Friday, June 22, 2007

A Date With Judy






Here's an odd tie-in comic done by DC. A DATE WITH JUDY was a pleasant but not necessarily memorable radio series that ran from 1941 through 1950 with a feature film spin-off in 1948 starring Jane Powell. The series itself featured several young women as Judy over time, most notably Louise Erickson who appeared in Judy-esque roles on lots of shows in those days including a stint as THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE's niece, Marjorie. It was in that capacity that I got to meet and work with the delightful Ms. Erickson in the early nineties at one of the Cincinnati Radio Conventions. Along with the lovely Shirley Mitchell and the late Willard Waterman (as Gildy), Louise re-created her original role in a script in which I appeared as the gruff Judge Horace Hooker.

DC Comics, as part of its attempts at finding new types of subjects for the dwindling comic market of the post-war years, offered A DATE WITH JUDY as a comic book that tied in both with its expanding humor line (LEAVE IT TO BINKY) as well as its radio line (GANGBUSTERS). As unremarkable as the radio series itself, Judy went from one innocent ARCHIE-style mishap to another with only the tiniest bit of cheesecake to distinguish it at all.Even though the series ended in 1950, the comic also tied in with the romance comics mini-boom of the fifties and thus continued on until, surprisingly enough, 1960, a full decade after its inspiration's demise.



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