshan said. “I offered my services as a consultant, but they didn’t want me. There’s a tremendous audacity in this business.”

Keeshan’s Captain Kangaroo ran for almost 10,000 episodes. The reboot? Just 40 episodes.

Captain Kangaroo continues to resonate with the people who grew up watching the program. When an auction house offered up the Dancing Bear costume in 2013, the successful bidder paid $207,019 for that piece of television history. Later that same year, the Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose puppets were auctioned off for $224,579.

Today, Captain Kangaroo lives on in memories and the occasional episode posted on YouTube. Jason Merrick, who grew up watching Keeshan and company in the Seventies, formed a private Facebook group in tribute to the program. The group, Captain Kangaroo’s Treasure House Memories, has attracted more than 2,800 members since founding in 2010. “I was fascinated by the entire production,” Merrick said. “The many characters, situations, and music made the series my favorite childhood television memory.”

That sentiment would have pleased Keeshan.

L. WAYNE HICKS is a Denver-based writer who previously worked for newspapers in Florida and Colorado. He has written about such figures in pop culture as Fess Parker, Mr.Bill, Encyclopedia Brown, Dick Tracy, and KISS. He is finishing a book about the Romper Room television program.

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Too Much TV COLUMN ONE

1) English 2) Science 3) History 4) Guidance counselor 5) Remedial Education 6) Basketball coach 7) Girls’ academy housemother 8) Second grade 9) Voice 10) Dance The Andy Griffith Show, Our Miss Brooks © CBS Television Distribution. The Facts of Life; Welcome Back, Kotter © Shout! Factory. Fame © MGM Television. Leave It to Beaver, Mr. Peepers © NBC Universal Television. Room 222, The White Shadow © 20th Century Television. The Secrets of Isis © Universal Television. All Rights Reserved.

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If your old man used to gripe that you’d never learn anything with your nose glued to the boob tube, here’s your chance to prove him wrong.

(Father doesn’t always know best.)

The class subject or school position in Column One corresponds to a TV teacher in Column Two. Match ’em up, then see how you rate!

RetroFan Ratings Keep your peepers on your own papers, students.

10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know theme song lyrics too!

7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan Dy-no-mite! You wasted your childhood with the rest of us!

4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned RetroFan Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til you spend more tube time!

0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan Ya big dummy! Put down that book and go watch some classic TV!

COLUMN TWO

A) Liz McIntyre, Room 222 B) Andrea Thomas, The Secrets of Isis C) Ken Reeves, The White Shadow D) Connie Brooks, Our Miss Brooks E) Miss Canfield, Leave It to Beaver F) Pete Dixon, Room 222 G) Eleanora Poultice, The Andy Griffith Show H) Edna Garrett, The Facts of Life I) Lydia Grant, Fame J) Gabe Kotter, Welcome Back, Kotter RETROFAN

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

TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S

MAINLINE COMICS

by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY Introduction by JOHN MORROW

In 1954, industry legends JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY founded MAINLINE PUBLICATIONS to publish their own comics during that turbulent era in comics history. The four titles—BULLSEYE, FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE—looked to build off their reputation as hit makers in the Western, War, Crime, and Romance genres, but the 1950s backlash against comics killed any chance at success, and Mainline closed its doors just two years later. For the first time, TwoMorrows Publishing is compiling the best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline comics work, including all of the stories with S&K art, as well as key tales with contributions

by MORT MESKIN and others. After the company’s dissolution, their partnership ended with Simon leaving comics for advertising, and Kirby taking unused Mainline concepts to both DC and Marvel. This collection bridges the gap between Simon & Kirby’s peak with their 1950s romance comics, and the lows that led to Kirby’s resurgence with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN and the early MARVEL UNIVERSE. With loving art restoration by CHRIS FAMA, and an historical overview by JOHN MORROW to put it all into perspective, the BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S MAINLINE COMICS presents some of the final, and finest, work Joe and Jack ever produced. SHIPS AUGUST 2023!

(256-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

DESTROYER DUCK GRAPHITE EDITION

by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER Introduction by MARK EVANIER

In the 1980s, writer STEVE GERBER was embroiled in a lawsuit against MARVEL COMICS over ownership of his creation HOWARD THE DUCK. To raise funds for legal fees, Gerber asked JACK KIRBY to contribute to a benefit comic titled DESTROYER DUCK. Without hesitation, Kirby (who was in his own dispute with Marvel at the time) donated his services for the first issue, and the duo took aim at their former employer in an outrageous five-issue run. With biting satire and guns blazing, Duke “Destroyer” Duck battled the thinly veiled Godcorp (whose infamous credo was “Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!”), its evil leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn, Medea (a parody of Daredevil’s Elektra), and more! Now, all five Gerber/Kirby issues are collected—but relettered and reproduced from JACK’S UNBRIDLED, UNINKED PENCIL ART! Also included are select examples of ALFREDO ALCALA’s unique inking style over Kirby on the original issues, Gerber’s script pages, an historical Introduction by MARK EVANIER (co-editor of the original 1980s issues), and an Afterword by BUZZ DIXON (who continued the series after Gerber)! Discover all the hidden jabs you missed when DESTROYER DUCK was first published, and experience page after page of Kirby’s raw pencil art! NOW SHIPPING! (128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-117-2

ALTER EGO COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS

By overwhelming demand, editor ROY THOMAS has compiled all the material on the founders of the Marvel Bullpen from three SOLD-OUT ALTER EGO ISSUES—plus OVER 30 NEW PAGES OF CONTENT! There’s the STEVE DITKO ISSUE (#160 with a rare ’60s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL, biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO, and Ditko tributes)! The STAN LEE ISSUE (#161 with ROY THOMAS on his 50+ year relationship with Stan, art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT, SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans)! And the JACK KIRBY ISSUE (#170 with WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s contributions to Iron Man’s creation, Jack’s Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work, Kirby in 1960s fanzines, plus STAN LEE and ROY THOMAS on Jack)! Whether you missed these issues, or can’t live without the extensive NEW MATERIAL on DITKO, LEE, and KIRBY, it’s sure to be an AMAZING, ASTONISHING, FANTASTIC tribute to the main men who made Marvel! NOW SHIPPING! (256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $35.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-116-5

CLIFFHANGER!

CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE SERIALS: 1941–1952 by CHRISTOPHER IRVING

Hold on tight as historian CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the origins of the first on-screen superheroes and the comic creators and film-makers who brought them to life. CLIFFHANGER! touches on the early days of the film serial, to its explosion as a juvenile medium of the 1930s and ‘40s. See how the creation of characters like SUPERMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPY SMASHER, and CAPTAIN MARVEL dovetailed with the early film adaptations. Along the way, you’ll meet the stuntmen, directors (SPENCER BENNETT, WILLIAM WITNEY, producer SAM KATZMAN), comic book creators (SIEGEL & SHUSTER, SIMON & KIRBY, BOB KANE, C.C. BECK, FRANK FRAZETTA, WILL EISNER), and actors (BUSTER CRABBE, GEORGE REEVES, LORNA GRAY, KANE RICHMOND, KIRK ALYN, DAVE O’BRIEN) who brought them to the silver screen—and how that resonates with today’s cinematic superhero universe. NOW SHIPPING! (160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-119-6

VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES One recent evening, the trailer for Rebel Without a Cause (1955) came on. There was James Dean, his face scrunched into an expression of emotional anguish, bellowing at his parents, “You’re tearing me apart!” Dean looked like a human powder keg ready to blow.

I thought: That’s just like Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957).

Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause was a big-studio Hollywood motion picture in CinemaScope and WarnerColor. Gene Fowler, Jr.’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf (IWATW) was a non-widescreen, black-and-white cheapie that nonetheless raked in a surprising $2 million at the box office.

Rebel preceded IWATW by two years. The earlier film spawned many imitators. Landon’s earnest, intense performance in IWATW is as much about teen angst as, you know, fangs ’n’ fur.

The two films have significant plot parallels.

Both protagonists are high school outcasts with anger issues. Both are counseled by understanding cops (Edward Platt in Rebel, Barney Phillips in IWATW). Both have ineffectual father figures (Jim Backus in Rebel, Malcolm Atterby in IWATW).

And, not for nuthin’, both protagonists rocked iconic outerwear. Dean wore that cool, red nylon windbreaker which became “the” look of the middle Fifties. And Landon was the first werewolf in horror movie history to wear a letter jacket.

TEENAGE MONSTERS (ABOVE) James Dean inspired rebellion among teens ... not to mention werewolfery! © Warner Bros. Pictures.

(LEFT) Michael Landon rocks that letter jacket in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). © American International Pictures.

When horror met hepcats and hot-rodders

BY MARK VOGER

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Dawn Richard isn’t in the movie much, but she’s in a lot of the photos and posters.

What’s that about? © American International Pictures

Okay, I’ve tortured the comparison enough. Let’s talk about the fun, frightful—albeit, fleeting—teenage monster genre.

Aw-woooo!

MOVIE HARBINGERS

There’s a consensus that the term “teenager” wasn’t really in popular use prior to World War II. When the term entered the vernacular, it was initially used as an advertising demographic.

(Yay, capitalism!)

A film series like MGM’s Andy Hardy movies of the Thirties and Forties, which starred Mickey Rooney as a pint-sized Casanova, are teen movies, kind of, with an important caveat: they are pre-rock ’n’ roll teen movies. Many cliches about teens in Fifties movies were inherited from Andy: the malt shop, the jalopies, the Jughead hats, the girl-craziness. (Well, girl-craziness goes back to Adam and Eve.) The only thing missing was rock ’n’ roll… and rebellion. Andy would never dream of sassing his sage papa, Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), during one of the old man’s many lectures on proper behavior in that stuffy, book-lined study of his.

The Dead End Kids, later the East Side Kids, later the Bowery Boys, came close to teen film status. And the ensemble—often led

by Leo Gorcey (bossy) and Huntz Hall (goofy)—certainly oozed rebellion. In the course of their many permutations between 1937 and 1958, these films began as dramatic thrillers (Angels With Dirty Faces, Crime School) and ended as cookie-cutter comedies (Dig That Uranium, Crashing Las Vegas).

But some of the films qualify as early harbingers of the teenage monster genre, especially if you (like me) stretch the definition to include movies about teen protagonists who encounter monsters, whether or not they become monsters themselves. Still with me?

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(TOP) Mad doctor Whit Bissell interrogates Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. (ABOVE LEFT) Is Landon becoming a werewolf — or going through puberty?

(ABOVE RIGHT) Landon puts the I in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). © American International Pictures.

In the running are the East Side Kids films Spooks Run Wild (1941) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943), both starring Bela Lugosi, no less, and the Bowery Boys films Spook Busters (1946), Master Minds (1949, with three-time Frankenstein monster Glenn Strange as a werewolf), Ghost Chasers (1951), and The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954). Of course, by the Fifties, the “boys” were all pushing 40, still milking the juvenile delinquent thing.

BIRTH OF A GENRE

Three years later, the surprise hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf kicked off the teenage monster genre proper, as it altered the fortunes of the indie machine American International Pictures (AIP). Produced and co-written by Herman Cohen, IWATW provided future Bonanza star Landon his first starring role as Tony Rivers, a Rockdale High student who is obstinate, violent, and somehow likable. Maybe it’s his fantastic hair?

Tony plays dirty during a fistfight, swinging a shovel and throwing dirt in his opponent’s eyes. After tough-but-fair Detective Donovan (Phillips) breaks up the fight, he recommends that Tony see Dr. Alfred Bradford (Whit Bissell, an actor born to play roles like this). “He’s modern. He uses hypnosis,” Donovan says of the doc.

“No headshrinker for me, thank you,” Tony shoots back. “You keep the man in the white coat for the goofs.”

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Tony takes his sweetheart Arlene (Yvonne Lime) to a Halloween party, where Vic (Ken Miller)—clearly the Jughead Jones of the gang—sings the Jerry Blaine-penned rocker “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo.” This being a Halloween party and all, the kids play good-natured tricks on each other.

When Vic plays one on Tony, he is repeatedly punched for his effort. This party is over.

Even Tony recognizes that this Ken Miller outburst was the last straw, and he agrees to see Dr. Bradford. Says the doc with feverish glee to an assistant: “Through hypnosis, I’m going to regress this boy back, back into the primitive past that lurks within him. I’m going to transform him, and unleash the savage instincts that lie hidden within.” Didn’t Lugosi say the same thing in, like, 1943?

The doc has a beauty of a rationale for this view, related to Fifties paranoia wrought by the atomic bomb: “Mankind is on the verge of destroying itself. The only hope for the human race is to hurl it back into its primitive dawn, to start all over again.” The science is hazy, but whaddaya want? It’s a monster movie.

Dr. Bradford juices up Tony with unpronounceable chemicals and interviews him in his altered state, encouraging him to regress.

As time passes, doctor and patient continue these treatments. (In the olden days, you had to get bitten to become a werewolf. By 1957, you just needed medication and therapy.)

A mangled corpse is found in the woods. Back at Rockdale High, shapely gymnast Theresa (Dawn Richard) asks permission to continue practicing past her allotted time. We immediately recognize her as Victim #2. Our first view of Phillip Scheer’s gnarly werewolf make-up is upside-down—a POV shot from the perspective of Theresa, who is hanging by her legs from parallel bars. Perhaps in keeping with the Fifties milieu, this werewolf has a pompadour.

Now investigating two killings, police question Dr. Bradford about the werewolf rumor. The doc plays the part of the pragmatic scientist to perfection: “This is America, modern America, not a hamlet in the Carpathian Mountains.”

Will Dr. Bradford get his comeuppance? Will Tony be cured or killed? Will Vic score a hit single with “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo”?

BEHIND THE SCENES

The co-executive producer of IWATW was Samuel Z. Arkoff, co-founder of American International.

“I first saw Michael Landon in what was the equivalent of a casting call at that time in Los Angeles,” said Arkoff when we spoke in 1991. (The producer died in 2001.)

“The thing that appealed to me about him, when we were looking for the teenage werewolf, was that he had a look of vulnerability, which was very important. After all, the

Samuel Z. Arkoff

The provocative movie poster for I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). © American International Pictures. werewolf couldn’t get along with his parents, his teachers, his male friends, his female friends. He was vulnerable, like a lot of young people are. That factor came across when I looked at him and I talked to him.”

Arkoff also recalled that AIP paid Landon a total of $666.

“It was the first time that they had ever done a teenage horror film, and it was the beginning of a whole new era of those types of films,” said Miller, who played Vic, when we spoke in 2002.

(Miller died in 2017.)

“I believe I Was a Teenage Werewolf had a budget of $125,000.

They shot it in two weeks. It was a great strain, but we were always there. There was no such thing as being ‘on call.’ You went to the studio in the morning; you got made up; and you stayed until the last shot at night, in case they could add a scene that maybe wasn’t in the schedule. It was very good experience as far as growing, as far as becoming an actor.

“The part of Vic was great fun for me. It was Michael Landon’s first film. It was tremendous working with him because he was very uptight, trying to do the best he could. He did a wonderful job in it.

“The film itself turned out to be one of the most phenomenal films because we had Gene Fowler for the first time as a director.

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He had been a film editor. He gave our characters a little bit more than how they were written originally.”

If the gymnast played by Richard seemed a bit sexy and grown up for a high school student, it may be because the actress, then 22, was a centerfold model for Playboy around that time. Not surprisingly, her image was used prominently in the movie poster and stills, despite her brief time on screen.

MORE TEENAGE MONSTERS

With a hit on their hands, AIP commissioned Cohen to produce two quickie follow-ups, both directed by Herbert L. Strock, and both with Scheer doing the make-up. One was I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), which had another important connection to its predecessor: Bissell as the monster-whisperer. This time, Bissell played Professor Frankenstein, who aims to—you’ll never guess—make a new creation out of dead body parts. In his film debut, Gary Conway wore the gloppy make-up as the titular monster.

“It was a film I did when I was in college,” recalled Conway when we spoke in 2002. “It really came out of the blue for me. I was a serious art student at the time.

My name was Gary Carmody.

I thought, well, this is kind of an odd film—Teenage Frankenstein and so on. Maybe I’d better Gary Conway change my name, so nobody will connect it with the more serious art student in college.

“But it became a huge hit. There were people around the block in Westwood. So that little plan fell apart,” he added with a laugh. “Because I became known right then and there as Gary Conway because of that film.

“Actually, right after the Army, Teenage Frankenstein steered me toward getting into television and films. And there my life remains in one form or another. So I have a lot to thank it for, really, even though I tried to escape even knowing about it. All these years later, it comes back again. People still find it fun and identify with it.”

Completing the Cohen trilogy was Blood of Dracula (1957). In it, weird Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), the chemistry teacher at Sherwood School for Girls, hypnotizes troubled transfer student Nancy (Sandra Harrison) with a glittery amulet, turning her into a toothy vampire with an Eddie Munster mullet. But why wasn’t it titled I Was a Teenage Dracula? And why wasn’t Bissell cast in drag as Miss Branding?

When AIP brought back the teenage werewolf and the teenage Frankenstein for Strock’s “meta” backstage horror film How to 16

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(TOP) The monster (Gary Conway) menaces a damsel (Angela Austin) in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. (ABOVE) Teenage Frankenstein lobby card. (LEFT) Sandra Harrison is lookin’ weird in a lobby card for Blood of Dracula (1957).

(BELOW) Harrison wears the Eddie Munster mullet. © American International Pictures.

Make a Monster (1958), Landon did not reprise his role. Instead, Gary Clarke did the growling alongside returning IWATF star Conway.

AIP was also behind Edward L. Cahn’s Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), in which canoodling teens on Lovers Lane vanquish veiny, bubble-brained aliens created by Paul Blaisdell.

OLD WORLD CHARM

In a plot device vaguely reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Paul Landres’ The Return of Dracula (1958) has the bloodthirsty

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the lines. “Every morning, he’d come into make-up and he’d take my hand and he’d kiss my hand,” she said. “He had a little Minox—you know, those tiny, little cameras—which were new in those days. He must have taken 200 pictures of me. He was always shooting, no matter what. We became very, very close.”

Dracula’s secret lair was hidden in the caves in Griffith Park, where many a Western, serial, and horror movie was filmed.

Recalled Eberhardt: “When we were in one of those caves, they had a coffin all lined in satin. I got in it one day with a mirror, and I was combing my hair, and they took my picture. I wish I had a copy of it now. It was so funny. It’s just a funny thing to see me with all this blond hair, combing my hair in a coffin in a cave. I did it just for the fun of it, to make Francis laugh.”

And what did Lederer think of Return of Dracula? Eberhardt had the scoop: “He said it was the worst movie he ever made.”

MAD DESIRES

(ABOVE) Garys Clarke and Conway stand cheek-to-cheek in How to Make a Monster (1958). (RIGHT) Veiny varmint from Invasion of the Saucer Men (1958). © American International Pictures. (BELOW) Francis Lederer menaces Norma Eberhardt in Return of Dracula (1958). (BELOW RIGHT) Eberhardt in lingerie dominates the film’s poster. © United Artists.

count (Francis Lederer) killing and stealing the identity of a Czech artist who is traveling by train to meet relatives in a small-town America. Norma Eberhardt played Rachel, a teenager who becomes infatuated with the vampiric imposter, though the actress was age 28 at the time.

“I was supposed to be in high school. I know; I’ve read the critics.

‘She’s no teenager,’” Eberhardt told me with a chuckle in 2006. (The actress died in 2011.)

Dashing Prague native Lederer was 30 years Eberhardt’s senior.

She admitted that Lederer’s Old World charm made it easier to say

How would the grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein fare in Fifties suburbia, where teenagers are always up to sexual high jinks, and rock ’n’ roll music is played at pool parties? Richard E. Cunha’s Frankenstein’s Daughter has the answer.

Frankenstein’s descendant (played by Donald Murphy in an over-the-top performance) goes by the name Oliver Frank, so as not to attract attention to the once proud, now poisonous, name of Frankenstein. As a screen villain, the arrogant, sociopathic, and, it must be said, dapper Oliver is all over the place. Every word out of his mouth is a lie. He has several mad desires: to have sex with teenage girls; to develop a serum that turns people into monsters; to create a female monster from scratch; and to restore the name of Frankenstein to its former glory.

Oliver is the live-in assistant of Professor Morton (Felix Locher), who is at work on nothing less than a cure for all disease. Morton’s fetching young niece, Trudy (Sandra Knight, the first and only Mrs. Jack Nicholson), lives at her uncle’s laboratory- and swimming pool-equipped home. When not hitting on Trudy, Oliver plies her with “fruit punch” that transforms her into a bug-eyed monster.

Whenever Trudy wakes up after a night of monstering, she has a bad hangover and can’t remember what she did, kind of like Otis on The Andy Griffith Show.

Trudy’s boyfriend, Johnny, is played by genre superstar John Ashley, who looks like Elvis Presley’s little cousin. Morton’s elderly, limping groundskeeper, Elsu (Poland native Wolfe Barsell), is secretly assisting Oliver in his unholy mission to create a female monster. It turns out that Elsu used to work for Oliver’s father, and he remembers Oliver’s grandfather. “A female? That’s never been done!” Elsu exclaims when he lays eyes on Oliver’s new creation. (Obviously, this is a different Frankenstein Universe than the one in which the Bride of Frankenstein dwelled, if ever so briefly.)

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Jack Pierce. “That was bad directing—extremely bad—and confusion,” said Thomas of the production when we spoke in 1994. (The make-up artist died in 1996.)

“I thought Sandra Knight would be Frankenstein’s daughter, but they brought this huge man in named Harry Wilson. They laid him on the table, and I made his face up. I took some cotton, some chromium, just wrinkled it up and sprayed it with the paint.

Took me about ten minutes.

“Then I wanted to put a wig on him; he was supposed to be a woman. I had a blond wig there ready to go. But the producer said, ‘Oh, just leave it to me. We’ll bandage his head up.’ I thought, ‘Hol-ee smokes! I should walk off of this thing.’”

TEENAGE WHAT?

You might assume that a movie titled Teenage Caveman (1958) would have a Cro-Magnon who is discovered in ice; thawed; revived; and eventually dances the Jitterbug in a malt shop while still in a leopard tunic carrying his club.

You’d be wrong.

“Well, the script that was sent to me was called Prehistoric World,” Robert Vaughn, who starred in Roger Corman’s film, told me in 2003. (Vaughn died in 2016.)

“It was actually written in kind of a blank verse. It was a plea for disarmament. So that was one of the reasons I did it. Of course, the whole thing changed dramatically, including the title. It went from Prehistoric World to Teenage Caveman.

“It became kind of a Jerry Lewis-like hit in France. It’s still considered a classic picture over there. It’s given me a lot of laughs over the years.”

Another person surprised over the title change was Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert W. Campbell, who wrote the script. “I was in London at the time when they called me about the name change,” Campbell told my friend and colleague, novelist Wallace Stroby, in 1987. (Campbell died in 2000.)

“I just laughed because right from the very beginning, I grew a very thick skin. Later, I met Robert Vaughn in a coffee shop on the Sunset Strip and we were talking. I asked him about his latest 18

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(TOP LEFT) Sandra Knight and John Ashley go “parking” in Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958). (TOP CENTER) Harry Wilson plays the (female) title monster in film. (TOP RIGHT) Knight needs eyebrow maintenence.

(LEFT) Um, if that’s supposed to be Frankenstein’s daughter, why is she topless with chest hair? A lobby card for Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958). © Astor Pictures Corporation.

effort. He mumbled something about having just completed filming a screenplay called Prehistoric World, ‘an allegory.’ I said, ‘You mean, Teenage Caveman?’ ‘That was regrettable,’ he said. Bob is a very serious fellow, you know. So I said, ‘I know, Bob. I wrote it.’”

But, Campbell added, the title change “wasn’t the most serious injury done me on that film.”

He recalled: “The whole thing was an allegory about the destruction of the world by atomic power. And here is mankind trying to struggle out of it, building all the myths, the taboos, doing Robert Vaughn invents the bow and arrow in Teenage Caveman (1958). © American International Pictures.

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all the things that were supposed to preserve the remnants of the race long enough for it to survive. And when Vaughn’s character goes stumbling off into the lush forest, when he goes daringly out there—which is also allegorical, that somebody sooner or later is going to turn their back on the teaching of the elders and find out that what was said was not true—he was supposed to come upon this spaceman in what I envisioned as a marvelous, elaborate spacesuit, you know, Victorian, sort of like the kind of stuff Disney did in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

“Well, instead of this, he (Corman) came up with this lizard man suit he’d found. Here, this was supposed to be this elaborate spaceman, and he’d come up with this lizard man suit. I think he said it cost $65.”

