“Greetings, creep culturists! For my debut issue, I, the CRYPTOLOGIST (with the help of FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON), have exhumed the worst Horror Comics excesses of the 1950s, Killer “B” movies to die for, and the creepiest, kookiest toys that crossed your boney little fingers as a child! But wait... do you dare enter the House of Usher, or choose sides in the skirmish between the Addams Family and The Munsters?! Can you stand to gaze at Warren magazine frontispieces by this issue’s cover artist BERNIE WRIGHTSON, or spend some Hammer Time with that studio’s most frightening films? And if Atlas pre-Code covers or terrifying science-fiction are more than you can take, stay away! All this, and more, is lurching toward you in TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest, and most decrepit, magazine—just for retro horror fans, and featuring my henchmen WILL MURRAY, MARK VOGER, BARRY FORSHAW, TIM LEESE, PETE VON SHOLLY, and STEVE and MICHAEL KRONENBERG!”
The Cryptologist and his ghastly little band have cooked up more grisly morsels, including: ROGER HILL’s conversation with our diabolical cover artist DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, another Killer “B” movie classic, plus spooky old radio shows, and the horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book. Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships January 2025
CRYPTOLOGY #3
This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!
Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!
Author’s log: During my inaugural visit to Los Angeles in the spring of 1977, CHiPs became the first television show or movie I observed in production, in person, on location. The police-[motorcycle] driven series, which originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1977 to May 1, 1983, was filming one of its initial episodes, possibly its pilot.
There I was, amid the show’s shining charismatic stars Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox, watching from afar a scene being filmed at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Doheny Street next to the once No. 1 location of the famed Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain. Just being near the CHiPs set was close to a dream come true. As a then-high school junior and aspiring actor, I envisioned one day performing on the show. Cheryl Ladd was eventually cast as Kris Munroe, younger sister to Farrah Fawcett’s Jill Munroe, on Charlie’s Angels. I fantasized about playing “Honch,” the younger brother to Estrada’s Officer Francis Llewelyn Poncherello, a.k.a. “Frank” or “Ponch,” alongside Wilcox as Officer Jonathan Baker, a.k.a. “Jon.”
Decades later, in January 2023, at the Richard M. Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, I hosted a CHiPs live event that reunited Eric Estrada and Larry Wilcox with Robert Pine, who portrayed Sgt. Joe Getraer, Ponch and Jon’s no-nonsense by-the-book supervisor; Lou
A Celebration of the Classic California Highway Patrol TV Series
Wagner, who was cast as the show’s mechanic, Harlin Arliss; Brodie Greer, who played Officer Barry “Bear” Baricza; and Bruce Penhall, who was Cadet/Officer Bruce Nelson.
A few years before that, I had interviewed and befriended Larry for my book, Dashing, Daring, and Debonair: TV’s Top Male Icons from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, portions of which are edited and excerpted within this article. In addition to the Nixon Library event, where I also finally had the chance to talk with Erik, Larry had participated in other live events I hosted over the years. Those included my Classic TV Throwback Thursday and Holiday celebrations at the Burbank Barnes & Noble in 2015, and an NBCUniversal Alumni Reunion in 2015.
In the process of researching this retrospective, I learned that CHiPs creator/producer Rick Rosner began his career as an NBC page.
Ditto that for me.
“Some things are meant to be,” I thought, “…while some dreams eventually come true,” if not always as originally planned.
I never got to play Honch on CHiPs, but not only was I honored to host a special live event that reunited the show’s stars, I’m now delighted to present this article, which I hope you’re equally delighted to read.
A MICRO- CHiPs HISTORY
Based on the real-life exploits of motorcycle policemen of the California Highway Patrol, thus the acrimonious-titled CHiPs series was created by producer Rick Rosner. He originally called the show Chippies, a descriptive reference to the officers which dated back to the Fifties and before. But NBC wasn’t all that crazy about the title,
of a television show. No matter what’s going on between the characters on screen, despite the characters’ emotions or situations, the actors’ performances in their given roles must somehow still be charming even in the most torrid of circumstances.
In the case of Estrada and Wilcox, their likability factor was off the charts. Virginia Reeser, a Los Angeles–based communications specialist, once explained it like this:
“When I think back to watching CHiPs in the 1970s, I can only smile. That was really good television. Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada portrayed two brave, kind, charismatic California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers in the mythical land of Los Angeles, California. It was a place where you could drive around on impressive motorcycles in the sunshine, even in February. As a young girl growing up in the snowy Midwest, these sun-soaked adventure scenes in mid-winter seemed just as much fiction as Saturday-afternoon sci-fi television.
“CHiPs was based in a real location,” Reeser continued. “Larry and Erik portrayed everyday heroes. Little did I know that in the future, I, too, would come to understand what it meant when they said someone lived in ‘The Valley’ or ‘the Foothills.’
“Beyond their characters working in incredible locations,” Reese observed, “…solving curious crimes, and performing heroic rescues, what I admired most about Larry and Erik’s portrayal of their
characters was their recipe for getting things done a fun combination of bravery, teamwork, and charm all tossed together with charisma and humor. They each had different personalities, but that’s what made the team even better. It showcased the best lesson about working together: as long as you have the same goal, you can have different styles and personalities, and still be a strong, effective team.”
With a flash-forward to the modern reality, Reeser, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband of over 30 years, graphic artist Steve Reeser,
“I see the true, brave men and women who are our California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers. I’m impressed every time I see them flying down the highway, off to keep us safe and secure, working as part of an incredible team. And I’ve even had the honor of meeting Larry in person at a classic TV event. The strong, kind spirit of his character which shone through in the 1970s is still there in his real-life persona today. As a Vietnam War veteran, he’s the best kind of modern-day hero, a family man who cares deeply about his children and continues to serve his fellow war veterans and the men and women who serve us in the law enforcement fields.”
