September 2021 No. 16 $9.

95 Good morning,
students!

LEAVE IT TO BEAVER’S
MISS LANDERS, SUE RANDALL

MARVEL SUPER HEROES

TV CARTOONS OF 1966

AN INTERVIEW
IN THE PALM OF
Who’s your YOUR HAND
friend when LOGAN’S
things get RUN’S
rough? MICHAEL
H. R. Pufnstuf YORK

Wolfman Jack • My Weekly Reader • Drive-in Theaters • Collecting Comic Art & more!
1 82658 00437 8 FEATURING Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury
Marvel Super Heroes © Marvel. H. R. Pufnstuf © Sid and Marty Kroff t Productions. All Rights Reserved.
 RetroFan:
Pop Culture
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EURY’s latest magazine is just for you!
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 57

The Crazy Cool Culture

We Grew Up With 43

CONTENTS Issue #16 September 2021

Columns and Departments

Special Features
2
3 Retrotorial
Retro Sci-Fi
Interviews with Logan’s Run’s 22
Michael York, Dean Jeffries, Too Much TV Quiz
25 and William F. Nolan Game show hosts

15 34
Will Murray’s 20th Century Retro Remembrance
My Friend, Tanya Roberts
Panopticon
by Mike Pingel
The Marvel Super Heroes
15
54
25 RetroFad
Ernest Farino’s Retro The Mullet
Fantasmagoria
Sue “Miss Landers” Randall 57
Retro Hollywood
Drive-in Theaters
37 by Jim Trautman
Scott Saavedra’s
Secret Sanctum 65
My Weekly Reader Super Collector
Collecting Comic Art
43 by David Mandel
Oddball World of Scott Shaw!
54 Wolfman Jack 79
RetroFanmail
3
69 80
Andy Mangels’ Retro ReJECTED
37 Saturday Morning RetroFan fantasy cover
H. R. Pufnstuf by Scott Saavedra
RetroFan™ #16, September 2021. Published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407
Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow,
Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount
Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $68
Economy US, $103 International, $27 Digital.   Please send subscription
orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Marvel Super Heroes ©
Marvel. H. R. Pufnstuf © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions. Michael York photo courtesy
of Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com/Wikimedia Commons. All Rights
Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators
unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2021 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows.
Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224
 by Michael Eury

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Michael Eury Most of us grew up in front of the television. Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers taught
us morals, the funny faces of Red Skelton and Flip Wilson made us laugh, and we knew we
PUBLISHER could trust journalists Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters. We marveled at the patience
John Morrow the castaways maintained for Gilligan after his repeated foul-ups of their potential
rescues, and were happy that Fred Sanford never really had “the big one.” No matter our
CONTRIBUTORS gender, race, or religion, or if we were the product of a nuclear family or a broken home,
Michael Eury or if we lived in a metropolitan high-rise or a trailer out in the sticks, TV was our common
Ernest Farino denominator.
David Mandel Author David Hofstede’s new book
Andy Mangels makes that very claim in its title: When
Brian Martin Television Brought Us Together (Black Pawn
Will Murray Press, 2020; available from online booksellers
Mike Pingel or the publisher at blackpawnpress.com). This
Scott Saavedra
isn’t a traditional dossier of time-honored TV
Scott Shaw!
Anthony Taylor
shows. Instead, through insightful essays its
Jim Trautman author explores the reasons why so many of
the programs we grew up on resonated with
DESIGNER us. Or, in the words of Family Affair’s Cissy,
Scott Saavedra actress Kathy Garver—who was interviewed
in RetroFan #10—as quoted in the book’s pro-
PROOFREADER motional materials, “David Hofstede delves
Rob Smentek into the meanings of our favorite comforting
classics and compares them with the TV
© 2020 David Hostede.

SPECIAL THANKS fare of today. You’ll be happy you stopped

John Ellis by to take a long breath of nostalgic fresh air
Hake’s Auctions and rediscover why these past shows are so
Heritage Auctions classic.”
David Hofstede Normally my Retrotorials are reserved
Sid and Marty Krofft for commentary about the issue’s features,
Productions but this time I had to take a moment to plug
Mike Lefebvre David Hofstede’s wonderful book, which I enjoyed
Mark Thomas McGee immensely and recommend to RetroFan readers. In NEXT ISSUE
Charles Robinson this era of TV programs that foment division, from
Amy Roy November 2021 No. 17 $9.95 You don’t tug on

the argumentative curmudgeons of sitcoms and Superman’s cape!

reality shows to the divisive rhetoric of demograph-

VERY SPECIAL THANKS
William F. Nolan
ic-skewed cable news, When Television Brought Us
Michael York Together is a much-needed reminder of happy days
and good times. JAWSMANIA

There’s a ton of TV history in this issue of

Dark
Shadows’
LARA PARKER
Don’t STEAL our RetroFan, by the way, including the first animated Aurora Monster
comes alive in an
exclusive interview!

Digital Editions! adventures of the mighty Marvel super-heroes, the Model Kits
C’mon citizen,
DO THE RIGHT
wonky Saturday morning kid-vid H. R. Pufnstuf, and a
THING! A Mom
& Pop publisher retrospective of actress Sue Randall, known to many
like us needs
every sale just to of you as Beaver Cleaver’s teacher Miss Landers.
Beyond TV, we also look at a host of other subjects…
survive! DON’T
DOWNLOAD
OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE!
Buy affordable, legal downloads only at and what other mag would dare co-bill Wolfman It’s a
Mad Monster
www.twomorrows.com
or through our Apple and Google Apps! Jack and My Weekly Reader? There’s something for Party and you ’re
invited!
everyone here, so get ready for another groovy grab- The Haunting • Drak Pack • George of the Jungle • James Bama • TV Dads’ Jobs & more!
& DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS
OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep
bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with! FEATURING Ernest Farino • Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Michael Eury
Mad Monster Party © 1997 Miser Bros. Press/Rick Goldschmidt Archives. Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions. Superman TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

producing great publications like this one!

2 RETROFAN September 2021

RETRO SCI-FI
RRRUUUNNNNNNIIINNNGGG Revisiting A Counterculture Icon
by Anthony Taylor
There is nothing run-of-the-mill about Logan’s Run; from its
origins through the grandiose spectacle of the 1976 feature film,
the story of the future cop running from his own mortality has
always stood apart from the crowd. Spawned in a Malibu hotel
in August of 1965 by two no-name (at the time) short fiction and
television writers, Logan has gone on to inspire a big budget
movie, a television series, several sequel books, and no less than
three comic-book adaptations, not to mention hundreds of
fanzines, amateur films, and other derivative works. Plans for
a film remake have been in place for no less than 24 years as of
2021, and two additional sequel novels are ready to publish.
My own involvement with Logan began as a 12-year-old,
when the movie came to my town. I was blown away by the art
direction, costumes, special effects, and sheer other-worldliness
of the environments I saw onscreen. It first resonated with me
on a visual level, but it also sank deeper as I began to understand
the implications of the plot and situations and relationships I was
shown. I recall seeing it five or six times in the theater—I was
enthralled.
As rumors of a remake began to take shape around 2006,
I had the idea that a book on all things Logan—The Complete
Logan’s Run was my working title—might be a decent seller if
it could be released at the same time as the new film, or even
better, in conjunction with it. I was surprised to hear that Bryan
Singer was attached to direct it, and that I had some connection
to him through a mutual friend. I contacted my friend and
asked if he could see if Bryan could put me in touch with the
correct people at Warner Bros. to whom I could pitch my idea.
with
Logan
(ABOVE) Your time is running out,
As luck would have Logan! Logan (Michael York) and Jessica
it, I then bumped (Jenny Agutter), from the 1976 sci-fi
into Bryan on the classic, Logan’s Run. © Warner Bros. Courtesy
floor of San Diego of Ernest Farino.
Comic-Con and
discussed it with
him in person briefly. At that point, it was so early in the process
that there wasn’t anyone yet assigned to merchandising a film
that was still on the drawing board, but I got some positive
feedback and felt the project was worth pursuing. I began
gathering information and scheduling interviews.
Luck continued on my side as I made a connection to Michael
York and found an email from him in my inbox soon after. He was
very happy to speak to me about the film and even invited me to
come to his home for an afternoon. We spent almost two hours
talking about Logan, his other films, art collecting, and so many
other subjects. He is a fascinating fellow and one of the smartest
people I’ve met.
On that same trip to Los Angeles, I was also able to interview
custom car king Dean Jeffries), who created the futuristic
vehicles for the Logan’s Run television series that ran on CBS
in 1977. Dean was a legend; he had created the Black Beauty
for The Green Hornet, the Monkeemobile for The Monkees, the
Moonmobile for Diamonds Are Forever, the cars for Death Race
2000, the Landmaster for Damnation Alley, and countless other
show cars and hot rods. He had a long career as a stuntman and
vehicle rigger for hundreds of films and TV series, and I was
able to hang out with him at his shop situated at the bottom of
Cahuenga Boulevard and the 101 Freeway in Hollywood and talk
about cars.
RETROFAN September 2021 3
 retro SCI-fi

As I began scheduling other interviews, Bryan Singer dropped
out of the project to direct Superman Returns, and the remake
floundered. At the same time, I had another book project take
off, The Future Was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim, which chronicled
the career of the model-maker, storyboard artist, and vehicle
designer of such classics television series as Thunderbirds, Captain
Scarlet, UFO, and the illustrations for Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of
The War of the Worlds album. I put The Complete Logan’s Run aside
to work on this and a few other projects and by the time I got
back around to it, the remake plans were up in the air yet again. I
decided to hold on to what I had and if opportunities to expand
my materials presented themselves, take advantage of them. If
the remake picked up steam again, I would be ready.
Such an opportunity came my way in 2015 when Logan
co-creator William F. Nolan was a guest at the World Horror
Convention in Atlanta. I was able to sit with him for an hour
or so and divine the origins of the novel, the journey to
making the film, and what the future holds in store for the
character. As a fan of his many other works as well, it was a
wonderful thing to hear him discuss with enthusiasm—at
the age of 88—all this wondrous things still ahead of him in
his career.
All three of these interviews are collected here because it
seems there may never come a time when a book like the one
I envisioned will be marketable to a larger audience, and I felt
that they should be seen and enjoyed. My journey with Logan
has been memorable and cathartic and I’m happy to finally be
able to share it. Whatever else the future may hold, I’m sure
of one thing: Logan will continue to run and gain new fans
worldwide.

MICHAEL
YORK
Michael York first gained note playing
Tybalt in Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and
Juliet and quickly became a bankable face
in films like Cabaret, The Three Musketeers,
and its controversial sequel, The Four
Musketeers. Since then, he has gone on to
star in hundreds of films and television
episodes, been nominated for several
Emmy Awards, and won many other
accolades, including a star on the Walk of
Fame in Hollywood. While appearing in
a play at home in Los Angeles in 1974, he
received the script for Logan’s Run, a film in
which he initially decided not to appear.
RetroFan: Logan’s Run…
Michael York: I remember it as a very
happy time.
RF: You said that you got the script and
didn’t like it very much.
MY: Well, yes, I was doing a play at the
time in downtown L.A., and I was on the
freeway when someone hit me from
behind. They hit me so hard the gas tank
in my Rolls Royce ruptured and it blew up!
So the producers gave me a young man
to drive me back and forth to the theater.
So we used to chat and I
mentioned this movie and
he said, “Could I take a look York as Logan in a publicity
at it?” I gave him the script photo from Logan’s Run.
and when he came to pick © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Ernest
me up the next day, he was Farino.
wagging a finger and said,
“You’ve gotta do this. Maybe you don’t
get it, but I do. This is tapping into a lot
of things that excite my generation. You
should reconsider it.” So I did. I think I’d
worked with [director] Michael Anderson
before in England.
RF: This was not the same Michael
Anderson who had been your theatrical
agent for a time?
MY: No, different Michael Anderson. Both
fellows of a different generation of doing
business, both gentlemen. Both incredibly
efficient.
RF: So this would have been around
late 1974 when you first got the
script?
MY: Yes. I was right in certain
aspects of my first impression,
there were things that didn’t make
sense. There things we worked
on quite a bit, and of course Peter
[Ustinov] created a much higher
role for himself than was in the script.
The character he came up with was
principally his own invention. He
was wonderful at improvising,
and you know, Michael
Anderson was smart
enough to give
him his head, so to
speak. And what he
got was fantastic.
RF: Having worked with Michael before,
was it easier to slip into or find the
character, or fit into the production?
MY: I think very much so, because we
had each other’s confidence, you know.
Because we’d been through this very
intense shoot… made with a clock ticking
away the whole time, so we liked each
other a lot. So I think when he mentioned
me to the production head at MGM, Dan
Melnick, they thought I might be a good
fit. Also, I had been around making movies
that were doing okay. What I found out
afterwards, and I don’t
know if this is true or
not, is that if I hadn’t
accepted, they were
going to shelve the
film. So I accepted,
and then we did film
tests, and I actually
tested with Lindsay
Wagner.