(TOP) Teenage cave people Darah Marshall and Robert Vaughn cozy up. (ABOVE) The Teenage Caveman poster promised “prehistoric rebels” (1958). © American International Pictures.

That “lizard man” did double-duty the same year in the Corman-produced Night of the Blood Beast.

Another creature feature that shoe-horned the word “teenage” into its title is Jacques R. Marquette’s Teenage Monster (1958). Rather than meet hep cats and hot-rodders, the title being faced sheriffs and shootouts. Teenage Monster is a Western—even if the heroine is House of Frankenstein ingenue Ann Gwynn.

1959 saw the grand finale of the movement with Tom Graeff’s thoroughly entertaining Teenagers From Outer Space, which out-Ed Woods Ed Wood, and views like it was written and directed by schlock satirist Larry Blamire; Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, which features a female hot-rodder (Jody Fair) and a bunch of Topstone rubber masks; Teenage Zombies, Jerry Warren tripe about zombies controlled by a Morticia-like femme fatale (Katherine Victor); and The Giant Gila Monster, about a misunderstood teen mechanic (Don Simpson) who wants to be the next Elvis.

GOLDEN YEARS

The teen monster genre was short-lived, straddling just those three golden years from 1957 to 1959. Its demise coincided with the petering out of a related genre, the juvenile delinquent film. If you wish to, you could award Honorable Mention status to four Sixties comedies with monster-adjacent teens: The Horror of Party Beach (1964), The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), and Ray Dennis Steckler’s hodgepodge The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1968).

Barring a time warp, a full-fledged revival of the genre seems an impossibility, though there have been glimmers. Michael J. Fox starred in Teen Wolf (1985), while Justin Bateman took over in Teen Wolf Too (1987). I hope to go to my grave never having seen either film.

It’s no wonder the star of the movie that started it all, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, moved on to bigger and better Movie poster things.

Landon’s breakthrough came for the the following year, when he was cast thoroughly as Little Joe in the 1959–1973 television entertaining institution Bonanza. After Landon died Teenagers From from cancer at age 54 in 1991, most obitOuter Space (1959). © Tom Graeff uaries focused on the actor’s work in the better-known Bonanza, Little House on the Productions.

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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

(LEFT) The sheriff keeps an eye on the kids in a lobby card for The Giant Gila Monster (1959). © McLendon Radio Pictures.

(BELOW) Michael Landon once again donned werewolf makeup for a 1987 episode of Highway to Heaven titled — wait for it — “I Was a Middle Aged Werewolf.”

(ABOVE) The gang attends a house party in a lobby card for Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959). © American International Pictures. (RIGHT) “Cash Flagg,” a.k.a. Ray Dennis Steckler (kneeling), says his prayers in The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1968). © MorganSteckler Productions.

Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. But we monster nerds never forgot the werewolf in Landon’s closet.

Nor did Landon. Arkoff recalled that an offhand comment he once made during a TV appearance indirectly led to Landon climbing back into his werewolf get-up.

“I was on the [David] Letterman show, and Letterman was talking about this particular picture and Michael Landon,” Arkoff recalled. “He said, ‘I’ll bet you’d like Landon to do Teenage Werewolf again.’ And I said, ‘Well, in view of his age, we’d have to call it I Was a Middle Aged Werewolf,’ which got a big laugh from the audience and Letterman.

“Some time later, Michael called me. He said, ‘Sam, I heard you that night.’ He was doing Highway to Heaven at that time. And for Halloween, he wanted to do an episode in which he, his TV character, was searching for a werewolf. So he wanted to use the footage of himself as a young man, to be the werewolf he was seeking. There would be no reference to the fact that it was him as a youth, although everybody would know it, of course.”

Landon produced, wrote, and directed the episode, indeed titled I Was a Middle Aged Werewolf, which aired on October 18, 1987. In it, Landon’s trusty sidekick Mark (Victor French) views a TV broadcast of IWATW. Landon’s character, Jonathan, walks in as Mark watches a scene in which the 19-year-old Landon transforms into a werewolf. Says Mark: “You know, the guy in this movie reminds me a lot of you… I mean when he’s a regular guy, not when he’s got the fuzz all over his face.”

Later, Landon gamely dons werewolf make-up in a scene in which Jonathan scares away two costumed bullies on Halloween 20

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©NBCUniversal.

night. “I’m not a werewolf, I’m an angel,” he assures the dumbstruck little trickor-treater he rescues.

The episode ends with Landon, again in werewolf mode, addressing the camera with a wink, wishing viewers a happy Halloween.

When Arkoff and I spoke in 1991, Landon had died earlier in the year. “He’d never had any kind of a role before,” Arkoff recalled of Landon’s star turn in IWATW. “He was 19 years old at the time. Poor guy is dead now. Wasn’t really a long life for him. He was a very good man, a very talented man.”

The eighth of Landon’s nine children is actress Jen Landon, who cut her show-biz teeth with regular roles on the TV soaps As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, and Days of Our Lives. Jen was seven when her father died.

“My dad, he loved me tremendously,” she told me in 2004. “Even though I lost him when I was young, and in life I’ve had plenty of insecurities and dark moments and doubt, that is a gift he gave me that I’ll always have: the love that he gave me.

“He was such an amazing person. Everybody wanted to be near him and around him. He passed away a long time ago, but even if it’s not cognitive or conscious, I won’t ever lose that sensation of having that father’s love for the time that I did.”

And what did Jen think of I Was a Teenage Werewolf? Said the actress: “I love it.”

MARK VOGER is the author and designer of six books for TwoMorrows Publishing, including Britmania, Monster Mash (a Rondo Award winner), Groovy, and Holly Jolly. Voger worked in the newspaper field for 40 years as a graphic artist and entertainment reporter, and lives at the Jersey Shore.

He recently completed his collection of Marx Sixties presidential figures (although, to be honest, the stand is a replica). Please visit him at MarkVoger.com.

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

PART 2

BY ANDY MANGELS Which narration opened the third incarnation of ABC’s gathering of DC comic-book heroes, titled Challenge of the SuperFriends? Was it William Woodson announcing, “Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great Hall of Justice are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: Superman…

Batman and Robin… Wonder Woman… Aquaman… and the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna, with their space monkey, Gleek. Dedicated to truth, justice, and peace for all mankind!”

Or was it Stanley Jones intoning, “Banded together from remote galaxies are 13 of the most sinister villains of all-time. The Legion of Doom! Dedicated to a single objective… the conquest of the

universe! Only one group dares to challenge this intergalactic threat… the SuperFriends! The Justice League of America versus the Legion of Doom! This is the Challenge of the SuperFriends!”

(CLOCKWISE) Super Friends (or SuperFriends, in this incarnation) Superman, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Robin, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and the King of the Seas, Aquaman, who has somehow gained the power of flight (maybe he just leapt like a flying fish out of the Hall of Justice’s fountain in the background…). TM & © DC Comics.

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It was both, in the oddest version yet of ABC’s 13-year Saturday morning hit which had nine different incarnations and as many titles. Last issue, we examined the first two versions of Super Friends, and now we’ll look at the most popular and historic season.

And watch the next two issues of RetroFan as Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning is your guide to the longest-running animated super-hero series ever!

HANNA-BARBERA’S TWO-IN-ONE

Super Friends had aired on-and-off on ABC from 1973–1977, with DC Comics’ super-heroes in The All-New Super Friends Hour airing 1977–1978. Although Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman had been joined by other DC heroes—such as Flash, Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Rima the Jungle Girl, Green Lantern, the Atom, and the Hanna-Barbera– created Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, and Samurai, as well as teen sidekicks Wendy Marvin and Wonder Dog, and Zan, Jayna, and Gleek—there was precious little actual comic-book content in the 32 hours of shows that had been produced thus far by famed ani-

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mation studio Hanna-Barbera. With 16 more hours to produce for 1978–1979, Hanna-Barbera planned something old and something new (and borrowed): They would have half-hour stories that would continue the All-New Super Friends Hour line-up of characters, and a second half-hour that would feature DC’s heroes fighting 13 of DC’s villains, with stories and plots that actually reflected content from the comic books themselves!

The first half-hour was almost indistinguishable from the previous season’s half-hour segments, even using the exact same Super Friends opening credits, which included a 1977 copyright and a space between the two words. The only major difference was that the episodic title cards now featured a dynamic flying pose against a blue background for the DC heroes, rather than the “stand-in-agroup” shot on a red-purple-blue background that preceded it. The

(BELOW) Model sheet turnaround of Batman for the first Super Friends animated series. Art by Alex Toth. Toth’s design was used in all later seasons of the show. TM & © DC Comics.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

Wonder Twins were in these stories, but no other outside guestheroes were. The stories were a bit more “cosmic” than their predecessors, with episodes that included the Wonder Twins’ planet of Exxor, a subterranean world beneath the Earth’s crust, UFOs, Dracula, space pirates, and a space circus, and visits to Aquaman’s Atlantis and Mount Olympus, home of Wonder Woman’s Greek goddesses and gods. In the final episode, Superman villain Mr. Mxyzptlk appeared, while in another one, three Kryptonian villains escaped from the Phantom Zone. This latter was likely timed to coincide with Superman: The Movie, which was about to debut in theaters in December 1978, and which featured the Phantom Zone.

It wasn’t the only bit of tie-ins that Super Friends was making.

Mego action dolls of most of the TV characters were on the shelves, desired by children everywhere, and some of the Mego boxes even used Super Friends art. Additionally, there were Super Friends–themed school supplies and sheets and clothing, although most of them did not use the specific name. Ironically, while one set did feature the Super Friends name and logo and characters (including Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog), it also

featured a pack of super-villains—Mirror Master, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Captain Boomerang, Trickster, Reverse Flash, Pied Piper, Heat Wave, Catwoman, Joker, and Captain Cold—with a similar logo. One catch, though: none of those villains had ever appeared on the show!

Featuring several Batman villains there—and in the Mego line—was not so odd as the fact that Batman and his villains had been appearing on two different networks since early 1977. Due to a deal Filmation had with DC Comics following their 1968 The Batman/ Superman Hour, Filmation had been able to continue developing projects for Gotham’s Caped Crusader, even while he and Robin were appearing on ABC’s Super Friends shows! CBS debuted a halfhour animated series, The New Adventures of Batman, on February 12th, 1977, from Filmation, and the series utilized live-action actors Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their roles vocally (plans to have them introduce the shows live, in character, were scrapped).

Why didn’t Filmation use Olan Soule and Casey Kasem for voices, as they had in 1968? Because they were on ABC, voicing the same characters for Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends!

(TOP LEFT) Model sheet for Green Lantern. (TOP RIGHT) The Super Friend known as Samurai. (LEFT) Classic hero Hawkman in awesome hero poses.

(BELOW) Superman, Wonder Woman, and (somehow) Aquaman fly into action.

TM & © DC Comics.

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THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHALLENGE

The second half-hour of ABC’s Challenge of the SuperFriends—this part with its own set of opening credits and with no space between the name—was designed to be radically different. The subtitle was, for a brief time, “Battle of the SuperHeroes,” but everyone knew that opening word would never make it past ABC’s Standards & Practices.

Gone for this incarnation were the Wonder Twins, and the group was now called the Justice League more often. Members included Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Black Vulcan (gone too were his pants!), Apache Chief, and Samurai, but while Hanna-Barbera had diversified its cast by featuring the minority heroes more regularly, it short-shrifted its female viewers, now offering them Wonder Woman as the token female.

Fighting against the heroes was the Legion of Doom, whose headquarters in a swamp, the Hall of Doom, blatantly resembled Darth Vader’s helmet from the year-old theatrical megahit Star Wars. The 13 well-known comic-book villains included Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Cheetah, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, Toyman, Sinestro, Black Manta, Captain Cold, Bizarro, Gorilla Grodd, Solomon Grundy, and Giganta. For those keeping count, that was two females, and no villains of color… unless one counted magenta or lime-green aliens (the African-American Black Manta never unmasked). But the villains’ line-up was not always the same 13 bad guys.

Alex Toth was the legendary lead designer and storyboard artist on the series, and he visually controlled almost everybody’s look (though Andre LeBlanc did some for this season). Toth did design sheets for most of the villains, some of which never made it into the series, including

The world’s greatest heroes have a meeting in the Hall of Justice. TM & © DC Comics.

(ABOVE) Character designer Alex Toth, himself a respected comic-book artist, also worked on storyboards.

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The Hall of Justice at night. (INSET) TV Guide advertisement for Challenge of the SuperFriends.

The Darth Vader–inspired Hall of Doom rises from out of Slaughter Swamp. TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

Catwoman, Riddler, and Scarecrow. Early presentation art for the “Legion of Evil” (also called “League of Evil” for a time) showed Dr. Sivana, Sinestro, Captain Cold, Joker, Beautia Sivana, Penguin, Abra-Kadabra, Poison Ivy, Heat Wave, King Kull, Gorilla Grodd, Mr. Atom, and Cheetah. In 1978, Hanna-Barbera had picked up the live-action rights to Captain Marvel (a.k.a. the star of Shazam!) and his villains, which is why the Sivanas, Kull, and Mr. Atom were included… as Captain Marvel was also intended to become a member of the Super Friends! One problem, though: Filmation held the animated rights to Captain Marvel and related characters. Out went the hero and his villains, as well as Joker, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and a proposed CONTINUED ON PAGE 28.

The Legion of Doom from the opening credits. TM & © DC Comics.

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(ABOVE) Joker awaits entry to an early version of the Hall of Doom. (COUNTERCLOCK-WISE FROM LEFT) Model sheets showing turnarounds of the Riddler, unused Batman villain Catwoman, and Solomon Grundy.

TM & © DC Comics.

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(ABOVE) An early concept illustration for the Hall of Doom interior shows an unused line-up of super-villains ncluding: (CLOCKWISE) Dr. Sivana, Sinestro, Captain Cold, Joker, Beautia Sivana, Penguin, Abra-Kadabra, Poison Ivy, Heat Wave, King Kull, Gorilla Grodd, Mr. Atom, and Cheetah. Of these 13, only four would make it into the revised Legion of Doom. (INSET) The Scarecrow looking almost like a Scooby-Doo villain. Model sheet art for (RIGHT) Black Manta, (BELOW LEFT) Giganta, and (BELOW RIGHT) Bizarro. TM & © DC Comics.

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andy mangels’ retro saturday morning CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25.

Mr. Freeze, which had been—or possibly might be—used in future The New Adventures of Batman episodes! Hanna-Barbera was allowed to keep Batman villains Riddler and Scarecrow, though.

Working closely with Toth was his friend, Darrell McNeil, who, at 18, had previously been the youngest animator at Hanna-Barbera [which you can read about in BACK ISSUE #30—ed.]. Since McNeil was a lifelong fan of DC Comics, he often functioned in the office as a “character consultant,” stopping the production team from making egregious errors such as painting costume colors the wrong color, or having Green Lantern fly a yellow plane (yellow is his weakness). But by the time of Challenge, McNeil was working as a layout artist at Filmation on Tarzan and the Super 7 and The Fabulous Funnies. Because he had the job he wanted at Filmation, McNeil had to find some way to work on Challenge.

In an interview with Marc Tyler Nobleman, McNeil wrote, “I discovered that union studio Hanna-Barbera used a number of non-union subcontractors in town to facilitate show production.

The most prolific local one was Love, Hutten, & Love [LHL], headed by veteran animators Bill Hutten, Ed Love, and son Tony Love… they would always get to lay out/animate the series Hanna-Barbera’s in-house least wanted to do. The show LHL was assigned that season was Challenge of the SuperFriends. A fellow Filmation layout person who had worked on Challenge of the SuperFriends for a week found the show too daunting (read: number of characters), wanted to switch to another Hanna-Barbera show LHL was doing, and offered to recommend that I take his SuperFriends slot. Now, because I was a union employee and the union frowned upon union ’toonists doing freelance, non-union work, I’d get no screen credit, but to work again on my favorite DC super-heroes plus their greatest villains… well, no freakin’ duh!” McNeil was soon back at work in his “off hours” from Filmation, assigned by Bill Hutten to lay out episodes with Alex Toth.

In his book, Alex Toth by Design, Darrell McNeil wrote about a humorous error in the Challenge episode called “The Time Trap.”

“Alex storyboarded, and I laid out the first act of that episode,

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Evil supervillains included: Lex Luthor, Captain Cold, Sinestro, and Toyman, sitting next to the Riddler. (OPPOSITE PAGE TOP) Bizarro looks on as Solomon Grundy smashes a Hall of Doom table. (OPPOSITE PAGE CENTER) The Cheetah slashes the table as Brainiac looks on.

(OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM) Giganta and the Scarecrow look concerned. TM & © DC Comics.

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which included the scene below of Green Lantern confronting an off-screen Sinestro. Alex’s board panel and my layout drawing show GL pointing his ring arm down to the ground, with my clearly numbered indications of the Lantern doing his ring-thing. The animator, however, just erased the numbers and sent the drawing through… and no one else caught it, so when you see the scene on TV, the reason that GL actually has three arms in it will now be readily apparent.”

After Challenge, Alex Toth decided he was done with HannaBarbera, and he jumped ship to rival company Ruby-Spears in 1980.

He wasn’t the only one who had difficulties on the series. In an interview with Marc Tyler Nobleman, animator Bob Hathcock said, “Bill Keil, who was the head of animation, had a small argument with me over whether Wonder Woman would throw her lasso

The notorious three-armed Green Lantern, from storyboard by Alex Toth to original layout by Darrell McNeil to finished mistaken animation.

TM & © DC Comics.

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FAST FACTS

Wonder Woman shows off underhand-thrown magic lasso technique, a surprisingly controversial topic.

TM & © DC Comics.

CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS f No. of seasons: One (new) f No. of episodes: 16 hours (two episodes each hour) f Original run: September 9, 1978 –September 15, 1979 f Studio: Hanna-Barbera f Network: ABC

PRIMARY VOICE PERFORMER CAST

f William Woodson: Narrator, Perry White f Stanley Jones: Narrator “Challenge,” Lex Luthor, Jonathan Kent, Jor-El f Danny Dark: Superman, Superboy, Commissioner Gordon f Olan Soule: Batman f Casey Kasem: Robin, Computer f Bill Callaway: Aquaman, the Flash, Bizarro f Shannon Farnon: Wonder Woman, Hippolyta, Lois Lane f Louise Williams: Jayna f Michael Bell: Zan, Gleek, the Riddler f Jack Angel: The Flash, Samurai, Hawkman f Buster Jones: Black Vulcan f Michael Rye: Apache Chief, Green Lantern, Solovar f Marlene Aragon: Cheetah f Ted Cassidy: Brainiac, Black Manta f Ruth Forman: Giganta f Don Messick: Scarecrow, Sinestro (later episodes) f Vic Perrin: Sinestro f Stanley Ralph Ross: Gorilla Grodd f Dick Ryal: Captain Cold, Hall of Doom Computer, Abin Sur f Jimmy Weldon: Solomon Grundy f Frank Welker: Toyman, Mister Mxyzptlk f Also featuring Lewis Bailey, Melanie Chartoff, Henry Corden, Al Fann, Bob Hastings, Bob Holt, Renny Roker

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underhanded (the bad guys were going to step into the loop). He didn’t like that I animated her throwing underhand, so I asked Bill Hanna if he minded me leaving to work on Captain Caveman with Ron Campbell, and he said that was fine. By the way, they ended up using that [underhanded lasso] scene in the main title of Challenge of the SuperFriends.”

PRODUCTION CHALLENGES

As with many of the All-New Super Friends stories, the tales for both parts of this season were often generated by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, then their outlines were given to story editor Jeffrey Scott to script. Scott would, in turn, get help from Norman Maurer or his wife Joan, brother Michael Scott, and Mark Jones. According to Jones, who scripted about a dozen stories, Hanna-Barbera paid $750 for a half-hour outline and $1,750 for a script. At Darrell McNeil’s suggestion, Jeffrey Scott took one unused episode from The All-New Super Friends Hour titled “The Energeon Creature” and rewrote it slightly to become the new show’s episode “The AntiMatter Monster.” And for a real writer’s twist, look for a meta joke in “The Rise and Fall of the Super Friends,” wherein Wonder Woman reads a page of the actual script for the show, here representing Mxyzptlk’s magical script!

Wonder Woman examines the script for the episode she’s in, “The Rise and Fall of the Super Friends.” TM & © DC Comics.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

(LEFT) This promotional cel for Challenge of the SuperFriends all but promised massive conflict, a worrisome matter for the network’s Standards & Practices department. (BELOW) Storyboard art by Alex Toth showing Lex Luthor discovering Wonder Woman’s beginnings in the “Secret Origins of the Super Friends” episode.

Also from the “Secret Origins” episode, screen captures that show (BOTTOM LEFT) the kindly Kents finding the baby Kal-El, who would grow up to be Superman, and (BOTTOM RIGHT) Hal Jordan finding a dying Abin Sur, who passes on the power of the Green Lantern. TM & © DC Comics.

ABC’s Standards & Practices censorial department was nervous about Challenge because it would contain actual conflict between heroes and villains. After all, even the opening credits ended with the McNeildesigned shot of the heroes and villains charging towards each other about to fight. So the stories were often softened just a bit. The villains could still have plans to conquer the world, or destroy things, but they had to be caught by the heroes for punishment.

Hanna-Barbera’s team didn’t always follow that rule, and even if the villains were caught at the end of one episode—instead of escaping at the last moment—the next episode would find them back plotting villainy in their swampy Hall of Doom, with no mention of incarceration of punishment.

One planned episode in particular caught Standards & Practice’s notes: “History of Doom,” the season’s final episode produced, in which the villains wanted to destroy the world. S&P wrote that “destroying the world” was an imitable act, which was bad for young viewers who might want to copy it. When HannaBarbera pushed back that nobody watching the show could actually single-handedly destroy the world, ABC relented.

Several of the Challenge episodes dove deep into DC Comics lore. In “Trial of the Super Friends,” the villains stole Wonder Woman’s lasso, Green Lantern’s power ring, and Batman and Robin’s utility belts before putting the heroes on trial and making them fight robot doubles. In “Secret Origins of the Super Friends,” Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom members travel back in time to stop Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern from ever existing! Although Superman’s origin had been seen before, this was the first time for animation that either Wonder Woman or Green Lantern’s stories had been featured.

Another episode, “Super Friends: Rest in Peace,” opened with the death of Batman, and continued with more shocking deaths,

including the demise of Wonder Woman and Superman! The aforementioned “History of Doom” included the origins of Lex Luthor and Giganta. All of them were remarkably true to their comic-book roots, and “Super Friends: Rest in Peace” even featured Wonder Woman doing a kind of “Wonder Spin,” which was clearly a nod to the popular ABC-then-CBS live-action Wonder Woman series starring the luminous Lynda Carter.

The voice cast for Challenge remained mostly the same as the previous casts, although several new voice actors came onboard.

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(LEFT) The super-heroes and super-villains of Legends of the Superheroes include the return of Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burt Ward as Robin, and Adam West as Batman. (BELOW) Alex Toth–drawn casting ad looking for people with “natural comedy ability.”

TM & © DC Comics.

Ted Cassidy, the actor famous as Lurch from The Addams Family, gave voice not to Solomon Grundy—an obvious choice—but to super-intelligent Brainiac and Black Manta. Stan Jones, who would later play villains on Transformers and Spider-Man shows—and narrate the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors film—was the imposing Lex Luthor. Don Messick, a Hanna-Barbera mainstay who was most famous as Dr. Benton Quest on Jonny Quest and a certain mysterysolving dog named Scooby-Doo, was both Scarecrow and Sinestro.

Marlene Aragon, another Hanna-Barbera cast member, would voice Cheetah years before becoming a fan favorite on Jem. Vic Perrin, the Control Voice on The Outer Limits, also played Sinestro in some episodes. And Stanley Ralph Ross lent his gravelly deep tones to Gorilla Grodd. Ross had a deeper connection to comics in Hollywood. He wrote 18 episodes of the 1966–1968 live-action Batman series, and the script for an unaired Wonder Woman pilot for the same production company. He later developed and created the live-action Wonder Woman show with Douglas S. Cramer, writing the part of Steve Trevor specifically for Lyle Waggoner to play.

