Epic Mickey

It's all over the news today about Disney's upcoming revamp of Mickey Mouse. Frankly, I find more interesting the description of the upcoming Wii game in which the new Mr. Mouse is scheduled to make his debut. Here's an excerpt from one article (the rest of which can be found here: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/11/05/mickey-mouse-gets-his-edge-back/?icid=mainmaindl3link3http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F11%2F05%2Fmickey-mouse-gets-his-edge-back%2F ).

Epic Mickey, coming out next year for the Wii console, will feature a new Mickey based on a very old concept. In the Wii game, Mickey travels back to the black-and-white cartoon world he abandoned in the 1930s, squares off against the Walt Disney character he replaced (Oswald the Rabbit) and runs around trying to eradicate other cartoon characters with paint thinner. Then he continues his quest to other locations and scenes from Disney history.

Random Panels of Comic Book Weirdness # 67/68

A doubleheader today from a 1955 BLUE BEETLE comic. First we see our hero running across a telephone line carrying intrepid girl reporter Joan behind him (star reporter of the Daily Planet, we're told) to the point where she is literally wafting in his wake! Later on in the same story we see a similar scene in which Beetle (who here seems to have most of Superman's powers!) leaps across town carrying not only Joan but an apparently long-winded policeman in tow! Proportions and sizes of people and things in this bizarre and very, very late Golden Age superhero story seem to change from panel to panel with anatomy, expressions and facial continuity being something the artist can't seem to grasp. In fact, it becomes obvious from all of the sleek, lovely pictures he tosses in as often as possible that what this guy really wanted to draw was...CARS!! Hope he lived a long and happy life doing Chevrolet clip art.

The Monkees

A recent trip to a more or less local Half-Price Books for bookdave's birthday netted him some goodies but I, myself, could not resist this for only ten bucks. THE MONKEES is a 2005 book that fits my very favorite category of pop culture book-totally obsessive! In the vein of Mark Lewisohn's Beatles books with their day by day listings, THE MONKEES by superfan Andrew Sandoval likewise presents a calendar-wise chronological look at the so-called "Pre-Fab Four." It's all here from little Mickey Braddock's CIRCUS BOY days to Peter and Mike's coffee house engagements and Davy's stage roles through the legendary process of assembling the group and their ensuing success and eventual fall from grace.

Anyone who says that the Monkees were NOT a real rock group needs only read the details of every single recording session or live concert appearance the four ever made to know the truth. While they may not assembled in any traditional way nor had much in common musically, they became more than just a TV show cast. It's fascinating to note here how many of those behind the scenes from critics and producers to songwriters and musicians looked down on Mike, Davy, Peter and Micky as just a necessary evil in getting the product out but through it all they came together.

The heady dates of 1967 show them at their most cohesive while 1968 shows them growing apart already. 1969 and 1970 show it all dragging out far too long with contractually new music and, even after forming his own group--the First National Band--Nesmith still hanging on as a Monkee in Kool-Aid commercials for the Saturday morning reruns of the original series!

The band's various revivals are touched on in the backmatter but if you're the kind of Monkees fan that wants to know every single little detail of what your heroes did between 1965 and 1970, this is easily the BEST of all the various Monkees books published over the past couple of decades. I'm a believer indeed!

Jack Benny Meets Batman

Longtime readers will recall that I'm a big fan of comedian Jack Benny. I even contributed a couple of years back to a published anthology covering different aspects of Benny's career. My piece covered Jack's 1990's comic book appearance with Batton Lash's WOLFF AND BYRD. What i didn't know at the time was that this was NOT Jack's first major comics exposure!

The beginning of 1967 saw the United States still in the grip of the preceding Spring's Batmania! TV's high camp BATMAN series was in its second season and huge stars all wanted to appear on it! Van Johnson, Tallulah Bankhead, Art Carney, Shelley Winters. Had Liberace not appeared as an evil pianist, it might not have been a surprise to see Jack Benny on BATMAN as a crooked fiddler! Instead, though, Jack's appearance was in another venue entirely...and has been almost completely forgotten in the years since.

Once again, let's revisit the never-reprinted, TV-based BATMAN newspaper strip from the late 1960's. Beginning in early 1967, Jack Benny was the special guest star in a seven week sequence credited on Wikipedia to writer Whitney Ellsworth and artist Joe Giella (but I seem to detect a trace of some assistance at times).

