Buster Brown and Me-1965

 

One of the very first comic strip characters with staying power was Richard Felton Outcault's Buster Brown, seen here with his dog, Tige. Buster was created way back in 1902 and while the strips faded after a couple decades or so, a 1904 alliance with the Brown Shoe Company kept the characters in the public eye. 

By the time I came along in 1959, Buster was seen in print ads like the above (with famous little person Jerry Maren as Buster), in TV commercials, and in specialty comic books like the ones below. They weren't newsstand comics at all, but rather were distributed through various shoe stores carrying Buster Brown Shoes. 

In 1965, I was in Kindergarten and toward the end of the school year, our class put on a play--my first acting experience (outside of one line in a Christmas pageant). The play was apparently a standard one in Kindergarten circles and was based on a 1929 song entitled "The Wedding of the Painted Dolls."

 One of the song lyrics was: 

"It’s a holiday, today’s the wedding of the painted doll

It’s a jolly day, the news is spreading all around the hall
Red Riding Hood and Buster Brown
The jumping jack jumped into town
From far and near they’re coming here"

Me, I was cast as Buster Brown, a character I only knew at the time from shoe commercials. My mother somehow got hold of a brown Little Lord Fauntleroy-style outfit which was close to Buster's traditional look. I felt silly in it but I refused to wear a blond wig to complete the effect!

I've often wondered what I might have looked like had I gone whole Buster and today, thanks to ubiquitous AI, we have an idea.

 

Booksteve Bookseller Stories--Weird Books and the FBI

The weirdest books I ever saw come through our stores were a series of German photography books that featured real corpses posed in pleasant little tableaus, often depicting scenes from fairy tales as I recall. Surreal, but truly shocking and disgusting. I just wrote a few descriptions from memory but deleted them to spare you the images in your head. As bad as you might think they were, they were worse. Some guy special-ordered one and bought it. That’s when we found out there was an entire series of them and he ordered the rest, one by one. Years later, someone was arrested in Cincinnati for attempting to do that exact same type of photography in the City Morgue. I’ve always wondered…

Another WTF volume was a $60 coffee table photo book we stocked at Barnes and Noble which featured nothing but crystal clear closeup color car crash photos, complete with fresh bloody corpses. Presumably, these were police photos. How anyone got permission to publish them like they were flower arrangements or something is beyond me. 

It was always company policy that we could never even order the infamous TURNER DIARIES book but we did find ourselves often ordering THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK for customers. For those unfamiliar with it, here is a description from Wikipedia: “The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and related weapons, as well as instructions for home manufacturing of illicit drugs, including LSD.” As I recall, It also has an actual recipe for marijuana meatballs. 

Anyway, company policy was that it’s not our business what anyone wants to read. Some of those ordering the book were police officers, who needed it for work. Others—like most of us booksellers—were likely curious as to what all the fuss was about. The FBI, however, were curious for completely different reasons. 

One day in the early 1990s—pre-Patriot Act—at the Florence Mall store, two Men-in-Black-style FBI men, complete with dark glasses indoors, asked to speak to the Manager. Brenda was off. I told them I was the MOD. They calmly but forcefully demanded to see all of our records with names and addresses of every customer who had ever ordered THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK. I began sweating and shaking and stammered out an explanation that I couldn’t do that as company policy was that customers had the right to order whatever they wanted as long as it was not in and of itself illegal. 

They began to guilt me, bringing up various then-recent bombings on the national scene and quoting me statistics on the loss of life. I tried to tell them that we’ve had police officers order the book to help find out about how to stop such things. They then said they wanted those police officers’ names. 

I was scared half to death. On the one hand, they were right that people who ordered bomb-making books might seriously be planning to make bombs. On the other hand I was a strong believer in the right to read anything you please, for whatever reason, and that the government didn’t have the right to demand that information.

I gave them the phone number for Waldenbooks’ Legal Department and they left, saying they would return with a court order for the info they wanted.

After they left, I was quickly on the phone with the Legal Department myself, where I was thanked for standing up to them. The Legal Department said that they were likely phishing (although that term was not yet in widespread use) and, without any specific current need for those names and addresses, would probably not have been able to get a warrant or a court order. I think I hid in the back room most of the rest of that day. We never head from them again regarding THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK although it was later added and then dropped from the Do Not Special Order list several times 

Booksteve's Bookseller Stories--Demoting Myself

BY REQUEST, HERE'S MORE FROM MY BOOKSTORE MEMOIRS.