CHALLENGE GOES LIVE?

On Friday, September 1, 1978, ABC aired a preview show with the unwieldy title of Kristy and Jimmy McNichol Present The ABC All-Star Saturday Preview Special [see RetroFan #10], hosted by the popular pre-teen brother and sister television stars. In the special, viewers got to see a clip from the following weekend’s Challenge of the SuperFriends.

Challenge of the SuperFriends debuted on September 9, 1978, to excellent ratings. The one-hour show proved so popular that it was expanded to 90 minutes (replacing Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?) from November 4, 1978 to September 15, 1979, with older episode reruns added in to fill the time.

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did animated versions. Unfortunately, ABC wasn’t interested. So the company took the concept to NBC, which approved two hourlong Legends of the Superheroes specials. Alex Toth produced artwork for a casting ad for the specials, but he had to swap out Superman and Wonder Woman for Captain Marvel and Black Canary when rights issues stood in the way of their usage.

Casting for the shows reunited Batman stars Adam West, Burt Ward, and Frank Gorshin, in costume as Batman, Robin, and Riddler. It also added Garrett Craig as Captain Marvel with Howard Morris as Dr. Sivana, Howard Murphy as Green Lantern with Charlie

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

Callas as Sinestro, and Rod Haase as the Flash with Jeff Altman as Weather Wizard. Other heroes included Danuta Wesley as Black Canary, Bill Nuckols as Hawkman, Barbara Joyce as Huntress, Alfie Wise as the Atom, William Schallert as new hero Retired Man/Scarlet Cyclone, and Brad Sanders as new creation Ghetto Man. Other villains included Mickey Morton as Solomon Grundy, transgender actress Aleshia Brevard as Giganta, and Gabriel Dell as Mordru. Famed announcer Gary Owens served as Narrator, and Ed McMahon appeared as himself, hosting one of the shows.

Legends of the Superheroes debuted its first special, The Challenge, on January 18, 1979. The second special, The Roast, aired on January 25, 1979. The tongue-in-cheek comedy was not quite what audiences wanted, especially as Superman: The Movie was still amazing crowds in theaters. [Editor’s note: For a lot more about Legends of the Superheroes, see Andy Mangels’ article in our sister magazine BACK ISSUE #25, available at the TwoMorrows site, www.twomorrows.com.]

A CHALLENGING LEGACY

Over the years, Challenge of the SuperFriends, especially the Challenge episodes, have become one of the most common touchstones that the overall series has had. The Legion of Doom—and the Hall of Doom—have been successfully integrated into not only the DC

comic-book mythos, and have been used in the animated Justice League Unlimited, Krypto the Superdog, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Teen Titans Go! series, as well as the live-action Legends of Tomorrow show, several direct-to-DVD DC animated films, and the DC Universe Online game. Most recently, it appeared in the HBO Max series, Harley Quinn. Action figures, dolls, and other collectibles have been created using the Challenge characters. The Legion of Doom has been referenced on Robot Chicken, South Park, Family Guy, Duck Dodgers, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, and other rappers spoofed it in a music video for “P.I.M.P.” The Seattle Seahawks called their defense squad the “Legion of Boom” for quite a while. The term has even been used as of late in politics.

Challenge of the SuperFriends is by far most of fandom’s favorite version of the long-running series, for good reason: the stories hew most closely to their comic-book origins. Hanna-Barbera learned some lessons from this, and as Super Friends evolved, changes were made… but that’s a story for our next two issues!

Fans have a few options to see these shows. After decades in chopped-up form in syndication and cable TV packages, on June 1, 2004, the uncut as-aired versions of Challenge of the SuperFriends were released on DVD by Warner Home Video as “Attack of the Legion of Doom” (with the villain stories) and “United They Stand,” but they only contained four each of the 16 shows. Warner released the complete seasons in two DVD sets: Challenge of the SuperFriends on July 6, 2004, and Super Friends on May 24, 2005.

The DVD sets are still available through retailers, but in June 2021, Warner released high-definition versions for HBO Max, digitally restored and looking better than they had when they were broadcast. Whether these hi-def versions will ever be released on Blu-ray is unknown, but for now, fans are happy to have choices.

For those who want a real deep dive into the minutia of each Super Friends episode, I highly recommend the thick, two-volume The Ultimate Super Friends Companion by Will Rogers with Billie Rae Bates. The pair are available on Amazon.

We’ll see you next issue as we swoop into the next several really strange seasons of Super Friends!

Unless otherwise credited, artwork and photos are courtesy the collection of Andy Mangels. Marc Tyler Nobleman’s website, quoted with permission above, is at www.noblemania.com.

Challenge of the Super Friends: The First Season DVD is one viewing option for fans of the series. TM & © DC Comics.

ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and co-author of 20 books, including TwoMorrows’ Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, as well as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books.

He wrote the bestselling Wonder Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman series for Dynamite and DC Comics, and has written six Fractured Fairy Tales graphic novels for Junior High audiences, released by Abdo Books.

He has written multiple Bookazines (available at any grocery store checkout) on Ant-Man, Iron Man, The Little Mermaid, and Chadwick Boseman. He is currently working on a book about the stage productions of Stephen King, as well as more Bookazines. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced Special Features and documentaries for over 40 DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com and www.WonderWomanMuseum.com RETROFAN

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TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

THE

PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION

by STEPHAN FRIEDT

Author STEPHAN FRIEDT shares the story of the meteoric rise of the Schanes brothers’ California-based imprint PACIFIC COMICS, which published such legends as JACK KIRBY, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, STEVE DITKO, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE GRELL, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and DAVE STEVENS. From its groundbreaking 1981 arrival in the fledgling direct sales market, to a catastrophic, precipitous fall after only four years, THE PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION reveals the inside saga, as told to Friedt by BILL AND STEVE SCHANES, DAVID SCROGGY, and many of the creators themselves. It also focuses on the titles and the amazing array of characters they introduced to an unsuspecting world, including THE ROCKETEER, CAPTAIN VICTORY, MS. MYSTIC, GROO THE WANDERER, STARSLAYER, and many more. Written with the editorial assist of Eisner Award-winning historian JON B. COOKE, this retrospective is the most comprehensive study of an essential publisher in the development of the creator’s rights movement. Main cover illustration by DAVE STEVENS. SHIPS DECEMBER 2023!

WORKING WITH DITKO

by JACK C. HARRIS

WORKING WITH DITKO takes a unique and nostalgic journey through comics’ Bronze Age, as editor and writer JACK C. HARRIS recalls his numerous collaborations with legendary comics master STEVE DITKO! It features never-before-seen preliminary sketches and pencil art from Harris’ tenure working with Ditko on THE CREEPER, SHADE THE CHANGING MAN, THE ODD MAN, THE DEMON, WONDER WOMAN, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, THE FLY, and even Ditko’s unused redesign for BATMAN! Plus, it documents their work on numerous independent properties, and offers glimpses of original characters from Ditko’s drawing board that have never been viewed by even his most avid fans! This illustrated volume is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the creative comic book process by one of the industry’s most revered creators, as seen through the eyes of one of his most frequent collaborators! SHIPS OCTOBER 2023!

Star Glider TM & © Jack C. Harris.

Shade TM & © DC Comics.

(160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-121-9

(128-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-122-6

THE CHILLINGLY WEIRD ART OF

MATT FOX

by ROGER HILL

MATT FOX (1906–1988) first gained notoriety for his jarring cover paintings on the pulp magazine WEIRD TALES from 1943 to 1951. His almost primitive artistry encompassed ghouls, demons, and grotesqueries of all types, evoking a disquieting horror vibe that no one since has ever matched. Fox suffered with chronic pain throughout his life, and that anguish permeated his classic 1950s cover illustrations and his lone story for CHILLING TALES, putting them at the top of all pre-code horror comic enthusiasts’ want lists. He brought his evocative storytelling skills (and an almost BASIL WOLVERTON-esque ink line over other artists) to ATLAS/MARVEL horror comics of the 1950s and ’60s, but since Fox never gave an interview, this unique creator remained largely unheralded—until now! Comic art historian ROGER HILL finally tells Fox’s life story, through an informative biographical essay, augmented with an insightful introduction by FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER also showcases all of the artist’s WEIRD TALES covers and interior illustrations, and a special Atlas Comics gallery with examples of his inking over GIL KANE, LARRY LIEBER, and others. Plus, there’s a wealth of other delightfully disturbing images by this grand master of horror—many previously unpublished and reproduced from his original paintings and art—sure to make an indelible imprint on a new legion of fans. SHIPS SEPT. 2023!

(128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-120-2

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON In college, I had a girlfriend who one night turned on The Rockford Files starring James Garner. She was a big fan. And after watching “The No-Cut Contract,” in which private detective Jim Rockford becomes embroiled in the unscrupulous machinations of semi-pro quarterback King Sturtevant (played by Rob Reiner), I became a bigger fan.

This was a third season episode, so I came in late. And while the girlfriend and I eventually parted company, I’ve been watching The Rockford Files ever since. True, the series went off the air in 1980, but it’s endlessly re-watchable. Over the decades, I managed to catch them all, most several times. It was that kind of a show.

The Rockford Files came along when TV private eyes were dull, square-jawed bunch. Mannix was the top of the heap.

After watching so many Rockford episodes, I started digging into the origins of the series.

‘THE JACK BENNY OF PRIVATE EYES’

Before Rockford came along, I liked a one-season wonder called The Outsider. Forgotten now, it starred Darren McGavin before starring as Carl Kolchak in The Night Stalker series. [Editor’s note: See RetroFan #11 for our Night Stalker coverage.]

McGavin played David Ross, an ex-con turned private eye.

Perpetually down on his luck, he stumbled through a seedy Los Angeles. The show wasn’t quite satire, but McGavin portrayed a rumpled and sometimes pathetic loser of a character. He was the anti-Mannix.

Sound familiar? Like a precursor to Jim Rockford? That’s because he was. Producer-writer Roy Huggins created Ross and later co-created Rockford. But not all the credit can go to him.

Enter Stephen J. Cannell. He was a young TV writer, a fan of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. After catching a few episodes of The Outsider, he decided to script an episode.

Cannell was impressed that the lead was not your typical hero.

“That was a terrific hardboiled private eye kind of anti-hero guy,” he later said. “I wrote a spec script for The Outsider, and I could not get it to Roy Huggins.

(LEFT) Screen captures I tried every connection I knew. from The Rockford Files’ I thought it was a pretty good introduction, including script. And it ended up coming glimpses of Rockford’s back to me, and I threw it in my dilapidated trailer and drawer.”

Noah Beery, Jr. as his dad, Rocky. © NBCUniversal.

THE ROCKFORD FOLLIES

BY WILL MURRAY

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The Outsider soon went the way of all television, and Cannell moved on.

Years later, he found himself associated with Roy Huggins as a producer of Toma, a crime show starring Tony Musante. Cannell scripted several episodes. Early in the first season, the show hit a snag, The fifth episode wasn’t going to be ready by broadcast time.

Cannell and Huggins huddled. ABC executives insisted they had to deliver. But it was impossible. So they came up with a radical solution. They’d script an emergency show to fill the slot.

ABC agreed and didn’t care much about what they did so long as they made it compatible with Toma.

Cannell explained, “The idea that Roy and I came up with was that Toma had a case he wanted to work on. Simon Oakland, his partner, would say, ‘That’s no case, I’m closing the file.’ Then Toma, who believed it was a case, would take it to his friend Jim Rockford, who only handled closed cases. Jim would spend the hour working on it. Then at the tag they would have a beer together. That way we would keep Tony in the show.”

But Musante declined to participate. So they killed the framing sequence and went ahead with a solo Rockford script.

“I remember the day I went to work to write the thing,” recalled Cannell. “We never had a story approved by the network. Nobody gave a sh*t what it was; it was just better than a test pattern. So I thought I could do literally anything I wanted. I started to really have fun. I had this plot and this guy named Rockford. I decided to give him a father. I named him after my dad, Joseph. I figured I’d make his father a guy who thought he was a total bimbo for doing this work.”

The more Cannell brainstormed, the more screwball the idea became.

“Then I thought, where is he going to live? Every time I got to the point where I said Rockford goes to the office and gets his messages, I didn’t want him going to an office. I thought I’m going to make this guy the Jack Benny of private eyes. I had him running credit checks on clients, tallying up everything: gas mileage, rubber. Then I thought every time he gets threatened, he’s going to quit. This guy’s no dummy. So I had him pulling off the case six times in the pilot—literally quitting. He’d say, ‘Look, I can’t go any further. But here’s what I’ve done. I won’t charge you for the trip to Vegas, the time, but it’s seven cents a mile, the rubber is three cents.’ Lindsay Wagner is saying, ‘What is it with this guy and these lists?’ I made a whole thing of the fact that he was cheap.”

Cannell got so carried away the 60-minute script became a 90-minute episode. Reading it, Roy Huggins said, “We’re not going to cut a word of this. Not a word.”

But ABC balked at the length and objected to Jim Rockford’s unheroic personality. Cannell refused to change anything. The network ended up re-running the first episode of Toma instead.

“So we decided to try NBC with it,” related Cannell. “It didn’t take us half an hour to come up with Jim Garner because I had inadvertently done with Rockford what Maverick had been to Westerns. I had just tried to take every cliché and step all over them. We submitted the script to Jim, he read it and flipped. We sold it to NBC.” Huggins remembered it differently. In 1972, he conceived the idea of a private investigator that handles only cases the police have closed. He called his protagonist Tom Rockford. “It was a 36

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(TOP) Before Jim Rockford, David Ross (Darren McGavin) was TV’s ex-conturned-gumshoe in the short-lived drama, The Outsider. (RIGHT) Roy Huggins and (BELOW) Stephen J. Cannell, creators of The Rockford Files.

rugged-sounding name for a character who was anything but rugged,” he explained.

When Huggins brought the idea to Tony Musante for Toma, his wife suggested that it might work better as a private detective story. “I thought about it, and I agreed with her. So I laid that story aside….”

When he heard that Jim Garner wanted to return to television, Huggins went back to that treatment. “I wanted to develop the story as a pilot for Jim, and then I decided that I ought to do Maverick as a private-eye series.”

Garner related, “I was negotiating with MGM to do a television series based on my character in Support Your Local Sheriff. When I got the Rockford script, I read it, loved it, agreed to do it the same day. I asked for one change of my own: the character was originally named ‘Tom’ Rockford. I said, ‘I’m not a Tom.’ They changed it to Jim.”

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

(TOP LEFT) James Garner as Bret Maverick in a publicity still for the quirky TV Western, Maverick (1957–1962). © Warner Bros. (TOP RIGHT) Garner came close to reprising his Support Your Local Sheriff role in a weekly television series when The Rockford Files came his way. © United Artists.

Both, courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) TV Guide ad for the September 12, 1974 premiere of The Rockford Files.

The timing could not have been more serendipitous. “I figured that if I did a private-eye series in which Jim played Maverick, it would be a tremendous success,” recalled Huggins.

Cannell started writing a fresh script from Huggins’ treatment.

Cannell had seen an episode of Mannix in which a little girl comes to the detective for help finding her missing mother. When the issue of Mannix’s fee came up, the little girl offered some lollipops and quarters. Mannix says, “That’s just the right amount.”

“As soon as I saw that,” Cannell noted, “I thought, bingo! If that same little girl went up to Rockford, he’d say, ‘What, are you

kidding me? I’ve got expenses!’ That locked me into the whole idea of how Rockford was this kind of guy never did anything for free, because he had to pay his bills.”

Huggins originally thought that Rockford would be a former cop, but changed that to an ex-con, borrowing from The Outsider. An exonerated Rockford had been paroled from San Quentin, which provided him with an eclectic group of ex-con associates.

Then NBC objected to a hero who kept chickening out every time the going got too dangerous.

“But by this time, we had Jim and had his weight behind this,” Huggins said. “He said, ‘That’s the show I’m going to do.’ It went on the air and it was a smash.”

MEET JIM ROCKFORD

NBC aired it as a Movie of the Week on March 27, 1974, but it all went back to that orphaned Outsider script.

“In that script,” remembered Cannell, “I had a place where David Ross was being followed by this guy and he led this guy into RETROFAN

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a bathroom. It was a big muscle-bound guy who was following him, and he said, ‘Oh, geez, now I’m going to be trapped here.’ So what he does is unscrews the liquid soap and pours it on the floor.

It was never shot or read by Roy, and so when I ended up doing the Rockford pilot, I pulled that out. I took that old thing from that spec script that I couldn’t get him to read and said, ‘You see, you should have done this.’”

Before Jim Garner let it be known that he was open to returning to television, other leads were floated. Huggins first envisioned it as a vehicle for Alias Smith and Jones’ Ben Murphy. James Wainwright, who had been in Jigsaw, was another candidate.

“I had discussed casting with Roy,” recalled Universal executive Frank Price, “and one of the things I had discussed was the idea of Robert Blake playing Rockford as a ‘short’ detective—because you’re always looking for something that makes your show a little different. I had seen Electra Glide in Blue, a feature starring Robert Blake, and I was very amused by it because the makers of the film took advantage of the fact that Blake was short. I particularly thought the humor that was involved in The Rockford Files would work if Rockford was a short detective. That’s there’s that scene in the pilot, for example, where the big guy is

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following Rockford, and Rockford has to go into the men’s room, where he puts the soap on the floor. That scene would go over very well if you had a little guy playing Rockford.”

Huggins offered Rockford to ABC as a series to rotate with Toma, but the network turned it down. They also cancelled Toma, later reviving it as Baretta with Robert Blake in the lead.

That was when Huggins turned to NBC. But the network previously had issues with Jim Garner over his short-lived Western Nichols. So pitching it as a modern-day Maverick might have backfired.

“So I decided to sell The Rockford Files as a series about a private eye who only handles closed cases,” revealed Huggins. “That would make it sound ‘different.’ This has happened time and time again—Mannix, as an example, started as a detective who works in an agency that bases its procedures on computers. That sold the series, but that concept was quickly forgotten.”

In this instance the closed-case angle was merely a selling tool. “No homicide case is ever

(LEFT) Album featuring the theme to the Rockford Files and other popular shows. Courtesy of Internet Archive. (BELOW) Like watching the detectives?

Original Gray Morrow artwork from the mid-Seventies for a magazine article about television’s top cops and private eyes. Jim Rockford is there, along with cast members from Hawaii Five-0, Columbo, Adam-12, The Rookies, Get Christie Love, Kojak, Police Woman, and more. Courtesy of Heritage.

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Signed publicity photo of James Garner circa his Rockford Files years, and show scripts. Both, courtesy of Heritage. closed,” Huggins explained. “The case that Rockford took on in the pilot was never closed—the police considered it inactive and unsolvable, but they never closed it. And I knew that. But I used it as a gimmick to help sell the series. So, The Rockford Files were ‘closed files.’”

Lip service was paid to this premise during the first season, but it soon faded as a motivating device.

When the series started, Garner explained his unorthodox character.

“It’s that Raymond Chandler–type of thing, with humor and action. There’s a lot of action in the series. There’s a big difference between action and violence. Rockford doesn’t carry a gun. Getting a permit is too much of a hassle. He has one, though, which he keeps hidden in a canister in the trailer.

“He’d much rather outwit someone. If it is absolutely necessary, he’ll fight. He knows all the tricks, and you’d better believe he’ll use

them if pushed to the wall. And a man like Jim Rockford adopts a ‘no-holds barred’ attitude when it comes to the survival of the fittest—and in his book, the fittest is always Jim Rockford!”

Under that steel and willingness to fight dirty was a heart of gold.

“Rockford works on his own,” Garner explained. “He’s a man who cares for people and will quote them a fee of $200 per day plus expenses, but will end up working for them whether they can afford it or not.”

So much for Cannell’s cheap, no-nonsense detective. Much of the series’ appeal lay in how often Rockford got tricked, suckered, or embroiled in the schemes of his unscrupulous clients or unsavory associates. How he got himself out of hot water and kept his PI license drove many plots.

Former cellmate Evelyn “Angel” Martin was the chief foil for gullible Jim Rockford. He first appeared in the pilot as a throwaway character.

Producer Meta Rosenberg noticed that there was a small part Screen captures of Rockford’s Private for an informant who worked in the Investigator license (LEFT), which he was records department of a newspaper. always in danger of losing, and (BELOW) She thought of Stuart Margolin, two Yellow Pages ads for his business. who had costarred with Garner on © NBCUniversal.

Nichols.

Rosenberg recalled, “Stuart was so fabulous in this little nothing scene that I said to Jim, ‘He’s got to be in the show! We’ve got to keep him. And so we did.’”

Huggins explained, “I had originally written a very commonplace character—a semi-heavy who I had not considered to be very important.

Steve took that character and came up with Angel, which I thought was an absolute stroke of genius.”

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until executives told him point-blank not to use Angel Martin again. Then Margolin got an Emmy nomination.

End of argument.

Margolin based Angel on a golf hustler he knew. “In my mind, Angel is a descendent of him. He’s a hustler, a street character. Angel’s a snitch. He’s like the characters Elisha Cook played. He’s out of O’Henry and Damon Runyon.”

No one sandbagged poor Rockford as much or more often than Angel. Yet he kept getting ensnared in Angel’s schemes.

“Rockford is his scapegoat,” revealed Margolin. “He’s the most available guy to point the finger at. I think he trusts Rockford the most, and Rockford trusts Angel to do certain things. He knows he will sell him out. He’s consistent.”

Robert Donat played Joseph “Rocky” Rockford in the pilot, but Noah Beery, Jr. took over the role for the series.

He had been the original choice, but was unavailable for the pilot.

Cannell modeled the crusty truck-driving character after his own father. “He could not understand why I didn’t stay in the furniture business. Rocky Rockford could not understand why Jim Rockford would risk his life as a private detective when he could get a solid job as a trucker.”

Beery was nonchalant about his role. “I don’t know that I really fit into any category on the show,” he once said.

“Sometimes Jim and I switch places and he takes care of his stupid father. I guess it’s more of an association. They could easily do without me, but they keep me around.”

Jim Garner saw it differently. “I think Rockford’s relationship with his father is the emotional backbone of the show. Sometimes they get on each other’s nerves, but the affection is there through it all.”

Four of The Rockford Files’ supporting characters: (TOP) Noah Beery, Jr. as Rocky Rockford and Gretchen Corbett as Beth Davenport. (BOTTOM) Joe Santos as Detective Dennis Becker and Stuart Margolin as Angel Martin. © NBCUniversal.

From (LEFT) Lindsay Wagner as Sara Butler in the series pilot to (CENTER) Lauren Bacall as Princess Irene Rachevsky to (RIGHT) Isaac Hayes as “Gandy” Finch, familiar faces as guest-stars were common in The Rockford Files.

So was Jim Rockford’s jazzy houndstooth sport coat. © NBCUniversal.

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The chemistry between actors Joe Santos and James Garner was a crowd-pleasing aspect of the series.

(INSET) Santos (LEFT) and Stuart Margolin (RIGHT) with Garner in 1994, during the era of Rockford Files reunion movies. © NBCUniversal.

‘THE ROCKFORD FILES’ KICKS OFF

When The Rockford Files debuted as a weekly series, it was with an episode called “The Kirkoff Case,” which was an unfilmed Toma idea Huggins revised.

It had a classic scene when Rockford is scared off a case by two thugs, acting perfectly agreeable to dropping the matter. Just like Bret Maverick in the old days.

According to Garner, “That’s the cue for an actor to do one of two things: play it straight or inject a little ‘Holy cow, I’m gonna get killed’ humor into it. That’s me, and that’s Rockford.”

Despite the hasty retreat, Rockford later has to prove he’s not a coward.

“But he wasn’t, of course,” said Huggins, “any more than Maverick was a coward.”

What Rockford was, was his own man. Asked if there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for money, Rockford replied, “I won’t kill for it, and I won’t marry for it. Other than that, I am open to just about anything.”

“Rockford is hand-tailored for Jim,” Huggins observed. “It’s designed to capture that dry sense of humor, the wryness, double-entendre, his innate sense of comedy timing.”

Meta Rosenberg agreed. “It’s a rare kind of quality, this ability to convey comedy with the flick of a finger. And Jim’s got it, no question.”

“I’m a reactor, which helps in that type of thing,” allowed Garner.

“It helps to comment on the situation. I like to come at things from a little more oblique angle, a humorous angle.”