ERIK ‘IDOL’
It was nothing less than ground-breaking for Erik Estrada to portray Ponch.
Years before, on Julia (NBC, 1968–1971), Diahann Carroll became the first African-American to star in a TV series. A pre-dethroned Bill Cosby shared the bill with Robert Culp on I Spy (NBC, 1965–1968, which was also later transformed into a less-than-stellar feature film in 2002 with Eddie Murphy and, yes, again, Owen Wilson). Nichelle Nichols was part of the original Star Trek series (NBC, 1966–1969).
Carroll, however, was TV’s initial African-American singular lead, male or female, in a series, drama, comedy, or otherwise. In like manner, Estrada became the first Latino actor to star in a weekly police series.
Estrada’s substantial first break as a fresh new face transpired opposite Pat Boone in the 1970 feature film, The Cross and the Switchblade, which was followed by performances in movies like Airport ’75, Midway, Trackdown, and The New Centurions. In the latter, Estrada worked with George C. Scott. “I co-starred in that movie,” he once said. “It was great working with him.”
(ABOVE) What does the best-dressed California Highway Patrolman sport on the job? This custom-made uniform shirt was worn by Ponch himself, Erik Estrada, for six seasons on CHiPs Shirt courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) At one point, Tina Gayle and Tom Reilly, seen here with Erik Estrada, joined the CHiPs fold. Courtesy of CTVPS.
Estrada also worked with Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Stacy Keach, or as he noted, members of “the old Hollywood,” and met John Wayne. “That was a thrill. I was working next door to him.”
Pre-CHiPs on TV, Estrada made stellar guest appearances on shows like Mannix, Emergency, Hawaii Five-0, Kojak, McMillan & Wife, The Six Million Dollar Man, Medical Center, and Police Woman. Estrada usually portrayed a stereotypical thug with a Latin accent, but off-screen he is intelligent and articulate, though he would not speak fluent Spanish until much later in real life.
A native of New York’s Spanish Harlem, Estrada grew up in an English-speaking environment. As the actor once observed, “My father taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and the snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that.
“This happens to a lot of kids from different backgrounds. They lose a lot of their parents and grandparents’ teachings, language, and culture because they have to deal with another language and
culture, 24/7. By the time I was 44, I was terrible in Spanish. I was always intimidated whenever I had to speak it.”
In his youth, Estrada envisioned being a New York City police officer. In a 2016 interview with TV Insider, he noted, “I’m not one to chill because I started working at the age of five… I can’t sit.” He moved to Los Angeles to find jobs as an actor. “I wasn’t looking for the stardom,” he said. “That came. I came out here to work and look for roles and get my mother out of the projects. I was able to do that.”
And a lot more. As Estrada another time explained, “I got involved with this girl who was into acting, then got bit by the acting bug myself.”
That bite eventually became infectiously inspiring to the TV audience when he was cast as Ponch on CHiPs. “Playing a positive role model on a network show,” Estrada had observed, “…it was great. I took it as a responsibility. Poncherello was supposed to be Poncherelli. And then when I got the part I said, ‘You know
“Wait’ll you see this, pal,” said Dan Rowan to Dick Martin in what sounded more like a threat than a kindness.
It was January 22, 1968, a Monday evening. NBC was presenting the premiere installment of its super-groovy, anythinggoes comedy hour Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. With its maiden program, the norm-shattering Laugh-In threw a lot at the viewer: new faces, psychedelic sets, bloopers, double-entendre. But no one was ready for what Rowan was about to throw at Martin.
“The toast of Greenwich Village in his first appearance anywhere: Tiny Tim!” announced Rowan, who soon skeedaddled from the stage. Out walked a gaunt figure with long, stringy hair, a beak-like nose, and a death-white face. The not-so-tiny Tiny Tim promptly produced a ukulele and began to sing the old Ella Fitzgerald hit “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” in a nails-on-blackboard falsetto, punctuated with the most peculiar facial expressions and gestures.
Martin stood stage-right as he took in the jaw-dropping performance, reacting like someone who’d chugged spoiled milk. After Tiny’s likewise bewildering rendition of “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” he frantically blew kisses at the audience.
“You searched high and low for that one, didn’t you?” Martin said to Rowan afterward.
“Kept him out of the service,” replied Rowan.
“I’ll bet the Army burned his draft card,” said Martin. Through all of his career struggles leading up to this moment, Tiny Tim had been told by seemingly everyone in his sphere—theater proprietors, audience members, his own parents—that he could never “make it.” The only person who believed in Tiny Tim was the only person who mattered: Tiny Tim himself. With that insane Laugh-In debut, a Pandora’s Box was opened.
Tiny Tim—alias Larry Love, alias Derry Dover, alias Emmett Swink, alias Raleigh Del (all previous stage names)—had entered popular culture, like it or not.
And plenty of people didn’t like it.
LIGHTNING ROD
Tiny Tim—remembered for his weird look, mock-effeminate mannerisms and cringe-worthy vocals—was a lightning rod. Most people laughed at him. Some called him a “fruitcake.” Perhaps a few fringe hippies, or aficionados of Twenties songs, took him seriously. But the overwhelming consensus was: He’s a freak. “Is Tiny Tim for real?” was a question on everyone’s lips after the singer (some would argue against that descriptor) scored his breakthrough on Laugh-In.
“It was tough to get letters, after the Laugh-In show, 98 percent ‘pan’ mail,” Tiny told Morton Downey, Jr. in 1994. “They said, ‘Where’d you get him from?’ ‘What’s happening to the world?’
“Even though it was rough, that’s the same thing that happened when I had this long hair in ’54 around the neighborhood in New York City, in Washington Heights. Only this time, it was on a larger scale. It was around the world.”