4 RETROFAN September 2021


Advance poster and the main poster
for the MGM-distributed Logan’s
Run. © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage.
RF: Very interesting. I knew that they had
originally talked with Lindsay Wagner
and Jon Voight for the film. Do you think
they decided that with your accent, they
needed another British actor to play
Jessica?
MY: I don’t know what logic drove that
decision. I thought that Lindsay was
fantastic, and I expected her to be in the
film. Who knows why she wasn’t, it could
be a thousand reasons—her agent may
have screwed up.
RF: Production started with location
shooting in Dallas. How long were you
there?
MY: Oh, a couple of weeks. We were
using the apparel mart, which was this
enormous space. It was the precursor of
all the shopping malls that were about to
spring up all over America. And there was
some very modern, “sci-fi” architecture
in Dallas at the time and a lot of that was
used as well.
RF: You’ve done a lot of costume-heavy
movies. Do you have any memories of the
costumes from Logan?
MY: I do. They weren’t the most
comfortable. Especially working in the
Texas heat! On the other hand, they looked
fantastic on the girls—all the sort of
diaphanous robes.
RF: I know a lot of actors talk about
finding the character in the shoes of
their costume—they find out how the
character walks and it informs their
performance. You mentioned in your
autobiography that you found an early
character in the mustache you had to
wear for the part.
MY: Oh, yes!
RF: What was Logan’s mustache?
MY: That’s an interesting question. Well, I
mean… he was pretty straightforward, to
be honest, I think, and yet… because one
wasn’t aware what one had. It was indeed
retro SCI-fi
tapping into a lot of things that affected
the boomer generation. I think I read
about it in the book… being a parentless
society, being a hedonistic society, being
given everything you could possibly want,
but of course the payoff is that it’s only for
a very limited time. And I’m sure that to
people of a parallel age it must have been
very… attractive.
You know, it was very youthful
oriented—we have this very youthful
revolution that was happening and for old
people to be reminded that there wasn’t…
it was very much like discovering Peter
Ustinov in the wild. You have to do a lot of
preparation, so that when you go in on the
day you’re ready to give everything.
And I’ve written about this as well;
there’s a moment in the play [film] where
the character will start playing you, not the
other way around. And even if you have to
change the script, it’s worth it because this
monster has found you and taken over and
he knows much better than you which way
it has to go. And we actually did have to fix
several things in the screenplay to make
the changes work logically.
RETROFAN September 2021 5
 retro SCI-fi
RF: What about the props?
MY: Those guns were constantly misfiring,
they were an absolute pain. And you know,
they looked good but they ran on gas
cylinders and they just weren’t very high-
tech, you could see all the wires running
down the sides of them. But they worked.
I’m sure that any remake would have to
be very high-tech indeed and be driven by
special effects, because that’s what people
expect. You can’t deny them.
Ah, you know, we were lucky in that
everything was kept in a balance between
the narrative, the acting, and the effects.
RF: Do you think Logan’s story still has
relevance? It’s a very different time than
in the Seventies.
MY: Yes, but there are still those people
who want to see something worthwhile,
something special, something you know,
over and above the materialistic things.
You know, that spiritual quest, which is
in a long line from grail legends to King
Arthur… all of that it’s again, tapping into.
It’s a sort of modern equivalent. And even
using the ankh, the ancient Egyptian thing,
sort of plugged that in as well as a sort of
visual shorthand.
RF: After an early screening, there were
around 23 minutes cut from the film
before it was released. Have you ever
seen the original edit?
MY: No, but I’ve been approached about
it at these conventions. They’ve asked my
why something from the trailer wasn’t in
the film, and I say I have no idea. That’s
the whole point of a test screening; to see
what works and what doesn’t. Maybe,
who knows, it will reappear as a director’s
cut again, I don’t know.
RF: You and the rest of the cast gave
performances that really transcended
the material, in my opinion. What
remembrances do you have of working
with Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, and
Peter Ustinov?
MY: We were very much a team. I
remember that everyone was more or less
on the same page. I do think there’s a sort
of discipline with British actors; you tend
more to just get on with it. If you have
problems, you don’t agonize about them in
public, you tend to take that off the set.
So you had three of us, me and
Jenny and Peter and you know, Michael
6 RETROFAN September 2021
(ABOVE) York (Logan),
Farrah Fawcett-Majors
as Holly, and Agutter
(Jessica), in a scene from
the film. Courtesy of Ernest
Farino.
(RIGHT) Her bestselling
swimsuit pin-up wasn’t
the only Farrah poster
hanging on walls in the
Seventies. Courtesy of
Heritage. © Warner Bros.
Anderson, too, there were
so many of us. So we weren’t
bedeviled with “Diva-dom.”
And I think that’s again, a
very British thing. That they’re
going to take it very seriously,
and behave seriously, and
maybe they’re not going to
show you who they are but
what they can do. You have
to take the material seriously
and really give it your best shot
and 100 percent concentration,
and if it works—fabulous. If
it doesn’t, at least you tried and you can and story? How do you respond when
walk away from it honorably. And also, take two is nothing at all like take one?
in the knowledge that what works in the MY: I loved it! Because you knew it wasn’t
moment many not survive the ages. So I to throw you, it was all in a creative
think that’s the nature of movies. interest because he’d found his muse and
he was just going with it. And it was very
RF: You said Peter Ustinov improvised enjoyable, too, being around him.
many of his lines—how was that to deal Peter was the most delightful person,
with as someone who is a little more he was a very civilized man. He had a
structured in your approach to the script wealth of the most incredible stories to

(TOP) Shiny costumes (except for the dark, utili-
tarian garb of the Sandmen, like Logan) dazzled
Logan’s Run’s audience. Shown here is concept art
by costume designer Bill Thomas for the film’s
character Doc (played by Michael Anderson, Jr.),
with attached fabric samples. © Warner Bros. Courtesy
of Heritage. (ABOVE) Logan and Jessica discover a
brave new world as Logan’s Run builds to its climax.
© Warner Bros. Courtesy of Ernest Farino.
enjoy. But equally, he took
it seriously with the work.
To come across T. S. Eliot’s
Cats before Andrew Lloyd
Webber… if you have that
sort of literary repertoire
and can bring it to bear…. He
was amazing.
RF: Tell me about the
fight between Logan and
Francis. It looked like you
and Richard Jordan were
just wailing on each other. I
know there were stuntmen,
but there are shots where
it’s clearly the two of you.
How long did it take to
shoot?
MY: Oh, yes. These things
always take longer than
you think they will. We had
several close calls, but it’s
par for the course, you know.
It was quite strenuous.
RF: Any idea that Farrah
Fawcett was going to
become the biggest thing in
the world two years later?
MY: Well, you know she was
my discovery. She owes me
everything! I saw her playing
tennis, and found out she
retro SCI-fi
was an actress and recommended her to
the producer.
RF: Do you like to watch your work or do
you avoid it?
MY: If the director wants you to watch
dailies, I’ve always gone along with it.
You have to be objective. It’s very hard,
it’s cruel, sometimes. But I think it’s
important to make sure the point is
coming over.
I’ve mentioned working with Bob
Fosse on Cabaret; that was the most
creative part of the day. We’d watch them
and discuss them creatively and he’d say
that’s not going to work and your version
worked better, we’ll use that. But I know
[Three Musketeers director] Dick Lester
wouldn’t go to the dailies, because he was
constantly discouraged and couldn’t see
what had been achieved or not achieved.
No, I think there’s always a time for that
[feedback].
RF: During production, did you begin to
get a sense of how the film was going?
Whether it would be successful or
possibly a train wreck?
MY: You know, I had a weird experience
when I first came to Hollywood. I was
actually in New York, and Bob Evans asked
me to do Love Story. And again, I thought
that wasn’t for me and it ended up
becoming a gigantic phenomenon and it
sort of gave me pause, and I thought, well,
you can’t stand too far outside of this, and
I think it made me much more proactive,
and I’ve done many more things. I know
there’s a whole school of actors that are
much more careful about what they
commit themselves to, but it’s part of
my Aries nature to wade in and I’ve been
proved right on so many occasions. The
things that you thought were surefire were
the things that went belly-up, and the
unlikely things—this modest little comedy
called Austin Powers explodes—so after all
these years now, I go on instinct. That’s all
you have to go on.
RF: Had you read the book when you did
the film?
MY: No, but I’ve dipped into it since. It’s
substantially different. And a lot of people
were upset that we got the age wrong!
[Last day occurs at age 21 in the novel, 30
in the film.] The purists.
RETROFAN September 2021 7
 retro SCI-fi
RF: The book is much more violent, much
more sexual, and much more drug-
oriented than the film. If the script had
been closer to the book, would that have
given you pause about playing Logan?
MY: I think you want to be responsible,
but I think it’s interesting to recognize
something that reflects the times in a very
interesting way. I think we’ve always been
interested in the futuristic—where are
we heading, and so on. And it was such an
interesting adventure once it got going.
But I do have a problem with violence.
It upsets me that you make a film that
maybe has one scene in which a weapon is
handled, and when the film is promoted
it’s that one scene that is featured. That’s
such a distortion. I can’t bear Reservoir
Dogs, for one thing.
RF: If there was a Logan’s Run remake—
Bryan Singer was attached do one not
long ago—and the character of Ballard
[an older runner] from the novel is part
of the story, would you be interested in
playing him?
MY: I wouldn’t want it to be too
“gimmicky.” It’s just
been done
somewhere, hasn’t it?
Singer did it in Superman
Returns, I think.
RF: When you recorded the commentary
for the laser disc release, which has since
been ported to the DVDs and Blu-rays,
did anything surprise watching the movie
after so long?
MY: You know what happened? They
released Michael Anderson’s film, Conduct
Unbecoming, and they asked me to come
in and do a commentary for Logan and I
said I’d be delighted to. So you come in,
they run the movie, and you have an open
8 RETROFAN September 2021
mic, so I started to speak and then I sort got to me and I can say to them it’s Logan’s
of trailed off—I was enjoying watching Run. And they say, “Yes!” So I always say,
it! And I had to apologize at the end and well, what was it about the movie the
asked them to let me go ’round again. turned you on, and I haven’t really gotten
a satisfactory answer, so I’ve been doing a
RF: The film was quite prescient in some lot of my own interpolation.
regards—the scene where Logan goes on He really touched people, Logan.
the Circuit to find a lover for the night…
MY: I was going online to get sex! We
haven’t quite perfected the bit where a
human gets transported to your location
yet, but it’s just a matter of time. They had
to run up that costume for that scene, they
hadn’t got anything for Logan to wear at
home. So that was made up in 20 minutes.
I still have it!
RF: What has stayed with you about
the movie or the part that may be a
touchstone for you?
MY: Well, what’s stayed with me and still
happens is that I meet so many people
in the street that almost paraphrase the
same story; that there was one movie of
yours when I was growing up that really
(ABOVE) Richard Jordan played Francis
7, Logan's fellow Sandman. (LEFT) This
sweatshirt, bearing an early version of the
Logan’s Run logo, was presented to Michael
York during production and worn by the
star. Courtesy of Heritage. (BELOW) Michael
York and writer Anthony Taylor in York’s
home in California. Courtesy of Anthony Taylor.
 retro SCI-fi

DEAN
JEFFRIES
Dean Jeffries (1933–2013) began
customizing motorcycles and cars after
learning to pinstripe while stationed in
Germany during the Korean War. Making
his way back to California, some of his
early customers included James Dean,
A. J. Foyt, and Carroll Shelby, with whom
he worked on the legendary Shelby Cobra.
In the Sixties he began creating custom
vehicles for films and television shows,
and in 1977 he built three vehicles for the
Logan’s Run television series, which ran on
CBS Television.
Car customizer Dean Jeffries looks over photos of the Logan’s Run TV series cars in
RetroFan: How did you get involved with his Hollywood workshop. Photo by Anthony Taylor.
building the cars for the Logan’s Run TV
series?
Dean Jeffries: To tell you the truth, I don’t What were they based on—what sort of modifications were made to the engine
remember! [laughs] It was a couple of years chassis did you use? and transmission.]
ago. It was probably sometime in 1977, DJ: I couldn’t tell you. It was all metal
and usually they don’t give you any time construction, I didn’t use Bondo or any RF: After you handed the cars over to the
to do this stuff. You don’t know until the of that kind of stuff. I didn’t care for studio, who was responsible for servicing
last minute. So we worked night and day it, still don’t. These days I don’t have a them?
getting them done for the shooting. choice, sometimes. [According to the DJ: I did it. I also did all the stunts
April 1978 issue of Custom Vans magazine, coordinating and all the driving and stuff
RF: You built Logan’s hover car and two of Logan’s Solar Car was built on the chassis with the cars for the chasing scenes or
the Sandman ground cars for the show. of a 1972 Chevrolet van. Extensive anything like that. All they [the actors]
did was pull up or pull out of the shot, but
whenever they did any action scenes it
was me driving. That’s the way most of

Interior pages from Custom Van magazine’s April 1978 issue’s article on the Solar
Car from the Logan’s Run television series. Courtesy of Anthony Taylor.

RETROFAN September 2021 9

 retro SCI-fi
the guys of that era did it, you know. They
didn’t want to risk the actors getting hurt,
and they could always get another stunt
guy if they had any problems. I’ve worked
on a lot of films doing stuff like that, and
rigging vehicles for stunt work.
RF: Driving around in those plexiglass-
domed cars must have been hot in the
California summer. Did they have air
conditioning?
DJ: There ain’t any air conditioning in any
of my vehicles. The first thing I do when
building a car is tear the air conditioning
out, because that system can screw
up the car more than anything in the
world. ’Cause they sit there with the air
conditioning on [while waiting for a shot to
get set up] and they blow up the motors!
Especially if you have an actor or actress
in there, you know they’re going to
have the air conditioning on.
RF: Right in the middle of a heat
wave!
DJ: Yep. We filmed out at the 20th
Century [Fox] ranch a lot, and also
the Disney lot out in the Valley. We
did a lot of stuff out there. I still have
my pass over here.
[Dean got up and pulled a small sign
with a Logan’s Run logo off the wall to
show us.]
RF: Was that for the vehicles?
10 RETROFAN September 2021
DJ: No that was the pass for my car to get
onto the shooting locations. You had to
have this or you couldn’t get into the area.
To be honest, I’m a little surprised it’s
still here and never got thrown out. Most
people don’t keep stuff like that.
RF: Do you recall how much the studio
paid you to create the vehicles?
DJ: Not off the top of my head, no. I’d have
to go through the paperwork. But I do
have all of it, I have records for everything.
RF: How much time did you spend
working on the set?
DJ: Well, the studio pays you by the
day for eight hours. Over and above
you get additional pay for overtime.
Then for anything like stunts you get an
adjustment, and that’s added on to your
(LEFT) A photo of Dean Jeffries and the
Sandman Ground Car from the Logan’s
Run TV series, on the wall of Jeffries
Automotive Shop. (BELOW) Dean
Jeffries’ on-set parking pass for the
Logan’s Run TV series. Photos by Anthony
Taylor.
check. I rigged and jumped a five-ton truck
on another film and they paid me $20,000
to do that.
RF: A lot of risk involved in that.
DJ: Well, the risk is that if you don’t make
that, it’s the end of you! [laughs] I have a
bad back—I busted it twice on jobs. I used
to come back to my shop and hang upside
down two times a day. Did that for two or
three years, I think.
RF: You rented the Logan cars out to other
productions after the show…
DJ: Yeah, they were in commercials
and other movies and stuff. I changed
something here and there, repainted
them, made a new front end for one them,
and they kept working for a few years.
That’s how it works; I got to keep them and
do whatever I could with them.
WILLIAM F.
NOLAN
William F. Nolan became enchanted by
science fiction at an early age. In the Fifties
he began publishing SF fanzines, including
The Ray Bradbury Review. As part of the
mid-century California science-fiction
scene, he became friends with many of
his favorite writers and began to have
his own stories published. In addition to
his many stories and novels, Nolan has
edited collections and anthologies, and
has won two Edgar Allan Poe Awards
from the Mystery Writers of America, as
well as two Bram Stoker Awards from the
Horror Writer’s Association, as well as
many other accolades. In 1963, he began to
imagine a world in which no one wanted
for anything, but life was limited to a
certain age and if you didn’t comply with