The first-season episodes tended to be straight crime dramas populated by a sly, quirky humor that didn’t quite dispel the

seriousness of the proceedings. Every one opened with a recorded telephone message received on Jim’s now-vintage answering machine. These humorous tags were usually written by the producers and directors, but seldom by the episode’s scripter!

“So it was very much a collaborative effort,” remembered producer Charles Floyd Johnson, “and we all had fun writing them.”

After Season One, Roy Huggins departed and Stephen Cannell took over as showrunner. And the series veered into its trademark comedic territory. But it also hit its first snags.

During the second season, The Rockford Files came under fire for excessive violence.

“First year, we weren’t listed as violent,” Garner observed. “Now we’re violent, and we do less than we did the first year. ’Course, no one ever tells you who makes up those lists, who decides what’s violent.”

Much to the star’s chagrin, the networks clamped down.

“They refused Rockford being knocked down by a judo chop to the neck,” Garner complained. “It was okay to film the blow, but then they wanted us to cut to Rockford falling to the ground without the hit being seen.”

But the network had its way.

“I’ve always been conscious of violence,” Garner grudgingly admitted. “I don’t like over-violence. We’ve cut down.”

In its place, wild car chases became the show’s signature action riff.

“I don’t do all of my own stunt work on Rockford,” allowed Garner, “but I’m behind the wheel often enough to establish that I do drive in the chase scenes.”

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This thrilled Stephen Cannell, who declared, “He was one of the best stunt drivers probably in this business, and here he was, the star of my show, so I could tie my principal into all of those shots.”

The other problem was the opposite. Universal Studios thought the show under Cannell’s supervision was drifting off course. It was also airing opposite its ratings rival, Hawaii Five-0. Panic set in.

FAST FACTS THE ROCKFORD FILES f No. of seasons: Six f No. of episodes: 123 (plus pilot) f Original run: September 12, 1974–January 10, 1980 f Primary cast: James Garner, Noah Beery, Jr., Gretchen Corbett, Stuart Margolin, Joe Santos f Creators: Roy Huggins, Stephen J. Cannell f Theme music by: Mike Post, Pete Carpenter f Network: NBC

SPIN-OFFS AND CONTINUATIONS: f Richie Brockelman, Private Eye (short-lived Rockford Files spin-off created by Stephen J. Cannell and Steven Bochco and airing on NBC from March 17–April 14, 1978; starring Dennis Dugan, Robert Hogan, Barbara Bosson)

“They decided Rockford should be a straight detective to compete with macho man Jack Lord [Hawaii Five-0’s Steve McGarrett, for you RetroFans who didn’t watch his “Book ’em, Danno” adventures from 1968–1980.—ed.], and they wanted us to take the humor out,” said Garner.

Frank Price related, “I told him that I thought that the shows were headed in the direction of broad farce, which is what I had seen on Nichols—and that I thought that was wrong for Rockford Files. You can’t play Rockford for a chump every week. Rockford has got to be a sophisticated guy. He is smarter than everybody else, not dumber.”

This discussion was dominated by Garner’s irate voice punctuated by a certain amount of furniture smashing. “If you don’t like the series, cancel it,” Garner told him. He won the argument. The humor stayed.

During this season, an Outsider script was recycled and retooled for Rockford. Occasionally, a classic Maverick script was also updated for the show.

“If you look at Maverick and Rockford,” observed Garner, “they’re pretty much the same guy. One is a gambler and the other a detective, but their attitudes are identical.”

Ratings slipped in Season Three, but the show held onto much of its audience—thanks to Jim Garner’s likable portrayal.

“We’re not a big flashy hit,” he asserted, “but the show grows on you. It’s easy to watch. Nobody in the family needs to be embarrassed. I think this is good for longevity.”

Garner credited his team of regular writers, which included Juanita Bartlett and newcomer David Chase, later to create The Sopranos.

“We’ve got writers we can trust—and that’s what makes it work,” Garner asserted.

THE ‘ROCKFORD’ UNIVERSE OF CHARACTERS

f Gabby & Gandy (the pairing of characters Gandolph “Gandy” Fitch, played by Isaac Hayes, and Marcus “Gabby” Hayes, played by Lou Gossett, Jr., in the February 18, 1977 Season Three Rockford episode “Just Another Polish Wedding,” was intended as a backdoor pilot for a Gabby & Gandy spin-off which never materialized) f “Just a Coupla Guys” (the pairing of bumbling would-be wise guys Eugene Conigliaro, played by Greg Antonacci, and Mickey Long, played by Gene Davis, in the October 6, 1978 Season Five Rockford episode “The Jersey Bounce,” was intended as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff co-starring the duo which never materialized) f The Rockford Files (eight reunion movies starring James Garner, broadcast 1994–1999 on CBS; Joe Santos and Stuart Margolin appeared in each telefilm, and various series cast members returned in others) 42

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Despite The Rockford Files being written expressly for him, Garner usually dismissed his contribution. “I didn’t bring anything to it,” he insisted. “I just showed up and said the words. When I just said what was printed, that was much cleverer than anything I could come up with.”

“One of the joys of The Rockford Files is that we could do anything from heavy, heavy drama, to spitball, Mad, Mad World kind of comedy,” Cannell added.

Episodes ran the gamut from the grim “So Help Me God” to a caper called “The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company,” to one of my favorites, the insanely convoluted “Irving the Explainer,” which is a send-up of period Hollywood noir films.

As much as the versatile scripts, the eccentric semi-recurring characters made Rockford the success that it was.

Crusty Lieutenant Diel was the first police officer Rockford tangled with. Joe Santos’ Detective Dennis Becker came along soon after and became a fixture.

Diel was eventually replaced by James Luisi’s Lieutenant Chapman, whose antagonism for Rockford resulted in several serious run-ins. Chapman didn’t care for Becker’s growing friendship with the private eye, which created another dimension of relationship conflict among the ever-expanding cast.

“Acting doesn’t have much to do with the series,” Garner opined. “It’s an attitude that makes the show. Writing is most of it.

Character. We deal more in humor and real situations and not so

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Season Six opened with a bit of stunt casting. Jim Garner had much in bravado as most detective series. I think that’s the reason it makes it.” been doing highly successful Polaroid television commercials with Gretchen Corbett played Jim’s lawyer Beth Davenport. She actress Mariette Hartley, who had tried out for Rockford in the past. appeared in the second episode. But when she wanted out of her “They wouldn’t touch me,” she revealed.

Universal contract during Season Three, the studio mandated that But now their on-screen bantering chemistry mandated a she’d also have to leave Rockford. Corbett departed. guest-star turn. This was the sixth season opener, “Paradise Bo Hopkins replaced her as John Cooper, Rockford’s new Cove.” It revolved around the Malibu Beach trailer that doubled as attorney in Season Four. He appeared in three episodes, beginning Rockford’s home and office. with “The Jersey Bounce.”

“The relationship between Jim and me is the same as in the Singer Isaac Hayes played another former Rockford cellmate, commercials,” quipped Hartley. “I put him down terribly.” hulking Gandolph Finch. He soon teamed up with Louis “Lou” In another bit of stunt casting, Lauren Bacall guested on a Gossett, Jr., as fast-talking parole officer-turned-PI Marcus Hayes. A memorable two-hour episode, “Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs.” spin-off series involving the unlikely duo failed to materialize.

Sparks flew between them.

Rita Moreno costarred in three episodes revolving around “No love scenes,” Bacall quipped. “We rather like the look of each ex-hooker Rita Capkovic. She had appeared with Garner in Marlowe, other. Better to leave it to the imagination.” the 1969 film based on a Raymond Chandler novel. Moreno won But trouble reared its head as the show went into what proved an Emmy for her portrayal as The Rockford Files’ needy former call to be its final season. The star had grown tired of the show and the girl. Talk of spinning Rita off into her own series never got past the discussion stage.

“People loved her so much they forgot she was a hooker,” quipped Moreno.

This revolving door cast of characters The Rockford Files had nearly completed its NBC run when MAD —which included the too-perfect-tomagazine spoofed it as “The Crockford Files” in issue #217 (Sept. 1980). be-true private detective Lance White, This original art page by Angelo Torres (from a Lou Silverstone script) played by Tom Selleck in his pre-Magnum, also pokes fun at Garner’s Polaroid TV commercials with actress P.I. days, and Dennis Dugan as the Mariette “I am NOT his wife!!” Hartley. © EC Publications, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage. unwavering Richie Brokelman, a fellow private eye who was spun out of the 1978 episode “The House on Willis Avenue” into his own short-lived series—and other professional rivals and wannabes were colorfully off-center and kept the show from falling into predictable ruts.

“Rockford is an island in a world where people can be pretty bizarre,” observed writer-producer Juanita Bartlett. “He is a very reasonable, very sane man who recognizes the insanity—and you can see that in his eyes, and in his face and his expression. Rockford recognizes the insanity, and he accepted it, although he certainly can do without it.”

“An actor like Jim plays better off characters with vinegar,” noted Meta Rosenberg.

“I think writers write for me because I can put my tongue in my cheek and go with it,” Garner reflected. “What else can I do? Steely-eyed sheriffs bore me.

Bravery bores me. I don’t take off my clothes and I don’t use foul language.”

LOVE, ROCKFORD STYLE

Rockford’s love life was as messy as his professional life. He finally got a recurring girlfriend in blind psychologist Megan Dougherty, played by Kathryn Harrold, in “Black Mirror.”

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

(ABOVE) James Garner as Jim Rockford on the June 2–8, 1979 cover of TV Guide (this copy has seen better days). The art is by noted illustrator Bernie Fuchs. © TV Guide.

(RIGHT) Stephen J. Cannell talks about the end of The Rockford Files in the December 1980 Video Action magazine. Note the cover-teased article about the future of magazines, books, and information in the new age of cable television. © Video Action, Inc.

beating he kept taking as the result of injuring his knee in an early season.

Garner began dropping broad hints to the press early in 1979.

“To tell you the truth,” he said in March, “I told Freddy Silverman I really didn’t want to do it after next year. I’m tired of it and everybody’s made a little fortune off of it. And like I said, it’s such a physical drain I’ve got to get away. But they’ve still got me for one more year, so I don’t know what will happen.”

A month later, Garner tried a different tack: “Somewhere along, you’d think somebody at the studio would say, ‘All right, Jim, a job well done. We don’t get too many series to go that long. So here, take a year.’ But something tells me it’s not going to be that easy—although as far as I’m concerned right now, Rockford is over, finished.”

Garner’s public pronouncements turned dire in June.

“What I need is physical rest,” the actor said. “Three out of five years now I’ve spent my time off in the hospital—leg operations, broken ribs from fights, and all kinds of things. The reality is, it’s a tough, tough job. Television is a killer.

“I will not work myself into the ground when I told them I didn’t want to do it in the first place,” he emphasized, “just to make them another couple of million bucks. I’m not going to drive myself to the 44

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grave! They can preempt us and put something else on. That’s their problem.”

Matters came to a head when Garner was stricken with a bleeding ulcer in December. His doctor ordered bed rest. Production shut down—and never resumed.

“By the time I was anywhere near able to go back to work,” Garner explained, “we missed our air date. NBC cancelled The Rockford Files with ten episodes of the sixth season still unfinished.

They claimed I was malingering.”

The final episode aired was “Deadlock in Parma.” But that was not the last one filmed. I once interviewed Van Williams, TV’s Green Hornet [see RetroFan #14—ed.], who told me that “Love Is the Word,” in which he played a deputy sheriff—which at that time Williams was in real life—was the actual concluding episode.

It was a fitting conclusion. Someone is trying to kill Rockford’s blind girlfriend Megan, and in the course of events, she comes to a realization she’s in love with another man. The show concludes with Rockford attending her wedding. After the vows are said, he turns away with his hands in his pockets, knowing that he’s lost something special. It was the perfect freeze-frame ending for the lovable hard-luck guy.

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

In the aftermath, years of legal wrangling ensued over Garner’s profit participation. Eventually, the actor won out.

ROCKFORD ROCKS ON

But that wasn’t the end of The Rockford Files. Despite everything, Garner returned to the character for eight TV movie specials, starting with I Still Love L.A. in 1994, which was set during the tumultuous times of the Rodney King verdict riots, earthquakes, and Los Angeles brushfires.

Asked why he returned to the role after his troubled history with Universal, Garner quipped, “I’m at an age that I don’t know if I could do this in three or four years down the line. And I want to do it. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it now. And it’s a wonderful character to do; it’s been very successful in my life, and I’d rather give it one more shot.”

As before, the star credited his team.

“I love the character of Rockford. He’s a wonderful, wonderful anti-hero, mainly because of the consistent writing. The character always appealed to me because he’s not your average, run-of-themill hero.”

Stephen J. Cannell returned, along with several original producers, writers, and cast members, except for Noah Beery, Jr., who had died. Beth Davenport also returned, having written a legal bestseller, as did Megan Dougherty and others. Angel Martin turned up as a TV evangelist.

A new character was introduced, Rockford’s ex-wife, attorney “Kit” Kitteredge, played by Joanna Cassidy. She throws him work on occasion.

The final telefilm, If It Bleeds… It Leads, was shot in 1997 but not aired until 1999.

One last time, Rockford comes to the rescue of Rita Capkovic. By then, Jim Garner was about 70, and felt that it was time to retire Jim Rockford.

Reflecting on the show’s impact, Garner gave this assessment: “Rockford softened the hard-boiled detective image made popular

by Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, and Robert Mitchum. Every real private detective I’ve ever talked to said Rockford was much closer to the truth than a lot of the tough ones on the screen.”

Tom Selleck pointed to the character as the spark for his light approach to his long-running Magnum, P.I. Whatever the uniqueness of The Rockford Files, Roy Huggins always acknowledged its seminal inspiration, which, despite all appearances, was not just Maverick.

“If I had ever done Rockford without Jim Garner,” he admitted, “I might not have used the Maverick character. Instead, I might have made Rockford more like the character I used in The Outsider, a loner who was a little put-upon, and somewhat rough around the edges.”

WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze. com) series of novels, which stars Doc Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider, and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary artist Steve Ditko.

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‘Bu exp t the ert y fo tim ugh ing’ t w K K it

U h C U CO N ONNG NQG QU F F UE U U ER RS S T TH W WHE E O OR RL LD D

(ABOVE) Detail from the poster of the 1973 film Fists of Fury. © National General Pictures Corp.

BY MICHAEL EURY The kung-fu craze of the Seventies nearly cost me a toe.

I was in my teens in 1973 when I thought it was a good idea to “test” my martial-arts prowess, “honed” from my fascination with the movie Billy Jack and the rattler-fast moves of its guardian of a progressive school for indigenous and with-it teens. My “opponent” was unwisely picked: my uncle Hershel, a giant of a man who was a decorated combat veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. As I poised to strike, I imitated my new screen hero by quoting a line the woefully outnumbered Billy Jack quipped to an antagonist: “I’m 46

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gonna take this right foot, and I’m gonna whop you on that side of your face… and you wanna know something? There’s not a damn thing you’re gonna be able to do about it.” Uncle Hershel dismissively blocked my kick with his mammoth arm. I assume his arm was as flesh and blood as mine, but it sure felt like I was kicking an anvil with my bare foot. My throbbing little piggy turned a horrid shade of purple that you’d never find in a box of Crayolas.

Martial arts were certainly nothing new by the time kids like me flipped over kung fu. These ancient fighting and self-defense

sports comprise a range of East Asian cultures’ unarmed and armed competitions. Many, if not most, of us do not understand the differences between such disciplines as kung fu, aikido, budo, taekwondo, karate, kendo, and savate, tossing them all into a lingual blender and labeling the whole lot “kung fu.” RetroFan respectfully bows to those who are serious students and practitioners of the martial arts, but in the spirit of the lighthearted tone of our “RetroFad” column we are anchoring this martial-arts discussion upon the cultural contagion that occurred in the early Seventies. But first, a little history…

According to journalist and blogger Terence Towles Canote, wushu (martial arts) date back to the third or second century BC, and in later centuries were chronicled in Chinese literature in a subgenre called wuxia. Other East Asian nations, including Japan and Korea, had their own forms of physical warfare and selfdefense that permeated their lore.

In the early 20th Century, these disciplines began their stretch onto a larger global stage. The nascent Chinese film industry released 1919’s Robbery on a Train, which Canote suspects is the earliest kung-fu movie. Karate, judo, and jujutsu (jiu-jitsu) made their way into the U.S.A., and many American soldiers in World War II were exposed to martial arts during their Far Eastern journeys. Once a karate dojo (studio) opened in the States in 1945, more followed. Canote writes, “By the Fifties and Sixties, karate dojos were scattered across the country.” As part of this burgeoning trend, athletes and wannabes alike attempted to smash through wooden planks and bricks using barehanded karate chops. Judo even became an Olympic sport beginning in 1964.

According to Canote, one of the earliest examples of a martial art appearing in an American television series was “Karate,” a Gene Roddenberry–penned episode of The Detectives originally aired on January 8, 1960; following on March 19, 1960 was “Black Belt,” an episode of Wanted Dead or Alive, the TV Western starring Steve McQueen.

Then the success of the first theatrical James Bond movie, 1962’s Dr. No, triggered the spy craze (see RetroFan #6). Television and movie secret agents including 007, The Avengers’ Cathy Gale and Emma Peel, Honey West, our man Derek Flint, and the wild, wild James West fought foes using some type of martial arts—usually judo flips and karate chops. Deputy Barney Fife, the shakiest gun in Mayberry, and Jethro Bodine, as a would-be “double-naught spy,” tried their hand at it, too.

Martial arts were also seen in Sixties animated cartoons. Bob Kuwahara, a native of Japan, created for America’s Terrytoons the animated character Hashimoto-San, a mouse that was a Japanese judo instructor. Joe Jitsu (Dick Tracy), Karate (Batfink), and Mr. Muto the Karate Ant (Atom Ant) were among other cartoon characters

(LEFT) This mid-Sixties release was one of several martial-arts books by Bruce Lee, who would soon rocket to international superstardom. Courtesy of Heritage. with Asian and martial-arts backgrounds; their exaggerated ethnic affectations are considered offensive to modern audiences.

These flashy new (to Americans) forms of combat were tailor made for comic books. Artist Frank McLaughlin’s Judomaster was one of Charlton Comics’ “Action Heroes” line of the mid-Sixties. Marvel’s karate-chopping Karnak premiered with his allies the Inhumans in Fantastic Four #45 in 1965. At DC Comics, teenaged writer Jim Shooter introduced Karate Kid as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in 1966’s

Sixties TV icons Barney Fife (of The Andy Griffith Show) and Emma Peel (of The Avengers) practiced martial arts, as did CBS’ cartoon star HashimotoSan, who was also seen in various Gold Key comic books. The Andy Griffith Show © CBS. Emma Peel © Studiocanal S.A. Hashimoto-San and Deputy Dawg © CBS.

Adventure Comics #346. Two years later, Diana Prince, the erstwhile, now-powerless Wonder Woman, became DC’s alternative to the martial artist Emma Peel, with a blind sensei embarrassingly named I Ching as her mentor and companion.

(Historically, comic books had previously flirted with martial arts, from the judo skills of Harvey Comics’ Black Cat in the Forties to the Jay-Jay Corp.’s Judo Joe comic in the Fifties.)

But no one in live action, animation, or illustration could out-kick, out-block, or out-move Bruce Lee, who electrified TV audiences in his star-making turn as the living weapon Kato on The Green Hornet (1966–1967). Born in San Francisco in 1940 but reared in British Hong Kong, Lee opened martial-arts schools in the Sixties in Washington State and California, teaching his hybrid brand of self-defense called Jeet Kune Do. The handsome, likable warrior was soon guest starring on television episodes, bringing his RETROFAN

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Sixties comic heroes Judomaster and the Inhumans’ Karnak helped pave the way for the next decade’s kung-fu craze. Judomaster TM & © DC Comics. Karnak TM & © Marvel.

dazzling disciplines to a wider audience. Lee opened the door for Asian cinema to arrive in American movie houses.

Next came the television drama Kung Fu, from Warner Bros., first seen on ABC as a TV movie on February 22, 1972. David Carradine rocketed to fame in the role of Kwai Chang Caine, an introspective Shaolin who wandered the American Wild West. The “grasshopper” pupil of his blind sensei Master Po (Keye Luke), Caine was often forced to use martial arts to defend himself or protect the innocent against pistol-packing cowboys and desperados.

Kung Fu premiered as a weekly series that fall and enjoyed a three-season run, with kid-friendly merchandising extending the reach of Caine’s fancy footwork outside of the boob tube. Teens and young men were particularly entranced by Kung Fu, mimicking the show’s choreographed combat. “Grasshopper” also became part of the lexicon of the day. (Patience, grasshopper: Kung Fu will be profiled at length in a future edition of RetroFan.) Meanwhile, inexpensively produced martial-arts films had become popular among Chinese filmmakers. A few wormed their way into some urban American movie theaters in the early Seventies.

Fanatical young viewers hooted for their high-kicking heroes, which included a lethal liberated lady, Miss Tien Li-Chun, “mistress of the death blow,” played by actress Angela Mao in the 1972 Hong Kong import Lady Whirlwind (billed in the U.S. as Deep Thrust in a sleazy grab at the name recognition of the recent porno hit Deep Throat).

The kung-fu craze kicked into high gear in 1973 once Warner Bros. picked up U.S. distribution rights for the Chinese-produced movies The Big Boss and Fist of Fury (both starring Bruce Lee), as well as Five Fingers of Death. By the spring of ’73, martial-arts movies topped the box 48

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office. “They spoke to young, marginalized kids who felt left behind, exploited, and ripped off,” opine authors Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali in their book These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World (2021, Mondo Books). The Hollywood trade journal Variety coined the term “chopsocky” to describe the genre, and nearly three-dozen kung-fu flicks thundered into American theaters in the remaining months of the year.

Enter Billy Jack. Actor Tom Laughlin first played the titular character, a multicultural (white and Navajo mixed heritage), former Green Beret-turned-social crusader, in the 1967 indie Born Losers. Laughlin, who also directed the film, independently released its sequel, Billy Jack, in 1971, to meager success. Once Warner Bros. took on Billy Jack’s distribution and re-released the film in May 1973, it became a surprise hit. Billy Jack enjoyed a theatrical return engagement in the late fall of 1973 and dominated the box office for three consecutive weeks.

According to billyjack.com, Laughlin originally made Billy Jack for $360,000; it has since grossed over $98 million.

With Kung Fu, the domestic distribution of chopsocky flicks, and Billy Jack, Warner Bros. unofficially established itself as the U.S.A.’s patron saint for martial-arts cinema. Another success for the studio came with its partnership with Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest to co-produce the influential Enter the Dragon, directed by Robert Crouse. Filmed on a budget of $850,000, it grossed over $21 million in the U.S. during the first few months of its release and earned $68 million worldwide. Enter the Dragon cemented star Bruce Lee’s status as a luminary.

Sadly, the martial artist did not live to see the film’s success.

Bruce Lee died unexpectedly on July 20, 1973. Enter the Dragon was released in the U.S. on August 19th of that year. Were the pop culture’s pulse not already fluttering for martial-arts movies, fans became even more rabid about Lee after his death. Episodes of the actor’s breakthrough TV series were stitched together as the 1974 theat-

(TOP LEFT) Viewers got their kicks from Bruce Lee as Kato when ABC’s The Green Hornet premiered in the fall of 1966. The Green Hornet © The Green Hornet, Inc. Publicity photo courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) “One tin soldier rides away…” Lobby card from Billy Jack. © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage. (INSET) Kung Fu fans could chew on bubble gum as well as the show’s philosophical ponderings thanks to Scanlens’ trading card series based on the popular TV show. © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage.

RetroFad

Number one super-guy Hong Kong Phooey in a production cel sequence. © HannaBarbera Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.

rical release The Green Hornet, with Bruce Lee billed as its star over the show’s lead actor, Van Williams. Lee was the subject of magazine articles, posters, T-shirts, and biopics including 1977’s Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth.

In Lee’s wake, Jackie Chan, Gordon Liu, and Bruce Li were among the new wave of Asian martial artists-turned-actors snake-fisting and leaping their way into international stardom.

