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DISCO FEVER

Saturday morning swordplay with

We think we love him!

The puppet planeteers of PLANET PATROL

The Partridge Family’s Don’t be a blockhead -read our LEGO history!

DAVID CASSIDY

Buckaroo Banzai • Mighty Mouse • Sonny & Cher • Get abducted to Roswell & more!

Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury Thundarr the Barbarian © Ruby-Spears Productions. Planet (Space) Patrol © ITV. LEGO® © The LEGO Group. All Rights Reserved.

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The Crazy Cool Culture We Grew Up With

Issue #32 May 2024

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Columns and Special Features

Departments

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Retrotorial

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Voger’s Vault of Vintage Varieties David Cassidy

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Too Much TV Quiz Men in Drag for Gags

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon Who Created Mighty Mouse?

RetroFad Disco Fever

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Retro Music Sonny, Cher, and Me

Retro Toys LEGO®

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Retro Travel Roswell, New Mexico

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RetroFanmail

Retro Sci-Fi Planet Patrol

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Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Monster-maker/Cartoonist Dave Ivey

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ReJECTED

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Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning Thundarr the Barbarian

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Retro Hollywood Buckaroo Banzai – Forty Years Later

RetroFan™ issue 32, May 2024 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. 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 Only. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Thundarr the Barbarian © Ruby-Spears Productions. Planet (Space) Patrol © ITV. LEGO® © The LEGO Group. LEGO cover photograph credit: Alan Chia/ Wikimedia Commons. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2024 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES

DAVID CASSIDY Triumph, tragedy, and the specter of Keith Partridge

He hung up Keith Partridge’s maroon crushed-velvet suit in 1974. Then David Cassidy spent the rest of his BY career eluding the specter of the fictional TV alter ego MARK he portrayed for four seasons of The Partridge Family.

VOGER The former teen idol recorded, toured, starred on Broadway, and mounted glitzy Vegas productions—yet he still encountered fans clutching Partridge (CENTER) David Cassidy called Keith Partridge Family lunch boxes. The problem: Though Cassidy “totally the antithesis of who I was.” But he played a fictional character, he really did sing all of never denigrated fans of the TV show that those Partridge hits like “I Think I Love You” (#1), “Doesn’t launched him to superstardom. (INSETS) Somebody Want to be Wanted” (#6), and “I’ll Meet You Cassidy in the Seventies. Publicity photo.

Halfway” (#9). Still, Cassidy was grateful for the early exposure, and maintained a sense of humor about his Partridge past.

The singer had larger concerns. After several DUIs in the 2010s, For Cassidy’s legions of fans, this revelation made his death he owned up to a drinking problem. “Getting behind the wheel seem even more tragic. But those fans can take comfort in the fact when you’re impaired is a horrible, horrible thing to do. Call a cab,” that Cassidy always expressed gratitude for their loyalty, so much he told me in 2011. so that he continued performing live through his turbulent final In 2017, Cassidy announced that he was living with dementia, years. Cassidy did this on his own terms, by not allowing himself to and died later that year at age 67. But it wasn’t dementia that took be overshadowed by Keith Partridge. (He never reprised the role in him—nor did he actually suffer from the debilitating malady that a reunion film project, for one profound example.) claimed his mother, actress Evelyn Ward, in 2012.

I spoke with the New York City native (born 1950) during five All came to light a year after Cassidy’s death, when an A&E interviews conducted between 1991 and 2011. In our final converdocumentary about him presented interview excerpts in which sation, Cassidy spoke about his drinking problem—by then, the cat the singer confessed that he lied about having dementia. The true was out of the bag—but was still concealing its severity. culprit that took Cassidy’s life? Alcoholism. “I did it to myself, man,” Recalling these interviews today is an exercise in spotting what he admitted in the interview. “I did it to myself to cover up the Cassidy was really trying to tell us about his sometimes troubled sadness and the emptiness.” life: being torn between divorced parents; sudden fame at 20; a RETROFAN

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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

Sinatra says, [paraphrasing], ‘You’ll have to forgive the construction going on here at the Sands. We really apologize. You know, it’s really expensive now to build here in Las Vegas. It’s actually $35 a square foot.’ Which is a beautiful statement.

“It’s still the best live album I’ve ever heard, I think, other than the seven, eight, nine minutes he goes off on [columnist] Dorothy Kilgallen. It’s such a time warp. What? Dorothy Kilgallen? Wasn’t she on What’s My Line? These are things that I remember as a child.”

Another profound musical influence on Cassidy happened on February 9, 1964, the night the Beatles made their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Recalled Cassidy: “I saw the Beatles on the Sullivan show on Sunday night. Monday, I begged my mother and my stepdad to take me to the music store. I bought a Fender—what was my first guitar? I’m trying to remember. A Fender Jazz Master? No, a Fender Jaguar.

“I started learning to play guitar. I played drums. I had a couple of friends of mine. We started to play. We were all learning Beatles songs off the first album and the second album. I was actively involved in some really bad garage and blues bands.”

L.A./NEW YORK SHUFFLE

When Cassidy and his mother migrated West as he was on the cusp of his teens, it was a right-place/right-time situation for the lad.

“I lived in Southern California during the Sixties as a teenager,” he said. “It was an amazing time to be alive. I was pretty much on the cutting edge of what was going on all over the place. I was accused of being a hippie by a lot of people. I tended to be a rebel.

I went to three different high schools; I was kicked out of two of them. I was pretty wild during my teenage years.”

Said Cassidy of his romantic pursuits at the time: “I was a very adventurous guy. I was not a very naive guy. I was somebody who was pretty active when I was young. And it was a time, fortunately, that you didn’t have to worry about what people have to worry about now.”

There were drugs, too, in those days.

“But it was a different thing,” Cassidy said. “It’s not like it is now. It was fun.