mandatory termination, agents were sent
to hunt you and do the job…
RetroFan: What inspired the situations,
characters, and the plot in the novel
Logan’s Run?
William F. Nolan: The origin of Logan
was a lecture I was supposed to give at
UCLA for Charles Beaumont’s Science
Fiction class, which was one of the earliest
science-fiction courses in the country.
He wanted me to come over as a guest
lecturer and he said, “I need one thing
from you, I need you to come in with a
definition for the difference between
social fiction and science fiction.” I said,
“Let me think about it… I don’t quite know
how to answer right this moment.”
I was on the freeway heading down to
the class a few days later, and I still didn’t
have it and I thought of the old cliche,
“Life begins at 40.” And I thought, what if
death begins at 40? I thought, what if there
was a society in the future that demands
extinction at the age of 40?
So I went to the class and I told them,
“Social fiction is when a man turns 40
and runs off with a Vegas showgirl and
divorces his wife. Death at 40 in a future
society in which you’re mandated to die
at that age in order to control population
[is science fiction].” So I made a little note
to myself and said, what happens if these
people don’t want to die at 40? Well, I said
to myself, then they send a killer man
after them. And I wrote “Killer Man, Killer
Man, leave my door. Don’t come back
here anymore.” I did a little sketch of the
Killer Man and took it to George Clayton
Johnson. George was doing a lot of TV
work back then—Twilight Zone, he’d done
a Star Trek, and he was really into scripting.
retro SCI-fi
He read my little paragraph and said, “This
would make a wonderful script, we should
do it as a screenplay.” And I thought, that
was only one aspect of it. We should do
it as a novel first, and then a screenplay.
He said, “Have you ever written a novel?”
I said, “No. Have you?” He said, “No!” I
said, “Well, we’re gonna write one and it’s
going to be called Morgan’s Run,” because
Morgan was what we decided to call the
character.
Just about the time we were starting
to write the thing in Malibu, we heard
about a film in England called Morgan, so
we couldn’t call him that. My old phone
number in Kansas City was in the LOgan
exchange, so I said to George, “Why don’t
we call him Logan?” And he liked that.
RF: So you wrote the novel and then went
directly on to the screenplay?
WFN: Yes. The only people who’ve ever
really seen the screenplay other than
MGM, who purchased it along with the First edition cover of the sci-fi novel
screen rights to do the film, was one of the Logan’s Run (The Dial Press, 1967), by
writers for Cinefantastique magazine, who William F. Nolan and George Clayton
said it was “far superior to the one David Johnson. Courtesy of Heritage.
Goodman wrote for the film. The Nolan/
Johnson script captures the feeling of the
book, and there’s logic all the way through; future, so logic is absolutely essential.
they logically explain everything.” There’s And the film, as nice as it was with Jenny
no logic whatsoever in the MGM film. Agutter and Michael York doing superb
Of course, I went to the producer, Saul jobs in the central roles, had no logic, in
David, when I read the screenplay that he my estimation.
was going to use ,and I said, “Saul, there’s
no logic to this, no logic. Why would you RF: Before Saul David was attached,
have an ice cave at the top of a domed George Pal was developing the film with
city with the sun burning down on it, a script by Richard Maibaum, right?
and why would you have a carousel that WFN: Yes, that’s right. It was funny, in fact
people keep going back to when nobody Maibaum invited us to lunch at the Brown
ever renews?” And he said, “Bill, you gotta Derby in Beverly Hills one day and George
remember one thing; you don’t need logic and I showed up and he said, “Well, I’m
in science fiction.” going to do the screenplay on your book,”
What a statement. Of and we said, “Oh, really!” He’d done a lot
course you need more logic of James Bond scripts and we thought,
there than in any other this guy’s good. And then he said, “Yeah,
form, because you have and the giant surfer thing is gonna be
to explain marvels of the fine.” And I said, “The what?” And he said,
“Well, on the island of Hawaii, there’s
a giant surfboard as tall as the Empire
Author William F. Nolan State Building.” And he had these flying
speaks at the World surfboards coming around it and I said,
Horror Convention in “Wait a minute, wait a minute; what book
Atlanta, Georgia, in are we talking about? There’s no flying
2015, where he received surfboards. I mean, there’s devil sticks. Are
a Grandmaster Award. you talking about the ones the gypsies had
Courtesy of Anthony Taylor. in the novel?” And he said, “Well, we don’t
call them devil sticks, we call them flying
RETROFAN September 2021 11
 retro SCI-fi

boards, and there’s this great god, and…”
George and I looked at each other and
tried to make sense of it, and in the end
we just said, “Good luck” and got
up and walked out and we shook our
heads and said, “This is NOT our book.”
Luckily… this is a terrible thing to say,
but luckily, Maibaum died before he
could destroy the book, so the book was
destroyed by [Logan’s Run screenwriter]
David Zelag Goodman instead.
RF: George Pal was known for producing
very family-friendly movies—The Time
Machine, War of the Worlds, and the
like. Your book was pretty racy stuff;
it was overtly sexual, casual about
drug culture… very adult. Do you think
George would have been okay with that,
or would he have downplayed those
elements of the story for a pass by the
MPAA?
WFN: I never met George Pal personally,
but I talked to him on the phone and he
said, “We have to work together.” This was
after Logan’s Run had fallen apart for him,
and he died shortly after we spoke.
So I never met the man, and I never
talked with him about what he would do
with Logan’s Run. I only know one thing—
he wanted to film it in Brasilia. Brasilia
is an abandoned town somewhere in
Europe, I think [Author’s note: Though
I’m sure he didn’t mean the capitol city
of Brazil, I could find no other mention
of this place other than in relation
to Newcastle, England. After WWII,
reconstruction of the city was to have
utilized modernist architecture and was
described as the “Brasilia of the North.”
The planned layout was abandoned
and completed with more traditional
structures after 1961. When fact-checking
this article with Nolan, he recalled that it
was indeed Newcastle where Pal wanted
to shoot. See illustration.], and it’s all
open. He was going to take his cameras
and crew and go film Logan’s Run there.
Beyond that, I know nothing about what
he would do in terms of censorship or
cutting scenes out or any of that. He
might well have gone along with it or he
might not; we’ll never know.
RF: So we know what you think of the
Saul David movie and what you think
they got wrong. What do you think they
got right?
WFN: What they got right was some
great sets, Sandman headquarters was
wonderful. The interior was black marble,
and I loved it. The vines covering the
Lincoln statue in Washington, D.C. was
beautiful, and heck, they won an Oscar™
for special effects! The surgery table
and the entryway to the New You was
beautifully done. I would say the music by
Jerry Goldsmith was wonderful. The acting
by Jenny Agutter and Michael York—they
were both British born and trained actors
who had done Shakespeare on the stage.
They were superb. So all that I liked a lot.
What I didn’t like was the whole
ending, with Peter Ustinov. [Ustinov] was
a good actor, but
he didn’t belong
in this movie. Had
nothing to do with
my book. He chatted
on and on about
cats and the whole
movie just ground
to a stop right
there. There wasn’t
a “run,” and there
was supposed to be
a “RUN.” George and I made it a RUN, we
really ran with the characters and created
the whole story in three weeks and the
whole point was to run with Logan. When
Ustinov comes on, it’s like hitting a brick
wall and everything stops. That bothered
me a whole lot. I did not like the last half of
it, but I did like the first half. And then at
the very end, where the little girl came out
and they touched the face of the old man
and the music rolls, that’s a beautiful last
scene, but what leads up to that—I have a
lot of problems with.
RF: How would you shape the story
differently if you were writing it today?
Our culture is very different now.
WFN: Well, Warner Bros. and Silver
Pictures have been struggling to do a
remake for more than 18 years (24 years in
2021), and they can’t get it right. They’ve
had 15 different writers try different
drafts. George and I came in and they
said they couldn’t hire us because we’re
too close to the material. Well, of course
we are—we wrote it! Hollywood wants
a fresh viewpoint. You don’t need a fresh
viewpoint; all you need to do is film the
novel the way it was written. And why did
they go to 30 for the death age [in the Saul
David film]? To a boy who’s 15, 30 is old

(LEFT) An artist’s concept for the rebuilding of Newcastle,

England, after World War II. City planners envisioned a futur-
istic center and nicknamed it “Brasilia of the North.” Producer
George Pal envisioned filming Logan’s Run here amid the areas
that were finished before the plan was abandoned. Courtesy of
Anthony Taylor. (RIGHT) The iconic cityscape from Logan's Run.
© Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage.

