A History of the Beatles

Today’s feature is another that could have fit under the Movies That Fell Through the Cracks banner except that
a) it isn’t really a movie and
b) every bit of the footage is easily accessible on the Internet.
A HISTORY OF THE BEATLES was a more-or-less random compilation of rare footage of the Fab Four that played the Alpha Fine Arts Theater in Cincinnati in early 1978. For all I know, it may well have been compiled locally and that may well have been the ONLY place it played.
Note that the flyer emphasizes that this is NOT a multimedia performance or a slide show. Throughout the seventies, various travelling shows attempted to cash in on the Beatles with exactly those tactics, to varying success. BEATLEMANIA ( "NOT the Beatles but an incredible simulation!")continued well into the eighties, in fact, when I finally saw it. I liked it. Clearly a lot of work went into it and there was a live group on stage performing Beatle songs (in various period costumes) to an overwhelming backdrop of historical context footage, sight and sound. Casual fans loved it but many hardcore fans decried the stage shows. Thus, to appeal to those fans, they distanced themselves with the disclaimer for A HISTORY OF THE BEATLES.
The Alpha Fine Arts had been (without the "Fine Arts" tag) a notorious porno theater that, as you might guess in Cincinnati, was constantly in trouble for one thing or another in the seventies. In the late seventies, it underwent a complete rehabilitation and became a repertory cinema. Their colorful monthly calendars were filled with such fare as SIDDHARTHA, BARBARELLA, THE BICYCLE THIEF and M. HULOT’S HOLIDAY. I had to take two buses to get there (age 19. I didn’t drive until 32 but that’s another story) but I would try to make it every Sunday afternoon.
The footage found in A HISTORY OF THE BEATLES included the STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER video (with Dick Clark outro), REVOLUTION on DAVID FROST, early concert clips, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE and…well, I’m not sure. You see, one of the first pre-recorded videos I purchased when I bought my beloved Betamax two years later was a two tape set of the same stuff…with about four hours added on! I get confused as to which footage was actually on display at the Alpha. The tape included the full Shea Stadium TV special, the full Tokyo concert and the full MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR and I’m sure THOSE weren’t a part of HISTORY.
Anyway, for a Beatles fan like myself, that showing I attended at the Alpha Fine Arts 28 years ago now was an overload of new to me musical joy. Yeah, yeah, yeah indeed!

View From the Sandbox

One item, if you can call her that (and I’d better not!), seen around the Library every day is my lovely wife, Rene. She has a blog also, dedicated to political issues from a liberal mother’s point of view. VIEW FROM THE SANDBOX grew out of her participation as one of the founding mothers of the Million Mom March in 2000. Of late, her blog has presented some interesting pieces, my favorite being her just posted article on the "English as national language" controversy which she posted in multiple languages including Greek, Spanish, German and Russian. Please check it out here at VIEW FROM THE SANDBOX and then go back and read some of her other editorials. I may be prejudiced, but by looking at things from a different perspective than most of the pundits, she sometimes makes some valid points rarely heard elsewhere.

Movies That Fell Through the Cracks # 6

THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN was a barely released 1974 movie based on well-known author Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories. Although he wrote regular fiction and science-fiction (as well as some scripts and non-fiction), the author is best remembered for his Appalachian balladeer horror stories but this is the only one that made it to the screen.
Improbably produced by CAGNEY AND LACEY’S Barney Rozensweig and directed by ONE STEP BEYOND’s John Newland, the film boasts an impressive cast of character actors including Second City alumnus Severn Darden, Susan Strasberg, Harris Yulin and, one of my favorites, the unfortunately monickered Percy Rodrigues. Topbilled as John is one Hedge Capers who, assuming he didn’t change his name, apparently never worked in show business again. Original music was by Hoyt Axton who seemingly could do no wrong in the seventies. Special effects were by Gene Warren who had an impressive credits list that included the stop motion work on the original LAND OF THE LOST.
IMDB describes the plot as "A wandering ballad singer in the Appalachians meets an ugly bird-type creature, is transported back in time, finds himself involved in the Devil's work." Their reviews offer fond recollections of fans of the books, all of whom cite the low budget restrictions of the movie. Steeped in the folk traditions of the Carolinas, Wellman’s tales would probably be hard to visualize as well as anything the books could display inside your own head. I find myself wondering, though, if the guitar carrying wanderer didn’t influence the folks who later brought you SIX-STRING SAMURAI.
You’re probably better off reading up on Wellman, himself , so here’s a link to a good source: The Voice of the Mountains