Turn on, tune in, drop out—that kind of thing. It was still very innocent, and kind of about a love thing. It had nothing to do with machine guns, South America, billions of dollars, and murder. It was a totally different concept and a different time. People’s attitudes about it were much different.”

But this period wasn’t all peace and love for Cassidy.

“I can remember when I moved to Los Angeles, I really longed for just a real, grounded, no illusion—just something very

loving, supportive, and very genuine. I never felt like I belonged in L.A. or in Hollywood.

“I graduated from high school after working with the L.A. Theater Company my last year in high school. I moved back to New York and took a job in the mailroom. My father had a guesthouse. They [Jack Cassidy and second wife Shirley Jones] were doing a Broadway musical at the time.

“After about three, four, five months, I got myself an agent. I went on a lot of interviews. I’d moved back to New York; I thought it was the right place for me to start, because my parents were both very involved in the theater. By fate, someone from the film company went to New York to see young actors. I had landed a pretty good role in a musical that bombed called The Fig Leaves Are Falling (1969).

“I flew out to Los Angeles to do a screen test. From that test, I got a number of dramatic shows like Marcus Welby, Ironside, Bonanza, Medical Center—all of those really successful one-hour dramas. In a very short period of time, actors can become kind of relevant and hot. At the end of that season, they do pilots. I had to do a number of different auditions for a half-hour situation comedy with music.”

COME ON, GET HAPPY

In 1970, Cassidy auditioned for this mysterious sitcom. He recalled: “They knew I could sing and play guitar; they did film for screen tests. Even though the network and the studio didn’t care, I started off playing [the Jimi Hendrix song] ‘Voodoo Chile.’ Because at first, there wasn’t any music [for the sitcom]. Nobody knew what the music was going to be like! So even though they knew I could sing and play, I was cast as an actor, as was everybody else.

“It was fascinating how it evolved, and how quickly it evolved, just by fate. It was obviously God’s intent. I feel very fortunate to have had all of the stars align to do that. Because I was able to not only become very successful, but to touch people’s lives and bring light into their lives.”

(BELOW) One big happy. Clockwise from top left: Shirley Jones, Dave Madden, Cassidy, Susan Dey, Suzanne Crough, Danny Bonaduce and Bryan Forster in The Partridge Family. The Partridge Family © Sony Pictures Television.

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Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

(LEFT) The fake band’s very real second album, Up to Date (1971). (RIGHT) The gang’s all here— even the dog and the bus­— on the picture sleeve for the #6 hit “Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted” (1971). © Bell Records.

The Partridge Family © Sony Pictures.

Cassidy was cast as the eldest sibling of a Cowsills-like singing family opposite his real-life stepmom, Oscar-winner Jones [see RetroFan #8 for the Cowsills’ story.—ed.]. Also portraying the titular clan in ABC-TV’s The Partridge Family (1970–1974) were Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, Suzanne Crough and, depending on the season, Jeremy Gelbwaks or Bryan Forster. They traveled along in a psychedelic school bus—actually, it was a faux-Mondrian design—joined

by Dave Madden as their flustered manager.

It was a weird surprise for Cassidy that his stepmother would be playing his mother. But according to Jones, the situation presented a personal upside.

Jones told me in 1992: “I was always kind of the ‘wicked stepmother’ in David’s eyes, even though I tried in every way possible to win favor with him. He was very bitter about his father’s divorce. Only when we worked on Partridge—until we had a close, daily relationship on an adult level—did we get to know each other.”

Portraying Keith Partridge for four seasons could often be uncomfortable for Cassidy, who described the character as “totally the antithesis of who I was.” For one thing, Cassidy said he felt “uncool” appearing alongside the younger actors.

“I mean, when you’re 19, you want your other friends who are 19 and 20 to think that you’re cool,” he said. “You don’t want to be with 12- and 13-year-olds. Imagine! It was hard for me.

“Don’t get me wrong. I liked the people I was with. I believed in what I was doing. I knew that I was good. And I knew that the music we were playing was good.

But the music was pretty much focused on an audience that was younger than me. And I wanted to make records for people my age.”

Said Cassidy on maintaining the Keith Partridge haircut: “I never got it cut. I just would let it grow. You know, once every couple of months, I’d cut it, probably, as 6

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I can recall. But I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, except getting up in the morning, taking a shower and having to spend half an hour drying it.”

On whether he still owned his maroon stage costume: “Oh, my crushed velvet? Um, sadly, I don’t. I sure wish I did, though. The crushed velvet was one of those magical outfits that went along with the bus and Mondrian that is that style.”

On the Partridge Family bus: “It was a 1958 International, I think.

It was a beat up, old, real seriously no-power, no nothing. It was a grinding old hunk of junk that they painted to look good. The inside of it was a mess. It was really a retired, beaten-up old school bus.

Because in those days, they didn’t want to spend more than they had to. I think they paid $250 for it, and I’m not exaggerating. You know, studio execs go, ‘Ah! Find some old school bus and we’ll paint it. Let’s not spend any money on this!’ That’s the way they did things in those days. A different world than we live in now.”

On being mobbed by fans: “They wrecked and destroyed five limousines when I played Madison Square Garden. They turned one of them over. I wasn’t in any of them, but when you get that kind of mass hysteria, that was pretty intense.”

On a favorite piece of memorabilia bearing his likeness: “There was a great piece in MAD magazine about ‘The Putrid Family.’ I was Teeth Putrid. It’s brilliant.”

Angelo Torres’ art from the Partridge Family parody in MAD #150 (1972). Cassidy called Torres’ depiction of him as Teeth Putrid “brilliant.” © EC Publications, Inc.

WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

Who Created Mighty Mouse?

BY WILL MURRAY I guess I’ve known the Mouse of Tomorrow for as long as I’ve lived.

As far back as my memory goes, Mighty Mouse was always there. If there was a greater cartoon mouse, I never encountered him. Sure, Mickey Mouse has his supporters.