12 RETROFAN September 2021


age, I think. Twenty-one is scary to them
because they come up to 21st year and
they’re dead before they’re even out of
their teens, barely. I said 30 is way too long,
it deadens the whole impact of the thing.
They said, “We can’t cast a movie with
under-21 people, we don’t have those kind
of actors, we can’t do that.” I know Jenny
Agutter was 23 when she did the film, and
Michael York was 34. So I understood that,
I said, “Yeah, I guess.”
I think we could do it today, but at the
time, in 1975 or ’74, they just didn’t have
those kind of people around and in a way
I’m glad, because Jenny and Michael were
wonderful and I would hate to think of it
without them. They really transcended the
movie.
I’d like to say something about Logan’s
Run that you haven’t asked me.
RF: Absolutely.
WFN: The film was written on a level of
trying to critique the society that was
around it. George and I were in Malibu
writing Logan when the Watts riots
took place, the young people burning
and assaulting the city. We would have
written it pretty much the same way
without that, but that certainly did make
us believe that we were on the right track.
With something like that happening the
same week we were writing it, we were
very much ahead of reality. I thought, this
is a good sign; people are going to be able
to accept Logan’s Run on a more realistic
basis because of the Watts riots, and that
was one thing that led into the making of
the film.
RF: You and George decided early that
this book needed a more mainstream
release than a sci-fi imprint could give it.
It must have made selling the book more
difficult to that kind of publisher. What
was the thinking behind that?
WFN: We both had two goals in mind
at the time, and they both seemed very
unrealistic because we were not big-name
writers then. I’ve become a big-name
writer since because I’ve been around so
long and done so much, and George too
because of his work on Twilight Zone and
such, but at the time we were struggling
writers and I said, “You know, I’m going
to make a crazy demand on the agent
who sells this, and and the studio that
buys Logan. I want $100,000 guaranteed
before we sell this
movie.” That’s over
a million dollars in
today’s money, so
we were basically
asking for a million
dollars up front.
And I thought
we’d probably
never get it, but
you never know
until you try. The
second thing we
decided to do was
to find an agent
who would ask for
$100,000 up front,
or we wouldn’t
go with that
agency. And of course, we didn’t have an
agent at that time. So we interviewed
three different agents, and gave them
the rough draft manuscript, which we
hadn’t sold to a publisher yet, and said,
“If you can guarantee us that you can
get $100,000 from a studio plus selling
the novel back in New York, then we’ll
go with your agency.” Two of the three
said it was just impossible to demand
anything like that from a studio, it wasn’t
realistic and would never happen. Okay,
fine. The third agency, the Hamilburg
Agency, said, “Yeah, we can get you the
hundred thousand, we think. We read
it, its unique, and as far as a mainstream
publisher, we’ll submit to places like
Dial Press, and Knopf, and MacMillan.”
So we signed with them. And by God,
they did sell it to Dial Press, which is
interesting because E. L. Doctorow, who
wrote Ragtime, was the editor there and
he bought Logan’s Run. E. L. Doctorow
bought Logan’s Run!
RF: Amazing! I had no idea.
WFN: Yep, and then we had another
producer named Tom Stern who offered
to buy the film. And he said, “Look, nobody
can give a $100,000 for an unknown
novel, I’m giving you top money here,
$40,000.” So we said, no. And then MGM
comes into the picture and George Pal
wants it, so he talked MGM into making
us an offer—$60,00! George and I, who
had no money at the time, said, “No. The
price is $100,000. Not $60,000.” They were
incredulous—we wanted 40,000 more?
We said, “Yes! If you want the film rights
retro SCI-fi
The Sandman headquarters explodes
while Jessica and Logan run. © Warner
Bros. Courtesy of Heritage.
to this book, the price is ONE HUNDRED
THOUSAND DOLLARS.”
Now meanwhile, we’re sweating blood
because we had a $60,000 offer which was
great, and we had turned it down. So MGM
said, “Well, let us think about it over the
weekend and we’ll either cancel our offer
altogether or come up with a hundred.”
So we were sweating it out. What if
they cancelled the whole thing? I told
George we’d be right back to zero and he
said, “Hang in there, it’s going to happen,
it’s going to happen.” And by God, on
Monday they said, “All right. You’ve got
your hundred. We’ll pay $100,000 for it.
And they did.”
So I can’t really complain about that;
at the time it was really big money. And I
think Hollywood had never paid that much
for an original book at that time.
So that’s an interesting thing about
Logan’s Run. It became a classic when
George and I were just trying to sell a
book.
So when the book came out from Dial
Press, we got major reviews across the
country and they were 99% positive—
people loved the book. I told George
that we’d done it—we’d broken through
that ceiling. Because we had submitted
it to three publishers at once, which
was unheard of in those days. You never
submitted anything to more than one
publisher at once. You’d wait eight or nine
RETROFAN September 2021 13
 retro SCI-fi
months to get an answer. We weren’t
going to wait that long, and Dial Press
was the one that came through with the
offer. So in almost every way you can look
at it, Logan’s Run was unique in one way or
another. It just wasn’t the average science
fiction idea or the average science fiction
novel.
RF: I think it’s more akin to something like
Fahrenheit 451. It’s had that sort of impact
on society.
WFN: Well, there’s been hundreds
and hundreds of science-fiction books
published since Logan, and yet it remains
one of the top ten classics of science
fiction, right up there with 1984 and
Brave New World. That’s something that
George and I never expected, and we’re
delighted it happened, of course. I went
on to write Logan’s World and Logan’s Search
on my own, and I’ve also done another
book called Logan’s Journey with a writer
named Paul McComas that’s out with our
agent right now [Author’s note: The book
remains unpublished as of 2021, as does
Logan Falls, co-written with Jason Brock],
so the Logan saga is still going on and
I’m still controlling it. George has pretty
well given me the reins to this thing and
said to take it anywhere I want to go, but
George is still my close friend, I still split
everything that comes from Logan’s Run,
the novel, with him [Author’s note: George
14 RETROFAN September 2021
First collected edition of Nolan and
Johnson’s Logan: A Trilogy (Maclay &
Associates, 1986). Courtesy of Heritage.
Clayton Johnson passed away on
Dec. 25th, 2015, several months after
this interview]. We’ve got editions
around the world, and audio versions,
we’ve had three different comic-
book versions of it, the latest from
Blue Water Productions. Marvel did
an adaptation of the film, and then
Malibu Graphics did a version of the
first two [books]. So yeah, it’s become
a classic and an icon. People know the
name Logan’s Run that have never seen
the movie or read the book, but they’ve
heard of that title. So we’ve been very
lucky.
RF: What do you think is the future for
Logan and the Logan franchise?
WFN: Well, it’s difficult to hang on to it in
one way, because the bigger it gets… it’s
like a giant fish. Trying to beach a giant
fish, and the bigger the fish is, the harder it
is to bring it up on the beach. There’s going
to come a day when the book rights will be
out of our hands and there’s going to be all
kinds of other writers being brought in to
write other versions of it and that’s going
to dilute the thing. So far, we’ve been able
to hold onto the book rights exclusively
so that nobody can write a book on Logan
without our permission. But that may fade
away, so I don’t know what the future of
that is going to hold.
RF: I’d be interested in seeing an
anthology based in Logan’s World, with
other writers contributing stories.
WFN: Possibly, that’s one idea. A lot
of fans did write their own fan stories
and published them in mimeographed
fanzines. I remember I went to San Diego
for WesterCon as the guest of the Logan’s
Run Organization of Fans, run by Faye
Metz, and posed with them; they had
costumes, and guns, and everything. So
there were fan clubs, there were artifacts,
there were crossword puzzles, there
were cartoons, an enormous amount of
merchandise that became available at
one time or another. And if the movie
they’re trying to make at Warner Bros.
goes through, it could all come back and
in a much bigger way. If we can hang on to
merchandising [rights], we could make a
lot of money! We’ve got lawyers working
on getting the television rights back, and
other things in the works.
So the answer is that I really don’t know
what the future holds… only that we want
to keep Logan running.
The author acknowledges the assistance of
R. Yancey in the preparation of several
interview questions.
ANTHONY TAYLOR
is the licensing and
brand manager for
the Bram Stoker
Estate, and a writer.
He is the author of
Arctic Adventure!,
an Official Thunderbirds™ novel based
on the iconic British television series by
Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. He has also
written episodes of the animated Paddle
Pop Adventures series from Monk Studios.
In addition, Anthony wrote Voyage to
the Bottom of the Sea: The Complete
Series – Volume 2, which includes reprints
of the classic Gold Key comic-book stories,
and The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike
Trim, chronicling artist Mike Trim’s career
designing models and special effects for
Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO,
and illustrating the cover for Jeff Wayne’s
Musical Version of The War of The Worlds
album. He was a monthly columnist for
Toy Shop Magazine for 12 years, covering
garage kits and genre collectibles. Anthony
was a regular contributor and editor for
the British magazine Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Models International, and contributed a
chapter on the Flying Sub miniatures from
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea for the
book From Sketch to Screen. His articles
have appeared in SFX, Video WatcHDog,
Fangoria, Screem, HorrorHound,
Famous Monsters of Filmland, FilmFax,
Amazing Figure Modeler, Effects
Special, Modeler’s Resource, and many
other magazines. Anthony also designed
and co-edited CultTVMan’s Ultimate
Modeling Guide to the Jupiter II as well
as CultTVMan’s Ultimate Modeling
Guide to Classic Sci-Fi Movies. He is the
force behind ATLRetro.com’s film and disc
review column “Apes on Film.” His website
is Taylorcosm.com.
 WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

Marvel
Super
Heroes by Will Murray

In the 21st Century, the Marvel Universe is a cultural juggernaut. animation work; programs and commercials as well. And the
But it wasn’t always so. comic books intrigued me. I’m not a comic book reader per se, but
Back in the Sixties, Marvel Comics was an upstart publisher the artwork to me was absolutely alluring. We decided to see if
staffed by a tiny team of artists and writers whose titles were we could animate a book. Now, if you recall, at that particular
printed so poorly that news dealers often period, the business was in a slump, and the
stuck them behind the better-looking DCs Goodmans, papa and son [Marvel publisher
and Dells. Yet by the decade’s end, Marvel Martin Goodman and son Chip], were
was the industry leader. fighting to stay alive. And fortuitously, I was
I know. I was there, buying every title able to make contact with them.”
as it hit the racks of assorted variety stores Not so fast. Producer-distributor Steve
and smoke shops, a proud part of that Krantz of Krantz Films credited his young
generation whose dimes sustained Marvel sons, Nicholas and Anthony, whose Marvel
as it crawled up from the ghetto of infamy collection was overwhelming the Krantz
to which it had been consigned during the home.
dark decade of the Fifties. “In desperation,” Krantz explained, “I
By 1966, I was a total Marvelite, having picked one of the comics up and started
given up on my earlier favorite titles, the to read it, and I realized that no one on
Superman-DC line. They were for kids. I was television at that time was doing any of the
a teenager now. Stan Lee was the new king comic books. My sons picked out a number
of the four-color jungle. of their favorite characters for me, and I
went out and got the rights to them, and
Coming Your Way on TV! that’s how Super Heroes began.”
Imagine my thrill when Stan announced Stan Lee settled the question when he
that some of their top super-heroes said, “As far as I know, the deal was made
were coming to TV. Grantray-Lawrence between Martin Goodman and Grantray-
Animation acquired the rights to Captain Lawrence. I’m sure it was Bob who decided
America, Iron Man, Prince Namor the Kids lost their minds when they which characters to use.”
Sub-Mariner, the Mighty Thor, and the spotted this house ad in Marvel Comics “Originally, my concept was to use
Incredible Hulk for release as a syndicated titles in 1966, announcing the forth- the original art and try to utilize that as
anthology show, The Marvel Super Heroes. I coming Marvel Super Heroes cartoon the basis for the production,” recalled
could hardly wait. and some of the stations broadcasting Lawrence, “but it proved to be too costly
Grantray-Lawrence’s Bob Lawrence the program. TM & © Marvel. and too complicated. We learned that
explained the show’s genesis. Disney had acquired a machine where you
“I was associated with a fascinating can copy cels, and if we’d all been smart, we
group of amateurs in Hollywood,” he said. “Some of the best would’ve bought stock in that company––that was the beginning
ones were Ray Patterson and Grant Simmons, and we were doing of Xerox. They had it locked up in a room, in Disney’s facility.
RETROFAN September 2021 15
 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
But Hollywood is like a sieve––so we got one. And we
locked ours up in a room. And it made all the difference
in the world. It was really a lifesaver.”
Here, Lawrence and Krantz were on the same page.
“It was set up as a ‘living comic book,’” Krantz said
at the time. “We used the original comic book art, and
animated only limited portions of it. It worked quite
well, because you get very dramatic poses in comic
books. Nothing is static. And we use the Pow! and
Smash! words right on the screen.”
Batmania was in full swing, so the parties were
hoping to cash in on the Sixties super-hero craze.
Having the foundation of Jack Kirby’s dynamic artwork,
as well as those of Steve Ditko, Bill Everett, Don Heck,
Gene Colan, and others to work from, gave the team
confidence that the episodes would work for television.
“One of the secrets of Marvel’s success is its ability
to draw action right into its panels,”
Lawrence observed. “Marvel’s art is like
no other penciling in comics, because its
artists and production people understand
the principle of arrested motion. Iron
Man doesn’t just stand there. He tenses,
or relaxes, or jumps, or recoils. The
characters don’t actually move, and yet
their actions seem to flow, catching the
reader up in a current of activity. Since we
wanted to retain this flow for our film, we
decided to let their artists carry the ball—
and the viewer—just as they do their own
readers.”
“We were fortunate to have such
fantastic art to work with,” added Grantray-
Lawrence President Ray Patterson. “In
blowing up these drawings to 18x14, in
order to do touch-ups on them, we found
very little that our artists had to tinker
with. Let’s face it, the comic book created
the illusion of action very successfully. We
merely helped it along a little.”
Lawrence recruited Stan Lee to assist with the inevitable
challenges arising from adapting serialized comic stories into
three-part cartoons.
“Stan Lee lived out in Hewlett Harbor on Long Island,” recalled
Lawrence. “I rented a penthouse apartment for him in New York
City to keep him near us so that we could work with him on a
daily basis. You have no idea. This man could work 24 hours a day.
Absolutely writes dialogue that makes all kinds of sense. So we
had that ability.”
At the time, Lee was thrilled. “They’ve been an absolute joy
to work with. They check with us on everything and they’re
tremendously anxious to keep with the spirit of our strips and
stories. The original stories have been hanged to some degree
because some of them aren’t complete in themselves. And the
animation studio has to change the ending so it seems like it’s a
complete episode.”
Early in the development phase, Stan Lee recorded a video
pitch/pilot for the show. “And that is what really sold the concept,”
revealed Lawrence.
16 RETROFAN September 2021
Marvel Comics artwork by Jack “King”
Kirby and Gene “The Dean” Colan
was used in these Grantray-Lawrence
promos produced to syndicate The
Marvel Super Heroes. TM & © Marvel.
Producing the Series
Steve Krantz farmed out the
production work to five separate
animation outfits, beginning with a
fading Paramount Cartoon Studios,
then headed by animator Shamus
Culhane. Paramount selected Captain
America’s origin for its shakedown
episode.
“Krantz was using Xeroxed
illustrations from the comic books,
only animating the eyes and mouths
of the characters,” Culhane explained.
“By adding special effects like death
rays, explosions beefed up by camera
moves, he had put together a sample film of a Captain America
story which had been accepted by the networks.”
Accepted––after a near-disaster of a first attempt, Culhane
later admitted.
“It was very easy work; the comic-book illustrations were
Xeroxed directly onto cels and painted like normal animation
drawings, so the animators had nothing complicated to do
except for the special effects. The rest of the animation, the eye
movements and mouth action, were so simple that even a novice
animator could have finished a whole picture in three weeks.”
Simple, but not foolproof.
“Because the action was so simple nobody bothered to
examine the drawings of the first two pictures,” Culhane
recounted in his 1998 autobiography, Talking Animals and Other
People. “Animators took the stock scenes as soon as they were
animated, noted the drawing numbers of the characters, mouth
actions, and special effects, and returned them to the inking
department as quickly as possible because as long as they were in
reuse the first two pictures were being delayed.

