Booksteve Reviews: Margaret Hamilton by Don Billie

 

Like most kids who grew up in the 1960s, watching 1939’s The Wizard of Oz on our small screen black and white television set was an annual ritual. I mean, sure, it was missing something when one didn’t get to watch the transition from sepia to color but hey, what did I know? I was born 20 years after its initial release and it was, like everything else I saw on TV before 1968, always black and white to me.

 

I adored the movie, naturally, and Judy, of course, and Toto! There was one part that gave me nightmares, though, and no, it wasn’t the Wicked Witch of the West. Well, it sort of was. It was Miss Gulch, pedaling away on her bike through the twister.

 

I knew she was just an actress and, like several of the other actors in the movie, simply playing a dual role, but that woman gave a very realistic portrayal of a very real world type of villain and she scared the heck out of me!

 

That woman turned out to be Margaret Hamilton, an actress I had seen in other old movies and would later come to know as Cora, the wise, softspoken Maxwell House Coffee spokesperson in TV commercials.

 

For decades that was pretty much all I knew about her, too. From time to time, I’d read something on Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, or Ray Bolger and, after her tragically early death, I came to learn a lot about poor Judy Garland. 

 

It wasn’t until I met Peg Lynch at the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio Conventions beginning in the late 1990s that I heard much more about Margaret Hamilton, then already passed. Peg had not only co-starred with her on early television but they became lifelong friends and Peg spoke of her in glowing terms every year.

 

Cut to 2024. There have been hundreds of books and documentaries about Judy and more than a few about the making of the classic movie that put her on the map, but what about Margaret? Her full story was still missing. Writer Don Billie decided that needed remedying.

 

Let me say here that Billie’s book, Margaret Hamilton: From Cleveland, Ohio to the Land of Oz,  is a perfect example of a celebrity biography without an agenda. The author starts with a striking cover, uses just the right amount of well laid-out pages, extensive and rare photos and clippings, good-sized, and easily readable fonts. He tells Margaret’s story from beginning to end (with a little necessary backtracking here and there), giving details, anecdotes, and quotes from her and others. There are ups and downs, as in everyone’s life, but no gossipy scandal-mongering here.  

 

The reader does learn lots of trivia such as the fact that she didn’t actually care for Maxwell House Coffee, nor did she get along with one of her Oz co-stars. Rumors about her life and career are cleared up and extensive acknowledgements are made as to sources for all the book’s info.

 

I also have to congratulate Don Billie on another score. Apparently, Margaret Hamilton was a self-published project. Speaking as an editor/proofreader, I spotted exactly one minor error in the very readable text. That’s in the entire book! I’ve read New York Times bestsellers with more errors than that! It’s an impressive book all around, in every possible way. 

 

It’s been a long time since Miss Gulch gave me nightmares but the fact that here I am in my sixties still remembering them should tell you what kind of impact they had on me at an impressionable age. After reading Margaret Hamilton: From Cleveland, Ohio to the Land of Oz, though, she doesn’t scare me anymore. I feel like I really know Margaret Hamilton now. I wish more celebrity bios were like this.

 

Booksteve recommends. 

https://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Hamilton-Cleveland-Ohio-Land/dp/B0DHH39DBN?ref_=ast_author_dp

Booksteve Reviews--Woman & Man+ by Craig Yoe

 

Fredric Wertham was the psychiatrist who stigmatized comics in the 1950s. He died in 1981. Had he lived to see Craig Yoe’s new Woman & Man +, he would no doubt have spent the rest of his days psychoanalyzing the book and its creator.

 

Craig, as any discriminating pop culture fan knows, is an award-winning designer, toymaker, author, editor, publisher, and, in recent years, world traveler. First Craig moved his family to Berlin, then to the Canary Islands. Then he, himself, moved to the Philippines while his family sadly stayed behind. 

 

Woman & Man + is, in its own unique way, a surreal visual commentary on all that has happened to him since he left the US. It’s also about, as one might suspect from the title, various aspects of the male/female dynamic in modern society…or maybe not. It’s hard to tell, actually. The book’s individual pages are a very personal, very trippy look into the unreconstructed hippie heart and mind of Yoe. Attempts at following any specific storyline as one goes through the pages (one doesn’t actually “read” them as there are very few actual words) netted me something different every time.

 

In the way of dreams, Snoopy, Nancy, Little Dot, Big Boy, Mickey Mouse, and many other familiar or almost familiar cartoon characters show up, usually in ways they would never be portrayed in their own worlds. 

  

Every page of the tome is a new dream, with Bob Clampett-style sight gags mixing with sexual undertones (and sometimes overtones) and flowing seamlessly on to the next. One picks up on feelings much more than facts, and those feelings, both good and bad, can be overwhelming at times. This may be ultimately an art book but art, of course, is not required to be pretty. Here the pages are endlessly clever and creative, cutesy and silly, and yet often one can feel the darkness from them, especially as the book continues on.

 

Craig’s artwork is the type of thing that would give Basil Wolverton nightmares and probably give Salvador Dali erections. Naked body parts abound, although not always attached to bodies (and not always in the correct places when they are!). So, too, are various bodily fluids, tattoos, bugs, and crazy creatures on almost every page herein. Very little of the art is content to remain within panel borders. I’m surprised it all remains on the pages, all of which, by the way, are in black and white, except for a very few with purposeful use of colors. 