But in my estimation, Mighty Mouse towered over all other animated rodents.

I imagine that I first met the colorful super-rodent on TV sometime in the late Fifties, but no later than the early Sixties. He was a staple of early television. But his glorious history went back further than that. For Mighty Mouse was no cheap, limited-animated TV cartoon product, but a true star of motion pictures.

YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES

Mighty Mouse was the product of Paul Terry’s Terrytoons cartoon studio, which was founded in 1929. Terry was a San Franciscan who came to New York City in 1910.

“I started out as a newspaper’s combination photographer and artist,” he related. “In the 1900s, I saw the first animated cartoon put out by Winsor McCay, and I knew then that’s what I wanted to do.”

The year was 1914. Over six months, Terry laboriously created his first animated cartoon, Little Herman, a takeoff of popular sleightof-hand magician Herman the Great, then sought a distributor.

“It was a beautiful spring morning and I had to borrow money for the train ride,” remembered Terry. “When I reached his office,

(ABOVE) Mighty Mouse had taken on his traditional appearance by the time animation house Terrytoons released this 1946 lobby card promoting his theatrical adventures.

But the cartoon crusader originally called Super Mouse had earlier gone through several permutations.

Mighty Mouse © CBS. Lobby card courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) Future Terrytoons

head honcho, animation pioneer Paul Terry, in his studio in the Twenties.

the producer said he preferred to look at my picture with an audience! I rushed out into the street, but there wasn’t an adult in sight. I finally rounded up a group of youngsters. They weren’t too eager to come.

“As Little Herman appeared and went into a magic act, the kids tittered. Then they giggled. At the end they were howling with laughter. The producer roared, too, and Little Herman was sold on the spot.”

The experience would guide Terry in his future career.

“And that tipped me off to the idea to draw things that would appeal to kids; because if they laughed at it, the adults wouldn’t have to know if it was funny, or whether it wasn’t, because kids’ laughter is so infectious. I decided right then and there to make pictures for the kids. I probably didn’t know enough to make anything for adults, anyway.”

Terry next created Farmer Al Falfa in Down on the Phoney Farm.

This led to him producing and directing a series featuring the character for Bray Productions.

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Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

The sequel, Frankenstein’s Cat, was a takeoff on the Boris Karloff’s 1931 film, Frankenstein. According to the narrator, no felines had been seen in the neighborhood for a year and the birds and mice cavort happily.

But an evil wind blows one little yellow bird off course into a dark castle, in which lives a clunky, black-and-orange creature called Frankenstein’s cat.

Chasing the bird, it begins to rise in the landscape. In answer, a little store mouse eats his way through a wheel of limburger cheese, transforming into Super Mouse, who performs all sorts of feats of derring-do, including a swordfight on a winding castle stair that pays tribute to Errol Flynn’s turn as Robin Hood.

In the end, Frankenstein’s cat is defeated.

In the shorts, Super Mouse is given no concrete identity other than an ordinary unnamed mouse that becomes super via different means in different narratives. The third episode, He Dood It Again, opens with Super Mouse living on a high shelf in a supermarket.

After nearby Sol’s Diner closes down for the night, its mice come out to frolic. When this attracts mice-hunting cats, they send out an SOS and Super Mouse once again comes to the rescue.

In this episode, the character is first referred to as a “mighty” mouse, but the name will not catch on for several episodes yet.

The fourth episode, Pandora’s Box, is the first depicting Super Mouse as living in the past. This will be a recurring motif, alternating with contemporary stories, set in what would later become known as Terrytown.

Here, the setting is somewhere in Europe’s past, and revolves around a mouse maiden named Pandora, who opened the mythic box that releases bat-winged flying cats, who begin terrorizing the mouse population.

Pandora’s boyfriend responds by taking vitamin A through X, turning into Super Mouse and beating up on the bad cats with great enthusiasm.

Aside from being a loose adaptation of the Aesop’s Fable of the same name, The Lion and the Mouse completely departs from all previous Super Mouse incarnations, suggesting that the filmmakers had no interest in continuity, seeing the property not as an individual, but as an adaptable conceit for telling animated stories.

(ABOVE) Mighty Mouse’s first comic book appearance, in Marvel’s Terry-Toons #38 (Nov. 1945). Cover artist unknown.Mighty Mouse © CBS. Courtesy of Heritage.

(FAR LEFT) Terrytoons animators Carlo Vinci and Conrad “Connie” Rasinski.

Courtesy of Animation Resources (www.animationresources.org).

Shown in the insets are (TOP INSET) Isadore “Izzy” Klein and (BOTTOM INSET) Gene Deitch.

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RETRO TOYS

before

BY JOE MENO

When LEGO was Wood!

Most of you are familiar with a LEGO® set. The LEGO Group, now the largest toy company in the world, is a company with stores, theme parks, and television shows worldwide. All of this has happened through LEGO’s basic product: the LEGO construction system. However, the LEGO Group started without the LEGO brick, or even toys. The company’s history is a bit more interesting and covers nine decades and four generations. Here’s a look at the first two generations and the early days of the company.

FIRST-CLASS QUALITY CRAFTSMANSHIP

The company was started when then-journeyman Ole Kirk Kristiansen moved in 1916 to the small town of Billund in Denmark, buying the Billund Maskinsnedkeri (Billund Woodworking and Carpentry Shop). Billund was a small community, and Kristiansen marries Kristine Sørensen. They have four children: Johannes, Karl Georg, Godtfred, and Gerhardt.

Before Ole Kirk’s purchase, the carpentry shop built houses in the summer and furniture in the winter. Other items

Author Joe Meno sits happily at the desk of the LEGO master, Ole Kirk Kristiansen.

produced included cabinetry, coffins, and bodywork for carts. All of these items were made with first-class quality craftsmanship

by Kristiansen and his workers when he took over. Other larger projects began to come in, such as farm buildings, and the dairy at Billund and another at the neighboring community Randbøl.