“I had screened the Captain America sample reel for all the
animators, pointing out the judicious use of blinks and the
perfect synchronization of mouth action and dialogue tracks.
The animation was so basic that I had elected to dispense with
the normal routine of checking each scene before photography. It
seemed a needless expense. I also had omitted shooting a pencil
test for the same reason.”
You can guess where this is going….
“When the first two pictures were ready to be screened,”
Culhane recalled, “I sat in the projection room with complacence.
The first two films have been done within the budget and on
schedule. A few seconds later after the first picture started, I
was jolted into shock. The mouth moves were a mess; often
they were completely out of sync. In some cases the mouths
were so distorted that the characters looked as if they were in a
class for speech therapy. All the eyes blinked and blinked. Thor
looked like a junkie in great need of a fix. Practically nothing was
usable except for the basic Xerox cells of the characters. Even
the special effects were terrible! The second picture was only
slightly different in that the mouths, in addition to being out of
sync, slid all over the face. Needless to say, there was no usable
animation in this one either.”
Back to the drawing board the team went, $10,000 poorer.
Eventually, they got it sorted out.
Culhane was given responsibility for The Mighty Thor, which
aired appropriately on the day named after him, Thursday.
Four other Hollywood studios handled the other characters.
Jonny Quest’s creator, Doug Wildey, took on Prince Namor,
the Sub-Mariner, which replaced Spider-Man in an 11th-hour
decision to hold him back for his own show. Wildey was art
director at Hanna-Barbara, which would soon produce a
Fantastic Four cartoon.
Sample storyboards from two different Thor episodes.
The Mighty Thor © Marvel. Courtesy of Heritage.
Wildey related, “I art-directed that Sub-Mariner show, and
across the street they were doing some of the other shows in
which they would take the drawings out of the comic books and
animate them from that. I wrote and laid out a number of bridge
segments for the Iron Man segments as well.”
Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
Wildey was assisted by artists like Sparky Moore, Herb
Hazleton, and Mel Keefer, and well as inker Mike Royer, who
extended and re-inked the comic-book panels where necessary.
“I wound up doing some original drawings of Tony Stark in
the cockpit of his jet plane and things like that,” Royer related,
“because there wasn’t comic-book art to fill it out. And on the Sub-
Mariner stories, not enough Sub-Mariners had been published at
that time, and so we did a whole bunch of original stories.”
Marvel writer Roy Thomas recalled pitching in.
“I met and talked with Robert Lawrence, one of the Grantray-
Lawrence partners, once or twice,” he said. “Mainly, I was ‘asked’
by Stan to come up with a short plot or two for ‘Sub-Mariner,’
since that series had far fewer episodes from which to extrapolate
plots and/or illustrations than the other four. I’ve no recollection,
however, of how many plots I wrote (not many) or if they were
used in any form. I do know that I was tempted to see if I could
turn any of Bill Everett’s [Forties] or especially [Fifties] stories into
MSH episodes, although none of the
earlier art would’ve been
usable… but I’ve no recollection whether I actually
did it or not.”
Comic-book artist Jerry Grandenetti
storyboarded an original Sub-Mariner episode
that never moved into production. As a fan, I was
startled to see at least one Sub-Mariner story on
TV weeks before it appeared on Tales to Astonish.
Marvel and Grantray-Lawrence worked very
closely.
Roy Thomas stated, “I’m sure that MSH was
given plots for upcoming stories, which would’ve
been just several ahead of what was then currently on the stands.
Stan may have thought up an idea or two and then carried
through in both places, because he’d have figured that MSH could
pick up Gene Colan’s art for it later perhaps.”
Stan Lee was the unsung hero of the harried production
process, juggling his Marvel editorial duties while he rewrote his
older stories for the unfamiliar medium.
As Bob Lawrence explained, “Ray Patterson’s wife June was
brilliant as an editor, and we would create storylines from the
comic books. And Stan would edit. And that man could edit all
RETROFAN September 2021 17
 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
night, and he would correct and change the words. Dialogue,
scripts, ideas, concepts.”
Since the formative Marvel Universe had largely coalesced,
rights problems arose in adapting some story arcs. Insufficient
Captain America stories were available to adapt, so several
Avengers issues were converted into Captain America episodes,
dragging along the likes of Giant-Man, the Wasp, Hawkeye, the
Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver. Avengers #2 was converted into an
episode of The Hulk.
But the wildest thing the producers did was to combine the
free-for-all slugfest of Fantastic Four Annual #3 and Fantastic Four
#6, in which the FF battled with Dr. Doom and the Sub-Mariner,
into a frenzied mash-up which also included the Avengers. This
became sort of an inside-out Sub-
Mariner episode, with the original
X-Men (see inset) substituting for
the FF. This marked the mutant
team’s first media appearance,
although they were incongruously
renamed the Allies for Peace.
A year later, when Hanna-
Barbera adapted an issue with
The Fantastic Four for their new FF
cartoon, they couldn’t use Prince Namor, so they changed him
to Prince Triton of Pacifica. Inexplicably, his archenemy, Attuma,
carried over unchanged from Marvel Super Heroes.
The licensing department must have had nightmares. As a kid,
I was sure confused.
Anyway, it was all a glorious mess. But it was all us first-
generation Marvelites had. Today’s cinematic blockbusters were
beyond our innocent ken.
Even by TV standards, the animation was primitive. The
Xerography-dependent endeavor lowered TV animation
standards to the level of a fusion of manipulated clip art and
talking heads. Camera work provided much of the illusion of
movement. Yet this was the earliest media building block of the
current Marvel Universe. To this day, it remains the most faithful.
(LEFT) Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner scripts and story notes from Grantray-Lawrence’s archives. (RIGHT) Jonny Quest
creator Doug Wildey (see RetroFan #7) worked on the Sub-Mariner toons, including this dynamic drawing of the Avenging
Son of Atlantis and “friends.” Sub-Mariner & X-Men (inset)w TM & © Marvel. Courtesy of Heritage.
18 RETROFAN September 2021
“They were interested in preserving the real feeling the Marvel
characters had, and I worked with them,” Stan Lee confirmed.
“While the animation was rather limited, they made a concerted
effort to keep them as close to the stories in the comic books
and as close to the artwork as possible. Of everything that’s been
done, those primitive cartoons were the closest to our own style.”
Even so, bloopers abounded, with stock shots being reused––
and sometimes misused—endlessly, and the voice actors often
flubbing their lines, which at times came out of the mouths of
the wrong characters. Because the art was lifted directly from
the printed comic panels, character interpretations varied from
scene to scene, with the Hulk shifting from Jack Kirby to Steve
Ditko’s interpretation, or Iron Man morphing from Kirby to Don
Heck and Gene Colan, sometimes frame by frame. If
an episode included the original bulky Iron Man, he
was recolored red and gold in a clumsy effort to pass
him off as his sleeker successor. “On-model” was not
a Grantray-Lawrence concept. Only Doug Wildey’s
team went to the trouble of redrawing their star’s
poses, so Namor had a consistent look.
“From an artistic viewpoint,” observed Shamus
Culhane, “the series was garbage.”
Your Star-Spangled Host
It might have been garbage, but it was our garbage. I loved the
show. And unlike mere mortal Marvelites in other cities, I enjoyed
the privilege of watching it on Boston’s Channel 7, WNAC, which
hired actor Arthur Pierce to portray Captain America as a live-
action host.
Wearing a shiny blue CA suit, he filmed a teaser that still
survives on YouTube, thanks to an enterprising Marvelite with a
Super 8 camera and a reel-to-reel tape recorder:
“To be or not to be a Marvelite, that is the question.
“Whether tis nobler to join this jazzy group of goof-offs,
“For to evade the slings and arrows of Brand Echh,
“For to take up arms against a sea of super-hero competitors.”
 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

There’s more, but you get the idea. Pierce threw

Chisel-jawed Arthur
Pierce suited up as the
Star-Spangled Avenger
to host The Marvel Super
Heroes. Captain America TM
& © Marvel. Both, courtesy of
Will Murray.
Real name: Arthur Daniel Levy.
himself into the role like no other thespian, before or
since, spouting off as if Stan Lee himself were wearing
the red, white, and blue, waving his plastic shield while
introducing each segment. Other cities had to settle
for the local Bozo the Clown.
Pierce’s dialogue was written by no less than
Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. “I would write
comedy skits,” he revealed. “I would write intros
commenting on the stories, and I think really some of
the best and some of the most interesting writing I’ve
done in my whole life was written for this show.”
Siegel had warmed up for this assignment by
scripting the Archie Comics imprint Mighty Comics, a
Marvel competitor Lee undoubtedly meant when he
coined the term “Brand Echh.”
These studio vignettes soon turned into running
stories, with Captain America narrating the off-stage
action. My hazy memory is that Dr. Doom and some
nameless television pioneer plastered in green foam
as the Incredible Hulk showed up from time to time as
the action spilled over into Boston streets. In the final
installment, Cap learned that his old partner Bucky
was still alive and rushed off to discover the truth. I
always wondered what happened next. In the comics,
Bucky stayed dead for decades.
Boisterous and bombastic, Pierce was a six-foot-
two ex-Marine-turned-New York actor who shuttled
between that city and Boston, keeping a residence in
each town for convenience. He had recurring roles in
two soap operas, One Life to Live and All My Children.

Mighty Marvel Sing-Along

Not every aspect of The Marvel Super Heroes was cheesy and crude.
Real money was put into theme and incidental music.
“In most animation work,” revealed Lawrence, “the music and
sound effects are caricatures to match the art. For our program,
we ruled out pops, whistles, and pings. In their place we have a
carefully executed score with the kind of music you might hear in
a feature film.”
A young musician and former cartoon voice actor named
Jacque “Jack” Urbont was hired
to write the theme songs to the
individual features. During a
conference, Stan Lee was dubious
since Urbont admitted he was
unfamiliar with Marvel’s characters.
“Mr. Lee,” he recalled saying, “I
know what you’re thinking, and if I
were in your shoes, I’d be thinking
the same thing. But just get me some
source material––one or two comic
books––and three days later, I will have songs that are so terrific
you will wish you’d written them yourself.”
Lee was impressed, later saying, “I wish I could claim to have
Old Jade Jaws is comin’ atcha in this Incredible Hulk cel
written the lyrics, because I think they’re brilliant, but alas, I
appropriating Jack Kirby art. TM & © Marvel. Courtesy of Heritage.
didn’t.”
Urbont also composed the jaunty series theme, which ran:
RETROFAN September 2021 19
 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
“Meet the sulky over-bulky, kinda Hulky super hero,
“Optimistic and electrically transistored super hero,
“An exotically neurotic and aquatic super hero,
“The Marvel Super Heroes have arrived!
“Super-powered from the forehead to the toes,
“Watch them change their very shape before your nose.
“See a cane-striking super hero change to Viking super hero,
“A humdingin’ real swingin’ shield flingin’ super hero.
“They’re the latest, they’re the greatest, ultimatest super heroes,
“The Marvel Super Heroes have arrived!”
“From this tiny little show that lasted only a year in
syndication, for an outfit that went bankrupt a year later, this
thing has grown exponentially,” Urbont marveled. “It’s now part
of the fabric of American culture.”
Wherever There’s a Hang-Up, You’ll Find
the Spider-Man
Marketed as a weekday afternoon program, The Marvel
Super Heroes debuted on September 1, 1966. Original
episodes continued into December. Then the endless
and inevitable reruns commenced. WNAC broadcast it
at 4:30 weekday afternoons.
John Vernon, who would later play Dean Wormer
in National Lampoon’s Animal House, voiced both Iron
Man and the Sub-Mariner. Sandy Becker was Captain
America. Chris Wiggins played Thor. Max Furguson
was the Hulk, but Paul Soles did his alter ego, Dr. Bruce
Banner. Other voice actors included narrator Bernard
Cowan, Don Mason, Paul Kligman, Peg Dixon, Len
Carlson, and Vita Linde.
Shamus Culhane was gearing up preparing a Spider-Man
cartoon show for the 1967–1968 Saturday morning season, but the
company’s new owners, Gulf & Western, decided to dissolve their
20 RETROFAN September 2021
Gene Colan’s work on Marvel’s Armored Avenger is
evident in this Iron Man cel. TM & © Marvel. Courtesy of
Heritage.
animation unit because it received so little revenue from
The Marvel Super Heroes. Culhane quit when they declined
to do Spider-Man. In its original incarnation as Famous
Studios, Paramount was responsible for the first super-
hero cartoons in history—Superman.
Yet Steve Krantz, who took over production,
considered The Marvel Super Heroes to be an unqualified
success. Although a one-season wonder, the episodes ran
in syndication for years thereafter.
“Marvel made a great deal of money on the basis of the
shows I produced,” he insisted.
Krantz was not done with Marvel properties, either.
Spider-Man storyboards created for The Marvel Super
Heroes served as the basis for the Saturday morning
Spider-Man cartoon, which Grantray-Lawrence developed.
That show was a big jump in animation quality, but that
was because the show was sold to ABC. The difference lay
in the budget.
“The Super Heroes cost $30,000 a half-hour and Spider-Man is
$50,000 a half-hour,” Krantz explained. “It would be impossible
without a network sale.”
“It was a network program,” clarified Lawrence, “so we had to
put more production into it.”
Spider-Man was far more successful than The Marvel Super
Heroes, running for two years, with another season that was
syndicated. Animator Ralph Bakshi took over with Season Two.
Paul Soles, who had voiced Bruce Banner, played Spider-Man.
Dialogue was recorded in Toronto by a voice troupe directed by
Bernard Cowan.
“If you watched us in the studio reading these scripts,” recalled
Soles, “we were like little children in a sandbox… it was fun.”
For the third season, fantasy writer Lin Carter wrote the scripts
and Spider-Man’s adventures lost their urban flavor and veered
He’s got radioactive blood! Grantray-Lawrence’s Spider-Man.
One of these days Spidey’s cartoon show will get a full spotlight
in our pages. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel.

into dark realms and other dimensions, with painful recyclings of
art and storylines. The show strayed so far from the Marvel vision
that it didn’t feel like Spidey any more.
By that point, Stan himself had become disenchanted with
Krantz Films, complaining, “They insist on strict simplicity. This
immediately eliminates everything that is Marvel. We just gave
up on them and they went off on their own to do all-new stories.
Personally, I was very dissatisfied with the way our heroes were
handled.”
Lee also grew tired of attending pointless meetings with the
producers. “I was very interested in the television series in the
beginning. I flew out to the coast and I discussed these things
with Hanna-Barbera and Krantz Films and so forth, until I realized
discussing it meant nothing because all they’re interested in
doing is pleasing the sponsor. Not the network, not us, but the
sponsor.”
After Spider-Man ran its course, Krantz optioned that character
and the Hulk for feature films. But neither came to fruition.
But the floodgates had been opened for a surge of Marvel
merchandizing that continues to this day––toys, puzzles, games,
T-shirts, and, of course, subsequent cartoons.
“I fought hard for a contract,” Bob Lawrence remembered,
“and we wrote an unbelievable contract with the Goodmans,
because they didn’t know what they had and where to
go. Believe it or not, in this contract I was able to obtain
participation in the merchandising rights, and continuing
interest in it.”
Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
Unfortunately, the Marvel artists whose work was being
shown on TV at the time did not participate in the early bonanza.
Goodman’s failure to share in such revenue may be one of the
reasons artist Steve Ditko quit drawing The Amazing Spider-Man in
1966.
Decades later, Jack Kirby complained, “They used the artwork
as a background and moved the figures across the screen on
the end of a stick. It was primitive animation. They adapted the
stories exactly and wouldn’t even give me credit for it.”
Ultimately, the most memorable elements to survive The
Marvel Super Heroes were the corny theme songs, which were
burned into the impressionable brains of baby boomers like
myself who were its captivated audience. Even though I knew the
stories by heart, the show kept me going until the latest Marvels
hit the racks.
As Stan Lee put it, “I thought those cartoons were great.
They used real Marvel stories and in some crazy way their
shows captured the spirit of Marvel. The theme songs were
wonderful—25 years later people still remember them.”
WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild
Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze.
com) series of novels, which stars Doc
Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider,
and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary artist
Steve Ditko.
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RETROFAN September 2021 21
 Too
Much
TV
If your old man used to gripe that you’d never learn anything with your nose glued to the
boob tube, here’s your chance to prove him wrong. (Father doesn’t always know best.)
Each congenial host in Column One corresponds to a game show in Column Two. Match
’em up, then see how you rate!

