Pussycat and Me

I mentioned yesterday that AMAZING HEROES was the very first publication to pay me for my writing. That was in 1989. Momentary editor Chris McCubbin (now a successful game strategy guide author) was intrigued with my suggested article on Marvel’s PUSSYCAT and we exchanged several letters as I worked and re-worked the piece (ah, if we had only had e-mail!). I must admit that I was actually trying to make back some of the $89.00 I had spent on purchasing THE ADVENTURES OF PUSSYCAT at San Diego the previous year.
I had first discovered the obscure girlie strip back in 1970 in the back pages of my dad’s hidden stash of STAG and other so-called "men’s sweat" mags (which I later realized were a sideline of Marvel’s parent company). At age 11, I found the only slightly risque strip itself not nearly as interesting as the fact that it was obviously drawn by the same guy that did SUPERGIRL and TOMMY TOMORROW! What a comic book geek I was/am!
Ten years later, age 21 and legally allowed to do so, I was paging through a cheap, newsprint girlie mag the likes of which I had never seen before when I suddenly found, much to my amazement, a PUSSYCAT strip! "They’re STILL making this strip!!??" I thought to myself. Well, they weren’t, of course. It was a reprint, a fact driven home by the appearance in the same magazine of Basil Wolverton’s POWERHOUSE PEPPER strip from the 1940’s. In fact, some of the girls seemed to have been photographed in the fifties, too! Lots of stupid jokes, ancient reprinted panel cartoons (some by Bill Ward), murky black and white nudes and silly old comic strips. Who exactly was the intended audience for such a mixed bag of a mag? I, of course, bought it immediately. I only ever found one other issue, though. It had more Wolverton but no more PUSSYCAT. By 1985, however, I had heard about THE ADVENTURES OF PUSSYCAT, the black and white magazine that came out around the same time as THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN and reprinted the character’s early strips. Nostalgia, the collective mentality and the male mind being what hey are, I had to have it and I did, in fact, find it at San Diego in 1988.
With art by Wallace Wood, Bill Ward and Jim Mooney and a gorgeous cover by Bill Everett, PUSSYCAT might best be described as LITTLE ANNIE FANNY light. When I wrote the article, I speculated that, because of the bombastic, alliterative dialogue in some of the stories, Stan the Man himself might well have been the writer. Artist Jim Mooney, in a later published interview confirmed that Stan Lee did, in fact, write at least one but that his brother Larry Lieber wrote the rest of the ones on which the artist worked. Mark Evanier supplied the fact that Ernie Hart, otherwise not working for Marvel, also wrote some of the adventures.
When the issue of AMAZING HEROES with my article came out, I was in heaven. At long last I was a professional writer (and I photocopied Fantagraphics’ check to prove it!). The bookstore where I worked even stocked AMAZING HEROES and I looked forward to bragging about my piece (pardon the expression). Of course, that would be the issue where our buyers decided to drop it because it hadn’t been selling well. AARRGH! After several frantic phone calls to the regional buyer’s office, I was informed that there were no copies to be had. My local comic book shop had even been shorted on that issue but saved me the only two copies they got. Another nearby comic shop reluctantly agreed to save me all seven copies they had but I had to pick them up by 7 PM that day. I took an hour and a half bus ride to get there (on two buses through three counties in two states!) and made it with about fifteen minutes to spare! On the equally long return bus ride, it occurred to me that I had cornered the local market on that particular issue of AMAZING HEROES so no one I knew locally could ever glance through a copy and discover my article! Sheesh! And I wanted to be a writer! I signed and distributed a few of the copies I had (including one to my future bride, then simply a friend and co-worker) and began submitting ideas to AH for a follow-up now that I had an established relationship with the editor. The editor? Who? OH, NO! NOT AGAIN! Just like that, McCubbin was gone and the new guy didn’t know me and didn’t seem interested in any of the ideas I pitched. Sigh. Discouragement set in and it would be years before I followed up successfully.
With the rise of the Internet, THE ADVENTURES OF PUSSYCAT cult began to grow. Fred Hembeck wrote a much better piece than mine on the old girl. Wikipedia even has an entry now( The Adventures of Pussycat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) with links to Fred’s piece and even some actual PUSSYCAT stories on the web! Here’s one I haven’t seen anywhere, however, clipped from that 1980 reprint, a holiday tale for a holiday weekend. The closing line of my AMAZING HEROES article said that Pussycat "…can be found these days languishing in a distant corner of the Marvel Universe, filing her nails as she commiserates with Millie the Model, wondering why she couldn’t have been born a mutant like all of the popular girls." With Millie herself suddenly getting a little reprint respect at Marvel, and Pussycat’s growing Internet fan club, maybe there’s a chance for at least a trade paperback collection! Meooow!