Ole Kirk won a building contract for a church in Skoldberg.

However, the contract yielded only a little profit. His reply: “Oh, well—it was for a good cause.” This quote gave a quick glance at Ole Kirk’s character. He was a man of faith and lived his life to a basic principle: to look after what has been granted to him as well as possible. In his work, he kept the highest standards, and outside of work, he was involved with community and church activities.

Faith gave Kristiansen optimism, and with hard work and determination, helped him weather hard times.

Adversity is something that everyone experiences, and for Ole Kirk, these instances proved to be life-changing. In 1924, his sons Godtfred (four years old at the time) and Karl Georg (at age five), while playing in the workshop, tried to light a fire in a glue heater. Nearby wood shavings caught fire, and the workshop and their home burned to the ground.

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retro toys

A/S LEGO, went to the 1954 British Toy and Hobby Fair in Brighton and learned that Kiddicrafts Self-Locking Bricks wasn’t a success internationally. While on a ferry, he started talking to a fellow Dane, Troels Petersen, who was a head buyer for the toy department at Magasin du Nord. Troels lamented about the state of the toy industry, upset that there was no system to it. This caught Godtfred’s attention—he had the same thought about LEGO’s products. LEGO had to focus on one idea: one product that was unique and lasting that could be developed into a wider range of toys that were easy to play with, easy to produce, and easy to sell. It wasn’t hard for Godtfred to figure out that one product—it would be the LEGO brick.

The system became a System of Play, where initial sets would lead to collecting the bricks and expanding the building possibilities of the bricks by buying more sets. More sets would equal more building, which would equal more sales. Godtfred could see this in action with his children, Gunhild, Kjeld, and Hanne, and used

them to advertise a series of LEGO sets in 1953, before his visit to the British Toy Fair.

Godtfred created ten guidelines for the LEGO System: 1. Unlimited play possibilities 2. For girls, for boys 3. Enthusiasm for all ages 4. Play all year around 5. Healthy and quiet play 6. Endless hours of play 7. Imagination, creativity, development 8. Each new product multiplies the play value of the rest 9. Always topical 10. Safety and quality The first LEGO System set was Town Plan No. 1, which followed the guidelines set by Godtfred. Children could buy sets to expand

A trio of images depicting the outside of the LEGO tractor box, inside of the box with unassembled pieces, and the final farm vehicle constructed. © 2024 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved.

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RETRO SCI-FI

Planet Patrol

“This is Earth, the year 2100.

“New York is the headquarters of Space Patrol, and men from Earth, Mars, and Venus live and work there as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men whose courage and daring make the universe safe for us all.”

– Extended opening narration from the first Space (Planet) Patrol episode, “The Swamps of Jupiter” We close in on a fiery roaring sun, then the planet Saturn, the ringed wonder of the solar system. A humming chord signals a craft flashing past us—also ringed, a circular hull wrapped around a cylindrical core inside a whirling sphere of energy. With a melodic four-note signature, the craft passes the Moon and heads for Earth.

With a cymbal crash, a stylised title zooms toward us… SPACE PATROL. Known as Planet Patrol in the U.S.A., to avoid confusion with the Fifties series Space Patrol, the British version was a marionette show similar to Fireball XL5. This had made its debut in the U.S. on NBC (ABOVE) Hop aboard a Hover Jet and join the Planet Patrol in action! (LEFT TO RIGHT) Slim the Venusian (sitting), Colonel Raeburn, Husky the Martian, and Captain Larry Dart. © ITV. All images accompanying this feature are courtesy of Shaqui Le Vesconte.

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in the spring of 1963, whereas Planet Patrol’s distribution was more sporadic. WPIX in New York was first to air it from January 1964, running the series several times until the fall of 1968. CKLW out of Ontario, Canada, started in the fall of 1964, with KHJ in Los Angeles following in the fall of 1965, as did KCMB in Honolulu.

ROMANTIC BEGINNINGS

Planet Patrol was the brainchild of author/producer Roberta Leigh.

This was a pseudonym for Rita Lewin, who began writing romance novels in the Fifties. When she had a son, Jeremy, she started writing bedtime stories for him. With independent commercial television (ITV) about to start in the U.K. in 1955, Leigh pitched these as a puppet series, The Adventures of Twizzle, about broken or lost toys forming their own Stray Town. Having no experience of production, she approached AP Films to make it. This company belonged to Gerry Anderson and Arthur Provis and, with work being lean, they agreed to take it on. The 52-part series had a meagre budget of £450 per episode but was a success, repeated by various U.K. regions until the early Seventies. The follow-up Torchy the Battery Boy, about a toy which rescues others from abusive children, was commissioned and aired from 1959, to even more acclaim and success.

In some ways, Torchy laid the foundation for Planet Patrol—the eponymous battery-powered hero had a rocket which took him to the star Topsy-Turvy Land, where toys came to life. Leigh was

retro Sci-Fi

After one last (known) screening of Planet Patrol in Idaho circa 1970–1971, the series disappeared from the United States, although it apparently resurfaced in South and Central America as Patrulla del Espacio in the Sevenites. It aired as Space Patrol in Malta and Rhodesia, and faired well in Australia, clocking up five runs between 1964 and 1972. Japan aired the series as Supesu Patororu, airing in 1964 and 1966.

After Planet Patrol, Leigh embarked on a color pilot called Paul Starr. In terms of format, it could be considered “Planet Patrol Mark II,” and documentation suggests it was originally considered as a spin-off set in the same universe and timeframe, allowing models, sets and puppets to be reused. But a line excised from dialogue originally set it in the year 3000, so space travel was faster, increasing the pace of stories. Further drafts, outlines, and completed scripts repopulated the solar system with new alien races. This was probably a good move as Planet Patrol, being made in black and white, was fast approaching its sell-by date with color television rapidly on the increase.