COLUMN ONE

1) Art Fleming

2) Wink Martindale

3) Gene Rayburn

4) Jack Bailey

5) David Martin Ruprecht

6) Bill Cullen

7) Bob Eubanks

8) Peter Marshall

9) Monty Hall

10) Allen Ludden

22 RETROFAN September 2021
 RetroFan Ratings
“Is 10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan
it door Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know
number theme song lyrics too!

1, door 7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan

Dy-no-mite! You wasted your
number childhood with the rest of us!
2, or door 4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned
number RetroFan
Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til
3?” you spend more tube time!

0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan

Ya big dummy! Put down that book
and go watch some classic TV!

COLUMN TWO

A) Queen for a Day

B) The Newlywed Game
C) Tic-Tac-Dough
D) Let’s Make a Deal
E) Supermarket Sweep
F) Password
G) Jeopardy!
H) The Hollywood
Squares
I) Match Game
J) Eye Guess
Eye Guess, Hollywood Squares, Newlywed
Game, Tic-Tac-Dough © Sony Pictures
Television. Jeopardy! © Merv Griffin
Enterprises. Let’s Make a Deal © Hatos-Hall
Productions. Match Game and Password
© Goodson-Todman Productions. Queen
for a Day © MCA/Universal Television.
Supermarket Sweep © Al Howard
Productions. All rights reserved.
ANSWERS: 1–G, 2–C, 3–I, 4–A, 5–E, 6–J, 7–B, 8–H, 9–F, 10–F
RETROFAN September 2021 23
 All characters TM & © their respective owners.
ED
AND
EXP COND
SE ION!
EDIT

THE WORLD OF JACK KIRBY’S KIRBY & LEE: MAC RABOY

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 ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA
Sue Randall as “Miss Landers” poses with Jerry Mathews “as
the Beaver.” Leave It to Beaver © NBCUniversal Television.
And Starring as—Kitty, Ruthie, Hope, Kathy Taylor Johnson,
Kathy O’Hara, Lucy, Susan, Elaine, Anna, Phyllis, Lois, Elizabeth,
Mimi, Chick, Kay, Evelyn, Peggy, Ellen, Effie, Bianca, Hardi, Sabina,
Jen, Ann, Louise, Sarah, Virginia, Carrie, Diane Emerson Soames,
and Mary Ann, to say nothing of Miss Turner, Miss McNulty, Miss
Franklin, Mrs. Wilson, Nurse Thompson, Sgt. Addie Malone, an
FBI Clerk, the Union Boss’ Daughter, the Bride’s Friend, a College
Girl Holding a Newspaper, and—
Wait a minute! What actress could possibly play all those
divergent roles? Barbara Stanwyck? Meryl Streep? Sally Field?
Nope. It’s our favorite elementary school teacher, “Miss Alice
Landers”—
Sue Randall.
Like Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, I, along with an uncountable
number of schoolboys in the late Fifties and early Sixties, had a
deep-seated crush on “Miss Landers,” experiencing on a weekly
basis numbness too far down to be heartburn. It didn’t matter
that when Miss Landers made her first appearance in 1958 Sue
Randall was 23 and I was six. A kid that age lives in blissful
ignorance of age and time, and I was confident we’d be married
one day soon. The only bubble-bursting downside was the
splash of reality I confronted on a daily basis at school: none of
my teachers looked like Miss Landers! Or possessed her calming,
pleasant manner. (Astrologically, Sue was a Libra, a personality
that fits hand-in-glove to Miss Landers: “A considerate and
thoughtful nature with understanding and sensitivity who puts
the needs of others above her own, always available to offer a
non-judgmental ear or supportive words, and likely described
as the ‘perfect friend.’”). I would later reconcile this disparity
between reality and art by chalking it up to the old adage, Life
Isn’t Fair.
And if you think it was just me borne away on the wings of
schoolboy naiveté, here are comments posted on the IMDb:
“Sue Randall, with those big, beautiful eyes and girl-next-door
Yes,
Miss
Landers…
How Sue Randall Became Every
Boy’s Teacher-Crush
Written and captioned by Ernest Farino
presence…” and, in reply, “I agree absolutely about Sue Randall—
it’s easy to see WHY Beaver had a crush on her; if you didn’t you
weren’t normal,” as well as “Sue Randall is forever etched in my
memory as Beaver’s crush-worthy schoolteacher, Miss Landers.”
Years later, along with many other interests, I casually
collected photos of Sue, helped by the advent of the internet and
eBay. I always wanted to find out more about her, so an article for
RetroFan seemed like the perfect excuse to knuckle down.
Sue Randall was born Marion Burnside Randall in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, on October 8, 1935. Her father was Roland Rodrock
Randall, a well-known real estate consultant. The Randall family
was one of the prominent families of Philadelphia at that time
and Sue’s parents supported her ambitions to pursue theater
arts. At the age of ten Sue began acting on stage in a production
of Dear Ruth by the Alden Park Players in the Germantown area
of Philadelphia, and in 1953 finished her early education at the
Lankenau School for Girls. Then it was on to New York, where she
graduated with honors from the prestigious American Academy
of Dramatic Arts. By then, though, she was so busy with theater
work she was unable to attend her own graduation and receive
the “Best Actress” award.
In an article in the May 19, 1956 issue of TV Guide (vol. 4, #20,
issue #164), Sue recalled that she had “read in the paper that
[producer Richard Aldrich] was looking for apprentices for his
summer theater in Falmouth, Massachusetts.” So she simply
arrived, unannounced, at his office. There was no one else there
except Aldrich. “We began talking and he said I could have a job.”
Sue painted scenery and read for the director. She met Helen
Hayes, who was to star in What Every Woman Knows, and was
given a part. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/producer Howard
Lindsay (who, with frequent collaborator Russel Crouse, would
write the book for the Tony Award-winning musical The Sound
of Music) saw Sue in the role and hired her for a production of
RETROFAN September 2021 25
 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

his Life with Father. Sue also appeared at Falmouth with mankind. Sabina was the family’s maid in the first
Gloria Vanderbilt in The Swan. At the time Sue was often and third acts, and as a beauty-queen temptress
described as “another Grace Kelly,” and, by coincidence, in the second act. Sue honorably followed in the
it was Kelly who starred in the film version of The Swan footsteps of notable actresses who had played
in 1956. Ironically, Sue’s brother and Grace grew up Sabina on Broadway: Tallulah Bankhead (who won
together. “They’re older, about 26,” Sue said. Grace did the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Actress
give Sue some advice: Don’t take a stock Hollywood of the Year as Sabina), Miriam Hopkins, Gladys
contract. “Benefit from my experience,” Grace told George, Lizabeth Scott, and Mary Martin (in a TV
her, describing how she had been signed to a seven- production).
year contract at $750 a week while her films made Sue did so well in The Skin of Our Teeth that she
millions. later won roles in network TV dramas. Her first
Of producer Aldrich Sue said, “I guess credited TV appearance came in the 1955 episode
he just liked me. He sent me out to read “Golden Victory” of the series Star Tonight, an
Sue Randall
for parts I couldn’t possibly fill, just so the anthology series on ABC (February 1955 to August
also worked as
right people would see me.” So Sue started 1956) that aired on Thursdays at 9pm opposite
a fashion model
making the rounds of producers’ offices and Shower of Stars (CBS), Capitol Wrestling from Las
between her
in January 1954, 20-year-old Sue Randall Vegas (Dumont), and Dragnet (NBC). Each of its
early theater
played “Sabina” in an American Academy 80 episodes consisted of a self-contained story,
and television
production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer usually adapted from plays, short stories, or
appearances.
Prize-winning drama The Skin of Our Teeth, novels by contemporary authors, and provided
a three-part allegory about the life of a opportunity for young up-and-coming New
York actors to star opposite established players
such as Buster Crabbe, Neva Patterson, Theodore
Bikel, and June Lockhart. In addition to Sue,
other “newbies” who appeared in the series included Joanne
Woodward, Maureen Stapleton, Jason Robards, Jr., and Robert
Culp (with whom Sue would
appear ten years later in an
episode of I Spy).
Sue then took the role of
“Diane Emerson Soames”
in the television soap opera
Valiant Lady (which enjoyed
a remarkable run of 1,027

(ABOVE) Sue plays

a scene with Martin
Balsam in Valiant Lady.
© CBS. (LEFT) You can
watch Sue’s commer-
cial for Newport
cigarettes on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/
episodes from 1953–1957). watch?v=QGeTmaMyM6U.
Helen Emerson was the © R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
“valiant lady,” a 40ish widow
Sue studies her lines for the ABC production of “Golden Victory” whose daughter Diane runs off
for the series Star Tonight. Sadly, only four of the 80 episodes of with a married man. Because of its long run, “Diane” was essayed
Star Tonight have survived, not including this one. So this photo by four actresses: Anne Pearson (#1, 1953–1954, original cast),
is also a rare record of part of television’s lost “Golden Age.” Dolores Sutton (#2, 1954–1955), Sue Randall (#3, 1955–1956), and
The original network caption said, “Until a month ago, Miss Lelia Martin (#4, 1956–1957). (And, in a bit of crossover trivia, Lelia
Randall’s career had consisted almost entirely of summer stock, Martin later starred as “Momar” in that bona fide 1964 classic
including the Helen Hayes Festival in New England last season, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. See RetroFan #12.) At the time
and an ingénue role on one of daytime TV’s top soap operas. Sue that they needed a “Diane #3,” Sue read for producer Leonard
is a fashion model between TV commitments.” © ABC. Blair who, after having auditioned 60 other actresses, hired her
on the spot.

26 RETROFAN September 2021

 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

In 1954 Sue portrayed Diane Emerson on the CBS drama

Woman with a Past and then appeared on Playhouse 90 (1957)
and General Electric Theater (1959). She also did an occasional TV
commercial, including one for Newport cigarettes. Sue became a
heavy cigarette smoker, which ultimately cut her life short (more
on that later).
In the late Fifties, Sue filmed a pilot with Theodora Davitt for
a proposed sitcom called Up on Cloud Nine, about the “the daffy
misadventures” of two flight attendants, but the proposed series
couldn’t land a sponsor. The pilot was described by one reviewer
as “painfully unfunny” as Sue
and Theodora’s characters
“insult passengers and frighten
them in flight by mistakenly
preparing the plane for a crash
landing.”

Sue appeared as a “steward-
ess” (yes, we know, but that’s
what they were called back
then) in the unsold pilot for a
series called Up on Cloud Nine.
“Operation Jettison” is
included on The Complete
Steve Canyon on TV DVD
vol. 1, still available for
purchase. Producer: John
R. Ellis, Executive Produc-
er: Harry Grant Guyton.
Color art and graphic
design by Johann Mitchell.
Steve Canyon® is the Registered
Trademark of the Milton Caniff
Estate. Entire package and
contents © 2008 by The Milton
Caniff Estate, all rights reserved.
Used here by permission of John
Ellis, DVD producer.
Steve Canyon
Steve Canyon was a comic
strip by writer-artist Milton
Caniff that ran from January
13, 1947 to June 4, 1988. In
the late Forties, Gone with
the Wind producer David O.
Selznick considered a Steve
Canyon film series starring
Guy Madison, but it was
television that brought Steve
to life. A filmed, half-hour
television series of 34 episodes
aired on NBC in 1958–1959
(with reruns on ABC in 1960).
Dean Fredericks, formerly the
Hindu manservant on Johnny
Weissmuller’s Jungle Jim series,
played Steve, a troubleshooter
for the United States Air Force
stationed at the fictitious Big
Thunder Air Force Base in
California. Sue Randall’s Steve (TOP LEFT) Sue Randall as Sgt. Addie Malone in “Operation Jetti-
Canyon episode, “Operation son.” (TOP RIGHT) Steve explains the workings of the Lockheed
Jettison” (episode #6), was C-130 Hercules to Addie. (CENTER) Dean Fredericks, Sue Randall,
filmed on August 15, 18, and 19, and Tige Andrews in “Operation Jettison.” (BOTTOM LEFT) Sue
1958 and first run on NBC on comforts the injured Lt. Castle (Michael Galloway). (BOTTOM
Saturday, October 11, 1958. RIGHT) Episode cast credits. At this early stage of Sue’s career, it
Coincidentally, several cast still must have been a thrill for her to see her name on the screen.
members in the “Operation Steve Canyon frame captures by DVD producer John Ellis, copyright ©2008 by
Jettison” episode have The Milton Caniff Estate, used with permission.
connections with the original
Star Trek series: DeForest Kelley
(Dr. McCoy) appears in the (as “Kras”) in “Friday’s Child” (1967), co-starring the Batman series’
command center, John Hoyt Catwoman, Julie Newmar.
was the doctor in the ST pilot As of February 13, 2021 the Decades network has been running
episode, “The Cage,” Paul Comi the Steve Canyon episodes, so, as the saying goes, “check your local
(Steve Canyon’s co-pilot) played listings.”
the navigator in the ST episode
“Balance of Terror” (1966), and You Outta Be in Pictures…
Tige Andrews was the first Sue Randall would appear in 62 television episodes from 1953 to
Klingon to appear in Star Trek 1967, proving herself to be a popular and reliable supporting or
RETROFAN September 2021 27
 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria
co-starring actor. Yet, she only appeared in one feature film; we’ll
never know if she was content with her TV career or yearned for
bigger projects on the silver screen. From my own experience
in the film industry over the years, my sense is that, given the
unpredictable and sometimes volatile nature of the business, she
was likely content to be a working actress.
Her only feature film was Desk Set in 1957, starring Spencer
Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Sue was the third of three assistant
(TOP LEFT) Print ad for Desk Set, a rare version that features the
full cast, including Sue Randall (FAR LEFT). (TOP RIGHT) Sue
Randall as Ruthie Saylor. (CENTER) Sue Randall and Katharine
Hepburn. Turns out Hepburn was something of a mentor to
Sue, which is likely how she came to be in the film. (BOTTOM
RIGHT) Director Walter Lang pours tea during a break in
filming. Known for her sharp wit, it appears from the delight-
ed expressions on the faces of (LEFT TO RIGHT) Dina Merrill,
Spencer Tracy, and Sue Randall that Joan Blondell (in black
dress) has cracked-wise at the expense of a chagrined Mr. Lang.
Desk Set © 20th Century Fox.
28 RETROFAN September 2021
researchers, along with Joan Blondell and Dina Merrill, who made
up the staff of the Research Department at a fictitious television
network. The film was adapted from the Broadway play The
Desk Set written by William Marchant that originally starred
Shirley Booth for 296 performances at the Broadhurst Theatre in
New York from October 24 to July 7, 1955. The Hollywood Reporter
announced that Booth would repeat her role in the film, which
ultimately did not happen.
…And Along Came Beaver
Leave It to Beaver was created by writers Joe Connelly and Bob
Mosher and broadcast initially on CBS (then ABC) from October 4,
1957 to June 20, 1963, for six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes).
The series centered around Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver (Jerry
Mathers), and his adventures at home, school, and around his
neighborhood. Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont starred
as Beaver’s parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Tony Dow as
Beaver’s brother, Wally. We assume that RetroFan readers are
familiar with this iconic series in general [and if not, the show and
three of its stars will be featured in a forthcoming issue—ed.], so I
will keep the focus on Sue Randall as Beaver’s schoolteacher, Miss
Landers.
Actually, Sue wasn’t Beaver’s first teacher. That was “Miss
Canfield,” played by Diane Brewster for four episodes when the
show first went to series.
Miss Canfield: “Theodore...”
Beaver: “My name’s ‘Beaver’.”
Miss Canfield: “‘Beaver’? Is that your given name?”
Beaver: “Yes ma’am. [pauses] My brother gave it to me.”
Sue Randall came on board as Miss Alice Landers in “Ward’s
Problem” (S2/Ep42, October 16, 1958). Diane Brewster was
The Leave It to
Beaver first season
opening title.
Each subsequent
season had a new
opening. The theme
music is “The Toy
Parade,” written
for the series by Dave Kahn, Melvyn Leonard, and Mort
Greene. Although the song had lyrics, the show always used
an instrumental version. For the third season, the tempo
was quickened and the tune whistled by a male chorus, and
the final season featured a new version arranged by prolific
jazz composer Pete Rugolo (who also wrote for Thriller, The
Fugitive, Run for Your Life, Felony Squad, Alias Smith and Jones,
and Family). Leave It to Beaver © NBCUniversal Television.
 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