Cartoon Character Actors-The Letters-1988

In mid-1988, the interest in classic cartoons was at a peak due to the much-anticipated release of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? with its first ever cross-studio teaming of characters. It was during that year that I developed the idea for a book on voice actors to be entitled CARTOON CHARACTER ACTORS-THE MEN AND WOMEN BEHIND YOUR FAVORITE ANIMATED STARS. I bought a book on how to write a proposal and found the name of an editor at Crown who had done a pop culture book I admired earlier that year. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again my proposal, all on an old-fashioned typewriter with correcting tape! I have at least three complete variations on the proposal here and several incomplete. This, of course, does not even count the copy I sent out eventually!

I knew I would have to interview some of the legendary voice actors, most of whom were still with us at that time but how to get hold of them? I noticed that the name Andrea Romano was on a lot of the newer cartoons from Hanna-Barbera so I got the bright idea to write a dozen letters...and send them all to Andrea Romano. It made sense. As a director she obviously knew and worked with these folks! So I wrote her a cover letter and sent off individual interview requests explaining the project (with SASE of course!) and waited to hear something from either Andrea or Crown.

Unfortunately, the first thing I heard, just a few days after I sent off the package to H-B, was notice of the death of the great Daws Butler, one of my all-time favorite cartoon voices! Soon after that, though, I was heartened to hear from my hand-picked editor and she liked my book idea! She suggested some changes and offered some other ideas, most of which I liked but all of which I incorporated since, as a first-time author, I figured I should listen to my editor. We exchanged several letters and spoke on the phone once or twice and I was convinced Crown would go for the idea. She wanted to see something written before committing, though, so I spent most of my waking hours doing research (which, in those already ancient days, meant hanging out at the Public Library and digging through back issue animation mags in comic shops!)

In the meantime, letters from my cartoon idols started drifting in. Henry (Fred Flintstone) Corden, Jean (Wilma) VanderPyl, June (Rocky the Flying Squirrel) Foray, Janet (Judy Jetson) Waldo, Don (Scooby Doo) Messick , Daws Butler....wait a sec! Daws Butler? Apparently my letter arrived only days after his death and his widow kindly wrote me a bit about Daws and included some clippings and a bio sheet. I was shocked that she would take the time but very appreciative.

That was the year I flew out to San Diego in July to take one of June Foray's voiceover seminars. I recorded it for posterity and afterwards spoke briefly with her about my hopefully-upcoming book. (Who knew all these years later I would be involved with her autobiography? But that's another story already told.)

Then, literally as I was setting up specific telephone interview times, came the final blow. My project may not have been officially contracted but my wonderful editor had nursed me along for months by that point but then one day she was gone. I was told that her position was eliminated during one of the incestuous mergers that happen so often in publishing. In this case, Random House absorbed Crown. As my book was not actually on anyone's roster except that of someone now no longer present, they had no idea it existed. I sent them another proposal, this time with my guarantees of interviews and sample chapters on Jim Backus and Ross Bagdasarian that I had polished and repolished. I was informed that several similar books (which really weren't at all similar) had performed poorly for them so they would be passing on CARTOON CHARACTER ACTORS.

I spent the next six months racking up rejection slips from every other publisher I could find who might in the least be interested in that type of book. Outside of one from Pomegranate Press signed personally from its owner, DARK SHADOWS actress Kathryn Leigh Scott, these were NOT fun. I hated opening my mail.

Soon enough I moved on to another project which then became my first professional sale--my article on PUSSYCAT in AMAZING HEROES. Then another book idea, YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST PICTURE (now appearing as one of my blogs at long last) was researched, nurtured and shot down endlessly. A few more small articles appeared by me but I was disheartened and gave up on the idea of a book.