Domestic U.S. studios quickly churned out their own kung-fu flicks. The movie (ABOVE) Get a genres of martial arts and Blaxploitation intersected grip, Joe! Hasbro with entries such as Jim “Dragon” Kelly’s Black Belt rebranded its former Jones and Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones. military man into an Many of these films were pretty darn bad, “Adventure Team” mind you, with wooden acting and repetitive plots format and gave featuring fight-to-the-death championships in each action figure ancient temples, or quests to avenge the murders kung-fu grip! © Hasbro. of martial-arts masters. Chopsocky imports Courtesy of Hake’s. notoriously were poorly dubbed into English, which became part of the fun of watching them. Bad guys didn’t carry guns, but black belts instead. These fist-fighters’ shirtless, sinewy bodies were ripped and glistening. The actors grimaced menacingly as The REAL master of kung fu: Bruce they smacked their opponents. Their chi-curdling Lee! (LEFT) Publicity photo from screams and a cacophony of sound effects (with Enter the Dragon. © Warner Bros. (RIGHT) more snaps, crackles, and pops than a vat of Rice In 1974, Lee upstaged Green Hornet Krispies) made these flicks as noisy as they were star Van Williams on this poster frenetic. Kung-fu movies were, in essence, the video promoting theatrically released games of the Seventies, with high-speed visuals and episodes of the 1966 TV show. © The over-the-top violence. Most of these movies earned Green Hornet, Inc. Both, courtesy of Heritage.

“R” ratings due to their bloodshed.

Such savagery didn’t dissuade entrepreneurs from grabbing hold of this trend. First and foremost, the fad “Everybody was kung fu fighting, received its own anthem: singer Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Those kicks were fast as lightning. a catchy novelty song that will no doubt be stuck in your head for “In fact, it was a little bit frightening, hours now that I’ve put it there. Co-written by Douglas and his “But they fought with expert timing.” record producer, Biddu Appaiah, “Kung Fu Fighting” was recorded Kung fu–crazed consumers crowded in a mere ten minutes, in only two takes. The record initially not only the movie theaters and record sputtered to find an audience, but soon caught on. It went on to sell stores, but the youngest among them 11 million copies worldwide, reaching the Number One spot on the hustled to the toy stores. GI Joe, Hasbro’s charts in the U.S. and elsewhere. Given the zeitgeist of the moment, soldier action figure introduced in 1964 (see RetroFan #20), was how could it be anything but a hit with a refrain like this…? updated with fuzzy, life-like hair and “Kung Fu Grip.” Toymaker RETROFAN

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Mattel’s sports action figure, the biceps-bulging Big Jim, added a martial-arts outfit to its range, as did Mego’s Action Jackson.

Aurora, best known for its model kits, introduced in 1975 its Kar-A-A-Ate (Karate) Men fighting game, a variation on Rock-’em Sock-’em Robots. Plastic kung-fu fighters such as manufacturer

Kung-fu comics of the mid-Seventies. Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist TM & © Marvel. Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter and Karate Kid TM & © DC Comics.

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Durham’s Yung Kung Fu were churned out by cheapie toy companies and racked onto discount stores’ pegboards and shelves. And if your household’s grade-school martial artist wasn’t satisfied with playing “kung fu,” he or she could watch Hanna-Barbera’s animated Hong Kong Phooey, which debuted as part of ABC-TV’s Saturday morning line-up in the fall of 1974. Gravelly voiced Scatman Crothers brought to life the cartoon’s title star, a canine janitor named Penrod Pooch who became an inept martial artist that relied upon his Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu for guidance.

A blitz of publications about martial arts appeared on newsstands and in bookstores. Hard-hitting heroes named Sloan, K’ing Kung-Fu, Ninja Master, and Jason Striker, Master of Martial Arts starred in series of hastily produced paperback novels. Magazines were cranked out that shared “secrets” of martial arts and promised to teach how to “break a brick in 100 days.” Photo-heavy how-to books with titles like The Complete Book of Karate and The Manual of Martial Arts attracted would-be warriors.

Comic books, whose advertising pages were often the home of product pitches for bodybuilding programs, printed no dearth of kung-fu ads in the Seventies. Some of their guarantees were pretty darn scary, such as the pledge from Count Danté, the Supreme Grand Master of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, to teach “the world’s deadliest fighting secrets.” By comparison, Universal Self Defense’s full-page ad was less threatening, simply assuring the kids that with their training “your hands and feet could have fantastic new power!!”

Martial arts not only invaded comic books’ advertising pages, they influenced the creation of new characters as well. Premiering on September 1, 1973 was Charlton Comics’ Yang, an obvious nod to television’s Kung Fu. Writer Joe Gill and artist Warren Sattler were responsible for Yang, and the title performed well enough to spawn a spin-off, House of Yang.

Television’s Kung Fu also inspired a Marvel Comics character.

Writer Steve Englehart related to Tom Stewart in Back Issue #13 of his and artist Jim Starlin’s love of the Kung Fu show. Since Warner Bros. and DC Comics were in the same corporate family, it was unlikely that Marvel, where Steve and Jim were ensconced at the time, could license Kung Fu for the House of Ideas. “Jim and I created our own version of what we liked,” Englehart said, the end result being Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, who was first seen in Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover-dated Dec. 1973). (According to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, Shang-Chi’s first appearance went on sale September 4, 1973, meaning that Yang predated Master of Kung Fu’s premiere by three days.)

Marvel’s other big kung-fu character could also thank Hollywood for his conception. Marvel Comics writer and former editorin-chief Roy Thomas told Franck Martini in Back Issue #108, “When I saw my first kung-fu movie, which had an ‘iron fist’ ceremony in it, I decided that would be a good name for a more super-hero (i.e.

Marvel) approach to a kung-fu hero”—and thus Iron Fist was born.

Other Marvel martial-arts characters introduced during the Seventies include White Tiger, the Sons of the Tiger, the Daughters of the Dragon, and The Avengers’ Mantis. Eyeing an older readership than what the traditional color comics provided, Marvel also released its black-and-white magazine The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, featuring its pantheon of kung-fu heroes as well as behind-the-scenes articles about some of Hollywood’s most popular martial artists.

Rival DC Comics also stepped into the kung-fu arena. Writer Denny O’Neil was the company’s martial-arts mover-and-shaker.

RetroFad

Following his introduction of judo and karate into the revamped Wonder Woman, in 1970 he brought the global menace of the League of Assassins into the various Batman titles. After the martial-arts craze exploded, in early 1975 DC premiered O’Neil’s series Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, expanding upon the adventures of a character that had recently appeared in a 1974 dime-store novel, Kung Fu Master, Richard Dragon: Dragon’s Fists, co-written by O’Neil and partner James R. Berry using the penname “Jim Dennis.”

Kung-Fu Fighter ran 18 issues, introducing the fast-fighting Bronze

Neal Adams’ photorealistic artwork brought Bruce Lee to life on the cover of Marvel’s black-and-white magazine, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #17 (Oct. 1975), with the martial artist still capturing readers’ imaginations two years after his death. TM & © Marvel.

BOX OFFICE NUMBER ONES OF 1973 Amid the theatrical releases of 1973 that have since become film classics (including The Poseidon Adventure, Cabaret, Soylent Green, Live and Let Die, High Plains Drifter, and The Way We Were), these kungfu flicks (mostly Chinese imports) fought their way to Variety’s top spot of the U.S. box office (dates in parentheses are the “week ending” dates for each film): f Five Fingers of Death (March 28) f Fists of Fury (May 9) f The Chinese Connection (June 13) f The Hammer of God (June 20) f Karado: The Kung Fu Flash (August 1) f Enter the Dragon (two consecutive weeks at No. 1: August 29, September 5) f Lady Kung Fu (September 12) f The Shanghai Killers (September 19) f Deadly China Doll (October 3) f Billy Jack (re-release) (three consecutive weeks at No. 1: October 31, November 7, November 11) Chopsocky movies continued to be released in 1974, but their box-office dominance faltered. Strong competition from major new releases (including Papillon, The Exorcist, The Sting, Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, and The Longest Yard) and the public’s loss of interest in the sameness of most martial-arts movies’ plots allowed only two kung-fu flicks to reach the Number One spot in 1974: f Return of the Dragon (sequel to Enter the Dragon) (August 14) f The Trial of Billy Jack (sequel to Billy Jack) (three consecutive weeks at No. 1: November 20, November 27, December 4)

Tiger and Lady Shiva, both of whom played continuing roles in the DC Universe for decades to follow. Arriving in late 1975 was Karate Kid, a spin-off of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes title, solo-starring the teen martial artist.

By the time DC’s books premiered, the kung-fu craze was already on the decline, prompting a famous quip by former DC Comics publisher and Legion of Super-Heroes writer Paul Levitz that “the standing joke about DC was, when we started putting something out, you could be absolutely sure the trend was over.”

And over, it was. Well, almost.

By 1975, martial-arts movies were fading from the box office, and ABC aired its last new episode of Kung Fu on April 26th of that year. Martial-arts toys were on the wane, and most of the related comic books—including Hands of the Dragon #1 (and only), from flash-in-the-pan publisher Atlas (Seaboard) Comics—trickled away. The success among the lot was Shang-Chi, as Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu continued until 1983, distinguished by a notable run from writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy. By the late Seventies, kung fu was yesterday’s fad, with 1977’s Star Wars making science fiction the Next Big Thing.

But like the movies’ fearless, solitary fighters encircled by bloodthirsty assassins or shadowy ninjas, kung fu did not make its final bow. It fought on, and instead became a perennial genre. The Karate Kid film franchise—not based upon the DC Comics hero, as RetroFans are no doubt aware, but instead featuring original characters—followed. Martial arts became common in movies, TV shows, cartoons, comic books, and videogames, spawning characters like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and influencing fight scenes. Jackie Chan and other movie combatants graduated from chopsocky flicks to mainstream action films. Martial-arts schools proliferated, teaching self-defense. Kickboxing and other martial arts pack sports venues. Asians and Asian-Americans continue to thrive as filmmakers and in television programs. Oldies like TV’s Kung Fu have been updated for a contemporary audience. Marvel’s Iron Fist starred in his own Netflix show, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was released into theaters in 2021. If you thought Hong Kong Phooey was a trip, try watching Kung Fu Panda. And fifty years after his death, Bruce Lee continues to mesmerize us.

From where I sit, it looks like everybody is still kung-fu fighting!

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IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB

Since 2000, FROM THE TOMB has terrified readers worldwide. This second “Best of” collection of the UK’s preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics uncovers Atomic Comics lost to the Cold War, rarely seen (and censored) British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, GOOD GIRLS of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ Alien Worlds, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and a myriad of terrors from beyond the stars and the shadows of our own world! It features comics they tried to ban, from ATLAS, CHARLTON, COMIC MEDIA, DC, EC, HARVEY, HOUSE OF HAMMER, KITCHEN SINK, LAST GASP, PACIFIC, SKYWALD, WARREN, and more! Edited by PETER NORMANTON. (192-page Trade Paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490816 (Digital Edition) $10.99

HERO-A-GO-GO!

HERO-A-GO-GO! celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. RETROFAN magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this all-new collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, DELL’S SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the “Split!”

CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, Spider-Man), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and more!

(272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 ISBN: 9781605490731 (Digital Edition) $13.99

AMERICAN TV COMIC BOOKS (1940s-1980s) From The Small Screen To The Printed Page

A fascinating and detailed year-by-year history of over 300 television shows and their 2000+ comic book adaptations across five decades. Author PETER BOSCH has spent years researching and documenting this amazing area of comics history, tracking down the well-known series (STAR TREK, THE MUNSTERS) and the lesser-known shows (CAPTAIN GALLANT, PINKY LEE) to present the finest look ever taken at this unique genre of comic books. Included are hundreds of full-color covers and images, plus profiles of the artists who drew TV comics: GENE COLAN, ALEX TOTH, DAN SPIEGLE, RUSS MANNING, JOHN BUSCEMA, RUSS HEATH, and many more giants of the comic book world. If you loved watching The Lone Ranger, Rawhide, The Andy Griffith Show, The Monkees, The Mod Squad, Adam-12, Battlestar Galactica, The Bionic Woman, Alf, Fraggle Rock, and “V”—there’s something here for fans of TV and comics alike.

(192-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605491073 (Digital Edition) $15.99

THE BEST OF FROM THE TOMB This first collection compiles features from its ten years of terror, along with new material meant for the NEVER-PUBLISHED #29 • (192-page Digital Edition) $10.99

LOU SCHEIMER

CREATING THE FILMATION GENERATION

Biography of the co-founder of Filmation Studios, which created the first DC cartoons with Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, ruled the song charts with The Archies, kept Trekkie hope alive with the Emmy-winning Star Trek: The Animated Series, taught morals with Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and swung into high adventure with Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, Zorro, live-action shows Shazam! and The Secrets of Isis, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Written by LOU SCHEIMER, with RetroFan’s ANDY MANGELS. (288-page Digital Edition) $14.99

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Pop History.

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614

SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

You’ll Put Your Eye Out, Kid Danger in Happy Toyland

BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA “We’d like to show you another one of Mr. Mainway’s products… it’s called Bag O’ Glass. Mr. Mainway, this is simply a bag of jagged, dangerous, glass bits.”

– Consumer Reporter “Yeah, well, look—you know, the average kid, he picks up, you know, broken glass anywhere, you know? We’re just packaging what the kids want! I mean, it’s a creative toy, you know? If you hold this up, you know, you see colors, every color of the rainbow!”

– Irwin Mainway Mr. Irwin Mainway, maker of General Tron’s Secret Police Confession Kit, Johnny Switchblade: Adventure Punk, and the above-referenced Bag O’ Glass, is not, of course, a real toymaker, but rather a character played by Dan Aykroyd. Mainway made his first appearance in an NBC’s Saturday Night skit (Season 2, Episode 10, in 1977, before it became Saturday Night Live or just SNL). Mainway returned in a few later episodes selling Halloween costumes (a plastic bag with a rubber band was a space helmet) and as a school lunch provider serving “dog’s milk” to schoolchildren (obtaining such milk was apparently “a very interesting process”). The morally outraged reporter was played by the show’s host for the week, Candice Bergen, and later by Aykroyd’s fellow Not Ready for Primetime Player, Jane Curtain.

Few toymakers have been as predatory as the fictional Irwin Mainway (is what I hope). That’s not to say that there haven’t

Beloved toy favorite Mr. Potato Head was, in its early days, made with hard plastic pieces strong enough to plunge into actual fruit and vegetables. Mr. Potato Head ® Hasbro, Inc.

been poorly made or poorly thought-out playthings for kids sent into the marketplace. Absolutely, there have been. And some have been completely bonkers. But even relatively well-designed toys can have unintended consequences as anyone who has ever stepped—barefooted—on a sturdy, brilliantly designed Lego piece in the dark can confirm.

Weirdly, I became worried about potential hazards of toys as a kid. At first, it was just Mr. Potato Head parts with pointy shafts made to plunge into a plastic (or real) potato that worried me. Distinctly I recall wondering why a toy company, in this case Hasbro, would make something so obviously able to inflict pain and injury. And I say this as someone who really, deeply wanted to have a Mr. Potato Head (which I did eventually get from the local Dime Store). Still, the little potato eyeballs with plastic shivs coming out the back particularly unnerved young me.

If that was all we had to worry about in terms of unsafe toys during the Retro Years, then we could end the story here, but we all know that is not the case. Not then and not in the years before then. In fact, we Retronauts had it pretty safe compared to our forefathers (or actual fathers). So before we look at how dangerous our playtime could be for us, let’s take a quick look at how completely hazardous it was before many of us were born.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND BLOWGUNS

The A. C. Gilbert Company was once one of the largest toy companies in the known world. It was founded by a part-time magician RETROFAN

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and Olympic Gold Medalist in Pole Vaulting, Alfred Carlton Gilbert, who originally made magic sets.

Gilbert was best known for his steel construction toy, Gilbert Erector sets, which appeared in 1913 following a 1911 version known by the catchy name Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder, and as “the man who saved Christmas.” The later was the result of convincing the Council of National Defense to drop its plans for an end to toy production as America was entering World War I. Gilbert thought that inventing was vital for America and wanted to promote the benefits of science. Despite noble intentions, he produced some notorious non-Erector kits. The classic example is the No. U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (1951) with actual radioactive uranium ores. The rumor is that the U.S. government quietly suggested the need for such a kit to Gilbert; while interesting, this has yet to be proved. But I do want to press the point: this child’s plaything was radioactive.

And it wasn’t the only one. Gilbert included radioactive uranium in some of its chemistry sets during the Fifties.

Experimental Glass Blowing (for Boys) was another Gilbert kit (M512-C) to provide a sense of wonder, experimentation, and possible injury. Glass blowing is very cool. But as a home activity for kids, the combination of glass and open flame from an alcohol burner is a problematic mix. It’s notable that none of the illustrations in the kit’s instruction booklet show just how close the child’s face needs to get to the heat source to do the various experiments.

The Man Who Saved Christmas (2002) was the fictionalized story of the real effort by A. C. Gilbert to keep toy production active during the First World War. Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander played Gilbert. © Alliance Atlantis Communications/Orly Adelson Productions.

One of the experiments contains instructions on how to make a blowgun. Using a dangerous toy to create another dangerous toy out of glass is certainly a bold move.

Speaking of blowguns: Zulu Blowguns were offered up to young boys in the Twenties. The sets came with eight arrows and some paper targets for use indoors (yep), but we can safely guess that it was pets and little brothers that were most in danger. The narrow arrows had blunt tips, but any kid with a pocketknife could sharpen things up right quick. Fun Fact: Zulu warriors did not use blowguns.

Lead. The dangers of this metal have been known since before the 20th Century. It is toxic. Children, the future of our species, are extremely vulnerable. Lead used to be a component of paint, which was often used to make toys more colorful and exciting and poisonous (not on purpose, but still). Toy soldiers were made of lead, and with a casting set you could make your own. There were other manufacturers of lead-casting sets, but I’m picking on the A. C. Gilbert Company right now. They had a number of casting

(LEFT) A well-dressed lad and his blow gun in this detail from a 1928 ad. (BELOW LEFT) The Dutch Boy’s Lead Party booklet (1923). Booklet courtesy of Worthpoint. (BELOW) A Gilbert Kaster Kit from a 1941 Gilbert catalog. From the collection of the author.

(ABOVE) Radioactive uranium ore and an asbestos heat shield, and (BELOW) an easy-to-make flame-thrower, you know, for kids. Both courtesy of Windell Oskay via Flickr.

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sets, but it was their top-of-the-line Kaster Kit Furnace that looks a bit too industrial and not home-friendly at all. Oh, and two more things: Molten. Metal.

Surprisingly, lead-casting sets were around at least into the Sixties, a lot longer than its glass-blowing and atomic-energy toy store buddies lasted.

(LEFT) Porter Chemcraft got into the Atomic Energy game also in the Fifties. (RIGHT) The Lionel Corporation, best known for its trains, teamed with Porter to produce this biocraft Biology Lab (1961) about the “science of living things.” It comes with dead things and sharp objects. Courtesy

Chemistry sets may conjure images of mad science experiments, but they weren’t really designed for mayhem, but education. I very much wanted a chemistry set way back when, but it was a no-go with the folks since I had very young brothers at the time, and it was deemed unsafe. I was very interested in science, the space program, and inventing during the late Sixties (I wanted to be the Wright Brothers). I did get a very nice microscope, perhaps as a consolation prize, which I really liked. It came with dozens of glass slides full of bug parts and stuff. Stupidly, I kept bringing the lens in too close to each slide and eventually broke every single one of them. Kids and glass, right?

The Fifties were an especially ripe time for chemistry sets as the Cold War and Space Race brought out a need for scientists and educated people to bolster Our Side. It was common for chemistry sets to try to assure parents that it was all safe and harmless and the patriotic thing to have: “Prepares Young America for World Leadership.” That said, chemistry sets have included elements that have raised concerns; mainly about caustic, explosive, and poisonous materials.

The earliest chemistry sets included tools and chemicals contained in simple wooden boxes with scientists and students as the intended market. In 1914, the Porter brothers, John and Harold, created and produced Chemcraft Kits. These toy chemistry sets were inspired by the earlier English versions and A. C. Gilbert’s Erector Set, which had been introduced the year before.

The easiest elements to worry about in these sets were the chemicals. Some sets contained potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder that can be used to make smoke bombs (or just buy a pre-made one via a Johnson Smith catalog); iodine solution, poisonous if ingested; and calcium hypochlorite, which can be used to make chlorine gas (see World War I). Chemistry sets also had lots of glass parts: pipettes, beakers, thermometers, test tubes, and more (like the previously mentioned: uranium). Not to mention alcohol burners that, with the right adapter, could be turned into a simple blowtorch (not making this up).

The biggest problem for chemistry set manufacturers moving into the Sixties was the customers. Parents had concerns about

chemistry sets and soon, limited by the Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act of 1960 and the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 among other legislation, began to lose their luster and some of their most interesting chemicals. Lest you think that the government is always about being a buzz-kill, a 1939 press release from the United States Department of Agriculture about dangerous toys is fascinating. It warned parents that they were responsible for making sure that chemistry sets with chemicals labeled “poison” could be used by their child “with safety.” (Yes, but still, what?)

Chemistry sets had been marketed to boys, but sets for girls emerged. One encouraged young ladies to become lab assistants (seriously, had none of these guys ever heard of physicist and chemist Marie Curie, who died due to, ahem, long-term exposure

CHEMICAL ROMANCE

of the Science History Institute.

(LEFT) The Lionel Chemistry Magic comic book (1946) offers instructions to change water to wine (sure), make a lot of smoke, make trick matches, and—this is absolutely true— make a hydrogen explosion. (RIGHT) Meanwhile, girls get to watch and make notes with the Gilbert Lab Technician Set for Girls (1958). Courtesy of the Science History Institute.

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A screen capture of the Austin Magic Pistol in extreme action thanks to a YouTube user known only as Z pushing this delightful plaything to its limits.

the Porter Chemical Company had declared bankruptcy. A. C. Gilbert was done by 1967, following the 1961 death of its founder.

Interesting chemical interactions weren’t just for chemistry sets. The Austin Magic Pistol (circa late Forties), a name that surely conjures up promises of mystery and projectiles, looks like the kind of gun a robot in a Buck Rogers serial might wave around shooting electric bolts scratched into the film stock. The projectiles were basically ping-pong balls (pretty harmless) and the mystery was provided by “Magic Crystals.” The gun was described as “harmless.”

Turns out, not exactly. The crystals were actually calcium carbide. To use the gun you needed to add a bit of moisture to the crystals (spit works) in a chamber the combination of which makes volatile acetylene gas that a trigger/flint device sets off with a satisfying blast that launches the ball from said gun. Add too much water (or too much spit) and a flame shoots out when you fire it (I have witnessed this via YouTube). Miners used this tech to power their lamps until the Fifties when they were finally discontinued for being too dangerous. (The Austin Magic Pistol: “The Toy Miners Won’t Use.”)

HOT TOYS

(ABOVE) Detail from the 1960 Sears Christmas Book catalog. The smaller of the two ovens is the notorious Empire Little Lady Electric Range. The selling point of the larger electric range is that the child may stand at the stove “as Mom does.” Courtesy of christmas.musetechnical.com. (BELOW) The initial versions of the Little Lady Electric Range killer, the Easy-Bake Oven came in very groovy Sixties and early Seventies colors. There were concerns about the heat from the two 100 watt light bulbs needed to cook the cookies and whatnot, but the early Easy-Bake Ovens were largely a problem-free toy. Courtesy of Bradross03/Wikipedia.

to radiation?). Skil-Craft produced a biology lab that included an actual dead frog and crayfish, among other creatures, for dissection and observation. I imagine the assembly factory for this product was quite the horror show.

Legal actions and complaints helped to dumb down the chemistry sets to the point where kids simply lost interest. By 1984, 56

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Some very cool toys had heating-element issues. I’m not talking about the Kenner Easy-Bake Oven, which debuted in 1963. This toy oven used a pair of common light bulbs as a heat source so that a child, usually a girl child (in the old days!), could bake goodies. It’s practically a miracle toy. No, the only problem with the Easy-Bake Oven was not enough ingredients and too small portions. However, modern, updated versions of the still-made-but-redesigned (now

by Hasbro) toy have caused heating-related injuries.