The plot has the comedian in town for a fundraising violin concert for the Gotham Symphony when his rare Stradivarius is stolen by an unknown villain. In spite of Batman's protests that they don't work on commission, the Dynamic Duo agrees to take the case for $1000 dollars per hour (from cheapskate millionaire Benny!) donated to the Symphony.

The catch is that for those prices, Jack insists on tagging along to be sure they don't pad out their fee! Thus we see Jack taken blindfolded to the Batcave where the Batputer (sic) immediately and easily identifies the thief as "The Collector," a non-descript bad guy who likes the finer things in life.

Next it's off for a 15 story bat-rope climb--with Benny in the lead--to the villain's penthouse lair. BUT!...he is expecting them with poison-tipped darts which Batman diverts with his batarang...or at least he calls it a batarang. This is followed by the ClockKing-like Collector turning loose the two vicious gorillas he just happens to have in his luxurious apartment. Gorillas, of course, are NOT known for being vicious but hey, ...

Jack manages to deal with them by unintentionally finding their funny bone and getting them laughing, leaving the arch-criminal to resort to the tried and true method of a gun. Not to worry, however, as Batman immediately recognizes that the gun has been rigged by the Collector's enemies to blow up and kill him when h tries to shoot it. It takes the Caped Crusader a few minutes to convince his foe of this but after that, all's well that ends well.

With his Strad returned, Jack signs over a 7000 dollar check to Batman for the symphony. All that's left is for Robin's punchline and a brief plug for the following week's million dollar debut of...Batgirl (which I don't have...yet!)
Special Thanks to Marko in Croatia for pointing me towards these scans!

The Dead End/East Side/Bowery Kids # 4

Huntz Hall

Henry "Huntz" Hall (so named because one of his many brothers thought he "looked German" even though of Irish descent) had been a professional actor all his life, literally having made his stage debut at the age of 1 in 1920. Like Leo Gorcey, he reportedly owed his casting in the original stage production of DEAD END to actor/director Martin Gabel (husband of WHAT'S MY LINE's Arlene Francis) who was himself about to appear in the play. Gabel is said to have had Hall demonstrate a machine gun-like sound effect to playwright Sidney Kingsley. When he did it better than other auditioning actors, he got the part of the gang member "Dippy."

In the early DEAD END KIDS films, he often played tough but occasionally suggested the humor that would eventually make him stand out. After the second film, CRIME SCHOOL, Gorcey and Bobby Jordan were kept on but Hall's was one of the contracts that was dropped by Warner's. He, Billy Halop, Gabe Dell and Bernard Punsly regrouped over at Universal as THE LITTLE TOUGH GUYS.

It got confusing for awhile as Warner's would rehire Hall and the others for their remaining DEAD END KIDS films including the classic ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES even as the four continued on at Universal as the Little Tough Guys, The Dead End Kids AND the Little Tough Guys and later the Junior G-Men! The fact that Leo was still at Warner's was both good and bad for Hall who was able to begin to develop some of what would become the standard humor of his character and yet did not have what would become his perfect foil for it.

Eventually, with a few side trips into solo filmwork, Huntz Hall was reunited with Leo Gorcey the already established EAST SIDE KIDS at Monogram. His first few films were made while he still continued working with the "other" team at the other studio. Eventually, with Halop left behind and Punsly retiring from show business, the Universal films ended. From that point on the Gorcey and Hall team took off quickly. Before long, as we've stated before, the rest of the gang became superfluous.

Huntz Hall's Glimpy character affected a turned up baseball cap that would become his trademark. (It would later be adopted by indie film pioneer Ray Dennis Steckler and Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, both of whom openly "channeled" Huntz). In many of the EAST SIDE KIDS his buffoonish character was given spotlighted bits of comic business and Hall began developing a series of flutters, tics and facial peculiarities that would endear him to audiences. As the "kids" became THE BOWERY BOYS, these all continued.

In his private life, he somehow found time to serve in the military but after the war became one of the first "name" celebrities to be arrested for possession of marijuana. He also, as did Leo Gorcey, had a history of driving intoxicated.