Tiny Tim (1932–1996) was born Herbert Buckingham Khaury in New York City to a Jewish mom and a Catholic dad. “I remember, when I was three years old, having an old gramophone Victrola,” he told Wes Bailey in 1982. “I was always attracted to, not only those types of records, but a medium in which a voice can come out of a box like that.”
A man named Bill Chambers was in Tiny’s junior high class. “The way people saw him on TV, that’s the way he was back then. That was no act,” Chambers told me in 1997.
“He was very good-hearted, very bright. I used to go to his house and listen to his
records. He had a crew-cut in those days. He was a big guy—the tallest kid in the class. He used to sit way in the back. He was very shy. He was so unathletic, it was incredible. But he loved sports, especially hockey.
“One kid at school used to bully him a lot. But he would never fight, no matter what. I took care of this bully one time. Herbert never forgot that.”
The scratchy songs coming through that gramophone had an effect on Tiny, who was determined to follow in the footsteps of his musical heroes of yesteryear such as Rudy Valleé, Byron G. Harlan (“Thomas Edison’s favorite singer”), Irving Kaufman, Henry Burr, and Bing Crosby.
But Herbert Khaury seemed like an unlikely entertainer. He was odd-looking, and his passion for the old songs outstripped his actual talent. Still, he had drive. He hustled. His first tryout was at a place called Mom Grant’s Riviera on 43rd Street in 1950. He went on many more auditions, and adopted the ukulele out of necessity.
“The reason for the ukulele is very important” he said in a video interview taped at Uke Expo 1996. “I used to go to a lot of singing auditions—plenty in the Fifties.” He explained that he would accompany himself on the uke so that if an audition went badly, he wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of asking a pianist to return his sheet music.
“Coming up the ladder, I was the original long-haired, white-faced-makeup singer, since ’54,” Tiny told Russ Gorman in 1988. (Tiny cited the Beatles, Kiss, and Boy George as his stylistic descendants.)
For an introverted kid like me growing up in the Sixties, model making was the perfect hobby. I could sit alone in my room for hours, listening to the Beatles while gluing styrene models—and occasionally, my fingers—together with polystyrene cement. Testors, the most popular brand, would eventually modify its formula by adding horseradish during the big glue-sniffing scare in the early part of the decade. Most modelers considered people who filled paper bags with glue and huffed them to be… let’s say, not very smart.
Our mobile home overhung the banks of the Palm Beach Canal in West Palm Beach, Florida, and with the nearest model shop at least two miles away, it was very difficult to obtain model kits—until I got my first bike. But there was another problem: we were dirt poor, and my father didn’t believe in allowances. I did odd jobs for our neighbors, including pulling weeds from
between patio stones until my fingers were raw, so I could “learn the value of a dollar.”
In those days, everyone I knew built models, and traded them back and forth. That’s how I acquired built-up Aurora models of Frankenstein and Dracula, which would otherwise have been out of my price range. When my fundamentalist parents saw them, however, they told me I had to get rid of them so they wouldn’t “bring demons into the house.” Crestfallen, I decided that if I had to dispose of them, they’d go out in a blaze of glory—literally. I brought them out to the retaining wall beside the house one night, poured glue on them and set them on fire. It was glorious. Dracula’s demise
was particularly epic, his arms extended in front of him as if fighting the flames as he slowly melted into a pile of goo.
Once I was mobile, I was out of the house as much as possible. As a free-range kid who loved exploring, my journeys ranged far and wide, but most often to Renault’s Hobby Shop on Military Trail, which was a modeler’s fever dream. The shelves were stacked with every imaginable model kit, and although I couldn’t afford most of them, sometimes a cheaper one would catch my eye. Which brings us to the Weird-Ohs.
Weird-Ohs artist
Like most boys of that age, I was a car nut, and loved to read my friends’ Hot Rod magazines. I was especially into top fuel dragsters, and could almost smell the fuel and hear the screeching of slicks when I was immersed in articles about them. But one day at Renault’s in 1963, I saw a dragster from the Hawk Model Company that stopped me in my tracks. It was in an electric pink box that said “Weird-Ohs” in crazy, warped lettering, and underneath, “Car-Icky-Tures.” But the best part was the monster that was driving. His name was Digger the Way Out Dragster, the box said, and it was hard to argue with that assessment.
With his nauseating green skin, an evil grin sporting dagger-like teeth twisted into a rictus of malevolence, and orange helmet complete with a fire-blasting header pipe, Digger was the craziest, most demented-looking model I’d ever seen. To me, he was beautiful, and I was instantly in love. I had to have him.
Fortunately, I had a few shekels left from my last weed-picking job. It was just barely enough to liberate Digger from the hobby shop. I rushed home on my bike with the kit and got to work. When I opened the box, the model didn’t look much like the box cover illustration, which bothered me for a moment. But the model was so cool and unusual that my disappointment passed quickly, and before long, I put a completed Digger on the shelf by my window so the paint could dry.
Now, the real test: Would I have to burn him, like Dracula and Frankenstein? I soon had my answer. When my mom saw him, the first thing she did was laugh. If Digger was okay with Mom, then Dad didn’t much care one way or the other. I was golden. But Digger wasn’t the end of the line, as one Weird-Oh after another rolled out of production and eventually made it to Renault’s. I acquired as many as I could.
Then, one fateful day, Dad announced we were moving to Okeechobee, Florida, where his father lived. It was a literal cowtown at the time, far away from my friends, and
William “Bill” Campbell and furry friend in 2014. Facebook.
worse, it had no hobby shop. To say I was disappointed is a gross understatement. Way out in the hinterlands, I missed the release of the Frantics and Silly Surfers, and after being made fun of for modeling by my rural classmates, I stopped building models altogether.