In 1986, our District Manager gave us a form to fill out about our career aspirations. As Assistant Manager at the Crestview Hills store, I wrote that I hoped to someday get my own store. Then the District Manager’s husband sadly developed a brain tumor and she was, of course, distracted. She later told me that this was why I was passed over for promotion when a few months later my manager, Brenda, was given the much more successful nearby Florence Mall store.

As you might imagine, I was NOT happy.
 
This situation was made worse with the arrival of a new manager to take over my store. Let’s call him “Bob.” Bob was short and had a huge, almost fake-looking mustache and smelled of cigarettes all the time. In time, he would come to leave a lit cigarette burning in an ashtray just inside the door to the stockroom so he could slip back there and sneak puffs constantly.

Bob was also a massive control freak. On day one, he said he was not going to make any major changes right away. On day two, he handed me a legal pad page filled with changes he wanted implemented immediately.

The one change I remember: Company policy said that all cash had to be face up in the cash drawer. Makes sense. Bob decided that he wanted all COINS face up as well. At all times. I assumed that was a joke, but no. The other employees asked me to talk to him. I did. He said MORE changes would be coming soon.

With Brenda, I could usually talk her into seeing things my way if I felt it was important enough and pushed hard enough. With Bob, he took away more and more of my power as assistant manager and treated me just like another bookseller.

Speaking of other booksellers, most of them quit in fairly short succession, to be replaced by his hires, the most forgettable—and forgotten—employees I ever worked with.

A few of our regular customers complained to me about Bob, too. Bob was also gay and very effeminate and that (and worse, the cigarette smell) didn’t sit well with some of our older regulars who missed Brenda and the more knowledgeable booksellers she had hired.

The next time the District Manager came in, she asked how things were working out between Bob and myself and I let loose about my feelings toward him as a manager and asked her flat out why I was passed over. What had I done wrong? She told me that the form I had filled out never said I wanted to be promoted. I told her it did. She happened to have those forms in her briefcase and took a look, after which she profoundly apologized to me. Damage done, though. I was stuck. But not for long.

I didn’t drive then so I took the bus in to work every day. Sometimes on the bus I’d run into a guy named Mike whom I had known for years. Mike had gotten a job as a full-time bookseller at the Florence Mall Waldenbooks so he was working there with Brenda but not getting along with her, while I was feeling increasingly stuck and depressed with Bob. One day, Mike told me he was turning in his notice.

About a week later, I decided when I got off work one day to take the bus out and see a movie at the Florence Cinemas. The bus stopped at Florence Mall so I dropped in to see Brenda for the first time since she’d left. She was in the middle of interviews to find a replacement for Mike but she told me she wasn’t finding any good candidates. After our brief visit, I went on to the movie… but a plan formulated in my head.

The District Manager said she felt like she owed me, so she, and Brenda, agreed to go along with my idea. I demoted myself and transferred over to the Florence Mall store. There, as just a bookseller, I had less responsibility…but more money! Turned out that since the Florence Mall store was a larger and much more successful store than the dead-end mall I was coming from, the pay was higher! Considerably higher!

 

Luckily, I got along well with Paula, who was then Brenda’s AM. In fact, Paula treated me almost as a second assistant and would often ask my advice.

Within a few years, Paula was promoted to manager of her own store—ironically the Crestview Hills store I had come from! At that time, I was once again promoted to Brenda’s assistant manager. In all, I spent nearly nine pretty happy and successful years at that store, the highlight of which was meeting and working with Rene, the woman destined to be my bride.

Oh, and Bob? I worked with him once more, at a different location, just to help out one day when somebody quit. I heard later that he was fired from the company for theft. 

Booksteve's Bookseller Stories--Interviewing

A FEW YEARS BACK ON FACEBOOK, I POSTED A SERIES OF 50 ESSAYS ON MY NEARLY 30 YEARS AS A BOOKSELLER. THE INTENT WAS (AND KIND OF STILL IS) TO DO 50 MORE AND THEN PUBLISH THEM AS A BOOK. JUST NEED TO FIND THE TIME TO DO THAT. MEANWHILE, HERE'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE PIECES. 