unavailable to continue as Miss Canfield due

to a scheduling conflict with the production
of Torpedo Run (1958), in which she appeared as
Glenn Ford’s wife. Sue stayed on for a total of
29 episodes through 1962. An interesting side
note is that like many TV series that required
contemporary wardrobe (and may have been
on a tight budget), Sue Randall was required
to buy or provide her own clothes for her role
as Miss Landers.

The Plot Thickens…

Two “Miss Landers” episodes stand out.
The first is “Teacher Comes to Dinner” (S3/
Ep9, November 28, 1959). Beaver expresses joy
at being in Miss Landers’ class so his mother,
June, invites Miss Landers for dinner.

Beaver: My mother invited Miss Landers

to dinner. (LEFT) (LEFT TO RIGHT) Sue Randall (Miss Landers), Stephen Talbot (Gilbert), Jerry
Larry: To eat? Mathers (Beaver), and Lelani Sorensen (“Classmate”) in “The School Picture”
Beaver: Sure. You can’t invite somebody (S4/Ep30, April 22, 1961). (RIGHT) Jerry Mathers and Sue Randall display good ol’
to dinner without letting them eat. American values throughout the series. At one point in the series Beaver muses, “I
Larry: Boy, Beaver, this could be the worst wouldn’t wanna do anything to hurt God. He’s got enough trouble with the Russians
thing that ever happened to you in and all.” © NBCUniversal Television.
your whole life.

Beaver’s concern mounts, and as June is fixing the dinner,
Beaver looks on:
BEAVER
GIVES
MISS
LANDERS
THE SLIP
In the episode “Last Day of School” (S3/Ep38, original
airdate June 18, 1960), June buys a gift for Miss Landers
on Beaver’s behalf, since he can’t think of what he should
give her. June settles on handkerchiefs, a sensible,
“neutral” choice, but the purchase gets accidentally
switched for lingerie at the department store. Wally and
Beaver sneak an advance look and—
Wally: “Boy, Beaver, it’s a slip!”
Beaver: “That’s some kind of ladies’ underwear, Fiancé” (S4/Ep7, November 12,
isn’t it?”
Wally: “Sure, it’s some kind of ladies’ underwear!”
Beaver: “Gee, Wally, I can’t give Miss Landers
underwear in front of the whole class!”
Wally: “Well, maybe you could. You’re just a little Beaver is shocked to see the
kid.”
Beaver: “Yeah, but I’m not that little of a kid!”
Beaver: Nothing in here could poison anybody, could it,
Mom?
June: Why, of course not, Beaver!
Beaver: Larry said Miss Landers might eat something and get
toenail poisoning.
June: You mean ptomaine poisoning?
Beaver: Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, he said if she got it, she
might get mad and flunk me and stuff.
The thing I related to in this episode, and I think is a good
example as to why the series has endured, is the notion of the
teacher out of her element and out in the real world. And on top of
that, in your own house. I think we’ve all experienced that from time
to time: your regular bank teller seen at the grocery store prompts
that dilemma, “Where do I know her from…?” and that sort of
thing. Our family never had a teacher over for dinner, but I do
remember that my science teacher in the Fifth Grade was dating
a woman from the front office and there they were at the movie
theater together! I can’t tell you the name of the movie to save my
life—I spent more time stealing sideward glances across the aisle
than I did looking at the screen…
The second memorable
episode is “Miss Landers’
1960). As the title suggests,
this was the heartbreaker
wedding announcement.
© NBCUniversal Television.

RETROFAN September 2021 29

 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

for Beaver (and the rest of us). We never knew much about Miss
Landers’ personal life, which made this development come as
all the more of a shock. She’s engaged to a man named Tom
Brittingham (Jack Powers). Oddly enough, though, while Miss
Landers appears in another nine episodes, there’s no further
mention of an eventual marriage or “Tom.” (Good riddance as far
as I’m concerned.)
Sue Randall continued to appear in supporting or guest-star
roles throughout the Sixties, intermixed with her appearances on
Leave It to Beaver. I was too young to have made the connection,
but I wonder if anyone blurted out “It’s Miss Landers!” during
Gunsmoke or The Twilight Zone.
Rather than delve into summaries of all these shows, here’s a
photo gallery of Sue’s appearances in a handful of TV episodes.

Sue guest-starred in a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone entitled “From Agnes – With Love” (S5 Ep20, February 14, 1964). James Elwood
(Wally Cox) is a shy computer technician who listens to a meddling supercomputer named “Agnes” for advice on his love life. Sue plays
Millie, Elwood’s co-worker—and crush—who finally agrees to go on a date with him. But Millie is smitten by the handsome Walter
Holmes (Ralph Taeger), and Elwood catches them at Walter’s apartment cutting loose (with Millie dancing barefoot, the little minx!).
This episode was directed by Richard Donner, who would later helm the first Superman movie (1978; RetroFan #3). Donner’s assistant,
Amy Roy, kindly inquired on my behalf but Mr. Donner said that he had no recollection of Sue in particular, so I’ll take that as having
been a positive “no-problem” experience. © CBS.

In the Twilight Zone
episode “And When the Sky Was Opened”
(S1/Ep11, December 11, 1959), Sue played a
nurse attending to three astronauts (Rod
Taylor, Jim Hutton, and Charles Aidman)
who return to Earth after a strange encoun-
ter and vanish one by one. Although Sue has
only a small part (and is only identified as
“Nurse”), this is a truly excellent episode
based on the equally superb 1953 Richard
Matheson short story Disappearing Act. © CBS.
(LEFT TO RIGHT)
Jackie Coogan, Art
Carney, and Sue
Randall in “Charley’s
Aunt,” from the
anthology series
Playhouse 90 (S1/
Ep26, March 28,
1957). The episode
is notable for its
interesting roster
of talent: Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and
written by Leslie Stevens (co-creator of The Outer Limits),
with additional cast consisting of Orson Bean (Anatomy of a
Murder), Richard Haydn (Young Frankenstein), Tom Tryon (I
Married a Monster from Outer Space and author of The Other),
Venetia Stevenson (Horror Hotel), and Jeanette MacDon- Steve Forrest and Sue
ald (San Francisco, and famous as operetta singing partner Randall in “See the Elephant
to Nelson Eddy). And if that’s not enough, the music was and Hear the Owl,” Death
composed by Russell Garcia, who would famously score Valley Days (S12 Ep25, April
George Pal’s film The Time Machine a few years later. © CBS. 28, 1964).
Miss Landers becomes Miss Turner in My Favorite Martian
(S2/Ep22, February 28, 1965). Tim accidentally shrinks
Uncle Martin’s spaceship and it becomes the model for a toy
version. How to get it back from the department store as it
starts to grow back to its original size? © CBS.

30 RETROFAN September 2021

 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

Sue Randall as
Elaine Randall,
the daughter of
a man sentenced
to hang, in the
“Judgment”
episode of The
Rebel, starring
Nick Adams (S1/
Ep2, October 11,
1959). © ABC.

Sue Randall, Troy Donahue, and Jay Chamberlain in the Surfside

6 episode “Spinout at Sebring” (S1/Ep32, May 8, 1961). The series
was about three hip private detectives living and working out of a
houseboat in Miami, Florida (although regular cast member Troy
Donahue was not one of the detectives). © Warner Bros. Television.

Sue appeared in three

episodes of 77 Sunset Strip:
“Hit and Run” (1959),
Sue appeared “Strange Girl in Town”
in six episodes (1959), and “The Affairs of
of Death Valley Adam Gallante” (1960). Here
Days. These two she looks longingly at Edd
images are from “Kookie” Byrnes (“Gerald
the episode “The Kookson III”) as he once
Private Mint of again combs his hair on the
Clark, Gruber & show. This habit inspired the
Co.” (S11/Ep12, song “Kookie, Kookie, Lend
December 28, Me Your Comb,” performed
1962). by Byrnes and Connie
Stevens, which reached #4
on the pop charts. © Warner
Bros. Television.

Sue appeared in two Perry Mason episodes, “The Case of the Ill-Fated Faker” (S4/Ep3, October 1, 1960), the first filmed for the fourth season
though aired as the third show, and “The Case of the Garrulous Go-Between” (S7/Ep22, March 12, 1964). © CBS.

RETROFAN September 2021 31

 ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria

CONTRARY TO
POPULAR BELIEF…
Some reports are incorrect regarding Sue Randall’s
screen appearances:

Sue appeared in the “No Exchange on Damaged Merchandise”

episode of I Spy (S1/Ep9, November 10, 1965). © NBC.

© Walter Wanger Productions.

Some have thought that Sue appeared in Don Siegel’s

classic sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
(TOP) Sue appeared in two episodes of Hennesey starring Jackie However, my friend Mark Thomas McGee, author of
Cooper, “The Matchmaker” (S1/Ep13, December 28, 1959) and the book Invasion of the Body Snatchers: The Making of a
“The Green-Eyed Monster” (S2/Ep24, April 3, 1961). (BOTTOM) Classic (2012), checked his extensive files and could find
(LEFT TO RIGHT) Sue Randall, Jackie Cooper, and Cooper’s no listing for Sue among call sheets, or even lists of
Hennesey co-star Abby Dalton. © CBS. actors considered for the film but not hired. Since the
production hired local extras for the townspeople, it’s
possible that Sue is in the crowd shown here. Probably
not, though, since she was likely still living and working
in New York in 1955–1956. (Incidentally, this location is
in Beachwood, California, down below the Hollywood
sign, and you can stand
on the very spot of this
camera angle.)
It has been reported
that Sue appeared in
Sue’s final episode of Death (LEFT TO RIGHT) Will William Marchant’s play
Valley Days was in the episode Hutchins, Karl Swenson, and The Desk Set on Broadway,
“The Courtship of Carrie Sue Randall in the Sugarfoot thus assuming that this
Huntington” (S14/Ep8, March episode “The Mysterious led to her role in the film
17, 1966), where she played Stranger” (S2/Ep12, February version. However, this
opposite of Jeff Pearson. 17, 1959). © Warner Bros. Television. error is likely based on the fact that Sue’s role in the
film (“Ruthie Saylor”) was first performed on stage by
Anne-Marie Gayer, but as of June 25, 1956 was taken over
by Martha Randall. Martha Randall… Sue Randall… (at
least it wasn’t Tony Randall).
The image below image popped up on the internet
and while I cannot determine the artist, this is merely
fan art, though nicely done. After meticulous research, I
can confirm that Sue
did not appear in any
episode of The Love
Boat. Wishful thinking
Sue appeared in three episodes of Sea Hunt opposite the “Under- by a clever fan.(Her
sea Investigator,” Lloyd Bridges: “Rescue” (S4/Ep7, February 18, image here appears
1961), “Superman” (S4/Ep32, August 12, 1961), and “Crime at Sea” to be taken from her
(S4/Ep37, September 16, 1961). Photos shown here are from the episode of I Spy.)
episode “Superman.” © United Artists Television.
© Aaron Spelling Productions.