Paul Starr and his Asian assistant Lightning are agents for the Space Bureau of Investigation. This operates out of an undersea base, from which they launch their versatile Solarscope craft. The S.B.I. Chief has been assigned Dr. Lesley Mann to help with his workload. In the pilot, Lesley seems little more than a glorified secretary, but the unmade scripts reveal her to be a capable scientist, even accompanying Starr on some missions. As with Leigh’s unpublished stories, and unvetted by television channels and regulators, some scripts come over as astonishingly adult. “The Last of the Vikings” deals with a drug distributed in milk deliveries, making millions into addicts. Harsh justice is meted out to the villains in “The Fiends of Juno,” mauled by oversized rodents, while “King for a Day” deals with animal experimentation and is unclear about the fate of Chuckles, a monkey who gains super intelligence. Unlike Leigh’s previous series, these were not particularly wholesome or moral stories. One can only ponder if they would have got made had a series been green-lit.

In 1965, Leigh wrote and produced a 26-part animated educational series called Picture the Word for Rediffusion. In subsequent years she helmed two 13-part color puppet series: Send for Dithers, about an incompetent handy man; and Wonder Boy and Tiger, about a boy and his oversized cat that roam the world looking for people they can help. This was apparently produced to support a weekly comic called Wonder which Leigh edited for Esso petrol stations for a six-month run during 1968. However for reasons unknown, both series had an extremely limited distribution on British television, and it may have been they were produced for the cinema matinee market. Seeing the commercial value in comics, Leigh edited another weekly called Fun ’n’ Games for the supermarket chain Tesco. With strips drawn by top artists and based on the products they sold, this enjoyed a more successful year-long run from late 1969.

1966 had seen Leigh branching into live-action television with The Solarnauts, starring John Garfield, Derek Fowlds, Martine Beswick, and John Ringham. This was again very much in the mold of Planet Patrol, and commissioned by the British ABC-TV to export to the USA. Produced by the same film company that made The Avengers, the half-hour pilot. “Cloud of Death.” is a respectable pacy

What little Planet (Space) Patrol merchandising produced in the mid-Sixties included home movies, activity books, comics, and even candy smokes! Space (Planet) Patrol © ITV.

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RETROFAD

BY MICHAEL EURY Sex, drugs, and—no, not rock ’n’ roll, but Disco. And let’s add fashion to the mix.

When recalling the contagion we know as Disco Fever, one can’t easily separate the glam, glitter, and gettin’-it-on from the throbbing dance hits that temporarily transformed the world into a boogie wonderland.

Prior to the Sixties, “Disco” was not yet in the vernacular, outside of an obscure comic book character named “Disco, the Boy Detective” appearing in an obscure 1940 comic book titled Hyper Action Comics. (It is unknown if Disco ever got down and boogied.) Some old-timers might’ve recalled the defunct townships of Disco, Tennessee, and Disco, Illinois.

“Discothèque,” which Wikipedia tells us is French for a “library of phonograph records,” became used to describe mid-century Paris nightclubs before the term spread beyond France’s borders. By the Sixties, there were discothèques in cities across the globe, packed with gyrating young people, sparking dance crazes along the way such as the Twist (see RetroFan #10) and go-go dancing (see #19). What’s a girl to wear when Twisting the night away? The “discothèque dress,” a slinky, sleeveless little number trotted out in 1964. As Denny Hilton reported in a disco history posted in October 2012 on Oxford University Press’ OUPblog, 1964 was also the year “discothèque” was first shortened to “disco,” originally in a July 12, 1964, Salt Lake Tribune article about the dress’ popularity, then in the September 1964 Playboy Magazine, where “disco” was namedropped when describing L.A. nightclubs.

According to DiscoAfterDark.com, “It was possible to get amplifiers and speakers that could deliver clear, powerful sounds,” thus creating a verve that ignited bodies in motion on the dance floor.

(ABOVE) We know that everybody was kung-fu fighting back in the Seventies… but they were Disco-dancing, too! Detail from the poster for the 1978 theatrical release Disco Fever, a.k.a. Jukebox, with other faves getting up and boogieing on the RetroFan dance floor. Disco Fever © Group 1 International

“Technological advances Distribution. Love At First Bite in amplifiers and speakers © American International. enabled a high-fidelity sound Mickey Mouse Disco and to be combined with non-stop Sesame Street © Disney. Roller music so dancers didn’t miss Boogie © Skatekey, Inc. All, a step from one song to the courtesy of Heritage. next,” a trend that started in gay nightclubs in New York in 1969 before soon extending to other cities. In the early Seventies, DJs began to take center stage at many big city clubs, holding court as slick, hip masters of ceremonies while simultaneously spinning records. Black nightclubs pulsated with what DiscoAfterDark.com calls “hot, danceable music”—R&B, funk, and soul—producing “a discothèque environment and set[ting] the stage for the creation of disco music.”

But it wasn’t yet Disco music being played at discos.

So, what exactly is Disco?

“Disco music is known for its ‘four-on-the-floor’ rhythm, which referred to the constant quarter-note bass drum beat—you’ll find four-on-the-floor beats (with some variation) in almost every famous disco hit,” according to GroovyHistory.com. Wikipedia expands this definition by noting Disco music’s “often-reverberated vocals, often doubled by horns, over a background ‘pad’ of electric pianos and ‘chicken-scratch’ electric guitars.” Disco music was RETROFAN

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RETRO MUSIC

Sonny, Cher, & Me

BY PAULA FINN

In December of 1966, I—like countless other “teenyboppers”—was a huge Sonny and Cher fan. They’d had hit records like “Baby Don’t Go” and “Just You,” but it was “I Got You Babe” that had really launched their stardom.