The Empire Little Lady Electric Range, on the other hand, was one of ten toys targeted by consumer protection groups for remedial action under emergency provisions of the then-new Toy Safety Act of 1970. They claimed that the toy stove reached temperatures of 600 degrees, which, being hotter than an actual stove, was very bad. The pre-war Little Lady Range did get fiercely hot (the thermostat turned up to 500 degrees, but some sources say it did get to 600). Modern auctions and sales for these vintage stoves often include the words “gets hot fast” and “DANGEROUS.” The post-war versions were less hot (yet hot enough to bake cookies). They were also insulated with fiberglass, a suspected carcinogen. However, due to the popularity of the Easy-Bake Oven, Little Lady Electric Ranges were essentially gone from the market by the end of the Sixties. If you really want to singe your hair, some of the earliest toy stoves were heated by… coal.

The consumer groups were spot on about another toy on their Top Ten Recall list: Lawn Darts (Jarts). Some years later a child did die, and over 6,000 people ended up in emergency rooms as a result of play gone wrong.

A number of the (literally) hottest cool toys around came from Mattel. The company is internationally known as the home of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels toy cars. But it came from modest beginnings in a Los Angeles garage in 1945, first selling picture frames and then dollhouse furniture. Before Barbie wowed young girls in 1959, the company had a hit with the Uke-A-Doodle, a ukulele-shaped music box. But it’s the Sixties and early

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

Seventies-era Mattel toys with heating elements that are of most interest here.

Vac-U-Form, a toy-making toy (the only thing better than a cookie-making toy), featured an exposed heating surface. The heat softened a thin plastic sheet that would then be placed over a mold. Then pumping action would create a vacuum that sucked the plastic down over the mold, and soon you had a small toy. This was unspeakably fantastic. And useful. The instruction booklet tells how to use modeling clay to modify existing molds, or you could use it to make all-new ones. The Famous Monsters of Filmland Monster Make-Up Handbook (1965) suggested creating bugged-out monster eyes using the Vac-U-Form despite its high $12 cost (about $115 in 2022 bucks!). Still, that exposed heating plate was a concern for parents. It sold, but its retail life was short, about a year. Decades after being discontinued (and a failed revival by ToyMax in the Nineties), used sets still in working condition are popular with hobbyists despite the potential for burned fingers.

Another heating platform toy from Mattel were the Thingmaker sets. The Thingmaker used a standalone heating unit (“Caution, very warm surfaces”), metal molds, and “Plasti-Goop” to create a variety of, well, things. The Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker (1964) is probably the best remembered, but other types exist. The Fun Flowers set (1966) featured flower and leaf molds (you could get real flowers and leaves back then, right?) and was marketed to girls.

Other crave-able Thingmakers were the Fighting Men set (1965), which allowed you to create stand-up soldiers (but they were

Toys that make toys! Two comic-book ads from 1966–1967: (ABOVE) the still-sought-after Vac-U-Form and (LEFT) the Fright Factory and Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker. © Mattel. weirdly soft compared to regular toy soldiers); the Fright Factory (1966), which made spooky stuff (most of which could be used as parts of a gruesome rubbery disguise); and Incredible Edibles (1967), which made ingestible things. The “edible” Gooble-Degoop was heated like the Plasti-Goop. Fortunately, it didn’t give off toxic fumes like the Plasti-Goop. It also didn’t really taste very good.

A bit of the departure from the other Thingmakers was the best of the bunch, 1969’s Hot Wheels Factory. The Factory had a heat element contained within the device unlike the other Thingmakers.

That doesn’t mean you couldn’t burn yourself on it. You surely could, and I did. Fans of TV’s Arrested Development may recall the family’s Cornballer, a fry device that burned everyone who got close enough to the thing… it was like that.

The Hot Wheels Factory was given to me on my birthday one year (this is the kind of party gift you get when a friend’s dad is a V.P. at Mattel). Plastic pellets in different colors were dropped into the Factory gullet, melted, and extruded into a metal mold allowing you to create a small variety of plastic Hot Wheels–type cars. They worked, too. The best part about the set was that the little cars could be broken apart and re-melted to make new cars.

One of my all-time favorite toys.

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(LEFT) The Hot Wheels Factory literally made hot cars. (RIGHT) The similar Kenner Electric Mold Master made a greater variety of vehicles, plus guns and bullets! Hot Wheels © Mattel. Mold Master © Kenner.

But, you know, burns. In fact, I got burned so often I assumed that the toy was some kind of prototype without all the safety features added in. Nope.

The Kenner Electric Mold Master was similar to the Hot Wheels Factory. You could make various civilian and military vehicles and even pistols and bullets. Like the Hot Wheels Factory, it used heat and you could re-melt the plastic. Even though you could make a greater variety of objects with the Mold Master, it didn’t seem to catch on (but then, neither did the Hot Wheels Factory).

DEADLY ORIGINS

If we had a category for playthings that make you feel bad about yourself, then Wham-O has the top spot for me. I could not control, operate, or enjoy their flagship toys, the Hula Hoop or the Frisbee. But some of their other inventions were great, if somewhat hazardous. For a time, Wham-O was the home of affordable toys that kids wanted.

Wham-O began in 1948. Their first product was a slingshot for target shooting and hunting smallish critters, but bagging a deer was theoretically possible. “Wham-o” was supposed to be the sound of the lead balls hitting its target. The company followed their successful slingshots with throwing knives and blowguns (what is it with blowguns in toyland? Even Fleer sold one). By 1957, Wham-O hit with their first toy fad, the Hula Hoop, followed by (RIGHT) Wham-O products from the late Fifties: The Throwing Dagger is “powerful” and “silent” and the Blowgun set has steel darts. © Wham-O. 58

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the Frisbee [which you learned about in RetroFan #13!—ed.], and then in the early Sixties there was another big, big hit for them with the Super Ball.

On the surface the Super Ball (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes a single word) did not appear to be a dangerous toy. It was, after all, just a ball, albeit one with “50,000 lbs. of compressed energy,” which certainly sounds like the last thing you want to hand a child. And boy, did those balls bounce. That was thanks to

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

(LEFT) The 1970 package for the Super Ball promised high-flying action and a good way to lose your ball. (RIGHT) The Super Elastic Bubble Plastic was a safe toy so long as you didn’t use it. © Wham-O. Both courtesy of Worthpoint.

“Zectron” giving it the “oompf” to bounce higher than similar-sized rubber balls. Zectron may sound like something that emerged from Area 51, but it was merely the trademarked name for polybutadiene (originally created for industrial use, but when none could be found it was sent Wham-O’s way).

The danger of the Super Ball was that it presented a challenge to any child who owned one: How high could you get it to go? Sixties-era packaging showed the ball bouncing over a single-story house.

A fellow kid in my neighborhood took that challenge and tried to launch the Super Ball over his house and into the busy boulevard on the other side. Fortunately for passing drivers that day, he was unsuccessful. A more recent package illustration shows the Super Ball bouncing near a house. Supposedly, there was enough energy in the little things to go as high as three stories, but I suppose my neighbor’s technique was weak.

Here’s the stuff of nightmares: There was once a promotional Super Ball about the size of a bowling ball. This enormous Super Ball fell or was pushed from the roof or out of the window of the 24th (or 23rd) floor of a hotel in Australia (sources, as they say, vary). The first bounce reached back up to the 15th floor, and the second bounce “destroyed” a car. Take a moment to imagine the terrifying havoc to civilization if the wrong people got ahold of such an invention. By wrong people, I mean boys, age 8–13.

Not every family in Suburbia had a built-in pool for cooling off during the heat of summer. Wham-O came to the rescue with the Slip ’n Slide. The Slip ’n Slide was a slender strip of plastic that connected to a common water hose. Turn on the hose and a layer of water allowed overheated kids to cool off as they slid down the length of yellow plastic. For best results this was done in a yard with grass because when the plastic stopped, so did the young slider once she hit the grass. Most of the playthings discussed so far have presented some kind of risk to children, but the Slip ’n’ Slide was different. Adults and older teens that tried to use it could hurt themselves badly because the toy wasn’t designed for their size and weight. In some cases, neck and spinal injuries occurred. You’d think that that would be the end of the toy being used by adults,

but astonishingly, a television show called Ultimate Slip ’n Slide was in production for 2021. It was to be a family-friendly competition show, but was taken off the schedule due to cases of “explosive diarrhea” during production. So adults, stay off the kids’ things.

TOXINS FOR TOTS

Wham-O’s Super Elastic Bubble Plastic might fit better in a “Toys That Made Me Bad About Myself” category than one devoted to toxins. Super Elastic was a substance that came out of a tube. A small amount squeezed out and rolled into a ball and placed on the end of a provided short straw that was supposed to allow the user

Retro-style Slip ’n Slide packaging (2016) features a 16-foot slide. In 1961 the slide was 40 feet long. © Wham-O. Courtesy of Worthpoint.

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to blow out a gigantic three-color bubble. Never could do it. Never, never, never, not once. I don’t think I know anyone who could make even a teeny little pimple of a bubble. I kept trying. Blowing into the straw. Sucking air back out of the straw. Repeat. With each inhale we kids took in acetone vapors in small amounts. Small. Not zero.

Get enough of the acetone vapors into your system and the toxin causes dizziness, narcosis (you become barely conscious and stupified), or you fall into a coma. Granted, you’d have to be alarmingly dedicated to Super Elastic Bubble Plastic to experiece these side effects, but keep this in mind: Super Elastic Bubble Plastic also burns! It’s flammable, gang.

You may be surprised to find something as goofy and harmless as Silly String listed here, but the first version of the product definitely belongs. It’s not the “string” part that is the problem, it’s the propellant. Originally, chlorofluorocarbons were used to shoot the colorful string out all over the place until the damage they caused to the protective ozone layer in our shared atmosphere was understood and the substance was banned. For you fans of Silly String, two things: one, you can still get it with safer propellant, and two, you can make your own. If you do decide to make some, keep a few simple things in mind: do not aim it at furniture, rugs, pets, eyes, hair, clothes, or food you expect to eat because the main ingredient is hydrogen peroxide, a bleaching agent. But, you know, have fun.

I’M WITH STUPID

the Prelinger Archives.

Imagine a plastic hat with a plastic pole atop it and plastic tassels attached to the other end. The toy is played with when you wear the hat and twist your noggin around vigorously to make the pole spin around, causing the tassels to proudly fly. Such a miracle invention did exist. First appearing in 1965, it was called the Swing Wing. Swing Wing was made

by Transogram, a company now gone. They were probably best known for Ka-Bala (“The Mysterious Game that Tells the Future”), a kind of tarot-esque game with a green plastic glow-in-the-dark eyeball at the center of the board. They also made a Monkees board game and Little Orphan Annie clothespins, which I suspect could pinch quite hard but really aren’t within the parameters of this article (consider yourself warned, though).

The Swing Wing was likely an attempt to capture renewed Hula Hoop energy, but the focus on neck and head movement probably doomed it. There’s just no good reason to yank your head around for hours at a time. A couple of sources mentioned whiplash injuries due to Swing Wing swinging, as well as concussions, but there isn’t any solid proof, so I’m skeptical. Speaking for my much younger self, this toy would bore and annoy me. Also, it’s stupid, and I hate it.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

A toy doesn’t have to be cheap or badly designed to do harm.

Sometimes things go a bit sideways. Literally. My middle school had a rocket club and decided to give a demonstration with a few rocket launches. The rockets used were from Estes, a model rocket company still in business. When used properly, the rockets were safe and very cool, with the biggest problem being the retrieving of the rockets since they didn’t automatically return to the launch pad. Since the only Estes products that I owned 60

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(ABOVE AND LEFT) Transogram billed its Swing Wing as a “fun thing,” if by “fun” they meant “ridiculous.”

Screen captures from a 1965 commercial. Courtesy

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(LEFT) The flight path of a model rocket from the 1969 Estes Model Rocket catalog when things go right.

They don’t always go right. © Estes Industries LLC. From the collection of the author. (BELOW) Metal and wood tools: hammers, saws, plyers, screwdrivers and other things that poke, pound, and cut. Catalog art, circa 1963.

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

were a couple of catalogs, I was really looking forward to the club’s demonstrations.

The first model rocket went up fine and high with a very satisfying “swoosh,” as it disappeared into the sky. Club members were busy fussing over the rockets, and a group of us students and a couple teachers stood parallel to the line-up of launch pads at the other end of the asphalt-covered play yard. The club members were all very serious and officious as they pressed the button to launch the next rocket. There was a rushing hiss, and the eyes of the kids nearest the rocket got really big.

Slowly—Matrix slowly—the launch pad tipped over, sending the rocket headed straight for the audience.

Me, and the others. Things then sped up and that rocket took a quick slightly corkscrew path toward us. It flew only inches above the asphalt.

Mostly I just remember the running and high-pitched screaming (could have been me, I don’t recall).

Antic chaos. No one was hurt, and that was the end of the rocket club, as near as I can tell.

Human error. It happens. If someone had gotten seriously hurt, well, that’s a different story. Lawsuits and injury tend to take the humor out of a situation. And I say this as a father who took his very young son into the emergency room for stitches one day because he wanted to see what it was like to be blind while walking over furniture (he almost got his wish). It could have been a funny story, but then it wasn’t. So, no, I don’t like to see kids get hurt.

Speaking of stitches, I was sitting in a Murray Fire Truck in our backyard as a kid. I might have been about eight. I swung my left arm around and the soft underbelly of my wrist caught on a sharpish piece of metal (the fire truck had seen better days).

I had to get a few stitches, and I was not brave about it. Murray made many fine metal pedal vehicles, but metal and toys can be a problematic mix (especially when they sit outside and get rusty).

Plastic polymers sound safe though, right? How about them clackers? Clackers is one name for a simple toy that is basically two plastic orbs attached to a shared cord with a loop or plastic handle in the center. The object of the toy was to bang the two spheres together for a sort of learn-eye-hand-coordination-and-makeannoying-sounds exercise. Clackers go by a multitude of names, including Click-Clacks, Whackers, Bonkers, and Knockers. Recalls due to the balls breaking apart began in 1971. Thanks to science creating better polymers, clackers are once again with us. Fun Fact (You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me Dept.): Clear clackers can function like a magnifying glass and start fires. Also: an early version of clackers circa 1968 used glass spheres which, oh-my-gosh-look-at-that, broke into sharp freakin’ pieces.

Toy tools. This should be kind of obvious. Tools used incorrectly can cause harm whether they are toy versions or the real thing. A friend of mine as a kid cut the leg off a family chair with a plastic saw. Was this an exaggerated story? Perhaps, but kids can be

(LEFT) The infamous yet beloved clackers, maker and date unknown. (ABOVE) A proper modern chemistry set. © Thames & Kosmos.

like jailed convicts. They have lots of free time on their hands for unexpected mischief.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it: Anyone else have Hot Wheels track “sword” fights? Anyone?

PLAYTIME IS NEVER OVER

I truly loved the old toys we Retronauts grew up with. Of course, I survived without too much injury or trauma (though the scar from my pedal car accident is the same size as my scar from an actual car accident). And I see things more from a parent’s point of view now. However, I am happy to report that toys once considered dangerous have returned, like the previously mentioned clackers.

Real chemistry sets are coming back as well. The Thames & Kosmos Chem C3000 (v2.0) is a serious set for young folks, and I’m delighted that it exists. It lists for about $280 (not bad when you consider that a top-of-the-line 1951 Chemcraft Master Laboratory set retailed for $27.50 or the equivalent to $287 in 2021).

Unsafe toys do still get made. As I started work on this edition of the Secret Sanctum there was a recall announced for the Gel Blaster SURGE Model 1.0 toy gun because it could burst into flames (shades of the Austin Magic Pistol). So what can we do about living in an uncertain toy world? Annual lists of unsafe toys exist for buyers who want them. World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc. (WATCH) has produced a top ten worst toys list for 50 years. Knowledge is strength. That never changes. Neither does human nature.

Kids will play with anything. I once got in trouble with the law for playing with some paint I found in an alleyway. At a minimum for everyone’s sanity, toy rules should be: don’t sniff it, don’t eat it, don’t put it where it don’t belong.

And, for Pete’s sake, keep away from bags of glass.

SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a Retro Explorer operating from his Southern California–based Secret Sanctum. He is a writer (more or less), artist (occasionally), and graphic designer (you’re soaking in it). Check out his Instagram thing, won’t you, at instagram/scottsaav/ RETROFAN

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All Hail Don Drysdale!

Baseball, Hollywood, and a Legendary Dodger

BY DAVID KRELL Don Drysdale had a right arm that batters feared and an on-camera presence that Hollywood producers sought.

On August 11, 1969, the three-time Major League Baseball strikeout leader announced what Los Angeles Dodgers fans dreaded but knew was inevitable. Retirement. His right shoulder no longer had the elasticity necessary to play at an optimum level.

Plus, the risk of injuries was increasingly apparent.

The Dodgers were in third place in the newly formed National League West, one game behind the Atlanta Braves and threeand-a-half games behind the Cincinnati Reds. “This team has a chance to go all the way,” said the 33-year-old Van Nuys, California, native to the San Pedro News-Pilot. “I don’t want to jeopardize their chances.” Drysdale had pitched in 62 innings across 12 games in his final season when he stepped away. His record was 5-4.

Then in their 12th year in Los Angeles after moving from Brooklyn, the Dodgers had added three World Series titles to their roster of achievements—1959, 1963, and 1965—since settling in Southern California. Sandy Koufax retired after the Baltimore Orioles swept the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. The southpaw’s phenomenal power resulted in winning three Cy Young Awards; leading Major League Baseball in strikeouts four times; and throwing four no-hitters—including a perfect game.

With Drysdale now gone, the void on L.A.’s pitching staff was even starker. “I have immensely enjoyed my relationship with the Dodgers,” said the righthander to the Hollywood Citizen-News. “I owe quite a bit to baseball—just about everything. It’s been great. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Drysdale’s first major-league appearance ended with nine strikeouts in a complete game, 6-1 victory against the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium on April 23, 1956. It was the beginning of a formidable career: a 209-166 win-loss record, two-time 62

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A very Brady pitching pointer! L.A. Dodger Don Drysdale and Greg Brady (Barry Williams) in a promotional still for “The Dropout,” the Season Two opener of The Brady Bunch.

Original airdate: September 25, 1970. © Paramount Television. leader in innings pitched, a Cy Young Award, and nearly 2,500 strikeouts.

He also led MLB four times—and the NL five times—in hitting batters with pitches.

“I was called ‘intimidating,’ and I wasn’t about to dispute that,” wrote Drysdale in his 1990 autobiography (written with Bob Verdi), Once a Bum, Always a Dodger: My Life in Baseball from Brooklyn to Los Angeles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). “I never talked about my reputation, but I was very much at peace having others talk about it. Baseball then was a game of intimidation, and if opposing batters figured you were going to throw the ball inside at 94 miles an hour on a day when you didn’t feel like you could break a pane of glass, fine. Let ’em think that way. Perfect.”

Fearsomeness was a sharp arrow in Drysdale’s quiver. Endurance, another. He led both leagues in games started from 1962 to 1965.

Moreover, Drysdale had dominated the opposition just one year before retiring, when he broke the record for consecutive scoreless innings. Carl Hubbell had held the National League record with 45 in 1933; Walter Johnson’s 56 in 1913 topped the majors. Drysdale blanked the opposition for 58. In the midst of Drysdale’s streak, Robert F. Kennedy won the 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary and used his victory speech to praise the pitcher: “I want to first express my high regard to Don Drysdale, who pitched his sixth

Superstar Drysdale seen in baseball trading cards, ranging from 1957–1967, from Topps and Bazooka. © Topps. © Bazooka. Courtesy of Heritage.

straight shutout tonight, and I hope that we have as good fortune in our campaign.”

Tragedy struck. Two hours after the speech at the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Kennedy and wounded five others.

Drysdale’s scoreless-innings record stood until Orel Hershiser, another Dodger hurler, broke it in 1988 with 59, which is presently the record. “At least it stays in the family,” said Drysdale to Bill Plaschke in “Drysdale Takes Hershiser’s Best Pitch and Keeps Smiling,” published in the September 29, 1988 Los Angeles Times.

But his impact on popular culture extended beyond the pitching mound to TV studios and eventually the broadcast booth.

During his ballplaying career, Drysdale had guest roles in the shows Lawman, The Millionaire, and The Rifleman. But he’s better known among classic television buffs for playing himself on the small screen; his credits include Leave It to Beaver and Our Man Higgins.

In Jack Benny’s 1968 carnival-themed special Carnival Nights, Drysdale’s cameo consists of introducing himself as he steps up to a game—throwing a baseball at a target with Benny’s head as the bull’s-eye. Benny gets paid five dollars an hour for the gig. In keeping with his onstage persona of being cheap, the Waukegan, Illinois, native Benny says, “Well, for five dollars, I’ll take a chance.”

Lucille Ball and Johnny Carson have prominent roles in the special, which features music and dance numbers, plus appearances by Ben Blue, Paul Revere & the Raiders, George Burns, Danny Thomas, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and the Smothers Brothers.

Drysdale also played himself in four episodes of The Donna Reed Show.

Reed’s character, Donna Stone, is a suburban matriarch running her household with her husband, Dr. Alex Stone, and two kids—Jeff and Mary. In the 1962 episode “The Man in the Mask,” high school student Jeff is excited to meet Don Drysdale and interview him for the school paper. Drysdale misses the appointment because a meeting with sports writers lasted longer than anticipated, so he goes to the Stone house to apologize.

Not knowing that his interviewee is outside talking to his father, Jeff loudly voices frustration in the kitchen. Drysdale overhears him and compares him to Leo Durocher, the Dodgers’ feisty coach.

All is settled. Drysdale tells Jeff that a good fastball is like life insurance for a pitcher. He also mentions that it’s the first year for Dodger Stadium and he hopes to win the National League pennant.

The Dodgers came close. They tied the Giants in 1962, forcing a three-game playoff. The Giants won the NL flag, then lost the World Series to the Yankees in seven games.

When Jeff is persuaded by two competing girlfriends to umpire their softball game, Drysdale warns him against the endeavor.

Disaster happens. Every call that Jeff makes is met with anger from the girls. Drysdale stops by the field, sees Jeff’s quandary, and offers wisdom. “Just go out there and act like an umpire,” instructs the veteran ballplayer. “You don’t have to get tough, just RETROFAN

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be firm. Call every pitch, every play the way you see it. And after you’ve made your decision, stick with it. You know, Jeff, in baseball, nobody ever wins an argument with an umpire.”

He continues, “It’s the same in baseball as in life. The surest way to get clobbered is to be indecisive. Remember this. A wrong decision is better than no decision at all.”

Fair, but firm. Jeff’s new approach gets him respect and continued affection from the two girls on opposing sides—Angie and Marcia. Later, Angie comes to the Stone house to ask Jeff to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. Marcia stops by a few minutes later with the same invitation, but Jeff agrees to go with Angie since she asked him first. Then, he quotes his hero’s “wrong decision” line.

It’s misinterpreted by Angie as a degrading declaration, so she dumps him.

Set in a fictional suburb named Hilldale, The Donna Reed Show aired for eight seasons on ABC. Although a state was never mentioned, it’s presumably located in the Midwest because Drysdale says that the next time the Dodgers are in Chicago, he’ll get tickets for the family.

In the episode “All Those Dreams,” Jeff takes him up on that generosity as he accompanies his parents to the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago; Dr. Stone is there for a medical conference. But Jeff figured that he could just call Wrigley Field and ask for Drysdale rather than give him advance notice before the trip. Drysdale never

(ABOVE AND OPPOSITE PAGE) Whether acting in episodes of Lawman and The Rifleman, or playing himself as he did on The Brady Bunch, Don Drysdale was a popular face in Sixties television. Lawman © Warner Bros. Television. The Rifleman © Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions. The Brady Bunch © Paramount Television.

Who knew that Donna Reed, second only to June Cleaver as the perfect Nuclear Family mom, was a swinger? Publicity photo with guest-star Don Drysdale for 1962’s “The Man in the Mask” episode of The Donna Reed Show. © Warner Bros.

Television.

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gets the messages, but winds up meeting Jeff anyway through a coincidence when the hotel manager asks Dr. Stone to examine the sick child of a couple (the Drysdales) staying at the Bismarck. It turns out to be nothing serious, thankfully.

In an ironic turn, “All Those Dreams” aired on April 18, 1963. The Dodgers played the Cubs in a night game on that date and Drysdale was the starting pitcher! But it was at Dodger Stadium, not Wrigley Field. The Cubs won 5-1. Drysdale’s other appearances on The Donna Reed Show happened in the episodes “My Son, the Catcher” and “Play Ball.”

