My Personal Sixties Beatles Memories

I really discovered the Beatles just as they were breaking up. 

Oh, I knew who they were. As an only child and too young to care, we didn't watch ED SULLIVAN that Sunday evening 50 years past but I encountered them from time to time.

I remember hearing HELP on the radio while we were on vacation on Virginia in 1965. I remember hearing RUN FOR YOUR LIFE on the radio in 1967 in a small corner grocery where I was going through their box of old comic books. 

I remember watching THE BEATLES Saturday morning cartoon series from time to time around 1966.

I remember watching HELP on its network television debut in...what? '67? 

I remember YELLOW SUBMARINE in 1968 as the first movie I was allowed to see without adult accompaniment. I also bought the book and the comic adaptation and had the latter's accompanying poster on my wall for years.

And as I began to buy the teen mags for coverage of THE MONKEES and other TV shows I liked starting in 1969, I remember there still being the occasional articles about the Beatles.

I remember my Dad getting SO mad when he read that Paul "McCarthy" shut the limo window on some fan trying to grab at him when they were in Cincinnati.

I remember my Mom telling me one morning as I got ready for school that one of those crazy Beatles married some Japanese woman.

I remember seeing Ringo on LAUGH-IN.

I remember going to see LET IT BE when it opened and finding it a total downer until the rooftop concert at the end.

But I really liked the song, "The Long and Winding Road." In fact, it became (and remains) my all-time favorite song. So I bought the 45. My very first Beatles record, ever. A week or so later the Beatles broke up.

From that point on, I spent much of the 1970s reliving what so many had already experienced in the 1960s. 

Above is my original copy (photographed today) of the seminal Fab 4 hit single "She Loves You," on Swan Records, in a sleeve I decorated myself around 1971.

Little Known Cap Comics

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Review

I was lucky enough to catch IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD in re-release in the early 1970s on the big screen. It's a big movie and it deserves a big screen. At the time, I didn't realize just how much BIGGER it had been on its initial run a decade earlier!

This picture was designed to be a salute to excess. Some love it and some hate it. I'm one of the odd birds that are right in the middle of that. When I watched it in the theater, I certainly enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was the funniest picture I'd ever seen even then.

Part of the fun of IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, though, is in all the recognizable faces on view in the same picture. When I was a teenager, I only recognized about half of them. Heck, this was the first Spencer Tracy movie I'd ever seen!

But my old pal Michael Schlesinger is a champion of the movie, as is blogger/writer and all-round great guy Mark Evanier. Mark's writings about it over the years made me think from time to time that it might be time to revisit the Big W. Then, last year, when I heard that both Mark and Mike (along with Paul Scrabo) would be doing full-length commentary on a newly restored Criterion release that's probably as close to the original road show cut as we're likely to see ever again, my interest was piqued.

THEN, when Mike and Mark appeared on an absolutely delightful and informative episode of the Internet radio show, STU'S SHOW, a couple weeks back, in an episode that ran three hours plus (and included a shout out to yours truly!), I knew I had to get it.

My friend Alan Bryan, whom I had talked into tuning in to STU'S SHOW that evening, was so impressed that he ordered a copy for himself and a copy for me! Thanks, Alan!

And I pronounce it good!

My wife and I sat and viewed IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD on our 50 inch screen (a holdover from back when we actually had cable) that evening. There are two versions--the general release version and the newly restored version with nearly an hour of long unseen footage and reconstructed scenes! We, of course, chose the latter...with the commentary!

I have to say I have never in my life enjoyed a commentary as much as this one. Maybe it's because I actually knew two of the three men doing it but it just felt as if they were right there in the darkened room with us. Never feeling obtrusive, all three men were educational and yet at times nearly as funny as the film itself! When it was over, my wife said that she felt as though she had just attended a master class in film.

And what about the film? If somehow you don't know, it's the story of a group of ordinary people who learn the whereabouts of a great deal of money and set off to find it, forming motley alliances along the way whilst all the while being unaware that the police are watching them...at least one with an ulterior motive.

The main cast is made up of some of the funniest folks in show biz at the time--Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Buddy Hackett, etc. The real fun, though, is that there's hardly a role in the entire thing that isn't cast with a familiar funny face. Jerry Lewis, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Jack Benny and many more. Pay particularly close attention and you'll also spot Leo Gorcey, Stan Freberg, Carl Reiner and Jesse White! My wife's biggest laugh came from, of all things, the less than 10 seconds appearance of The Three Stooges!