Interviewing is a necessary evil if you’re a Retail Manager but I never cared for it.

A typical Waldenbooks interview consisted of about 20 minutes of asking the company’s pre-planned questions to your interviewee while they fed you back the answers that you wanted to hear.

“This job often consists of heavy lifting. Would you be able to lift up to 50 pounds?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Next question. What is your favorite book?”

(Remembering one they read in school) “Uh…I guess Lord of the Flies.”

“What did you like about it?”

“It had a good ending.”

“Okay, moving on. Next question.”

With these interview questions, every interview was essentially a crapshoot. One time Brenda took a young woman in the back to interview her and they were back there for two full hours! The rest of us were joking about what was taking so long. Eventually the bell on the back door rang and the young lady came walking straight out. I stopped her before she could exit and said, “Just wanted to tell you that was Brenda’s longest interview ever. Pretty sure you’ve got the job.” Turned out she did…and I later married her.

Brenda had me sit in on interviews sometimes but I never really had to solo on them until I was actually promoted to Store Manager in 1995. Unlike Brenda, I wanted to teach my own inherited Assistant, Cheryl, to do interviews (figuring that the more people trained to do my job, the easier it would be for me) so I let her solo on one early on. She and a young woman were in the back room talking and I would go in and out just checking on them. Neither one seemed particularly animated. I finally asked, “Everything going okay?”

“Oh, fine. I guess we’re about through. Did YOU have any questions for her?

Off the top of my head, I said, “What’s your favorite TV series?”

That did it! Suddenly she was animated. Spinning around in her chair, she said, “Oh, that’s an easy one! STAR TREK!” She proceeded to then do about 10 minutes of “selling” us on the brilliance of STAR TREK, ending by showing us her STAR TREK-related ankle tattoo.

She apologized for her “unprofessionalism” but I said, “Can you start Monday?” Maureen did and turned out to be one of the very best booksellers I ever worked with and a wonderful human being, besides!

Eventually, I decided to give up their stupid standardized interviews and make them more into just chats. I cheated a little when I sat down and wrote some questions along the lines of the “television” question, designed to tell me useful things about the interviewee. I’d start out with the company’s questions, by that point in a thin booklet they sent us dozens of copies of per month. I’d ask one or two and then I’d say, “This is ridiculous! Let’s just talk!” and I’d rip the booklet in half and toss it in the garbage. Then we’d chat about life for about half an hour. I’d be talking about how much I hated to clean my room as a kid, for instance, and get them telling me how in-depth they were when it came to cleaning. We’d talk about movies, TV, parents, kids, whatever animated them.

I hired one girl because she had blue hair. As we talked, she said her mother kept nagging her that no one would hire her with blue hair and she was going to make her dye it back to normal…so I hired her. She worked out great for a short while but then her mother made her do it anyway and she freaked out and quit.

Brenda’s hiring instincts had always been pretty good, in spite of her actual interviews so I learned to trust my instincts as well. One person got bad references but I hired them anyway and they lasted for years, going on to manage a bookstore elsewhere. Another person I was worried was trying to steal a dirty magazine instead asked me for an interview just before I was going to confront him. He also worked out extremely well. One young woman seemed very shy at the beginning of our interview but by the end, we both said it felt like we’d known each other all our lives. She also worked out and we remain friends to this day.

One guy, though, I had a great interview with. We had a lot in common. He collected comic books, liked the same movies and TV shows and his interview was memorable all around. He quickly became a millstone around my neck for various reasons and since firing him was tricky and involved all sorts of warnings and write-ups, I literally talked him into quitting.

One night a woman and her two kids came in. Well, hardly kids. Her son was in his early 20s and her daughter 18. The woman said, “Are you hiring?”

“Yes”

“My daughter is looking for a job.”

I looked at the girl and asked her a question. Again, her mother answered. I asked another question. Again, the mother gave the response. Next time I asked, “Can SHE talk?” This ticked off the mother but the girl laughed and I agreed to interview her. I didn’t end up hiring her…then. Normally after an interview is over, I would quickly forget the names of rejected candidates. In this case, though, six months later when I found myself hiring again, I remembered her name and my instincts told me to call her in for another interview. This time I hired her and she was great. So great that I later hired her again when I was at the airport! In fact, Brittany became my best friend, an unofficially “adopted” member of our family, and my creative muse! I even officiated at her wedding! (In a way. But that’s another story).