They’d appeared on such musical TV shows as Hullabaloo and Where the Action Is!, and I was fortunate enough to attend a live taping of their appearance on Shindig! I’d sent away for tickets, but received notice that there was a two-year waiting list. No problem: my dad worked in television and knew the producer. He got me four tickets to the next week’s show. I took three friends to an episode that aired August 11, 1965, and which also featured such singers as Glen Campbell, Billy Preston, the Righteous Brothers, and Donovan. And… as was expected of all the teenage girls in the audience—I screamed myself hoarse. Technical difficulties interrupted the taping and the show didn’t end until after midnight.

Sonny and Cher were leaving for their first European tour the next day, and they were the only performers who stayed late to give autographs.

The next year, Sonny and Cher’s home address was circulating around my high school, and I jumped at the chance to get in on it. I never knew who first discovered the privileged information—but when it reached my friend Fern, she gladly shared it with me.

I was thrilled to have it. But now, what to do with it? Sonny and Cher lived in the hills of San Fernando Valley’s town of Encino, less than six miles from me. Too young for a driver’s license, I decided to take the bus which ran along the main thoroughfare of Ventura Boulevard. It was July, and I struggled to walk the last mile and a half of the journey up a steep hill in scorching heat. I’d brought a heart-shaped cake baked as a gift that I’d decorated with fresh oleanders from our garden. I had no idea the flowers were poisonous! This might not have ended well.

The house was a taupe one-story behind an electric gate. Parked in the driveway were the matching customized Mustangs I’d read about: gold for Sonny, and hot pink for Cher. I rang the bell and was disappointed when their maid came out and said they weren’t home. I gave her the cake and started the long walk down the hill.

I knew I’d try again.

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!

Detroit’s Mad Monster-Maker/Cartoonist

Dave Ivey

(and how he originated Ghostbuster’s Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man without getting any dough!)

BY SCOTT SHAW! It all started with Shock Theater in October 1957.

Originally marketed as Shock!, Shock Theatre was a package of 52 films from Universal Studios, many of which featured indelible characters now known as “the classic Universal Monsters.” It also contained suspense, mysteries, and anything with a tinge of spookiness. The films were licensed to appear on local stations, sometimes as “Million Dollar Movies” that ran every evening and four times on both Saturdays and Sundays, usually on late night Saturdays under the title Shock Theater. In 1958, Universal released 20 more horror-ish movies as Son of Shock to add some cool new ghouls into the content.

“All the local TV stations had to fill time, so they’d buy a package of movies from a distributor, which they would use for six months,” explained cartoonist Dave Ivey. “They might get one hundred films and maybe ten or 20 of them would be considered sci-fi or horror. Most of them were black and white and pretty old and junky. So they didn’t quite fill a two-hour time slot, so

(ABOVE) Dave Ivey’s “radio-active biscuit,” the Abominable Snowman, squares off against Ultra Ghoul—years before Ghostbusters! © Dave Ivey estate.

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the TV stations around the country were recruiting from within their ranks, people to host the sci-fi shows, the horror shows, and stretch them out a little bit, put some bumpers in there, talk to the viewers about one of the stars, or something like that, like Svengoolie does now.”

All of those horror hosts and hostesses left a fond mark on more than one generation of those of us who now refer to ourselves as “MonsterKids,” many of whom are also faithful readers (and writers and the editor) of TwoMorrows’ RetroFan. From 1957 well into the Eighties, a few MonsterKids even achieved the dream job of working with local TV stations’ weathermen, morning show hosts, and goofy gaffers in the lucrative and respected industry of horror-hosting. Of course, local programming attracted local talent, as well as people already working for the local stations.

Newcomers gladly traded a paycheck for training and experience, while the funniest employees among the stations’ staffs had a great time performing as horror hosts for a few extra shekels in their paycheck.

Dave’s widow Claudia recalls, “Dave loved drawing. He wanted to make cartoons, or any other kind of art. He also had a love for cameras. His dad gave him a camera when he was young, and Dave would get his friend, and sometimes one of his brothers and he would make up scripts, and Dave would film them and make short movies. Dave also liked camping, scuba diving, and going to the

(LEFT) Cartoonist and puppeteer Dave Ivey and his wife, Claudia Lee Ivey. (RIGHT) A big Eighties flashback! Dave Ivey with children Miki, Bryan, and Michelle, plus a couple of E.T.s. Courtesy of the Ivey family.

movies. In school, Dave was always drawing, making little comic strips. He was more of a loner and got picked on a lot.”

During San Diego’s Comic-Con International in 2022, I met Dave Ivey’s daughters Michele and Miki and his recently widowed wife Claudia for the first time. As someone who’s spent decades in the animation industry, I’m not only impressed with Dave’s work, but it made me wish I’d had a chance to get to know him… and to let you know who he was.

WHO WAS DAVE IVEY?

The middle of three brothers, David “Dave” Ivey was born on July 14, 1950. He was born and raised raised in Detroit, Michigan. He loved animated cartoons, especially the Warner Bros. shorts and everything from Walt Disney and Jim Henson, comic books, National Lampoon, and Fractured Flickers, Jay Ward’s TV series comprising repurposed silent movies. Therefore, Dave’s #1 fixation as a kid was making movies and cartoons.

“When I was in my early teens, I was crazy about animation,” Ivey said. “I wanted to, like, go work for Walt Disney or something, and I would buy these 50-foot, 8mm movies at the department store, and I’d run them through my projector one frame at a time and study the movements and how fast things moved per frame. And I started experimenting with my camera at home. I was making crude animated films when I was, like, 12, 13. When I was 15, though, I made the opening for a local kids’ show called Jerry Booth’s Funhouse, and they ran that for two years. I was in high school. Everybody was high-fiving me, ‘Hey, you got a cartoon on TV.’” Dave Ivey met his wife Claudia Lee at Ferndale High School in 1968, in 11th grade. Ferndale is a northern suburb of Detroit. Dave was a fanboy and an outsider, but schoolgirls would often ask him to draw their boyfriends. “I never went to art school.