Drysdale also guest starred as himself on The Brady Bunch. In the 1970 episode “The Dropout,” he’s a client of Mike Brady, an architect who often works out of his den in the family abode. After going over the latest plans for a new house that Drysdale wants to build, the two go to the backyard where Drysdale meets three loyal Dodger fans, the Brady Boys—Greg, Peter, and Bobby. Greg pitches in the Pony League and wants a career as a major leaguer; Drysdale shows him the grip for a slider.

Delusions of greatness worry Mike and his wife, Carol, who want Greg to go to college. They call upon the Dodgers legend to talk to

retro television

him about the harsh realities of baseball. Unfortunately, the gruesome details of packing your arm in ice and possibly staying in the minor leagues with subpar amenities have no effect on Drysdale’s idolater, who thinks he will skip college and go right to the majors.

When Greg gets pounded in the first inning of a game, he gets his comeuppance.

There is a contradiction in Drysdale’s appearance. Mike says that the pitcher went to college. This is untrue. Drysdale signed with the Dodgers organization right out of Van Nuys High School.

Barry Williams, who played Greg, recounted the show’s genesis and spinoffs, plus behind-the-scenes stories, in his autobiography Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992, by Barry Williams with Chris Kreski). The athletes who gueststarred were unsurprisingly popular with Williams and his co-stars Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland.

“Whenever a sports star would appear on the show, Chris, Mike, and I would make a beeline toward them and start hounding them until they’d consent to playing ball with us or at least offer up a coupla training tips,” revealed Williams.

“Wes Parker, Don Drysdale, and Deacon Jones all went home exhausted from our triple-teaming.” Joe Namath also guest-starred.

Drysdale could sing, too. Matching the excitement of sports with the glamour of television, Drysdale joined teammates Frank Howard, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, Moose Skowron, and Ron Perranoski on The Joey Bishop Show before the 1964 season for a version of “High Hopes.” Sammy Cahn, the song’s scribe, wrote new lyrics summarizing the Dodgers’ 1963 travails against the St. Louis Cardinals and sweep of the New York Yankees in the World Series.

Clad in a tuxedo, Drysdale sang the lead while his Dodgers brethren wore their home uniforms and backed him up with a chorus.

But the performing bug did not bite the six-foot-six baseball star with everlasting effects. He had his sights set on broadcasting, which he intimated in a 1959 episode of the game show You Bet Your Life, starring Groucho Marx. In 1970, Drysdale began a successful broadcasting career announcing for the Montreal Expos, California Angels, Chicago White Sox, and his old team, the Dodgers, in addition to NBC and ABC. A 1981 episode of The Greatest American Hero featured his broadcasting talents. In “The Two-Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Fast Ball,” California Stars manager Shorty Robinson is working with gunrunners to fix games; huge bets are subsequently placed.

Robinson’s cohorts have run the Stars’ two best hitters off the road and assaulted their best pitcher. Enter Whitney High School teacher Ralph Hinkley. Aliens had given Ralph a super-hero suit that gives him super-powers, including the ability to throw a baseball at 200 miles an hour. [Editor’s note: Learn more about The Greatest American Hero in our interview with star William Katt in RetroFan #5.]

Ralph, through his FBI handler, Bill Maxwell, gets a tryout and contract with the Stars to find out why the team’s standouts are

Drysdale was one of an elite group of late-Fifties/early-Sixties all-stars immortalized as a plastic figurine by Hartland Creations.

Courtesy of Heritage.

getting attacked and sidelined from playing. Drysdale provides the play-by-play for sequences in two games between the fictional Stars and Oakland Mets.

Don Drysdale died from a heart attack in his Montreal hotel room during an Expos-Dodgers series on July 3, 1993. He was about three weeks shy of his 57th birthday.

DAVID KRELL is the author of 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK and Do You Believe in Magic? Baseball and America in the Groundbreaking Year of 1966. www.davidkrell.com RETROFAN

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BRITMANIA

by MARK VOGER

Remember when long-haired British rock ’n’ rollers made teenage girls swoon — and their parents go crazy?

BRITMANIA plunges into the period when suddenly, America went wild for All Things British. This profusely illustrated full-color hardback, subtitled “The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture,” explores the movies (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, HAVING A WILD WEEKEND), TV (THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR), collectibles (TOYS, GAMES, TRADING CARDS, LUNCH BOXES), comics (real-life Brits in the DC and MARVEL UNIVERSES) and, of course, the music! Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, GROOVY, HOLLY JOLLY), BRITMANIA features interviews with members of THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, THE KINKS, HERMAN’S HERMITS, THE YARDBIRDS, THE ANIMALS, THE HOLLIES & more. It’s a gas, gas, gas!

(192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-115-8 • NOW SHIPPING!

GROOVY also by MARK VOGER

From Woodstock, “The Banana Splits,” and “Sgt. Pepper” to “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Altamont, and “The Partridge Family,” GROOVY is a far-out trip to the era of lava lamps and love beads. This profusely illustrated hardcover book, in psychedelic color, features interviews with icons of grooviness such as PETER MAX, BRIAN WILSON, PETER FONDA, MELANIE, DAVID CASSIDY, members of the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, CREAM, THE DOORS, THE COWSILLS and VANILLA FUDGE; and cast members of groovy TV shows like “The Monkees,” “Laugh-In” and “The Brady Bunch.” Revisit the era’s rock festivals, movies, art, comics and cartoons in this color-saturated pop-culture history!

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

‘Don’t Ask—Just BUY It!’ The Comics of Jack Kirby, Oddball Cartoonist

BY SCOTT SHAW!

The first time I met Jack Kirby was when he was a special guest at the first official San Diego Comic-Con (at the time a.k.a. Golden State Comic Con) on August 1–3 in 1970, and I was so excited I could barely speak.

The second time I met Jack was at his home in SoCal’s Thousand Oaks, along with my other teenage San Diego Comic-Con co-originator pals in 1971. I blurted out, “Jack Kirby!?! You’re my favorite cartoonist!”

Surprisingly, Jack seemed quite pleased to be described by that simple term, usually applied to those of us who write and draw nothing but the funny stuff. After all, comics aficionados have dubbed him “King” Kirby (a title he wore with some discomfort), and have compared his work to that of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Rockwell, among other artistic greats. I suppose that’s because Jack probably saw himself as a cartoonist, partially because he wrote the stories he drew. A few weeks later, he sent me a penciled caricature of myself getting strangled by King Kong (see inset).

If you are a loyal reader of RetroFan’s non-comics-related material, it’s very

possible that you have no idea who Jack Kirby was. From the Forties into the Eighties, Jack was comics’ most prolific creator.

Whether he was working with Joe Simon, Stan Lee, or by himself, Jack’s concepts and characters were exciting, unique, and popular.

He worked in every comic-book genre, but is best known for co-creating such super-heroes as Captain America, the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. If it wasn’t for Jack, there would be no Marvel Universe in comics or films. But Jack’s work went far beyond Marvel. Not only did he do work for almost every publisher of comics, but his style of storytelling and character designs educated the entire funnybook industry in how to make comics that people will eagerly purchase.

(ABOVE) You may know Jack Kirby for his work on Captain America, Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, and so many other super-hero series, but the King of Comics was no stranger to humor and other oddball work, such as cartooning for Charlton’s MAD knock-off From Here to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955). Courtesy of Heritage.

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The oddball world of scott shaw!

Most people tend to think of Jack Kirby in melodramatic superlatives. He’s been described as the ultimate comic-book artist, a master’s master of graphic fiction, and an incredibly talented creator of dynamic heroes, dramatic action, and cosmic conflicts.

He was, without a doubt, the single most imaginative individual ever to work in the field of comic books. He was equally comfortable working in any of the familiar comic-book genres of superheroics, romance, Westerns, science fiction, and war, among other dramatic themes. But Jack Kirby was also very funny as a writer, as an artist, and as a person, and left behind a surprisingly large body of work to prove it. I first noticed his very unique sense of humor in 1965 when I received the first issue of the Merry Marvel Marching Society Messenger newsletter. In it was a short autobiography by the former Jacob Kurtzberg, in which he described a soldier he knew as “The Human Roadblock.”

One of the strangest paradoxes in comics is that most “straight” comic books (in such “realistic” genres as super-heroes, Westerns, romance, war, etc.) are drawn in styles that actually bear almost no resemblance to truly realistic illustration! Yet, many fans (and even editors) of these comics turn up their noses at anything resembling the kind of humorous cartooning sometimes referred to within the business as “big-foot drawing.” In my estimation, Jack Kirby’s artwork somehow bridges this aesthetic gulf.

Judging from life drawings that he had done as a young man, Jack had always possessed a natural ability to work in a much more realistic style than that with which he is now usually associated. It appears that the exaggerated and dynamic anatomy, poses, design, composition, and foreshortening that have become such a Kirby trademark may have been the result of a conscious aesthetic decision on Jack’s part. One thing is certain, however: once he began his professional career (under a variety of pen names), no matter what the character or genre, whether the subject was serious or lighthearted, Jack Kirby could only draw like Jack Kirby, and if humorous illustration could be described as an exaggeration of realistic art, then Jack Kirby’s humor work is nothing less than an even greater exaggeration of his normally exaggerated style!

Therefore, this column will focus on the material that was unusual even for someone with Jack’s incredibly wide range of work in print—most really cool, some kinda ridiculous, but all somewhat amusing, obscure, and oddball.

YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

In 1917, Jack Kirby was born and raised as Jacob Kurtzberg in New York City’s Lower East Side, two square miles that were, at the time, considered to be the most densely populated neighborhood on Earth. Life wasn’t easy for kids during Jack’s youth, but by banding together in block-gangs, they learned how to be tough without becoming gangsters like they knew from films and personal experience. Whether they be Jewish, Italian, African-American, Latino, or Irish, the older the kids grew, the more they realized that escaping from the ghetto was necessary if they were ever going to achieve their dreams.

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Jack “King” Kirby in 1993. Susan Skaar.

He yam what he yam, and he yam inspired by Popeye. Still, Kirby’s early strip Socko the Seadog, produced under the pen name of “Teddy,” is fun to behold. © The Jack Kirby Estate. Scan courtesy of Scott Shaw!

Jacob was not only interested in drawing, he also liked to read pulp magazines and watch films in movie houses. Those media educated him in how to write stories and how to portray them.

That was his self-schooling, unlike the Pratt Institute art class he skipped out of after one week. While briefly working as a newspaper cartoonist’s office boy, he realized that his boss’ profession was what he wanted and soon needed. When his father lost his job, Jacob dropped out of school to earn money for his family, first as a newsboy.

Soon, Jacob was hired by Fleischer Studios—run by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer [see RetroFan #25 for more Fleischer info—ed.]—as an “inbetweener” on the outfit’s Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons. (An inbetweener is an essential animation artist that creates the transitional drawings between the assistant animator’s poses.) A fast drawer, Jacob’s income amounted to enough that the Kurtzbergs could afford to relocate to Brooklyn, a slightly nicer

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Long before he’d draw talking animals in DC Comics’ Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, Kirby had fun with babbling beasts in his “Earl the Rich Rabbit” and (INSET) “Lockjaw the Alligator” features in Hillman Periodicals’ Punch and Judy Comics. © The Jack Kirby Estate. Scans courtesy of Scott Shaw!

neighborhood than the Lower East Side. But outside of helping his family, Jacob wasn’t enjoying his new job. Not only did the studio’s vibe remind him of the pressure-filled sweatshops his father had toiled in, but Jacob was expected to draw the same character over and over in the same poses all day long, which to him seemed like the opposite of creativity. Fleischer Studios was also moving to Florida, which cemented his decision to leave the studio.

But it’s likely that this early animation training also had a long-range effect on Jack throughout his six-decade career. Not coincidentally, in the Eighties, Jack found himself back where he started, working in the animation field, doing character designs and concept development for HannaBarbera and Ruby-Spears Productions, including extremely cartoony designs for H-B’s Scooby-Doo cartoons. Even better, he

became a producer at R-S, with a regular salary and health insurance, perks that rarely occur in the comic-book industry.

But it’s apparent that his experiences at Fleischer had some influence on young Jacob. In 1936, he found work with Lincoln Features Syndicate, which sold material to smaller market newspapers, including ones for the Jewish readership.

He wrote and drew a number of different strips for Lincoln, mostly self-created and all bearing made-up signatures of fictitious cartoonists.

(Eventually, he’d pick one of them for himself because it sounded the most like a real cartoonist name, “Jack Kirby.”)

Jacob created his daily comics strips at home on the kitchen table. The majority were dramatic stories with quasi-realistic, Will Eisner-ish characters.

But there was one exception, because one of these strips was Socko the Seadog by “Teddy,” which began as a blatant Popeye imitation, complete with swipes from cartoonist E. C. Segar. Although he would never be known for drawing funny stuff, the kid who would soon be known as Jack Kirby was merely applying what he’d learned to do at Fleischer’s. The result was, at best, repetitive slapstick. But as the strip progressed, Socko’s swipes and corny gags were replaced by funny and clever globe-spanning adventure stories depicted with Jacob’s improving skills with acting, atmosphere, and storytelling.

Although there has been no evidence that it ever saw print, Jacob created a second comic strip in 1938, Abdul Jones, a fantasy with broad humor, produced using the name “Ted Grey.” It starred a teenage lad with wanderlust, accompanied by a mule that wore eyeglasses. Their exploits included a number of exotic characters including the 12-foot-tall bandit Katchaz Katchkhan, Josef Welchmore the Bagdad bookie, and RETROFAN

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(LEFT) Yes, that’s Kirby himself, on the wrong side of the law, on the photo cover of Prize Publications’ Headline Comics #37 (Aug.–Sept. 1949). © 1949 Prize Publications. (CENTER) Poison Ivan and Hotsky Trotski don’t stand a chance against Simon & Kirby’s patriotic, Commie-crushing hero. Fighting American #3 (Aug.–Sept. 1954). (RIGHT) The Fighting American and his sidekick Speedboy got this one-shot from Harvey Comics in the campy year of 1966. © The Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates.

Myrtle, the toast of a Sultan’s harem. Based on the strip’s surviving artwork, Jacob’s work was starting to look more exaggerated, an important aspect of his later style.

Of all the projects that Jacob created for Lincoln Features Syndicate, The Romance of Money was a series that wasn’t syndicated.

Instead, it was published as a giveaway sequential panel story booklet for savings banks. Some consider it to be Jack Kirby’s very first comic book.

SIMON & KIRBY’S ODDBALL COMICS

By the advent of super-heroes in what we now call the Golden Age of Comics, Jacob Kurtzberg had become Jack Kirby and had partnered with Joe Simon, another cartoonist with similar abilities, goals, and ethics. After co-creating Timely/Marvel’s Captain America, Simon & Kirby noticed that many readers identified with Cap’s teenage sidekick, Bucky Barnes. It led to teaming the young super-hero with an urban-raised boy, a matrix sparked by the creation of the Golden Age “kid gang” by Simon & Kirby. And no matter if the team was Timely/Marvel’s Sentinels of Liberty or Young Allies, DC’s Newsboy Legion or Boy Commandos, or even Harvey’s non-super-hero-genre Boys’ Ranch or Boy Explorers, it had its own comedy relief character.

Both Joe and Jack would return to the genre in the Seventies, each with his own outlandish Oddball concept.

After WWII, most super-hero comics disappeared from the stands, leaving very few survivors. Established and new genres took the place of the costumed characters that were associated with that just-concluded war. Funny-animal comics were big sellers, as were the new themes of teenage comics, WWII comics, humor comics, horror comics, and romance comics—the latter 70

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genre having been created by Simon & Kirby. Fortunately, they had no problem adjusting to new styles and genres.

Hillman Periodicals published Punch and Judy Comics, a long-running (1944–1951) funnybook aimed at a readership that was still learning how to read: little kids. The series featured lots of puppets, talking animals, and fairies. Never fazed by a new challenge, Jack leapt into Punch and Judy’s world of funny animals with gusto in the mid-Forties with “Earl the Rich Rabbit” and “Lockjaw the Alligator.”

As a cartoonist who’s done more than a few funny animals myself, I feel I must emphasize that Jack truly excelled at this type of material, and that it’s a real shame he rarely ever revisited the genre. Although lightweight in story, these are some of the most dynamic and powerful pages I’ve ever seen! It’s also noteworthy that “Earl” predated Carl Barks’ Uncle $crooge McDuck, who made his first appearance in 1948! The series also featured Jack’s Toby—a teenage boy in the “Archie” mode—in one of the later issues of Punch and Judy.

Simon & Kirby also worked on all four issues of Hillman’s My Date (1947–1948), a pleasantly cartoony series that was intended to exploit the popularity of Archie Comics’ line of humorous comics.

Around the same time, Jack and Joe also drew a teen humor strip in Archie Comics Publications, Inc.’s Laugh Comics #24 (Dec. 1947) called “Pipsy.”

Although neither Joe Simon nor Jack Kirby had any of their material in Prize/Headline Publications’ Headline Comics vol. 5, #1/#37 (Sept.–Oct. 1949), it’s still a major collectable for Jack Kirby fans.

Why? This issue’s photo-cover depicts a policeman busting a burglar mid-heist... with Joe Simon as the cop and Jack Kirby as the crook.

Strange World of Your Dreams (Prize, 1952–1953) was created to appeal to the same readership that was reading Simon & Kirby’s

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(LEFT) A frantic page of Kirby Kraziness from Crazy, Man, Crazy #2 (June 1956). tion of the spectacular success of Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD. Like its inspiration, this comic (originally titled EH!) featured a movie parody (“Walt Chisley’s 20,000 Lugs Under the Sea”), a comic-strip parody (“Rex Mortgage, M.D.?”), and a TV parody (“Line ’Em Up”), as well as various ad spoofs (“Be a Successful 90-Pound Weakling”).

There’s also a preview for “Comet Feldmeyer, the Ace of Space! And His Nerve-Wracking Little Companion... Lovable... The Electronic Nuisance!,” supposedly to appear in the next issue, but actually never seen in print again. This comic also features something unusual for Jack, but quite typical of MAD: the usage of duo-shade art board to add a textured gray shading under the coloring. Jack Kirby also illustrated two articles for Charlton’s B&W magazine and MAD rip-off Crazy, Man, Crazy: “Foreign Intrigue” (one page) in vol.

2 #1, and “Bloodshot Alley” (six pages) in vol. 2 #2. It’s not often that one sees Jack Kirby drawing in his own style while channeling the vibe of fellow cartoonist Jack Davis.

MARVEL MADNESS

Even Jack’s most enduring co-creation, the Marvel Universe, bears many marks of his sense of humor. The Fantastic Four’s Thing started out as a tragic character, but within a dozen issues Ben Grimm evolved into a lovable behemoth that remains one of the most popular Marvel characters of all time. His ongoing feud with the mysterious Yancy Street Gang was a source of gags in many early Fantastic Four issues. Marvel’s FF #11 (Feb. 1963) introduced thriving Black Magic series. It featured a host, “Dr. Richard Temple,” who smoked the same pipes that Jack liked. Supposedly, the concept for the series came from its editor, Mort Meskin, who had a reliance on psychotherapy!

Prize’s Fighting American (vol. 1 #1 1954–vol. 2 #7, 1955) started out as a fairly straightforward reworking of Captain America’s origin in a Cold War setting, but Simon & Kirby soon had Johnny Flagg and his sidekick Speedboy facing a host of whacked-out bad guys. Stories as funny as these come along few and far between, but considering they were crafted during the humorless era of the “Red Menace,” they are a testament to Simon & Kirby’s unique take on even the most somber subject matter. Fighting American’s Communist villains’ monikers are particularly amusing: Doubleheader, Round Robin, Square-Hair Malloy, Poison Ivan, Hotski Trotski, Ginza Goniff, Rhode Island Red, Invisible Irving, and Super-Khakalovitch. When Joe Simon was hired to edit a line of new super-hero series for Harvey Comics, he brought back some of the original Fighting American stories to fill a giant-sized first edition (Oct. 1966).

Simon & Kirby’s “Uncle Giveaway” was the host of Charlton’s Win A Prize Comics (1955), a comic book with the gimmick of awarding 500 free prizes of bikes, cameras, and sports equipment to readers who completed the drawing, stories, and quizzes within. [Editor’s note: See RetroFan #20 for more on contests in comic books.]

Considering that the series only lasted for two issues, it’s unlikely any of the winners received anything.

Charlton’s From Here to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955) was merely one of many comic books that flooded the newsstands in hopeful imita-

From Marvel’s Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963): (TOP) the hot-and-bothered Thing is pranked by the Yancy Street Gang, and (BOTTOM) finds the “skinny runt” the Impossible Man quite a handful. By Jack Kirby, with writer Stan Lee and inker Dick Ayers. TM & © Marvel.

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(LEFT) Lee and Kirby spoof themselves—plus Roy Thomas and Marvel at large—in 1967’s FF Annual #5. (RIGHT) The nutty “Fantastical Four,” in a Kirby-penciled splash page from Not Brand Echh #1 (Aug. 1967). TM & © Marvel. (BELOW) There’s no humor to be found in the grave topic of the Kennedy assassination, but Kirby’s Jack Ruby comic strip from the May 1967 Esquire magazine is among the King’s oddest comics. Sample panels appear below. Esquire © Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Scan courtesy of Scott Shaw!

the irrepressible Impossible Man, who echoed the personality of the zany alien lead in Gore Vidal’s play and film A Visit to a Small Planet.

When the Inhumans were introduced into Fantastic Four, so was their teleporting pet Lockjaw (and I sincerely doubt if the similarity in names between the giant bulldog and Jack’s funny-animal alligator of the Forties was a coincidence)! Another humorous Kirby creation at Marvel is Volstagg the Voluminous (undoubtedly patterned after William Shakespeare’s comic/tragic character Falstaff), one of the Warriors Three in The Mighty Thor along with Fandral the Dashing and Hogun the Grim. And who could forget the bizarre image of the Incredible Hulk, dressed in clown make-up and costume, juggling live elephants and other circus animals, as depicted in The Avengers #1? And how about those nutty Marvel sweatshirts featuring the Thing and the Hulk?

“Is This a Plot?” was a wacky threepage “behind the scenes” back-up story in Fantastic Four Annual #5 (Nov. 1967), written and penciled by Jack and inked by Frank Giacoia.

Jack even did an outstanding parody of his own characters in Marvel’s superhero spoof comic, Not Brand Echh (NBE), including: “The Silver Burper,” a parody of the Fantastic Four, in NBE #1 (Aug. 1967); “The Origin of Sore, Son of Shmodin!” in issue #3 (Oct. 1969); and “The Human Scorch Has to... Meet the Family!” in issue #6 (Feb. 1968). It was especially fascinating to see Jack drawing parodies of his own characters.

Esquire Magazine’s “46 Hours and 36 Minutes in the Life of Jack Ruby” in its 72

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May 1967 edition was produced by Jack. This unusual three-page story was about Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Writing, pencil art, and coloring by Jack Kirby, inking by Chic Stone, and lettering by Jon D’Agostino.

In 1967, Jack was hired to draw and color a spectacularly MAD-like piece of promotional art for NBC’s Captain Nice primetime TV super-hero sitcom (1967). Again, Chic Stone was his inker.

[Editor’s note: Check out RetroFan #9 for an interview with the actor who played Captain Nice, William Daniels.]

In 1969, Marvelmania, which released Marvel Comics merchandise, arranged for Jack to create a 17x22 promotional poster for the U.S. Marines’ Toys for Tots campaign.

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(LEFT) If you thought the Giant Turtle Olsen was the weirdest thing you’d seen in a Jimmy Olsen comic book… behold, Don Rickles—and Goody Rickels! Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #139 (July 1971). (ABOVE) From Mister Miracle #6 (Jan.–Feb. 1972), the self-aggrandizing Funky Flashman and sycophantic Houseroy. (BELOW) Can you identify the members of the San Diego Five String Mob from this page from Jimmy Olsen #144? TM & © DC Comics. Scan courtesy of Scott

Shaw!

DC DAFFINESS

When Jack relocated to DC Comics in the early Seventies, he brought his sense of humor with him. Comedian Don Rickles’ lookalike “Goody Rickels” first appeared in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen (hereafter JO) #139 (July 1971), and the second and final installment of the Goody Rickels saga, JO #141 (Sept. 1971), bore what possibly remains the greatest comic-book cover blurb of all time: “Kirby Says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” [Editor’s note: Issue #140, published between the Rickels’ story’s two parts, was a giant issue with Jimmy Olsen reprints.]