Peer pressure is a strong force at that age, and as I progressed through junior high and high school, it didn’t let up. After graduation, I spent a year and a half with my grandparents in Alabama, then moved back to Florida to marry my high school sweetheart. Finally away from the haters, I gradually got back into building models, mostly from Star Wars. My interest in the Weird-Ohs lay fallow.
It wasn’t until years later, after a divorce, remarriage, and move to North Carolina, that I started thinking about the little monsters again. Kids don’t consider, or much care, who designs the models they build, and I was no different. But as an adult who had just ended a career in IT and taken up writing for a living, I started to wonder just how the Weird-Ohs had come into being. I was collecting the models I’d built as a kid by then, with the help of a now-defunct tabloid called Toy Shop. What, I thought, if I could find the creator of the Weird-Ohs and write a story about him for the magazine? I pitched the article to them, and they accepted.
An internet search revealed the creator to be one William Campbell. The search was complicated a bit because he shared a name with the actor who played Trelane on Star Trek, but it was a start. Armed with my subject’s name, I dove into the ’net to find contact information, and came up empty. Not to be deterred, I contacted Testors, which had acquired Hawk in 1970. They didn’t have Campbell’s info, but were able to give me the address of John Andrews, who produced the Weird-Ohs kits.
Andrews had fond memories of his days at Hawk, but told me his version of how the Weird-Ohs came to be differed from Campbell’s. He was an artist himself with substantial connections in the aviation and defense industries, and what he had to say was fascinating. Armed with his information and some photos he’d sent, I was able to cobble together my Toy Shop article. It was only my second published piece, and I was thrilled just to see my name in print.
A couple of years later, I found a copy of the now-defunct (Do you see a pattern here?) magazine Model and Toy Collector. They had done a special
Weird-Ohs issue, and the information in the article differed quite a bit from Andrew’s account, as he had implied. I decided to try to find Campbell again, if only to find out what the real story was. This time, a quick search revealed an article by aviation artist Rick Ruhman, who seemed to actually know Bill Campbell. It was a big break in the case, tempered somewhat by the fact that Ruhman didn’t seem to have an email address.
I was, however, able to find his snail-mail address through the American Society of Aviation Artists, wrote him a letter, and soon we were regular correspondents. It turned out that not only did Ruhman know Bill, he had several of his original paintings. I’m glad Zoom didn’t exist yet or he would have seen me turn green with envy. He gave me Bill’s phone number and urged me to call, but I was reticent. At this point Bill was almost a mythical figure to me, and the old adage “never meet your heroes” kept going through my mind.
But I needn’t have worried. Bill was one of the most kind, gracious, self-effacing people I’d ever talked to, and I immediately liked him immensely. Celebrities don’t usually phase me, but when talking to Bill my inner fanboy came out, which seemed to amuse him. Since he didn’t seem to mind me calling, I did so, over and over. As we talked, he began to tell me about his life, and it turned out he’d done more—much more—than just the Weird-Ohs.
WHO WAS BILL CAMPBELL?
plastic; they were made of Bakelite, which was very heavy, but they were gorgeous. The models cost $25 apiece, and in 1933, that was a king’s ransom. Way out of my price range, but I still thought, ‘Oh, God, would I love to have one of those things.’ So that’s what got me started.” The display cases noted who had donated the models to the fair: the Hawk Model Company.
Bill Campbell was born in 1920 in a town north of Boston. When he was 14, he moved with his parents to Chicago—a move that would have big implications for his future. That was the year of the Chicago World’s Fair, where Bill accidentally stumbled upon his future career. On the waterfront, he saw a pavilion selling blimp and autogyro rides. Although he couldn’t afford them, he also saw something else that stopped him in his tracks.
Prints of early Weird-Ohs promotional art. Courtesy of Mark Cantrell.
Not that Bill hadn’t already been building models, but they were made of wood. “I was probably about eight years old when I started building ship models,” he remembered. “Famous ones like the Bounty and so on. You had to hollow out the hulls, because they were solid. You weren’t laying planking or anything like that. My father would saw them roughly, then I’d get a template to put on it so I’d get the curvature of the hull right.”
After high school, Bill enrolled at the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, simultaneously. “I’d go to regular school five days a week, and the institute on weekends,” Bill said. “I studied mostly fine art, working on figures and things of that sort. It wasn’t commercial art. I didn’t break into that until I graduated.” Bill played cornet in the college band, which practiced in a room under the bleachers at Stagg Field. One day they were told to find another practice venue, which Bill found out later was because their space was being taken over by the Manhattan Project, which created the first manmade nuclear reaction in Bill’s former practice area.
“I went into the control area where they sold the tickets,” said Bill, “and here were these beautiful plane models. They weren’t
His first job out of college was as a cartoonist, drawing strips for King Features Syndicate. The job didn’t last long, because the wages were abysmal, but it was another stepping stone on his of destined path. When that gig ended, Bill went back to hauling his portfolio around Chicago and soon landed a position at Roberts Studios, which supplied artwork to Sears and Montgomery Ward. After that he was hired at an engraving firm called Blomgren Brothers, where he got to do his first aircraft illustration for a client’s restaurant menu.
'I'm the Real Article-What You See Is What You Get' My Friend, John Candy
BY SCOTT SHAW!
Kids tend to identify with fictional characters and actual celebrities of all types with whom they feel have things in common. The connections could be cultural, vocal accents, or specific talents, among other elements.
In my case, I grew up as a fat kid and I loved overweight comedians like Jack E. Leonard, Totie Fields, and especially Jackie (The Honeymooners) Gleason, who was the direct basis of my favorite cartoon character (then and now), Fred Flintstone. And when I first saw John Candy on NBC’s SCTV Network 90 in 1981, I was immediately a fan of his, due to his humor much more than his weight, but I never expected that my weight would determine winding up as the producer of his animated network cartoon series almost a decade later.