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD was directed by Stanley Kramer, a filmmaker noted for his "relevant," "issue" movies and his often-noted heavy-handed approach to same. With its humorous study of the effects of greed on ordinary people, he actually manages to get in some relevant points here even. He went with the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach and, to me, it works. It still isn't the funniest film ever but it's an epic length look at the greed in all of us, with laughs, made more palatable by the many familiar faces and jack-in-the-box cameos.

Extras? Well, as we've said, there's the great commentary. How great is it? I think it's ruined me for other commentaries. The next day I attempted to watch Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS with a typical scholarly, stodgy commentary by 2 film historians and I literally had to turn it off. Besides the commentary, though, you get multiple documentaries and cast reunions from the 60s, 70s and 2000s as well as a collection of Stan Freberg's radio and TV ads (with an all-new introduction), a detailed booklet and even brand new art by the now-retired original poster artist, Jack Davis!

Booksteve Recommends!




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Now Available! Jacky's Diary!

When I was a young boy, I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to draw my own comic strip!

That would have been in the late sixties. Little did I suspect at that point that Jack Mendelsohn had already done what I wanted to do, and a full decade earlier at that...AND with the added perspective of being 31 and 1/2 when he wrote and drew JACKY'S DIARY in the style of a small boy.

JACKY'S DIARY ran as a Sunday only strip, beginning exactly 2 days after I was born in 1959! It would run until the very end of 1961 but if it was in my local paper, I was still too young to remember it. In fact, those who do remember it most likely do so because of the unique Dell one-shot comic book that ran in the FOUR-COLOR series.

With its purposely juvenile artwork and schoolyard puns, many find JACKY'S DIARY to be an acquired taste but good humor is good humor and trust me, Jack Mendelsohn knows good humor!

After his comic strip ended, Jack went on to do work for Jay Ward. He did the Beatles cartoons. He wrote for ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN. He wrote for Carol Burnett. He was a Story Editor on THREE'S COMPANY. He did the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES cartoon. And...he was the main writer on the almost immediately legendary 1968 animated feature, YELLOW SUBMARINE!!!

So I was suitably impressed when packager Craig Yoe drafted me (and my usual colleagues) to help Jack behind the scenes with proofreading and fact-checking on this just-out complete collection of JACKY'S DIARY by Jack, now age 86 and 1/2.

Got my copy in the mail today and I repeat, it is non-stop hilarity. Unlike many Sunday strips where the panels all lead up to a final punchline, every single panel in JACKY'S DIARY is a gag within itself and part of a larger theme that lasts the whole strip and, sometimes, several Sundays!

With its innocent tone and subversively simplistic art, Jack Mendelsohn's JACKY'S DIARY is going to be a tough sell in today's market of steroid-plagued super guys and gory zombies but the strip is lionized by many "in the know." Hopefully they can help get the word out.

If you like to laugh and appreciate unique comics art, then you owe it to yourself to give JACKY'S DIARY a try. Without a doubt, being associated with this volume has been one of my proudest book experiences! Thanks Craig! And a special thanks to Jacky, himself!

Booksteve Recommends!

PS--I sent Jack the Booksteve-drawn message below on his birthday and got back the perfect reply!

  

Gold Key Ad-1968

I never paid much attention to Gold Key Comics as a company until 1968 when they put out these two marvelous giant movie comics with free posters. 

I remember YELLOW SUBMARINE as being the first film I was ever allowed to go see on my own, without my parents. 

And CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG was the film I saw on my first date, at age 9! We met at the theater and sat through it twice!

I no longer have the comics...but I DO still have both original posters!

Making a Living-Charles Chaplin

100 years ago today Charlie Chaplin's first film was released and comedy would never be the same. Far from his best--he hadn't even yet conceived his tramp character--it was nonetheless his first.

Happy Birthday to Bill Mumy

As the smart kid in my elementary school back in the sixties (when geekiness was not yet cool) the person on TV with whom I could relate was fellow smart kid Will Robinson on LOST IN SPACE. Billy Mumy became a favorite of mine wherever I saw him, from TWILIGHT ZONE and BEWITCHED reruns to the delightful DEAR BRIGITTE and onto SUNSHINE, BLESS THE BEASTS AND THE CHILDREN, FISH HEADS and BABYLON 5! 

I credit him with being the one--inadvertently--who convinced my mother to stop throwing out my old comic books in big, greasy grocery bags! It seems he appeared on THE WOODY WOODBURY SHOW circa 1968 talking about his own collection with the host and I got my mother to watch so she'd learn that comics weren't just old trash! It worked!

Now "Bill" for many years, I was able to tell that story to him when I ran into him at a local comic book shop in the mid-eighties. I reminded him yet again when I became his FB friend a few years ago. 

Bill turns 60 today. Below is the card I made for him, showing him with the TV Zorro he idolized, who became his father on LOST IN SPACE.