Stan Lee's Best of the World's Worst

What did Stan Lee do for a hobby before he started doing all of those movie cameos (I can understand Spidey and FF but PRINCESS DIARIES 2? Where did THAT one come from?)? Answer: he wrote books! Or…did he? To look at this cover for RHINO PRESENTS THE BEST OF THE WORLD’S WORST, published in 1994, one would get the definite impression that Stan the Man was the author, wouldn’t one? The fact that the copyright is held by Stan Lee would seem to cinch that but then, if you read the fine print on the acknowledgments page you’ve got a compiler, editors and a list of "researchers, helpers, typists and exotic dancers." The most telling phrase is one that says "featuring caustic comments capriciously choreographed and concocted by Stan Lee." Hmmm… Opposite this page is the title page which now calls the book, STAN LEE PRESENTS THE BEST OF THE WORLD’S WORST and is followed by a quote stating, "If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism. If you steal from many, it’s research." What th’??? "Steal?" Are they trying to subtly tell us what becomes obvious as soon as you start the body of the book—that Stan’s contributions are minimal at best. Each page offers a number of paragraphs (some illustrated by various artists including sometime Marvel folks, Jim Owsley and Ed Hannigan) of trivial interest and under each one is an italicized Jay Leno-style zinger from the man who would later bring you STRIPPERELLA. Since he has to come up with something for every single piece, most of them fall flatter than Mister Fantastic after a bad day. For instance, after a piece about a Spanish Church that collapsed after taking 90 years to build, Stan writes, "They shouldn’t have rushed the job." After a piece on the Guyana Tragedy, Stan writes "Odd. We thought they’d died of old age." To be fair, some are better but none bring out a real chuckle. Rhino Records was responsible for this book…which readily explains why they’re Rhino RECORDS and not Rhino BOOKS!

DC Swipes Kirby!

Here's an unexpected one for the Jack Kirby swipe file series in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR(but since I have my own blog, I'm debuting it here) and it's a weird one. One of my all-time favorite splash pages comes from the CAPTAIN AMERICA story in Marvel's TALES OF SUSPENSE 92, 1967. It's a simple piece featuring Steve (CA) Rogers arriving back home at a commercial airport after a long series of very eventful issues. He's smiling, he's optimistic, he's...wait a minute. What's the deal with that scene-stealing little girl holding a doll? She's waving at us like she knows she's in a comic book! In fact, she doesn't look much like a Kirby character at all! I always had the sneaking suspicion that frequent Kirby inker Joe Sinnott threw in a drawing of his daughter or something just for fun. In fact, I vaguely recall an interview where someone asked Sinnott about that panel but I don't recall what he said. Jump now to DC's METAMORPHO 16 which hit the stands just a couple months later and...whadda ya know? There she is again! In fact, the entire airport crowd, in approximately their exact same positions, turns up at a dock where a cruise ship is leaving! Credited artist is Sal Trapani but Sal had a reputation for lots of assistants or, quite often, simply farming out or subcontracting the work he had been assigned. The inks still look to me like the heavy Charles Paris inks that had defined the look of the series but neither DC's SHOWCASE volume nor GCD credits an inker other than, perhaps, Trapani himself. So the question is, who was drawing this scene? Did they need a small crowd scene and just lift it plain and simply from the Cap tale which more than likely was on the stands just as the Element Man story was being drawn? If it was Sinnott's daughter, neice, neighbor or whoever, I wonder if she ever saw herself in THIS one!