YOUNG JOHN CANDY
John Franklin Candy was born on October 31, 1950 in New Market, Ontario, Canada. The younger brother of Jim Candy (Mar. 24, 1947–Apr. 16, 2011), John spent his earliest years in King City, Ontario, with their parents, Sidney and Evangeline Candy. The senior Candy was a WWII veteran who returned from Europe to be a car salesman. When John was five, Sidney suddenly died from a heart attack at only 35 years old. It was a medical vulnerability that had plagued the Candy family for generations and an emotional issue for John his entire life.
Evangeline, now Sidney’s widow, along with Jim and John, relocated from King City to East York, a borough that at the time, was primarily composed of neat, tiny, low-cost bungalows filled with working-class families. East York’s Donlands Theater was a favorite place for John to escape reality, soaking up Hollywood films as well as British comedies starring Peter Sellers, Alec Guiness, Alastair Sim and others. “I think that I may have become an actor to hide from
myself,” John once explained. “You can escape into a character. You can get lost and take up another life.” As a first-generation television viewer, John also absorbed hours of comedic series that are now considered classic. John once told Playboy, “I loved watching Jack Benny, Jack Paar, The Honeymooners, Burns and Allen, George Gobel, The Munsters, Rocky and His Friends, Howdy Doody, Rin Tin Tin, and Lassie. I wasn’t influenced by any one show, I was influenced by the medium.”
As a student, John was merely adequate, better known and liked for his warm personality than good grades. Becoming a class clown was inevitable, but surprisingly, John avoided appearing in school stage productions due to his severe shyness. John preferred to entertain his friends with games and shows in someone’s garage. In ninth grade, John was sent to Neil McNeil, a Catholic high school that was located an hour away from his home. His grades were mediocre because he focused on other activities. After his father had died, John became the family “dad,” not Jim. That extended to his friends, mostly kids who needed the help that John was happy to provide. But the loss of his father also made him feel like an outsider even among his friends, although John never revealed it to them.
John had grown into a tall kid by the time he entered high school, but his self-consciousness about his increasing weight was becoming evident. He applied the extra pounds to playing offensive tackle on the school’s football team. While on the gridiron, John was formidable, intimidating, and massive, but when the
game was over, John was his usual likable self, playing clarinet in the school band. He was elected to student council as treasurer, a position that gave him the power to book bands for school dances.
John’s time as a football player didn’t last long, due to a knee injury. After that, his enthusiasm for the game was focused on the Toronto Argonauts team in the Canadian Football League. John was a regular at Exhibition Stadium, and a flamboyant fan who yelled a lot. By this time, he was a smoker, a toker, and a drinker. But the party guy maintained a responsible attitude.
Even in his senior year in high school, John still felt that it was important to help his family and friends. He worked nights and weekends at a department store to earn enough to buy “the White Knight,” his name for a big old Chevy. According to John, “I was the 16-year-old driving everyone to bingo and shopping. It was quite a responsibility. It made me the man in charge of a lot of things.”
While at McNeil, John signed up for his first drama class, supposedly because the typing
class was full. He wound up in a modernized version of Julius Caesar and a drama titled Burning Effigy, written by one of John’s classmates. He played a dog and got a lot of laughs despite the topic of the piece. John was was also a huge fan of comedian and actor Jonathan Winters, and was a comic book collector.
Although John was a popular and talented teenager—a party animal with a big appetite—he still felt he was an outsider. He was sensitive and eager to be liked; with lots of girl friends but no girlfriend, John was understandably lonely. He also felt that his life had no direction, and therefore decided to join the U.S. Marines. Fortunately, he was rejected due to his knee injury, the one that prevented him from being a football player, but he still didn’t have a career path or goal. As John admitted, “I was a confused young man. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. Football was out because I’d hurt my knee. I had a series of odd jobs—selling sports goods, mixing paint, you name it. One of my jobs was with an ice show. I drove a small portable rink around. I made the ice. It was one of my first tastes of show business.”
At Centennial College in Scarborough, John enrolled in its journalism program, but he quickly lost interest and often skipped class. In his second year there, he switched to theater courses but dropped out before the year’s end. It didn’t matter. By now, John finally realized that he wanted to become an actor... but how?
EARLY ROLES
While John was still attending courses at Centennial, he gradually became friends with one of Toronto’s top talent agents, Catherine McCartney, whose office was across the street from Eaton’s, the depart-
ment store where John was working part-time. After months, 19-year-old John shyly revealed to Catherine that his goal was to be an actor. Ironically, she was searching for someone to play a high school football player in a TV commercial for toothpaste. Considering John’s recent history, he nailed the audition, playing opposite of actor/TV show/author host Art (Champagne for Caesar, People Are Funny, Kids Say the Darnedest Things) Linkletter. While on the set, John lit up a cigarette, which incited Linkletter to sternly lecture John that he should not smoke. Without missing a beat, tall and heavy-set John dryly informed the tightly-wound TV personality, “Yeah, it might stunt my growth.” That’s when Art Linkletter starting saying the darnedest things...
Soon, John was on the air again, now extolling the greatness of Molson’s Golden Ale, which impressed his friends from school. According to Catherine, “John had a quality of vulnerability. He was young and awfully cute. He was really eager to be an actor, so we kept trying to line up auditions for him.” She appreciated his sincerity, too. “John had the ability to make people feel special even if he had only known them a short time. Once he became your friend, he was always there for you, to listen and provide a shoulder to cry on.”
In addition to Catherine, John had also become friends with an aspiring writer/actor, Lorne Frohman. They had a lot in common, which included an absence of knowledge about how to pitch a TV show, as if that stopped them. They developed a show titled I Spy News without planning a budget, cast, or director. After a single pitch, they realized how incredibly unprepared they were. I Spy News was never mentioned again.