 

Speaking of color, the book’s colorful and grotesquely hypnotic cover art serves perfectly as both an introduction and summation as to what lies ahead. The high-class packaging from Clover even comes with a red placeholder ribbon. 

  

If one had to characterize Craig Yoe’s stream of consciousness art style, it reminds most of the early underground pioneers from Zap Comix such as his own mentor, Rick Griffin, as well as the great Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson, and even R. Crumb himself, all mixed with more than a twinge of Dr. Seuss. A back cover quote refers to Yoe’s art as “Like Dr. Seuss on Acid” and I can get behind that statement. 

 

In the end, you don’t really know all that much more about Craig personally than you knew going in, and yet somehow, on some level you can’t quite rationalize, you now ache for him, and yet deeply appreciate his artistic soul. Woman & Man + ends on an optimistic note, as the book itself has clearly acted as a catharsis to its creator. 

 

I’ve been friends with Craig Yoe for 16 years now. He’s one of the most creative people I’ve ever known. With Woman & Man +, he’s channeled all of his long-suppressed feelings and emotions into his warped and endlessly mesmerizing art. It’s what artists do. It’s what geniuses do. 

 

Booksteve recommends. 

https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Man-Craig-Yoe/dp/1951757092

 

Sticks on HAPPY DAYS

 

Everyone remembers the "forgotten" HAPPY DAYS character, Chuck Cunningham...but what about Sticks? The great new book above, 50 YEARS OF HAPPY DAYS, fails to even mention the character or his actor. 

John-Anthony Bailey was cast as "Sticks," Fonzie's new black friend, in Season Three of the long-running 1970s sitcom. Sticks got a lot of press at the time--some seen below--and then disappeared. If IMDB is to be believed, he only appeared in two episodes total. 

Bailey turned up soon enough as a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's Saturday morning series, WONDERBUG. 

After that, he reinvented himself as Jack Baker and became a major player in more than 100 adult XXX features before his death in the early '90s. 

 

 

New Books in Booksteve's Library Today

So what would YOU do if your name was BOOKsteve and you found a $20 bill yesterday and then saw where there's a Library Used Book Sale in the next county today? Hmm? I ask you! Here, in pics from eBay as I'm too tired to photograph or scan anything, is my haul. $12 total! I donated most of the change to Kroger's Feed the Homeless box when I stopped for groceries on the way home.

Joe Palooka and Mt Rushmore

 

 

Tired of a new controversy every day here in 2024? Well, try this one from 77 years in the past. 

The Wizard of Oz with the Hudson Brothers, Margaret Hamilton 1975

I can't help but think this was fun.

Booksteve Reviews: The Only Criminal by Tim Lucas

 I’m on record as being a big fan of writer and former Video Watchdog editor/publisher Tim Lucas. Full disclosure, I have known Tim personally for more than three decades, although not well, and we don’t speak often. I recently reviewed a couple of Tim’s non-fiction collections of film criticism and had a great time going through them. I quote liked his relatively recent novel, The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes as well, and I’m a big fan of his first published novel, Throat Sprockets. In fact, my bookstore did his first autographing for that one. 

 

All of which leads me to say I’m sorry I really couldn’t get into Tim Lucas’s new book, The Only Criminal. The long text section accompanying the story details the book’s evolution and how important it was/is to him. For Tim, The Only Criminal is that book that everyone has inside of them just kicking, screaming, and clawing to get out. For most of us, it never makes it out but, in his case, here we are.

 

The premise of The Only Criminal is certainly unique. The story takes place in a world where there is only one bad guy and he’s responsible for not only all crime, but all music as well. He’s never named and only one person, The Only Witness, is known to have seen him and lived, and yet all the books, magazines, newspapers, and television shows are about him as well. Here begin my problems. How did the world get to such a point for one, but more importantly, how is it logical to anyone in that world in any way, shape, or form?

 

Okay, suspension of disbelief. It just is, somehow. Our protagonist, Dr. Paul Vaguely, is obsessed with the Only Criminal. Outside of work, his life is built around his obsession. Then one day, his work and his obsession converge as the one person to have seen the Only Criminal alive becomes Dr. Vaguely’s patient, and the world wants details. 

 

Soon, the world Vaguely knew changes in ways he can’t seem to understand, and he begins to realize that he has a higher calling…sort of, in a sense.

 

I like the premise. As untenable as it is, it’s original and intriguing. The back matter tells the reader how much effort went into the story over decades, which makes me feel bad about not being able to really connect with it in any real way. The author’s non-fiction is always learned and informative, understandable without talking down to the reader. His prose, here, feels overwritten and for the longest time we simply have the premise reiterated as we go through several sections of what feels like set-up, without even a hint of the book’s overall plot. 

 

Tim writes that the book was largely inspired by the works of the great French director Georges Franju, including Judex, starring Channing Pollock, and Shadowman, which, surprisingly, Tim saw double featured with The Stranger’s Gundownat Cincinnati’s International ’70 theater—the same time and place I saw it. Like Tim, it was only later that I discovered Judex but it became a real favorite of mine, too. 

 

The Only Criminal distills basic concepts from these influences without lifting them whole and mixes them up into a literary, literate stew of (pardon the expression) vaguely philosophical, satirical metaphorical, and metaphysical ruminations on life, love, and responsibility. While I admit there were points where it certainly did make me think, in the end I realized I wasn’t sure exactly WHAT I was expected to be thinking about. As I said above, we all have that ONE book inside of us that needs to get out. That doesn’t mean that said book will resonate with everyone who reads it.