In the years since, after writing about this project online, there were a few nibbles from a small publisher about a revival. The problem was that so many of the classic folks had since passed. The industry had changed completely and a whole new generation of brilliant cartoon character actors was now on top--Rob Paulsen, Joe Alaskey, Maurice LeMarche, Billy West, Gregg Berger, Bob Bergen and a dozen more! They were all great and deserved a book but my book, as originally conceived, just wasn't it. Thus, I'm left with lots of notes, files, memories and a handful of letters and notes like the three seen here by some of my favorite cartoon character actors. Janet Waldo is, in fact, a Facebook friend. Maybe if I show her this I can still get her promised interview!

Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen-1981

Charlie Chan is, today, quite the controversial character. A few years back when TCM scheduled a Chan film festival, there were protests from supposedly outraged Oriental groups and the festival was tabled until it could be revamped to include a round table discussion of the issues to run prior to each film. The fact is that while the Charlie Chan books and movies and comics and cartoons do include racial stereotypes of the day, they also include Charlie himself who plays on those cliches and uses them to his advantage. In any medium, one thing is certain: If Charlie Chan is in the room, then Charlie Chan is the smartest person in that room.

That said, I have never been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for CHARLIE CHAN AND THE CURSE OF THE DRAGON QUEEN. Oh, it's easy to see WHY it was made. Just look at these ads as they blatantly rip off the traditional seventies PINK PANTHER film ad campaigns. This was an attempt to combine the PINK PANTHER franchise with the MURDER BY DEATH style silly black comedy-mysteries of Neil Simon.

Star Peter Ustinov is one of the most interesting performers of the twentieth century--erudite, urbane, witty, a great actor/director and humanitarian and one of the all-time great talk show guests. He often chose some odd cinematic vehicles, however. He had made a bit of a film comeback in 1976's LOGAN'S RUN which led to him inheriting the role of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot when Albert Finney passed on the follow-up to MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. As Ustinov fit the role of the persnickety Belgian detective physically much better than Finney, he made it his own and would ultimately play the character in a total of six films produced over a ten year period. With his facility for accents, his gentle humor and the unspoken tradition that the Hawaiian police detective was never played by a Chinese actor, it must have seemed like a brilliant idea to someone to cast Ustinov to star in this picture.

Director Clive Donner was a thirty year show biz veteran best known perhaps as co-director of Woody Allen's WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? He also directed Gene Roddenberry's unsold pilot, SPECTRE and had been set to direct Peter Seller's ultimately unrealized ROMANCE OF THE PINK PANTHER script at the time of Seller's death. Just prior to CC&TCOTDQ, he directed the justifiably forgotten GET SMART feature entitled THE NUDE BOMB.

As for the script, it's credited to award winning writers David Axelrod and Stan Burns (THE MARY TYLER MOORE HOUR, THE DICK CAVETT SHOW, THE DEAN MARTIN ROASTS) from a story by the film's very controversial (Look him up. I'm not getting into it here.) producer, Jerry Sherlock and, of course, featuring characters created by the long gone Earl Derr Biggers.

The TV movie-style cast that rounds out the picture includes reliable presences such as the always fun Roddy McDowall (as a cynical,wheelchair-bound butler), Angie Dickinson (as the overdressed and badly acted Dragon Queen), Lee Grant, Brian Keith and Rachel Roberts. The latter two actors both committed suicide--one presumes NOT because of this picture. A young and cute (but vacuous) Michelle Pfeiffer also appears as does the always interesting African actor Johnny Sekka.

Richard Hatch (not the SURVIVOR guy) from the then-recent original BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA appears in what amounts to the lead role as Lee Chan. Hatch, of course, was also NOT of Oriental descent. I don't believe he's Jewish either but here he plays a Jewish-Chinese character who is the most oblivious bumbler this side of Inspector Clouseau (naturally).

The picture has been going for nearly half an hour by the time Charlie enters the plot (outside of an opening black and white flashback) and it becomes immediately obvious that he speaks almost exclusively in fortune cookie sayings.

Brian Keith,as the SF police Inspector, can't say two sentences without cursing and seems to be basing his performance on that of Jackie Gleason in the SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT pictures.