In 1971, thanks to talent agent Kay Griffin, John got a small part as a Shriner in a new Canadian play, Creeps, at the Global Village Theatre in Toronto. Over its run, he became close friends with another young man with
a similar physique, Charles Northcote. They both were thrilled to appear in a professional theater production, despite each getting paid a puny $40 a week. Some nights, after rehearsals and performances, Charles, John, and John’s girlfriend Rosemary Hobor would drive the White Knight to a nearby public skating rink, watching John play hockey on the ice while drinking Rosemary’s thermos of hot chocolate or coffee. Around this time, John had a new job he had no interest in, a door-to-door salesman selling nothing but facial tissues, paper napkins, and candles. “I was terrible at it,” he recalled. “Out of 40 salesmen, I was number 40. I was having so much fun doing theater, my heart just wasn’t in flogging napkins. Finally, the boss called me in. ‘Candy, you’re fired. I should never have hired a damned actor.’ I’m thinking, ‘Actor? Somebody’s recognized me as an actor? I like that.’” And John was becoming an actor, or at least an extra in 1971’s film Faceoff
In the spring of 1972, John signed on with a touring troupe, the Caravan Theatre, that relied on a grant from Canada’s federal government, with six actors in children’s plays presented at Toronto’s Poor Alex Theatre and city parks. That’s where he first met lifelong friend
The Steve Reeves Story Man or Myth
Mr. America, Mr. World, Mr. Universe
BY ROD LABBE
SETTING THE STAGE: HOW STE vE AND I MET
By early 1960 —thanks to my big sister, Sue—I was already a battle-scarred veteran of the monster movie matinee wars.
Each weekend, I’d accompany her to the latest horror or science fiction thriller from American International Pictures, Universal, Allied Artists, or Britain’s Hammer Studios, served up hot and steaming at either the State Theater, Opera House, or Haines (an “old timey” movie palladium). We ate popcorn drenched in real butter, guzzled gallons of Coca-Cola, chewed, chomped, and consumed Junior Mints, Jujubes, Pom-Poms, Peanut Butter cups, Dots, Charms, and other assorted sugary confections, and didn’t give a fig about cavities, type 2 diabetes, or artery-clogging cholesterol.
We were no different from millions of late-Fifties kids. Neighbors constructed backyard bomb shelters (“just in case”), Ike golfed at the White House, and Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, and Bonanza entertained us for free on TV. Sue spun a Hula Hoop, wore pedal pushers, and raced her sleek Firestone bike rocket (with horn, light, rainbow-hued handlebar tassels, and a
wire basket). I hoarded Golden Books and Archie comics, rarely missed an episode of The Mickey Mouse Club, and dreamed my crazy little boy dreams.
It was an idyllic period, despite the threat of nuclear proliferation. Today, I see remnants of that life in photos, scrapbooks, videos, MeTV, RetroFan, and Turner Classic Movies, but I remember, too… and vividly.
Scary movies and everything they entailed were very much a part of our childhood existence together. Take, for instance, one memorable Saturday afternoon, sometime in 1959.
While Sue and I waited to buy tickets (a cool double bill: Earth vs. the Spider and The Brain Eaters), something caught her discerning eye. “Hey, look,” she remarked, pointing to a lurid poster for Hercules (1958), starring an actor named Steve Reeves.
A prophetic moment, indeed, since I knew Hercules would soon find its way onto Sue’s “must-see” list.
Sure enough, within three weeks, we were right back inside that same theater (the State), watching Hercules—a.k.a. Steve Reeves—fling a shining discus into Rome’s wild blue yonder.
No one inhabiting my limited circle of friends and family looked anything like this Steve Reeves cat. He seemed unreal, more akin to one of Ray Harryhausen’s creations. I’d no idea he’d been a world-class competitive bodybuilder. What’s a “bodybuilder”? As for Jailbait (an Ed Wood production) and Athena (MGM)—two of Reeves’ earlier cinematic efforts from 1954—I’ll be kind and say they weren’t exactly on our “must-see” list.
The notion that Steve Reeves might exist as a flesh and blood human never once dawned on me. Really, why would it?
I was a naïve Baby Boomer living in Waterville, Maine, an average-sized mill town defined by Scott Paper Company and other assorted manufacturing plants. My favorite pastimes, away from movie-going, included coloring inside the lines, Halloween, and Captain Kangaroo. Now and again, I’d put pencil to notebook paper and write derivative short stories about vampires and werewolves, distressed damsels, and fanciful universes inhabited by noble heroes (kinda like Hercules, now that I think about it).
Four decades later, writing brought us together, Steve and me. My goal: to interview Mr. Reeves for publication. This was far from an easy undertaking; it required determination and a liberal dosing of street smarts. In search mode, I’d bought the magazine Cult Movies #18, featuring a Reeves interview. Oh, I felt such overwhelming envy! Why couldn’t I be the one holding that microphone?
An autograph collector’s reference book, won from eBay, supplied the necessary catalyst. Between Love Boat refugees and
Murder, She Wrote “guest stars,” I spotted a listing for Steve Reeves. Now I had my key! One insightful letter later (supplemented by several choice published clips), I threw caution to the four winds and nervously awaited a response.
It came within days, handwritten and signed “Steve.” Included were his phone number, an autographed photo, and an appropriate time to chat. OMG!
The next week was spent compiling questions and gathering reams of library/Internet research. Tape recorder and copious notes by my side, I made that fateful phone call on July 7, 1997.
A female voice answered, identifying herself as Mrs. Reeves. We exchanged niceties, and then someone picked up an extension, cleared his throat, and spoke. “Hello, Rod, this is Steve. How are you doing?”
