It's Me, Dilly!-1957

 

Here's some examples and publicity for a new-to-me comic strip from the 1950s by Alfred Andriola (KERRY DRAKE) and Mel Casson. Seems to be based on the premise of "What if Marilyn Monroe starred in MY FRIEND IRMA?" 

 

 

Top Cat Meets J. Evil Scientist

Here we have a rare and unsung team-up if ever there was one! TC, of course, was starring in his own cartoon series when this came out in 1964 (reruns of his sole original season from 1961-62). It would be easy to call Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist an ADDAMS FAMILY or MUNSTERS "homage" except both those shows were just starting as this particular issue came out and the comics characters were already appearing in their own title, having first appeared several seasons earlier in a Snooper and Blabber cartoon!

 

Cameos in The Phynx

Dorothy Lamour

THE PHYNX is the legendarily bad late '60s flick about a rock group formed by the government and trained as spies/secret agents (by Clint Walker and Richard Pryor!) in order to rescue scores of iconic American celebrities kidnapped by the Armenian government!

The film got a lot of pre-release publicity due mainly to the gathering of these and numerous other celebs  but ended up caught in Warner Bros-7 Arts transition to the Kinney Corporation and barely released. The teen mags had played up the film's title rock band ("The Finks" you see) as possibly the next Monkees but their music is so bad throughout the film, and they don't show much personality, so that was never a real possibility.

Number one on my "Want to See" List for a couple decades, I finally got hold of a copy via Video Search of Miami around 1994! It's more widely available now, so folks can see for themselves how bad it is. 

Best remembered, if at all, as the final screen appearance of Leo Gorcey, teamed here once again with Huntz Hall, his long-time sidekick from The Dead End Kids, The east Side Kids, and The Bowery Boys.

The Champ, The Colonel, and Tarzan

Andy Devine, Tonto, and the Lone Ranger

Georgie Jessel, Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen

Joan Blondell and Xavier Cugat

Butterfly McQueen

Cass Daley, Leo Gorcey, and Huntz Hall

 

Connecticut in the Movies by Illeana Douglas is Out!

It's not my book. I didn't write it but it almost feels like I did. Illeana Douglas did say it's okay if I feel somewhat proprietary about CONNECTICUT IN THE MOVIES, though, her new book (her second) which was published today, several years after the idea for the book came to the popular actress early on in the pandemic.

Partly raised in Connecticut, the star of Grace of My Heart, Cape Fear, and To Die For bought a house there near her mother's, a bit of a fixer-upper akin to Cary Grant's and Myrna Loy's in the classic screwball comedy Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, and started writing. Having been a film historian for TCM for tears, too, as well as the granddaughter of Hollywood legend Melvyn Douglas, she knew movies and Connecticut equally well!

Some time later, she was looking for a proofreader and her friend Kliph Nesteroff, the perceptive author of the brilliant history of comedy, THE COMEDIANS, an Internet acquaintance of mine who had once sent me a big box of nifty collectibles (Like Soupy Sales coloring books!) he didn't want to take when he moved to the US from Canada, remembered that I had sent him a number of corrections for his blog and an ARC of his book. Kliph asked if I would be interested and then connected us via email.

Illeana asked for my number but never called. After a couple of months, I presumed she had decided to pass on me. Then one day her name popped up on my Caller ID but she said she was calling someone else and had the wrong number. I explained that I had been expecting her call for a while and she remembered, apologized, and we talked for a while. Next thing you know, I was hired!

She sent me her manuscript, with strict guidelines...at first. As I got into it, and we began exchanging regular emails and phone calls, a trust developed and I ended up as her copy editor, as well as a sounding board, a researcher, and helped with the book's design. I even pieced together a 700-page advance reading copy pdf which was sent around to various people such as Leonard Maltin, Michael McKean, and Ronan Farrow for blurbs.

After nearly a year of us working together and bonding, the book was sent off to the publisher. We expected that to be it for our involvement but there was still more work she was expected to do and my sounding board gig continued on.

But today, it was all worth it. The book is here and it's gorgeous! It's larger than we expected, nearly 400 pages with a great mix of mostly color movie stills, posters, and photos taken personally by Ms. Douglas, who is just as talented a photographer as she is an actress or writer. 