The plot itself is typical of the old films but with the accent on the silly comedy that was used as comic relief in the originals. A retired Chan teams with his bumbling grandson to solve a bizarre series of San Francisco murders that seem to be straight out of a Dr Phibes movie. Chan's old nemesis, the Dragon Queen, is suspected! The best part of the film is the San Francisco location shooting. It's like watching GOOGLE MAPS only with actors. The worst part would have to be the obligatory for the time disco scene! Or maybe the Old West-style horse and buggy chase? It's a toss-up.

Is it racist? Yeah...can't deny it. More than even the originals, CHARLIE CHAN AND THE CURSE OF THE DRAGON QUEEN plays on Oriental tropes and cliches and has Caucasian actors doing so with barely even any attempt at makeup. Peter Sellers' ill-advised final film, THE FIENDISH PLOT OF FU MANCHU, mined much the same ground with an equal absence of laughs around the same time. Oh, both have their moments but they are few and far between.

Peter Ustinov went on to become knighted in spite of CHARLIE CHAN AND THE CURSE OF THE DRAGON QUEEN. Michelle Pfeiffer continues a long and successful career in films of varying quality. Other than that...

Don't believe me? Did I mention the whole thing is on YouTube? See for yourself. Here's Part one. If you insist, you can follow it to the other nine parts!

Bedtime Banter by Basil--NSFW

Whenever I mention to folks that Martin Goodman was still reprinting by then ancient Basil Wolverton stories--along with not quite so old PUSSYCAT tales from the sixties--in his cheap, pulp-paper nudie mags at least a few years into the 1980's, they never seem to believe me! And believe me, in my circles, this kind of thing comes up more often than one might think!

I ripped out the good stuff--oddly enough, the comics to me--so I no longer know the names

of the mags but they were made up of grainy nudes, some of which looked reasonably contemporary but most of which seems to have been taken in the fifties. Not sure where this BEDTIME BANTER strip came from but the only other one I could find in this series was from 1950. Basil's POWERHOUSE PEPPER was also a regular in these reprints as well. The paper was ultra-cheap and after flipping through one, you had to wash your hands. As you can see it yellowed pretty badly also. So basically you had naked ladies, many with hairstyles your mother probably enjoyed and a few with pointless "sexy" captions. A tad more explicit than those you would find in the fifties is this innocuous pose from the reverse of the Wolverton page.

The rest of the mag consisted of panel cartoons, some but not all geared toward adult humor. I'd be willing to bet many of those were also first seen in the Eisenhower or Kennedy administrations. But this was circa 1982 and by then there was just no competing with the gynecological explicitness of HUSTLER and PENTHOUSE. The era of "Tease" was over and the genre left to aficionados who would soon enough rediscover its queen...Miss Bettie Page.

Stray Pussycats

Longtime readers may recall that my very first published article--way back in 1988--was an AMAZING HEROES article about Marvel's most obscure heroine--PUSSYCAT! Written anonymously at first bit later signed by Larry Lieber, the strip appeared in various Men's mags published by Marvel's parent company at the time and featured art by Wally Wood, Bill Ward and, eventually, Jim Mooney. It wasn't really all that explicit and the strips were filled with silly puns and leering males. In 1968, a one-shot magazine was published by Marvel featuring many of the early strips along with sone new art by Bill Everett. What many may not realize is that the strip continued for some time after that, building up enough inventory to fill at least a couple more issues that never came. Here are a few PUSSYCAT original arts odds and ends found on the Net. All are non-collected strips and all were credited to Jim Mooney (although one looks like Ward to me). Under Mooney's brush, our heroine resembles no less than Gwen Stacy with Little Annie Fanny's body! Not a bad combination.

The Batman Archives

Martin Grams pointed me toward this nifty new website for the true hardcore fan of the 1966 BATMAN TV series. All kinds of behind the scenes material you have never seen anywhere else--and not just on BATMAN but also on THE GREEN HORNET and the infamous attempt at a 1967 WONDER WOMAN pilot!

My personal favorite is an internal Standards and Practices memo (the censors) that seems to indicate that Pussycat, played on one 2 part Catwoman episode by singer Lesley Gore, was actually meant to be Poison Ivy! As a longtime proponent of the fact that the latter character--who made her own 2 part comics debut early in the Batmania era and appeared prominently in the newspaper strip--was made to be a TV villain but never was, this seems to prove me right!

Check out the site yourself but I warn you--hours and hours of geeky details!

http://www.batmantelevisionseries.com