Clash of cymbals, blast of celestial trumpets, and my mind went blanker than a freshly washed blackboard. “I’m okay, I mean, I’m f-f-fine, Mr. Reeves. Thanks for agreeing to chat with me.”
“My pleasure. And please, it’s Steve. No need for formalities among friends.”
“Fine, um, Steve.”
Thus, an amazing collaboration was launched. I listened and learned, as Earth’s only genuine demigod taught me about a life well-lived.
Here’s his inspirational story…
MEET STE vE REE vES
Stephen Lester Reeves entered our mortal existence January 21, 1926, in Glasgow, Montana. Naturally physically gifted, Steve’s startling good looks and strapping athletic build elicited constant curiosity. At football games, out shopping, anywhere and everywhere, curious bystanders stopped and asked, “Aren’t you a movie star?”
The question amused him. “If anyone had predicted I’d end up driving chariots, wrestling lions, and pulling down stone temples for a living,” he told me, “I would’ve said they were nuts.”
One early afternoon, not long after high school graduation, Steve and a good friend took off on a little excursion. They rode the trolley from Hollywood to Santa Monica, with the sole intention of
The Search for My Family’s Disney Artist
BY SCOTT SAAv EDRA
I was sitting in the dark at my desk. This was years ago while attending Rhoda Street Elementary. It may have been third or fourth grade. The teacher had loaded a film onto the 16-millimeter projector and flipped it on. The familiar flickering sound of the projector overwhelmed the music at first as it slowly built up volume and urgency. The class was watching “The Rite of Spring,” the longest segment of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940). The story is a dramatic telling of the birth of the world and creation of life up to the death of the dinosaurs. Most
importantly it features a fine, fine dramatic battle between a T-Rex and a Stegosaurus (which—spoiler—dies right before our eyes in what had to be a first for a Disney film). As I re-watched the segment before writing this, it reminded me that most of the first half is almost completely effects animation—steam, explosions, lava, and
more—and it is stunning. Just completely stunning (so stunning that some effects were reused toward the end of the segment).
This type of spectacular animated experimentation was very inspirational to me as a young, budding artist. Every Disney animated short and feature film I
saw as a kid was as much master class as entertainment. The main problem was that these animated gems were so hard to actually see. Disney animation, as I recall during the Sixties, was a rare treat on television and mainly seen on the movie screen. Getting seven of us kids packed into the station wagon for a trip to the drive-in could end up with us having to sit through The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes as easily it could reward us with The Jungle Book (one of my all-time faves).
And then Disneyland. My Uncle Bob went soon after it opened. His assessment: meh. His sister, my mom before mom-hood, visited not long after. Her assessment: something along the lines of “It was nice.” I went to “the happiest place on Earth” with my parents around
1963. I apparently found the newly opened Enchanted Tiki Room enchanting. “You loved those birds,” my mom tells me every couple of years.
My point? Disney represented a high and fascinating level of creativity to me (as it has for many—most?—RetroFans).
So you can imagine that my curiosity was piqued when I heard that I had a relative who worked for Walt Disney (the company and the man). My middle brother Craig pretty much had the same reaction. Which is very fortunate because he is something of the family historian and willing to sit down and talk to people in a way that I’m not. We sat down to try and piece together the known and unknown about our former Disney-employed relation.
The relative in question was my maternal grandmother’s cousin, Betty Jane Martin. In the greater family order she was my cousin twice-removed. Everybody called her Cousin B. J., just B. J., or Betty Jane. Cousin B. J. appeared at some family gatherings, but it was generally known that she had worked for Disney. Craig, being more curious than the rest of us, first talked to her when he was 14 (circa 1977), about her time with Disney. Decades later, Craig and I (with my wife Ruth as witness) sat down early last February for an official debriefing.
THE SEARCH BEGINS
Scott Saavedra: I’m talking to my brother Craig, winner of two Tony Awards. What made you decide to interview Betty Jane?
Cousin Betty Jane joined Disney Studios at Hyperion after the release of the transformational hit animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She was so taken with the film that she kept a scrapbook full of articles, ads, and other promotional ephemera. (Note the dancing girls promised in the newspaper ad.)
Craig Saavedra: I was in journalism [in middle school] and a huge Disney fan. Walt Disney was an idol of mine. But there were a lot of rumors out there like that he was frozen upon death—not true, he was cremated. That he was an Anti-Semite and a bigot. Just stuff that bothered me, and when I found out that Betty Jane was a former employee I was fascinated by that. I wanted to find out what the truth was.
In grade school, the frozen Walt Disney story was regarded as a fact. I’m not saying that I believed it—I don’t recall—but it didn’t surprise me a bit. The subject of possible bigotry or Anti-Semitism from Walt Disney on the other hand didn’t enter my brain at all when I was 14 years old. I—simple boy that I was—had moved on by then; focused more on comic books
Sketch of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse by Henry Major, a Hungarian artist who traveled the U. S. drawing notables. Art circa 1928. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Welcome back to “Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning,” your constant guide to the shows that thrilled us from yesteryear, 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 you on a Funtastic journey through the wacky and wild Saturday morning adventures of… Plastic Man!
One of the oldest comic book heroes—and certainly the bounciest—is Plastic Man, a wacky crook-turned-super-hero who has amused fans since his debut in 1941. “Plas” (as fans and friends call him) was created by cartoonist Jack Cole, and although the character was popular from the start, few could have ever guessed that he would become a recurring animated guest-star, or that he would headline his own animated series, have a super-powered son, and sproing back and forth from cartoons to live-action! Read on for the stretchable history of a red-suited maniac who might just pop up anywhere…
After working for Centaur Publishing and Lev Gleason Publications, young cartoonist Jack Cole was brought to the fold of Quality Comics in mid-1941. Owner Everett Arnold asked Cole to come up with a hero similar to the Spirit, a Will Eisner character that ran in comic books and newspapers. Cole decided to combine detective work with super-heroics, creating Eel O’Brian, a safe-cracking thief who is accidentally doused with chemicals. As he healed from near-mortal injuries, O’Brien decided to reform, especially after discovering that he could now stretch his body into any shape he could conceive. Wearing a red leotard and sunglasses and dubbing himself Plastic Man, the new crimefighter first appeared in Police Comics #1 (Aug. 1941).