I never knew that the Center for Creative Studies existed,” Ivey recalled. “I had a hard time getting through high school, because I was always drawing cartoons. And I’d get dragged down to the office and [the principal would] tear up my cartoon in front of

me. ‘Don’t do this anymore.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ I’d go back and start drawing a new comic strip about the principal. ‘I’ll get him!’”

Claudia recalled, “In most classes he was more interested in drawing cartoons than listening to the lessons, but to me he had to be listening. Dave was very intelligent. Dave kept to himself, and didn’t talk much. In the 8th grade I was asked by some kid if Dave Ivey was my brother; as they pointed at him, he was standing near the end of a hallway. I asked why. They said because we both were good in art and because we both had dark hair. I told them no, that my brother was blond.

I knew about Dave because he made a cartoon. I didn’t have Dave in any of my classes until 11th grade. He was in my art class.”

Dave Ivey and Claudia Lee were engaged on December 25, 1971, married on June 24, 1972, and raised three children: Miki, Bryan, and Michele.

GHOULS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

While Dave was selling his cartoons to National Diver magazine, he discovered a local show that showed vintage horror movies that was hosted by an entertaining weirdo horror host known as “The Ghoul.”

“David always loved horror host shows,” according to (TOP) The Ghoul and Froggy the Gremlin appear in this undated Brainsqueezins cartoon by Dave. (BOTTOM) Jacques Cousteau gets ribbed by Dave as Jock Ghoulsteau. © Dave Ivey estate.

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ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING (LEFT) Thundarr the Barbarian title card art.

(BELOW LEFT) Thundarr, Ariel, and Ookla as drawn

by Jack Kirby. Thundarr

the Barbarian © Warner Bros.

Television Studios. Courtesy of Heritage. (BOTTOM LEFT)

Joseph Ruby and (BOTTOM RIGHT) Kenneth Spears.

BY ANDY MANGELS Welcome back to “Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning,” your constant guide to the shows from yesteryear that thrilled us, exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some milk and cereal, sit cross-legged leaning against the couch, and dig in to “Retro Saturday Morning”! This issue, we’re taking a long-requested look at one of the most beloved Saturday morning shows from the Eighties… Thundarr the Barbarian!

The opening credits for Thundarr set up the most destructive view of a post-apocalyptic future that had ever been shown on Saturday mornings, complete with earthquakes, volcanos, and tidal waves wiping out entire cities. Dick Tufeld intoned, “The year, 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction.

Man’s civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice. With his companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword, against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!”

But how did Thundarr come to the air, and how did the series bring together the world of comics and Hollywood like never before? Read on…

DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Ruby and Spears began working for Fred Silverman at CBS—and then ABC—taking West Coast pitches for the New York-based executive. Because networks worked closely with studios on content at that time, Silverman asked them to help supervise the Saturday morning shows, and in 1977 they founded Ruby-Spears Productions, a direct animation competitor to Hanna-Barbera and Filmation. Their first series was 1978’s Fangface, followed by 1979’s The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show, and 1980’s Heathcliff and Dingbat.

Prior to 1980, the world of Barbarians and post-apocalyptic futures had been confined mostly to pulps, novels, comic books, and feature films. Although the apocalypse was a story as old as time, showing up as Ragnarök in mythology or the Last Judgment/ Second Coming in the Bible, it often was comprised of the destruction of man on Earth due to climate events, astronomical catastrophe, medical pandemics, alien or zombie invasions, or religious endtimes. In the 1800s, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Edgar

RUBY-SPEARS & THE APOCALYPSE & NEARLY NAKED MUSCLEMEN

Through the early days of Saturday morning animation, two studios had dominated the market: Filmation Associates and Hanna-Barbera Productions. Working side-by-side at HannaBarbera were Joseph Ruby (film editor) and Kenneth Spears (track reader), and in 1959, the pair began to write episodes of series such as Space Ghost and Herculoids together and develop shows. Their first big hit was Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, which they co-created, but they left shortly after all the new episodes for the series were completed, frustrated that they couldn’t move up on the ladder to the role of associate producers. After a period of time at RETROFAN

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andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

(LEFT) Presentation art by Alex Toth. (CENTER) Writer Steve Gerber. Photo by Alan Light. (RIGHT) Character designer Alex Toth.

A BARBARIAN, UCLA, AND COMIC BOOK SUPERSTARS?

Allan Poe, and H. G. Wells all wrote of the post-apocalyptic times, and into the 1900s, the burgeoning genre became the domain of science fiction and horror authors and filmmakers.

Barbarian fiction was mostly inspired by gladiator and warrior stories of old, with noble savages rebelling against warlords or unjust tribes or societies. No author was more successful with barbarian fiction than Robert E. Howard, whose 1932 creation of Conan the Barbarian would combine a brawny muscleman with sex and violence, set in a world of sorcery and monsters. Conan would be featured in pulp magazines, novels, and in an incredibly popular series of comics from Marvel. The first semi-barbarians to appear in animation were caveman Ugh, who appeared in the Dino Boy and the Lost Valley segments of Hanna-Barbera’s Space Ghost from 1966–1968, super-powered caveman Tor, who appeared in Hanna-Barbera’s Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor from 1967­­– 1969; and the alien space barbarian family on another planet on Hanna-Barbera’s The Herculoids, from 1967–1969. All three shows featured character designs created by master comic artist Alex Toth.

Filmation produced what was likely the first post-apocalypse Saturday series with their live-action Ark II show, which aired on CBS from 1976–1979, and was set on a pollution-ruined Earth in the 25th Century. And although they were developing Blackstar, a CBS series about an astronaut-turned-barbarian when he is flung onto a planet full of magic and monsters, that series would be beaten to the air by one year. Blackstar would debut in 1981, and Filmation’s sword and sorcery megahits He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power would debut on 1983 and 1985, but the first “real” post-apocalyptic barbarian series was Thundarr the Barbarian.