Illeana is going to be doing public appearances for CONNECTICUT IN THE MOVIES for the rest of the year, including events in Chicago and Los Angeles. Also, she's already started work on her next book, and I'm scrambling to finish up several assignments and projects of my own so I'll be ready to jump in and help when she needs me. 

You gotta love the Internet!

Order your copy here!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/149307573X?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

 

Neal Adams and Ben Casey, 1962

 

 

Updates

 

Sorry posts have been so light again lately. Currently copyediting a book on The Lone Ranger, writing an article on Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural for 2024 magazine publication, finishing the manuscript formatting for the McHale’s Navy book I recently co-wrote with author Denny Reese, reading several books for my review column at Forces of Geek,. another book co-written with Linda Alexander and Martin Grams, Jr, on James Garner's Maverick, is recently out, and Connecticut in the Movies, the book I worked behind the scenes on with illeana Douglas is just two weeks away! 

As far as my health, I have an appointment with a new cardiologist coming up on Monday. In consultation with my old cardiologist, they seem to have decided I don't have the type of heart problems they thought I had at all, but instead a completely different type of issue, which would require different treatment and meds. Cross your fingers.

I've got an item coming up in a comics auction soon--more on that later, and some possible good news regarding...well, no...better not even mention that one yet or I could jinx it.

Speaking of jinxes, there's a Friday the 13th in October! Always a week or so of weird GOOD luck for me!

So keep watching this space and I'll be back soon!

Still time to pre-order Connecticut in the Movies at the discounted price here---

https://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Movies-Dream-Houses-Suburbia/dp/149307573X

And you can order Maverick here---

https://www.amazon.com/Maverick-History-Television-Linda-Alexander/dp/B0C6BLTC4K

Booksteve Reviews": Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller-The Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith

Originally posted at FORCES OF GEEK!

Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy’ (review)

By 

Steven Thompson 

Written and Illustrated by Bill Griffith
Published by Abrams Books

Let’s get one thing straight right up front here.

Bill Griffith’s brilliant new book, Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: the Man Who Created Nancy, is an absolute treat!

I’ve actually never been much of a fan of Griffith’s work so I wasn’t at all sure what to expect.

I worshipped the often surreal Nancy strip growing up, though, and realized I knew less about Bushmiller than, say, Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, or Milton Caniff.

Griffith, himself a cartoonist for half a century now, has been on record for decades as a major Nancy fan so he was the perfect person to tackle this lofty project, coming, as it does, on the relatively recent heels of the also brilliant How to Read Nancy by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden.

At first, I was expecting a prose biography but Three Rocks is, appropriately enough, a graphic novel, cleverly utilizing repurposed Bushmiller art throughout alongside new art from Griffith.

And that new art is at times amazing.

My absolute favorite is a large finely detailed image set underneath an elevated train track that shows up on page 79.

Then, just two pages later, the artist completely redraws that same shot but from a slightly different angle and just up the street. Both images have thousands of lines and both images are stunning! Both also have old cars in them and Griffith draws them with a clear and obvious affection. Bushmiller’s story itself is interesting, although not incredibly different from a standard successful cartoonist story but for the fact of his growing eccentricities. He comes across as a likable chap who, in time, grows to be a tad full of himself, while steadfastly refusing to modernize his increasingly old-fashioned bread and butter comic strip in any way.

There are a lot of quotes directly from Bushmiller’s numerous interviews through the years, as well as a lot of examples of Nancy strips used to illustrate the biographer’s various points illustrating Bushmiller’s various points. It all becomes very meta.

This is especially true as we wind down Ernie’s story and follow a fictionalized version of Griffith himself as he visits the now retired Nancy in order to hear her version of things in a bittersweet section that nonetheless takes us to a somewhat happy ending.

Bushmiller may well have been pretty much set in his ways but Griffith utilizes every trick in his playbook to share that information with us, emphasizing endlessly inventive and creative page layouts and panel usage. Just looking at the thumbnails on the side of my PDF review copy shows his non-stop use of unique tricks to convey not just the cartoonist’s story but in a way, a story of time, and its effects—both good and bad—on all of us.

Using Nancy herself here as a narrator and a character was a great idea, and the back matter tells us that all of Nancy and Sluggo’s appearances are actual Bushmiller art, often deftly mixed in with Griffy backgrounds.

If you’re one of those folks who consider Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy to be a work of twisted genius, you’ll likely find that Three Rocks by Bill Griffith is another work of twisted genius.

Booksteve highly recommends!