With a weird mix of humor and heroics, Plastic Man proved a hit, and he soon got his own sidekick, a chubby polka-dot-shirtwearing mostly-reformed crook named Woozy Winks. Plastic Man was soon not only headlining Police Comics through #102 (Oct. 1950), but he also appeared in 64 issues of his own series, Plastic Man, from 1944–1956! Quality Comics was sold to National Comics Publications (now called DC Comics) in 1956, and they revived Plastic Man for a 20-issue series from 1966–1968 and 1976–1977.
Unlike some later stretchable heroes, Plastic Man had a few unique properties. He could mimic the faces and features of others, making him an effective doppelgänger. When he took the shape of other objects, whether they were chairs, airplanes, animals, or clothing, the items would retain the red-black-and-yellow colors of his costume! He was essentially bulletproof and mostly indestructible, though heat would melt him, and cold would stiffen him. And through all his stories, Plas kept a manic sense of humor, pinballing through stories filled with adventures and slapstick.
Beginning in 1966, television networks were growing hip to the popularity of super-heroes, as the ABC Batman series became a campy live-action hit, and new cartoon studio Filmation premiered The New Adventures of Superman on Saturday mornings (see RetroFan
#25). On weekday afternoons on syndicated stations, fans could watch Grantray-Lawrence’s Marvel Super-Heroes series (see RetroFan #15), featuring: Captain America, Thor, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, and Hulk
National made a deal with Hal Seeger Animation Productions in 1966 to try to sell Plastic Man as an animated series. Seeger was working on ABC’s Milton the Monster Show (1965–1966) and the syndicated Batfink (1966–1967), the latter of which was already a parody of super-heroes. Comic scribe Arnold Drake wrote a Plastic Man pilot script, which was referenced in the letters column of Plastic Man vol. 2 #2 (Feb. 1967): “The pilot film was written by amiable Arnie Drake and made by Hal Seegar Productions, which has racked up a raft of television triumphs. Negotiations with networks and sponsors are now under way, so there’s every indication that PM will be aired on prime time early next year.”
Unfortunately, nothing ever became of this pilot, and no artwork or indication that it was ever animated has surfaced.
Soon, most of DC’s other heroes were being developed by Filmation, which planned to include them as part of The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure on CBS in the fall of 1967. Filmation developed concepts to bring to the screens Green Lantern, Green Arrow, the Flash, Hawkman, Doom Patrol, B’wana Beast, the Atom, Wonder Woman, Metamorpho, Blackhawks, Teen Titans, the Justice League, and Plastic Man, among others. A few of those concepts did make it onto the screen as guest-hero segments on the series, but most never went beyond their initial development.
Plastic Man would finally make his animated debut on ABC’s Super Friends, debuting on September 8, 1973 (see RetroFan #26). That first season of stories saw one-episode
guest-appearances of the Flash, Green Arrow, and Plastic Man. The voice of Plas was Norman Alden, who already voiced Aquaman for the Super Friends show. Whether Hanna-Barbera ever planned to do anything further with those three heroes is unknown, although the Flash did eventually appear in future Super Friends seasons.
A PLASTIC LAWSUIT
In early 1977, Filmation announced that they would be producing a 90-minute live-action Plastic Man movie for NBC, and they began shopping an animated series as well. Nobody seemed interested, though, and Filmation gave up on the idea.
The following year, though, Filmation produced Tarzan and the Super 7 for CBS (see RetroFan #15), and one of its segments was titled Superstretch and Microwoman. That segment was a first for Saturday mornings: it starred a pair of married African-American crime-fighters! They were Chris Cross, who could stretch his body into any shape, and Christy Cross, who could shrink down to tiny sizes. Another segment on the series was Manta and Moray, which featured two aquatic-themed characters.
You never know where your freelance writing career is going to take you.
In 1985, it carried me to my first movie shooting location, Mexico City. The project was Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
This was not a direction I ever expected. I had just a few books to my name at that time. One, The Assassin’s Handbook, was devoted to the bestselling Destroyer paperback series that debuted in 1971. I had also ghostwritten a single novel in the series. Encounter Group had come out the previous year.
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I had interviewed series creators Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir for a small-press mystery magazine called Skullduggery. But it folded before the story saw print. Jim Steranko’s Prevue had it under consideration, but the interview was never published there. When Sapir and Murphy read my piece, they asked to use it as the nucleus of a non-fiction book on their series. More importantly, they hired me to assemble it. This became The Assassin’s Handbook.
In 1982, editor David McDonnell left for magazine. Before long, he was editing
I had written a couple of minor pieces for . Although I loved science fiction movies, I was no film expert and did not expect to ever contribute much.
When the Destroyer movie was announced in 1984, Dave asked me to interview Sapir and Murphy for a short news piece. Thanks to my access to the creators, I got some wonderful quotes regarding
their opinions of Lorenzo Semple’s original script, their own unsuccessful attempt, and the Christopher Wood shooting script.
Imagine my surprise when Dave called me a year later to ask if I wanted to fly to Mexico City to cover Remo Williams and the Secret of Sinanju, as they were calling it then. All expenses paid.
I’ll admit that I was hesitant. I had only interviewed a handful of writers
The first, fifth, and tenth entries in the Destroyer series.