Leo Gorcey had consolidated the power and, as part owner of the Bowery Boys franchise, stood to make good money. He knew, however, that Huntz Hall was an important part of that equation and so he, too, was given a stake in the later film series. Huntz even got top billing in the contractually obligated final films made after Gorcey suddenly retired following the mid-fifties death of his father.

After the Bowery Boys ended, Huntz Hall worked only sporadically. Even as he returned to stage work punctuated by the occasional TV guest shot, his character of Horace Debussey "Satch" Jones was becoming more popular than ever do to the gang's films being syndicated all over the country in kid-friendly time-slots. Throughout the sixties and seventies the gang's films aired regularly to high ratings on local stations throughout the country and Satch, the wide-eyed innocent, beacme a cult figure to the yonger generations! According to many sources, Hall himself was becoming richer than ever during this time as he had invested wisely in oil and gas.

At four points in the sixties, Huntz hall was teamed yet again with Leo Gorcey. The two appeared as themselves with interviewer Richard Lamparski on one of his WHATEVER HAPPENED TO... specials, they appeared as essentially Slip and Satch in the country music jamboree film, SECOND FIDDLE TO A STEEL GUITAR and as an odd amalgam of themselves and their characters in the legendarily lost (well, not entirely. I have a copy) film, THE PHYNX!
The last place the two coincided was strangely enough on the cover of the Beatles' seminal album, SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND...briefly. Leo Gorcey became the only person whose image was shown who demanded to be paid. If they paid him, everyone would want recompense. Gorcey was removed leaving Huntz Hall hobnobbing with Gandhi, Sonny Liston, Oscar Wilde and James Dean on what went on to become the most recognizable album cover of them all.

In the 1970's and 1980's, Huntz Hall appeared on talk shows every once in awhile and was lured back into films for items as diverse as the drive-in T&A flick GAS PUMP GIRLS and director Ken Russell's VALENTINO. In the latter Hall seriously took on the role of movie mogul Jesse Lasky and his performance lead to talk of a possible Oscar nomination but that never occurred, perhaps because critics trounced the rest of the film. In 1979 he even tried his hand at directing.

Outside of a memorable 1980's appearance on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, the last 20 years of Huntz Hall's life were spent relatively quietly. He was a popular guest at nostalgia gatherings where he was variously said to be nice, egotistical, mean, friendly, eccentric, paranoid, comfortable, mentally ill, stinking rich or just plain sad. Huntz Hall died in 1999.

Secret Sam

This SECRET SAM spy case was not only one of my favorite things when I was six in 1965 but I still had it up until a few years ago! Well, I didn't have the periscope. Lost it sometime around 1969. Lost most of the white bullets even before that by shooting them into bushes and out of moving cars. Oh, and the camera! That was a real camera! My very first! I was so excited! I went outside to take black and white pictures of all the neighborhood kids in the alley behind our house but when we sent them off to get developed (as you had to do in those days, kiddies) they all came back headless. AARRGH! My mother refused to buy me any more film because it was so expensive so it was years before I got a chance to take any more pictures on my own. One thing I don't recall the guy narrating this mentioning is that the red missile in the case was actually for sending secret messages. The red part slid off and you were supposed to write a secret message and wrap it around the center of the other part, then slide the red part back on. Then fire that sucker toward your friend who can then retrieve the secret message...if you don't flatten him with the missile! The whole thing was similar to a James Bond spy case that was more expensive and did NOT come with a real camera so this one was actually better! Take that, 007!

NaNoWriMo

Like I needed more to do that I don't get paid for, a friend talked me into signing up for NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH, an annual event in which one challenges one's self to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days without worrying about details such as "Is it any good?" Ray Bradbury once said something like "Writing is hard. Rewriting is much easier." Thus, the goal is to get it all out during this month and worry about correcting, editing and polishing it later (and selling it, too!). With a daily goal of just under 1700 words, I'm already a bit over 2000 and will probably get back to it here in a bit. It's a science-fiction story about a time traveler who arrives in the future thinking he's the first but quickly finding out that there have been literally thousands before him. That's all I'll say right now. Seen here is a mock cover featuring yours truly modeling as my main character (but no, it's NOT a Marty Stu novel!). There's still time to sign up yourself over at http://www.nanowrimo.org/hownanoworks