JO #144 (Dec. 1971) introduced the San Diego Five String Mob, a rock band from the planet Apokolips sent to the Earth by Darkseid to kill Superman. JO #145 (Jan. 1972) was the last time the San Diego Five String Mob was sighted. Who were those guys, anyway?

Here’s who... the secret origin of the San Diego Five String Mob! In 1971, many of us from the original San Diego Comic-Con committee visited Jack and his wife Roz in their home on a steep street in Thousand Oaks, California. At one point, we were sitting around Jack when he said, “I could turn anyone into a comic-book character—even you guys!” As we immediately responded in unison, “Okay, let’s do it!,” I noticed an “Oy vey, why did I promise that?” expression quickly passing across Jack’s face. But many months later, Mike Towry, Roger Freedman, John Pound, Will

Lund, Yours Truly, and Barry Alfonso as “Barri-Boy” appeared as the maniacal musicians from Apokolips in Jimmy Olsen. (That’s Jack Kirby-style arithmetic, folks.)

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Detail of original art for “The Dingbats of Danger Street,” a feature from the sixth issue of DC’s short-lived 1st Issue Special (Sept. 1975). TM & DC Comics. Courtesy of Heritage.

Kirby to add his art to the certificate. I did a rough drawing of a super-hero huddling with two young fans, Jack did the pencil art, and Dave Stevens, the future creator of The Rocketeer, did the final inking.

A few years later, Jack came up with a new kid gang for DC, “The Dingbats of Danger Street” in 1st Issue Special #6 (Sept. 1975.)

A group of outsider kids—Good Looks, Krunch, Non-Fat, and Bananas—live in the rough part of town and have to deal with urban villains Jumping Jack and the Gasser. Jack enjoyed drawing it and hoping that it would catch on, drew at least two more unpublished issues. Oddly, in 1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), Jack’s former partner Joe Simon unveiled a similar concept, “The Green Team,” starring an international gang of multi-millionaire kids.

The digest-sized reprint comic The Best of DC #22 (Mar. 1982) had the holiday theme “Christmas with the Super-Heroes” and featured “The Seal Men’s War on Santa Claus,” written by Michael Fleisher, penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked

by Mike Royer. It was originally intended for Sandman #7 in 1975, before that series was cancelled.

Believe me, Fleisher’s script makes Santa Claus Conquers the Martians look like It’s a Wonderful Life.

But among all of these, Jack’s most controversial creations he created while at DC were “Funky Flashman” and “Houseroy,” who made their first appearances in Mister Miracle #6 (Jan.–Feb. 1972).

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concepts. This particular issue stands out as a sterling example of Jack’s ability to do scathing satire. Funky Flashman is Jack’s barely disguised version of Stan Lee, and his obsequious houseboy Houseroy is obviously based on Marvel writer/editor Roy Thomas.

Check out this intro text for an example of Jack’s attitude toward his fellow inmates in “The House of Ideas”: “In the shadow world between success and failure, there lives the driven little man who dreams of having it all!!!—The opportunistic spoiler without character or values, who preys on all things like a cannibal!!!—Including you!!! Like death and taxes, we all must deal with him sometime! That’s why, in this issue, we go where he lives—in the decaying ante-bellum grandeur of the mockingbird estates!!—and ‘Wait for Godot’ with Funky Flashman!”

When Mister Miracle #6 was first published, the comics community was stunned by its uncharacteristically savage tone, but in retrospect, it’s even more outrageous! To paraphrase Stan’s familiar old hype-line, if there’s but one Jack Kirby comic that you should seek out and read, this is the one! Taking the subtext of Funky Flashman into account, it’s a testament to his importance in the comic-book industry that Jack could return to Marvel in the mid-Seventies.

Kirby was so impressed with San Diego Comic-Con co-originator Barry Alfonso that he was not only the basis for the San Diego Five String Mob’s “secret weapon” Barri-Boy, he was also Jack’s inspiration for Klarion the Witchboy, a new nemesis for The Demon #7 (Mar. 1973). Klarion has since become part of the DC Universe in comics and animation. As for his shape-shifting feline Teekl, that freaky creature could be based on anything.

In the Seventies, Mattel hired Jack to illustrate products, advertising, and packaging, including Superman in Secret Picture Game (1971) and Big Jim’s P.A.C.K. (1975).

KIRBY KRAZINESS KONTINUES

In 1975, Jack Kirby triumphantly returned to Marvel Comics to write and draw Captain America and his new creation, The Eternals, plus covers and other things. One of those “other things” was “What If the Original Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?” in What If? #11 (Oct. 1978), written and penciled by Jack. It featured editor/writer Stan Lee as Mister Fantastic, production supervisor Sol Brodsky as the Human Torch, Kirby was a super-hero to many pros and fans, but in What If? #11 (Oct. 1978) he and three of his fellow Marvelites “became” the Fantastic Four! Cover by Kirby and Joe Sinnott. TM & © Marvel.

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Destroyer Duck #1 (Feb. 1982). Kirby headlined this book for Eclipse Comics to benefit Steve Gerber’s lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the ownership of Howard the Duck. See page 12 for TwoMorrows Publishing’s new “Graphite Edition” re-presenting Jack’s issues in pencil form! © Gerber/ Kirby Estates.

Stan’s Gal Friday Flo Steinberg as the Invisible Girl, and Jack himself as the Thing!

Jack’s opinion of Stan and company had apparently mellowed, although the story’s affectionate tone might be due to Jack’s artistic reunion with the FF (even this strangely warped version) rather than with Mighty Marvel itself. I was delighted to help out co-inkers Mike Royer, Bill Wray, and Dave Stevens by doing uncredited background inks throughout the story.

Always a trailblazer, Jack was one of the first big-name cartoonists to establish creator-owned properties for the direct sales comic market. Destroyer Duck #1 (Eclipse Enterprises, 1982) was Jack’s long-awaited (by me, at least!) return to the funny-animal genre.

This satirical title was co-created with Steve Gerber in reaction to both men’s mistreatment by Marvel (and to provide funds for Gerber’s lawsuit against Marvel over ownership of Howard the Duck). Duke “Destroyer” Duck battles the forces of Godcorp, Ltd., whose corporate motto is “Grab It All, Own It All, Drain It All.” Steve and Jack wrote and drew four more issues of Destroyer Duck; their last issue was dated December 1983.

In 1982, 3D Cosmic Publications released Battle for a Three Dimensional World, a 3-D comic book written by Ray Zone, designed and penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Mike Thibodeaux, with lettering by Palle Jensen. The publisher also sold a 3-D poster

by Jack. Both came with 3-D glasses designed by Ray Zone with

artwork by Jack and a blurb that referred to Jack as “the King of the Comics.” When funnyman Johnny Carson misunderstood the reference and mocked Jack’s unasked-for title, things got very tense until the Tonight Show host made a public apology to Jack.

Later, created during a bedtime story for his granddaughter Tracy when she was a little girl, the Dr. Seuss-like “Goozlebobber” turned up in Jack’s Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #4 (Pacific Comics, May 1982).

Topps Comics’ Satan’s Six #1 (Apr. 1993) was a comedic series that Jack had created. He had only written and drawn ten pages before he passed away on February 6, 1994, but his premise and penciled material spawned two Satan’s Six miniseries that followed.

Edited by Michel Choquette, The Someday Funnies (Abrams, 2011) was an anthology of short pieces by a usually diverse selection of contributors, including C. C. Beck, Rene Goscinny, Harvey Kurtzman, Moebius, Art Spiegelman, William Burroughs, Federico Fellini, Frank Zappa, Gahan Wilson... and Jack Kirby. Jack’s entry was a two-page story, “The Ballad of Beardsley Bullfeather, or, Tune-In, Cop-Out and Drop-Up!” One more thing: Musician Frank Zappa was a big fan of Jack’s, and they happened to live nearby each other in Thousand Oaks. Here’s a photo by Michael Zuccaro of them in Jack’s studio.

(Jealous, Paul McCartney?)

What can I say in summation? Jack Kirby was the consummate cartoonist, excelling at every type of comic-book story, even humor. And to paraphrase Jack, I didn’t ask, I just bought ’em!

For 50 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW! has written and drawn underground comix, mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and video games. He has worked on such characters as Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew (which he co-created with Roy Thomas), Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Comic-Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He can be reached at shawcartoons.com.

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Ford Could Have Been ‘Meathead.’” Some of these clippings might very well inspire future RetroFan articles. Thank you, Jack!

We start this RetroFanmail column with a salute to one of our most enthusiastic supporters, reader JACK ROURLAY of Lincoln, Nebraska. Jack recently sent ye ed a spiralbound copy of his self-produced grab-bag, Scrapbooking Hollywood, from Funny People to Monsters (below). It’s a collection of magazine

articles, celebrity autographs, newspaper clippings, movie poster repros, and other ephemera connected to a treasure trove of pop culture, everything from a photo of Wizard of Oz actors without make-up to an All In the Family tie-in article titled, “Harrison

Re the Too Much TV Quiz in RetroFan #21: My wife and I found this more challenging, as the robot pictures were not identified by names.

Even when we saw the answers (and how terribly we both did), we could not figure out which photo went with which name.

Don’t recall if this is the standard or if it’s a way to make a dual game (“Match the name with the show, then match the name to the photo!”), but numbering the photos would definitely improve the readers’ chances.

VINNY AND JENNY BELLIZIA Vinny and Jenny, not long ago a reader or two cautioned ye ed about making these quizzes too easy!

True, most of those robots aren’t as familiar to RetroFans as the recognizable actors or characters whose photos we drop in to our Too Much TV Quizzes, but a few web searches for the robots you missed on the quiz will provide images to help you identify them. And the best way to improve one’s chances at these quizzes is to watch more classic TV!

In RetroFan #21, when Mark Voger listed the first person to “officially” dress as Catwoman (below)

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simply as Bob Kane’s “unnamed” girlfriend, I thought I’d share this photo (and her name) with you for the benefit of other curious readers.

Also, a friend of mine did further research and sent me the attached article. It shows that the “unnamed girlfriend” was not only named Lynne Feldman, but was suing Kane for not naming her as the real artist of paintings she did and he took credit for, including the one of her as Catwoman. She was also never his girlfriend as she alleged he treated her very unkindly after she spurned his advances.

VINNY BELLIZIA A Bellizia double-shot! Thank you for the info and images, Vinny. The newspaper headline and photo below (undated, from an unspecified publication) will be of interest to fans of Batman and followers of the controversy that surrounds cartoonist Bob Kane.

The article, as reported by Alfred Albelli, is of insufficient quality for reproduction here but mentions Lynne Feldman’s mid-Sixties lawsuit against Kane for lack of agreed-upon compensation and credit for paintings he purportedly commissioned from her. She also charged Kane of making unwanted romantic gestures toward her, resulting in him “willfully and maliciously attempt[ing] to cause me aggravation and mental anguish.” The results of her lawsuit were not reported in this article.

If anyone knows of the resolution, please update RetroFan’s readers by contacting the editor at euryman@gmail.com.

my heart because it co-stars my good friend Kenny Miller, who may be better known to RetroFans for his roles in I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Attack of the Puppet People. Kenny sings “Pearly Shells” in the film, and a few others on the soundtrack album. Kenny discusses making Surf Party in his autobiography, Kenny Miller: Surviving Teenage Werewolves, Puppet People and Hollywood (McFarland, 1999), and notes that he was precariously perched on the back of a speedboat for close-ups during his surfing sequences. Every time the boat hit a wave, he ended up in the water! I have shared a photo (above) from Surf Party published in Kenny’s autobiography.

I also greatly enjoyed Scott Saavedra’s profile of Michael Dunn, who I also loved on The Wild, Wild West, and Scott Shaw!’s exhaustive review of custom car magazines. I’ve never been a gearhead, but I found this article fascinating.

DON VAUGHAN

I’m commenting on Mark Voger’s terrific article about Sixties beach movies in RetroFan #22. This was yet another article I thought I would quickly flip through, only to find myself engrossed by every word.

Mark’s listing of beach movies is extensive, but I believe he missed one: Surf Party (API, 1964), directed by Maury Dexter and starring Bobby Vinton, Patricia Morrow, and Jackie DeShannon. This movie has a special place in

Explaining my excitement at receiving my latest copy of RetroFan #23 in the day’s mail, I told my wife, “Where else can I read articles on Colorforms, Yellow Submarine, M&M’s, and The Prisoner, all in one magazine?”

For me, the highlight of the issue was Scott Saavedra’s look at M&M’s. This was pure RetroFan stuff: a fun, information-packed look at something we’ve enjoyed our whole lives.

Scott acknowledged the story about the effects

of green M&M’s, something I repeatedly tried to prove true in high school by offering them to every girl I knew (spoiler alert: it doesn’t work).

Personally, I thought it was a stroke of genius on the Mars marketing department to anthropomorphize the green candy into a sexy, sultry woman, paying homage to that long-standing urban legend.

I have to disagree with Scott when he says he “doesn’t cotton to all the fancy-fancy” M&M offshoots. My go-to at the movies is peanut butter M&M’s, dumped into my popcorn. Sweet, salty, peanut butter, and theater popcorn butter… that’s your four basic food groups right there, all in one slippery bucket.

I also enjoyed your look at Fiftiesmania.

American Graffiti is one of my all-time favorite movies, and its amazing soundtrack got me hooked on the music of that era. And of course, there was Fonzie from Happy Days. In my clueless teenage years, thinking I was a lot cooler than I was, I once made an offhand comment to my mother: “If I had grown up in the Fifties, I would have been Fonzie.” She laughed and said, “No, you’d probably be Ralph Malph.” Good old Mom, she always knew how to bring me back to reality…

I have never seen Creature From the Black Lagoon or The Prisoner, but thanks to the intriguing articles in this issue, I immediately ordered DVDs of them. I look forward to watching them based on the excitement and enthusiasm seen in these articles.

All of the other articles were fun, fine reading. I always look forward to the next issue of RF! Thanks for producing such an original and upbeat magazine.

MICHAL JACOT

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Michal, you weren’t the only reader who salivated over Mr. Saavedra’s M&M’s article, as you’re about to read.

fingerprints and glue drips on it. But it was fun building and made me instantly receptive to watching a film version when I came across it, switching channels, on TV. Years later, I saw Creature in a theater, where it was shown in 3-D.

After seeing the photo of the M&M’s dispenser in the current issue of RetroFan, please allow me to share photos (above) of the two M&M’s dispensers that I own. Both feature red and yellow M&M’s riding fire engines, with Red driving and Yellow holding on for dear life. They also feature sound and lights when the ladders are moved. The older engine was found at a car show while the newer engine was found at a CVS store. Hope you enjoy the photos.

BOB SOFFA

Gimmicks and merchandizing are fine, but at the center of all that was a movie that had much suspense, artistry, and excitement. It could and did succeed on its own merits.

I’m actually glad the Creature came later than the other Universal monsters. He’s separate, not interactive with the other snarlers. That might have been a good financial move—so many films in the Forties. However, all of the characters were lessened by it. None was as distinctive or well done as their premiere solo films. As for a modern retelling of the Creature, why bother? What’s the point when it was done right the first time? Yes, it’s in black and white, but so were all the classic Universal monsters.

Loved your photo of a Creature Soaky.

Would have loved that when I was younger.

Usually, we’re nostalgic about fondly remembered TV shows. That’s hardly my case with The Prisoner. I did catch part of the premiere episode in 1968. Yet, rather

A number of especially intriguing articles in issue #23.

Though Creature From the Black Lagoon was four years before my time, it was subsequently on TV so frequently and heavily merchandized that it seemed a familiar part of childhood. My introduction was that cool Aurora model you displayed. Yours was well painted. Mine had 78

RETROFAN

July 2023

than hooking me, it confused me to the point I quickly changed the channel. It was when Rover, the weather balloon, was attacking Number Six. I thought it was incomprehensible or, as phrased when I was ten, “Dumb.” Hardly. I just didn’t have the intellect to understand. Over the years, I heard such heightened praise about the program that I gave it a second chance, in 1986, when The Prisoner was rebroadcast on PBS. Watched and, this time, enjoyed the vast majority of the episodes. Even flattered myself that I understood most of them.

I thought Patrick McGoohan was great. A defiant individual who wouldn’t compromise or meekly go along. Someone with a moral code of his own and a mentality that could confound and outwit all the various Number Twos. Loved the tidbit in the article that theorized that Number Six may’ve actually been the one who dreamed up the Village and was disconcerted to see someone put the concept in motion. Hadn’t heard that previously.

Of course, the show, though about escape, wasn’t escapist entertainment. The viewer had to pay strict attention. Otherwise, some allegory or subtle point could easily be missed. Enjoyed that even the people responsible, such as McGoohan or the actors, weren’t always precisely certain what everything meant.

So, if I’m still unsure about some aspects, I realize I’m in good company.

I’ve seen and enjoyed The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine many times. How can you go wrong with such a soundtrack and distinct visuals? Highlights of the article were: the film was a rush job yet, based on the level of creativity and perseverance, came out as a unique gem; and The Beatles themselves gradually warmed to it and then actively embraced it.

Potentially, they could have been the harshest critics, yet they seemed to enjoy and appreciate it, too. After reading the article, I wanted to go watch it again.

In addition, I laughed at the memory of Colorforms, something I haven’t thought of in well over 50 years. It’s a throwback to a simpler form of play. Adhesive elements that a kid could experiment with and move to his or her delight. No rules needed— just imagination. Maybe that’s why it’s lasted so long?

Also cracked up to see Chief O’Hara (Stafford Repp) from Batman in your TV quiz. While it’d be nice to read a chat with Burt Ward, nothing says you couldn’t supplement it with an article about some of the supporting cast members. Granted, so many are gone, and interviews, via an Ouija Board, aren’t

the easiest thing. Still, it would be fun and informative giving background and coverage to those we fondly remember and are no longer around. For my money, Repp and Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon) were two of the most hilarious elements to the show. Even Alfred and Aunt Harriet added some humanity. While not as ideal as a current interview, a retrospective involving past greats could add a lot and cover topics, in more depth, where live actors are no longer available. Certainly, that would be applicable to the roster of super-villains: I think we’re down to two Catwomen, one Riddler, and Lady Penelope Peasoup.

JOE FRANK Rest assured, citizen, that there’s a lot of love for TV’s Batman here in RetroFanland, so don’t be surprised if you occasionally read about its peripheral characters in future editions.

Richard Kolkman, who wrote last issue’s All In the Family merchandise Retro Collectibles article, recently wrote ye ed to say, “I loved

your Captain Action book.” [Editor’s note: While both the 2002 first edition and 2009 expanded second edition of Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure are sold out, an article about the toy appeared in RetroFan #7.] “I, of course, bought the Batman outfit for Captain Action, like almost every kid did,” Richard wrote.

According to the photo above that Richard sent, he (or his parents) also bought another Batman outfit back in ’66: Ideal Toys’ Batman plastic helmet with cape. Holy haberdashery, Batman! It’s li’l Richard Kolkman, age five, standing vigil in his living room, not even requiring a Bat-signal prompt to spring into action!

Tell your friends about us, and share your comments about this issue by writing me at euryman@gmail.com.

MICHAEL EURY Editor-in-Chief

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RETROFAN #6

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RETROFAN #3

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RETROFAN #5

LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s STAR TREK CARTOON, “How I Met LON CHANEY, JR.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare ELASTIC HULK toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and MR. MICROPHONE!

Interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEAMONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman/Batman memorabilia, & more!

Interviews with SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the way-out Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

Interviews with MARK HAMILL & Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, MOON LANDING MANIA, SNUFFY SMITH AT 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

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RETROFAN #7

RETROFAN #8

RETROFAN #9

RETROFAN #10

Interviews with MeTV’s crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning GHOST BUSTERS, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty NAUGAS! Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIE-DOBIE GILLIS connection, Pinball Hall of Fame, Alien action figures, Rubik’s Cube & more!

With a JACLYN SMITH interview, as we reopen the Charlie’s Angels Casebook, and visit the Guinness World Records’ largest Charlie’s Angels collection. Plus: interview with LARRY STORCH, The Lone Ranger in Hollywood, The Dick Van Dyke Show, a vintage interview with Jonny Quest creator DOUG WILDEY, a visit to the Land of Oz, the ultra-rare Marvel World superhero playset, and more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with the ’60s grooviest family band THE COWSILLS, and TV’s coolest mom JUNE LOCKHART! Mars Attacks!, MAD Magazine in the ’70s, Flintstones turn 60, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, Honey West, Max Headroom, Popeye Picnic, the Smiley Face fad, & more! With MICHAEL EURY, ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW!

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

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

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RETROFAN #11

RETROFAN #12

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RETROFAN #15

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

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

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

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

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

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RETROFAN #17

RETROFAN #18

RETROFAN #19

RETROFAN #20

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

Dark Shadows’ Angelique, LARA PARKER, sinks her fangs into an exclusive interview.

Plus: Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party, Aurora Monster model kits, a chat with Aurora painter JAMES BAMA, George of the Jungle, The Haunting, Jawsmania, Drak Pack, TV dads’ jobs, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY.

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

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

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

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RETROFAN #21

RETROFAN #22

RETROFAN #23

RETROFAN #24

RETROFAN #25

Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO BOY, TARZAN Saturday morning cartoons, the true history of PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, the MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO ’77, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns

by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Surf’s up as SIXTIES BEACH MOVIES make a RetroFan splash! Plus: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ZORRO’s Saturday morning cartoon, TV’s THE WILD, WILD WEST, CARtoons and other drag-mags, VALSPEAK, and more fun, fab features!

Like, totally! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet the stars behind the Black Lagoon: RICOU BROWNING, BEN CHAPMAN, JULIE ADAMS, and LORI NELSON! Plus SHADOW CHASERS, featuring show creator KENNETH JOHNSON. Also: THE BEATLES’ YELLOW SUBMARINE, FLASH GORDON cartoons, TV’s cult classic THE PRISONER and kid’s show ZOOM, COLORFORMS, M&Ms, and more fun, fab features! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Interviews with Lost in Space’s ANGELA CARTWRIGHT and BILL MUMY, and Land of the Lost’s WESLEY EURE! Revisit Leave It to Beaver with JERRY MATHERS, TONY DOW, and KEN OSMOND! Plus: UNDERDOG, Rankin-Bass’ stop-motion classic THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY, Christmas gifts you didn’t want, the CABBAGE PATCH KIDS fad, and more!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet Mission: Impossible’s LYNDA DAY GEORGE in an exclusive interview!

Celebrate Rambo’s 50th birthday with his creator, novelist DAVID MORRELL! Plus: TV faves WKRP IN CINCINNATI and SPACE: 1999, Fleisher’s and Filmation’s SUPERMAN cartoons, commercial jingles, JERRY LEWIS and BOB HOPE comic books, and more fun, fab features! Edited

by MICHAEL EURY.

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TwoMorrows.

RETROFAN #26

RETROFAN #28

RETROFAN #29

RETROFAN #30

The saga of Saturday morning’s Super Friends, Part One! Plus: A history of MR. T, TV’s AVENGERS (Steed and Mrs. Peel), Daktari’s CHERYL MILLER, Mexican movie monsters, John and Yoko’s nation of Nutopia, ELIZABETH SHEPHERD (the actress who almost played Emma Peel), and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER, & MICHAEL EURY.

The BRITISH INVASION of the Sixties, interview with Bond Girl TRINA PARKS, The Mighty Hercules, Horror Hostess MOONA LISA, World’s Greatest Super Friends, TV Guide Fall Previews, the Frito Bandito, a Popeye Super Collector, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

The story behind BOB CLAMPETT’s Beany & Cecil, western queen DALE EVANS, an interview with Mr. Ed’s ALAN YOUNG, Miami Vice, The Sixties’ Wackiest Robots, Muscle-Maker CHARLES ATLAS, Super Powers Team—Galactic Guardians, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns

by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

The Brady Bunch’s FLORENCE HENDERSON, the UNKNOWN COMIC revealed, Hanna-Barbera’s Top Cat, a Barbie history, RANKIN/BASS’ Frosty the Snowman, Dell Comics’ Monster Super-Heroes, Slushy Drinks, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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