The Hulk is Coming (1978)

In late 1978, with the semi-success of the SPIDER-MAN newspaper strip (and the failure of THE VIRTUE OF VERA VALIANT), Marvel ventured once again onto the ink-stained pages of America’s newspapers with THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Hulk had been much more successful than Spidey on television. In fact, the newspaper Hulk was, as on TV, David Banner, not Bruce. Ostensibly written by Stan Lee (but I’d venture that they would more than likely put his name on it no matter who was actually writing it) and drawn by his brother Larry Lieber, the plots are fairly uninteresting and the action typically, as in most newspaper strips, drawn out. Aided either by a jarring variety of inkers or at least inking styles, Lieber’s artwork went from pretty good to rushed in a matter of weeks. Seen here is the cool "Coming Soon" ad that appeared in my local paper along with the introductory week of strips. It was not uncommon for newspaper syndicates to provide such strips to get readers up to speed when the series began in a new market. Noting the extremely crude lettering on these, I don’t think it’s a stretch to guess that these may have been cobbled together in-house by The Cincinnati Post themselves rather than distributed by the syndicate. I’m not certain how long THE INCREDIBLE HULK lasted in papers elsewhere but around here, the strip was gone pretty quickly, leaving ol’ Greenskin alone to sit in a corner and wait for Peter David to come along and make him interesting again.

Fandom Annual # 3

I thought I had sold FANDOM ANNUAL # 3 a few years ago but I found it slightly misplaced in the archives last night. This 200 page bound volume collects what is essentially a "Best Of" compilation of early RBCC articles and art. Published circa 1972 (there’s no date) it features such a wide variety of fan-oriented obsessions that it eerily echoes the blog I, myself, have now created! Legendary fan G.B. Love was the editor and his talented replacement, James Van Hise (who still owes me some money on that last RBCC subscription renewal but, hey, that’s all water under the bridge…) assisted.
An index of the contents will give some idea of just how diverse fandom was in those days (and maybe how I got to be that way, too!).
Cover-Sub-Mariner by Farwell and Warner
(?)Inside Cover-Fighting American by Bill Black

EC Revisited by Rich Hauser-20 page section illustrated by original and fan EC art
Blackmark- a review of Gil Kane’s sword and sorcery paperback

Undergrounds- a one page piece by Van Hise

Comics Fans- an undergroundish strip that defines fanboys in 3 pages of still true truisims

Untamed Love-a Frazetta reprint

Interview with Garry Trudeau

An index of UNCLE SCROOGE comics by…wait for it…DON ROSA!!!!!

Magazine reprint on Alex Raymond

Flash Gordon-one page reprint

Serial stills, posters and lobby cards for 16 pages

Harryhausen stills

TOR by Joe Kubert-Cover and 11 page reprint

Star Trek article with rare illustrations

WHITE INDIAN-Frazetta reprint

The Williamson Collector-23 pages of this popular RBCC review feature, with art

Return of the Werewolf-Horror reprint by Al Williamson and Harold LeDoux

7 page Lone Ranger piece with great stills

3 pages of early Wallace Wood art

The Ray- Lou Fine reprint

Interview with PRINCE VALIANT’S Hal Foster

White Indian-another Frank Frazetta reprint

Rocketship-Flash Gordon serial feature reviewed

Buster Crabbe and the Maid of Mars-yet another reprint

SPACEHAWK- Basil Wolverton sci-fi reprint!

Days of Valor- Multi-page EC reviews

Captain Comet-Space Pilot, one final comic book reprint

A series of classic and (at least then) little-seen golden age comic covers

Back Cover-PRINCE VALIANT by Hal Foster
Whew! As I said, what a diverse bunch of stuff…much like what I’ve been presenting here. Okay, Van Hise, I guess I got something out of all this after all. Let’s call it square on that subscription mess, deal?