Jerry Lewis at 100

 

I can’t recall the very first time I ever saw Jerry Lewis. I know I knew him from somewhere by the time I started seeing his comic book in 1966, with Jerry living with his obnoxious little nephew Renfrew and their witch housekeeper. I remember seeing posters at the local theater for the re-release of CINDERFELLA in 1967. At age 8, I knew CINDERELLA, of course, and thought the movie’s title was hilarious…but I didn’t catch it at the theater. 

  

I did end up catching several of Jerry’s movies on the big screen in the late ‘60s, though. I guess my parents found his silliness safe and kid-friendly. I remember in particular seeing DON’T RAISE THE BRIDGE, LOWER THE RIVER, HOOK, LINE, & SINKER, and WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? at Covington, Kentucky’s Madison Theater. Meanwhile, I also savored Jerry’s movies on television, particularly WAY, WAY OUT one Saturday afternoon and THE BELLBOY (his masterpiece in my opinion) one Saturday evening. THE NUTTY PROFESSOR was another favorite. 

  

In 1970, Jerry ostensibly starred in a Saturday morning cartoon series called WILL THE REAL JERRY LEWIS PLEASE SIT DOWN? I say ostensibly because Jerry was actually voiced in that mercifully short-lived series by David (Squiggy) Lander. The real Jerry was all over the TV in those days, though, with multiple failed shows of his own in the ‘60s and ‘70s as well as frequent guest appearances on just about every variety series except Dean Martin’s. I actually had no idea that Dean and Jerry knew each other, let alone had been partners in the most popular comedy duo of their day. I first heard about the team when ABC ran their 1952 naval comedy SAILOR BEWARE in prime-time in 1973.

 

Apparently that opened the floodgates and Martin & Lewis movies from the 1950s began to be shown again on local stations. I even learned that Jerry’s DC comic book had also originally co-starred Dino! In 1976, on Jerry’s annual Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon, Jerry’s pal Frank Sinatra engineered a surprise live TV reunion of Martin and Lewis. It was short, awkward, and yet so cool to see them together. 

 

Jerry’s film career had not gone well in the 1970s. The decade began with the utter collapse of his attempt at making the now-notorious THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. On top of some major health issues and addictions, his movies took a back seat. He did write a marvelous book entitled THE TOTAL FILMMAKER about his unique style of directing. 

  

Jerry had an international comeback with HARDLY WORKING in 1980, although its old-fashioned and now tone-deaf goofiness was trounced by critics in the US. Subsequent starring vehicles fared no better. As hard as it was to believe, Jerry Lewis’s time as the ranking comedy icon was now in the past.

  

Two years later, then, he starred in a drama…or let’s say a very black comedy. Martin Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY cast Jerry as an obnoxious talk show host, similar to himself, opposite Robert De Niro, the reigning dramatic actor of the day. Jerry not only held his own but received raves from fans and critics alike. 

  

It wasn’t enough to revive his film career as a major star. Even two films made in France, which had always equated Lewis with the likes of Chaplin and Tati, were second-rate at best, What THE KING OF COMEDY did do, though, was to help him to plateau. No longer considered an outdated has-been, his reputation as an all-time entertainment icon was now locked in. 

 

By all accounts a mercurial man in real life, more like the somewhat monstrous Buddy Love in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR than Julius Kelp or “the Kid” he played opposite Dean Martin, Lewis alienated many who knew him over the years. I personally have known a few people who had more than just a passing relationship with Jerry. One, who took a comedy class offered by Jerry at Paramount in the early sixties, had nothing nice to say about him. Another, who spent a lot of time with him in his later years, describes him as belatedly humbled and appreciative.

  

Love him or hate him—and it’s easy to do both, often at the same time—today is the 100^th anniversary of Jerry Lewis’s birth, and there’s no question that the world would have been poorer without him. “Hey, lady!” Go watch your favorite Jerry Lewis movie today.

Bess Sellers--1990/2026

 

 Longtime readers may recall my attempt at winning a King Features contest for a new comic strip back in 1990 with BESS SELLERS. Today, I found an unfinished strip idea from back then and had ChatGPT finish it from my layouts.

Ted Knight-1954