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Steve Gerber had been a popular comic writer for Marvel Comics in the 1970s, working on books such as Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Man-Thing. It was in that latter series that he created Howard the Duck, who became a cult favorite character, and even ran in the 1976 U.S. Presidential campaign. Gerber had problems with deadlines, and was eventually fired off Marvel books, and in 1980, he filed suit against the company for ownership of his creations.

Gerber had written some Hanna-Barbera comics for foreign markets, for editor Mark Evanier. When he found out that Evanier was working on the Plastic Man series for Ruby-Spears, Gerber asked for an intro to the producers. Shortly after turning in his first Plastic Man script, he was signed for an exclusive contract for animation with Ruby-Spears.

As he revealed in a 1983 interview in Comics Interview, Gerber met with Joe Ruby in September 1979 for a lunch meeting. “The

Thundarr expressions character sheet. Art by Alex Toth.

RETRO HOLLYWOOD

40 Years Later

BY D eWAY NE TO DD

‘CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN LIKE THEN…’

It was the summer of 1984.

20th Century Fox was launching its next big blockbuster franchise to rival Raiders of the Lost Ark and James Bond.

Headlined by a stellar cast who were on tap for at least five films, the series would explore a richly detailed universe that had been under development for a decade.

Peter Weller. Jeff Goldblum. John Lithgow. Ellen Barkin. Christopher Lloyd. These critically acclaimed actors were entering the prime of their careers, bringing a dramatic veracity to the leading roles.

Bolstered by contemporary music and a hip rock ’n’ roll aesthetic, this movie was at the cutting-edge zeitgeist of Japanese-American fashion and Zen philosophy.

Revealed at the conclusion of the film, the sequel to this hip science fiction action-adventure was already titled: Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.

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There was only one glaring (ABOVE) Buckaroo Banzai problem… No one could figure and his fashionable out how to sell the movie. crew incorporated an Lacking a clear description of assortment of Eighties the film, it would be impossible fashions. Buckaroo Banzai to create an effective marketing © 20th Century Studios. Unless and promotional strategy. otherwise noted, all images Uncertain what to do, studio illustrating this article are executives opted to push the courtesy of DeWayne Todd. film release from early June to early August, right in the middle of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Marketers decided to expand the title of the film and test the market appeal with a limited distribution. The five-month paced release of the movie effectively killed a strongly coordinated advertising campaign.

As a result of this misguided launch, the film never found an audience and was a bomb at the box office, recouping only half of its $12 million production costs.

REtRO HOLLYWOOD

act that was required to constantly shift the actors from human appearance to Lectroid form so that the visual perspective of the other characters would be consistent. Often, the alien appearance switched back and forth within a single scene. No wonder many audience members reported being confused!

Uniquely designed by Michael Riva and brought to life by make-up artist Tom Burman, the Lectroid appearance was inspired by placing an inverted lobster on the designer’s face. These remarkable masks were then custom sculpted for specific actors, including Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, and Dan Hadaya. Amazingly, the actor’s distinctive features are seen in the heavy latex masks, making the characters both distinguishable and recognizable.

For the Lectroid spacecraft, Richter wanted to break away from the high-tech look of most Hollywood films. Taking a line from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Richter observed, “Why do we always expect metal ships? Because we are very self-centered, and we have metal ships.” To get a unique design, Richter and Riva turned to nature as the inspiration for developing organic vehicles. Respected modeler Greg Jein built the miniatures for Banzai, deftly modeling the large ship of the Black Lectroids from large sections of coral and John Whorfin’s troop ship from a massive spiky oyster. “The result is like something you’ve never seen before,” declared Richter. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to like them, but you haven’t seen spaceships like this.”

Many of these visual and directorial innovations can be lost in the fast-paced complexity of the film, but Richter never caters to audience expectations or motion picture tropes. These are the elements that make Buckaroo Banzai entirely unpredictable and wildly entertaining.

The hard-rockin’ Hong Kong Cavaliers embody the spectacle of early Eighties L.A. club bands. © 20th Century Studios.

‘WHERE ARE YOUR SPURS At?’

Designer Aggie Guerrard Rogers met Richter on the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and was brought onto the team to oversee costume development for Buckaroo Banzai. Having recently designed the look of Return of the Jedi, Rogers was challenged to bring the styles back to earth. “Buckaroo’s clothes are progressive, a little far out, not at all conservative or wild. For his rock outfit, he wears a Gianni Versace sports jacket and a Perry Ellis suit and tie. For the press conference, he wears a recut Giorgio Armani fabric suit. And for Japanese fashion… he wears a modern Yogi Yamamoto shirt.”

Other members of Team Banzai are also arrayed in essential Eighties styles that include teased hair and brightly colored outfits.

Each of the unique looks were constructed for the specific character IF YOU ENJOYED PREVIEW, portrayed by strong supporting cast members ClancyTHIS Brown, Pepe CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS Serna, Lewis Smith, Carl Lumbly, and Laura Harrington.

ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! The aliens, who have been trapped on Earth for nearly 50 years, would get a completely different fashion treatment. Riva explained, “We were going with greens and blues and yellows for the Lectroids, who are basically sick and anemic.” Other observers would describe the Lectroid outfits as resembling shady Russian salesmen.

‘I WAnt SOME MUSIC OUt Of YOU CHARACtERS’

An essential part of Buckaroo Banzai is the music from both the soundtrack and within the film itself. Buckaroo and his inner circle, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are a hard-rockin’ group of musicians. In the movie, Buckaroo performs at a small venue called Artie’s Artery, a perfect example of the hip early Eighties glam-metal RETROFANneon-lit #32 Featuring a profile of The Partridge Family’s heartthrob DAVID clubs of Los Angeles.

CASSIDY, THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, LEGO blocks, Who Created Mighty Mouse?, BUCKAROO BANZAI turns forty, Planet Patrol, Big Little Books, Disco Fever, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_152&products_id=1775

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