32 RETROFAN September 2021


Final Days
Sue retired from acting in 1967 at age 32 following a severe car
accident that left her with a scar over her eye. Her final credit was
on the episode “Heaven Help Us” of Vacation Playhouse (S5/Ep4,
August 14, 1967), a summer-replacement series that spotlighted
unsold TV pilots. Sue returned to Philadelphia and became
involved in charitable benefits such as the Multiple Sclerosis
Telethon, Joey Bishop’s Telethon for Handicapped Children, and
the Arthritis Fund.
Sue Randall was married twice, first to Peter Blake Powell
in 1957. The couple had two sons, Blake and Kenneth, but the
marriage ended in divorce. Sue’s second husband was James J.
McSparron.
In the Leave It to Beaver episode “Teacher Comes to Dinner” (S3,
1959), Gilbert, Whitey, and Larry are up in a tree spying on Miss
Landers and the Cleaver family eating dinner at their picnic table
in the backyard—
Gilbert: This isn’t worth a quarter. I want my money back!
Whitey: Me, too! Nothin’ good is happening.
Larry: Well, come on guys! Let’s wait ’til dessert.
Gilbert: Nah! Who wants to see her eatin’ dessert?
Larry: Well, after dessert she might even smoke!
Gilbert: Smoke?
Whitey: You mean like a cigarette?
Larry: Well, sure!
Whitey: Boy, that would be worth a quarter to see that!
In real life Sue Randall was a heavy smoker (you’ll recall
mention of that TV commercial for Newport cigarettes earlier
in this article). Of course, back in those days, almost everybody
smoked cigarettes (an unfair and memory-challenged criticism of
the excellent series Mad Men, too). Unfortunately, Sue apparently
developed an extreme smoking habit and was diagnosed with
lung and larynx cancer in 1982.
Mike Lefebvre, author, researcher, and collector, was preparing
a book on Leave It to Beaver and called up Sue back in late 1983.
A raspy, growly voice answered the phone, Mike asked to speak
with Sue Randall, and the phone was handed off. Sue’s second
husband, “Jim” McSparron, came on the line. Mike again said
he’d like to speak with Sue Randall and Jim said, “That was Sue
Randall.” By that time Sue had been given treatments and her
larynx had been removed. Mike had a pleasant conversation with
Jim, who was friendly and cordial, and who indicated that despite
her condition, Sue was in good spirits.
Mike also relayed the story that Robert “Rusty” Stevens (“Larry
Mondello” on Leave It to Beaver) was in Philadelphia in the early
Eighties and happened to pass by Sue Randall. Except that he didn’t
even recognize her. Apparently, by then the cancer had taken its toll.
Sue passed away on October 26, 1984 at Pennsylvania Hospital
in her hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was 49 years
old. Per her wishes, her body was donated to the Humanity Gifts
Registry in Philadelphia for medical research.
(LEFT) Sue Randall on a seaside vacation, c. 1983. (RIGHT) James
J. “Jim” McSparron, Sue’s second husband. Photos courtesy of Mike
Lefebvre. (BOTTOM) Sue Randall’s obituary notice, 1984.
ernest farino’s retro fantasmagoria
Perhaps “Miss Landers” has left us with one last lesson about
the dangers of smoking.
Sue’s son, Blake Powell, has said that Sue “was exactly like
the ‘Miss Landers’ character. She was kind and considerate, and
never raised her voice in anger, but could give you one look of
disappointment that would change evil little boys’ ways. She
also never tried to act in any way ‘above’ anybody else. She was
loved by people from all stations of life.” Blake also said that it
was between Sue and Mary Tyler Moore to play Laura Petrie on
The Dick Van Dyke Show. A message from Blake on the Facebook
group The Leave it to Beaver Fan Club said that he really does
appreciate Leave It to Beaver and all the fans, and that “It is nice
to know there are people out there appreciating all the talented
actors on the show.”
Jerry Mathers remembered his co-star fondly, saying that she
was “a wonderful friend and mentor.”
My thanks to John Ellis, Mike Lefebvre, Mark Thomas McGee, and
Amy Roy.
ERNEST FARINO recently directed an episode
of the SyFy/Netflix series Superstition
starring Mario Van Peebles, as well as serving
as Visual Effects Consultant. Previously
Farino directed Steel and Lace starring Bruce
Davison, episodes of Monsters starring Lydia
Cornell and Marc McClure, ABC’s Land of
the Lost starring Timothy Bottoms, and extensive 2nd Unit for the
miniseries Dune starring William Hurt, Noah’s Ark starring Jon
Voight, and Supernova starring Luke Perry. A two-time Emmy®-
winning Visual Effects Supervisor for SyFy’s Dune and Children of
Dune miniseries, Farino supervised the Emmy-nominated visual
effects for the Tom Hanks/HBO miniseries From the Earth to the
Moon; James Cameron’s The Terminator, The Abyss, and T2; as well
as Starship Troopers, Snow White–A Tale of Terror, Creepshow, and
many others. His publishing enterprise, Archive Editions, has published
Mike Hankin’s elaborate three-volume book set Ray Harryhausen –
Master of the Majicks, The FXRH Collection, and more.
RETROFAN September 2021 33
 RETRO REMEMBRANCE
,
My Friend,
By Mike Pingel
Once upon a time there was an actress named Tanya Roberts
who became known around the world as Charlie’s final Angel
when she joined the hit TV show Charlie’s Angels in 1980 as Julie
Rogers, the “Streetwise” Angel. That was my first introduction to
this heavenly beauty. I was a huge Charlie’s Angels fan since 1977,
and of course even today. I created a newsletter (Angelic Heaven)
and website (www.charliesAngels.com) dedicated to the actresses
and their hit series.   The Beastmaster, and then posed for a nude layout in Playboy
My friendship with Tanya
began 20+ years ago when
I did my very first Angel
interview (by telephone)
with her for the newsletter
in 1998. At that time, Tanya
was starring as the sexy
mother Midge Pinciotti in
the hilarious comedy, That
’70s Show.   Playboy (nude layout) – “Strange, I’m shy with being naked;
One of the questions I
asked her to compare a day
on the set of Charlie’s Angels
to a day on That ’70s Show.
Tanya told me: “On That ’70s
Show, I come in at 10am and
leave at 4:30pm. We rehearse all week—first day read through
the script, then script into rewrites… every day the cast works on
read-throughs. Then on Thursday, we have dress rehearsals and
on Friday, we shoot the show. On Charlie’s Angels… in make-up at
7am, then [I] got home at 7pm! In filming Charlie’s Angels we did a
lot of waiting around, for different shots… such as close-ups. I hate
waiting around.”  to the world. I was excited for the new Angel, but sadly AFN
Unknown to me at the time, I would meet Tanya in person
shortly after that phone interview. My friend Jules and I went
to grab frozen yogurt after the gym in West
Hollywood. The woman in front of us was telling
her order and I looked at Jules and said, “I think
that’s Tanya Roberts,” and it was. I went over and
introduced myself and met her husband Barry.
Our meetings kept happening. I was to film a
segment for our local Fox channel in injunction
with promoting That ’70s Show. The topper of the
interview I was able to go to the That ’70s Show set
and meet Tanya on camera. During the interview
I even asked Tanya to “marry me”! LOL. She
declined since she was already married.
From there, our friendship grew. I created her
first website, went with her to fan signings, and
worked as her publicist. This past year I co-hosted
34 RETROFAN September 2021
with her The Live Chats with Tanya Roberts. We went live every
Saturday on Facebook, where Tanya would chat with her fans.
She loved doing she show and meeting her fans from around the
world. It’s a blast of the show. All our shows can be viewed on
YouTube.  
After the cancellation of Charlie’s Angels, Tanya set her
sights back to the silver screen. She went on to star as Kiri in
magazine. She is also took on the comic world with the feature-
film version of Sheena: Queen of the Jungle. Then in 1985 she became
Bond Girl, Stacey Sutton, in A View to a Kill.
During my first interview with Tanya, I asked her about each of
her major iconic projects. Here was her response for each one:  
Charlie’s Angels – “gorgeous, fabulous” 
The Beastmaster – “magical; surprise, never-expected cult hit;
wonderful” 
scary; never will do again” 
Sheena – “fabulous; LOVED Africa” 
A View to a Kill – “total luxury; best of everything”
That ’70s Show – “MOST FUN I EVER HAD”
Tanya Roberts was born Victoria Leigh Blum, on October 15th,
1955, in the Bronx, New York. She dropped out of high school at
15 and hitchhiked around the country, looking for adventure.
She eventually returned to New York City, and began a career in
modeling. 
I was an Army brat living in Germany when the final season
of Charlie’s Angels came on the air, introducing Tanya Roberts
(Armed Forces Network) actually never showed the final
season. It was not until I returned to the States, when TNT used
to show the series, that I
was finally able to watch
her episodes. Years later,
after graduating college,
I moved to Los Angeles
with dreams of being an
actor.  
There is that a well-
known saying, “Never
meet your idols.” Well,
Tanya was exactly what
you would expect—she
was wonderful, funny, and
never lost her New Yorker
“whatever” attitude.  
Tanya Roberts
One fond unchecked can be fatal. If you have any symptoms, check with
memory with Tanya your doctor; UTIs are preventable when caught early. 
was, we were in Tanya was a huge animal advocate. She owned many dogs,
my car. As we were cats, koi-fish, birds, and frogs throughout her life. Her fur-babies
driving, we both were her life. If you would like to honor this beautiful soul, please
started singing make a donation to ASPCA.org. 
Duran Duran’s Tanya was taken away from all of us way to soon. She was
song, “A View to a eager for the pandemic to get over and return to acting hopefully
Kill,” the title track in a TV comedy. 
from her 007 film. What will I
When would that remember about
ever happen? It will my friend will be her
be one of many smile, her laugh, and
cherished memories her love of life. I will
with her.  miss chatting the
Tanya was most, we could talk
always up for doing about anything… and
something silly. I we did.  
remember we were One of my favorite
at the mall during questions I asked
one Christmas Tanya in that 1998
shopping and I interview was, “How
thought we should take a picture with Santa. Tanya said, “Sure,” did it feel to be the
and we went down and took a photo with the jolly St. Nick. But new kid on the block on Charlie’s Angels?” Tanya’s response was:
turned out we both hated the photo. “Great, and tough—the stars were tired of the show, knowing the
Tanya loved sushi. Her favorite restaurant was Katsu-Ya end of the series was coming soon. I came at the end of the party.” 
in Studio City, California, which we ate at For Tanya, life was a party.
so many times throughout the years. She Sadly, she has now left the
began dragging me along and to be party too soon, which hurts my
honest, I was never a fan of it, but Tanya heart. Tanya was a wonderful,
taught me all about sushi and I now love beautiful, and authentic woman,
it. I would always order the California roll actress, friend, and Angel.  
with tempura shrimp on top. She always
made fun of me that I love the ones with MIKE PINGEL has published
deep fried shrimp on top. Yet sometime seven books including Channel
during the meal she would steal one or Surfing: Charlie’s Angels, Channel
two them. It always made us laugh!   Surfing: Wonder Woman, and
Tanya was a health freak. Every morning recently, Betty White Rules
she would take a hike with her dogs and the World. He also hosts two
drink her green smoothie when she got online shows, Collector’s Heaven
home. I took a hike with her once. I could and The Mike Pingel Show. He
not do it again; the hike was hard and wore has worked as a freelance
me out!    publicist for over 20 years
She stayed in the house all of last in Hollywood. Pingel owns
year, not wanting to catch COVID-19, but and runs the CharliesAngels.
sadly, an unchecked UTI was the cause com website and was Farrah
of her death, on January 4, 2021. UTI is Fawcett’s personal assistant.
very common in women over 65, and www.mikepingel.com
RETROFAN September 2021 35
SCOTT SAAVEDRA'S SECRET SANCTUM

Weekly Reader
12+

My
By Scott Saavedra

d do such a thing? Let's find out!

A newspaper for school children? Who woul

Special Introduction
boys get their very own copy of
Our week has seven days. That is a and
Weekly Reader. My Weekly Read-
lot. We need so many days because My
full of stories about important
we are all so very busy. On Monday er is
nts just like your father’s news-
the school days of the week begin. eve
er but without extra words that
All week long we study and learn pap
ld make you sad. RetroFan is a
and have lunch and milk. The last wou
azine that is almost the same
day of the school week is Friday. It mag
My Weekly Reader. RetroFan has
is the best school day. Is it because as
ies about important old televi-
the next day is Saturday and that is stor
shows and good toys and best
not a school day so you can watch sion
there are no words that will
television cartoons and eat sugar of all,
e you sad. Well, except for the
cereal until your head feels funny? mak
t of this story where My Weekly
No! Friday is the best day because par
der dies…
that is the school day all the girls Rea

RETROFAN September 2021 37

 Scott Saavedra's secret sanctum

In the interest of full disclosure: I do MWR referred to itself as “The Children’s Newspaper,” but
not recall getting My Weekly Reader in they managed to leave out important details and even stay
elementary school. I remember getting a away from upsetting topics, so wanting “to know more”
competitor’s magazine, Junior Scholastic, in was entirely understandable. Weekly Reader: 60 Years of
middle school. I liked Junior Scholastic a lot News for Kids, 1928–1988 (World Almanac, 1988), a book
and even kept several copies for decades prepared by the then-current staff of Weekly Reader (the
until finally returning them to the earth. But word My having been dropped by then), admitted as much,
RetroFan didn’t get requests from readers indicating their policy was designed to “avoid difficult or
for an article about Junior Scholastic… they controversial discussions in the classroom.”
wanted to read about My Weekly Reader, so It’s true that there would be stories the newspaper felt
here we are. could be safely overlooked (Did an eight-year-old in 1929
My Weekly Reader was a slim magazine- absolutely need to hear about the stock market crash?—
sized newspaper for elementary school probably not), while others couldn’t passed over. The
children. It was between four and eight pages long. The writing shattering assassination of President John F. Kennedy was too
and design were clear and basic. There were eventually editions big a story to ignore, and yet their four-page “Special Memorial
geared for all elementary school grades featuring news stories Section” (Dec. 1963) was mostly photos and a transcript of his
and other information of interest. There was often a comic strip inaugural speech. It doesn’t mention the assassination at all.
or some other cartoon, and a study guide on the last page. Special Kennedy was simply not alive anymore. Even as news for kids, it’s
sections were sometimes included for the areas of science, health, a very elemental fact to not address.
etc. Twenty-five issues were published during the school year and Despite such weak spots in its news coverage over the years,
a Summer edition was available during, you know, the Summer. the desire to drive young minds to an interest in current events
Judging from comments online, getting the latest My Weekly was a solid one. That goal, and My Weekly Reader’s story, began
Reader (MWR) was also a nice break from the classroom routine nearly 120 years ago with a publication called, quite sensibly,
for many students. If you were Current Events.
lucky, the teacher would pass
out copies and let everyone read Twin Births
in class and then answer the Separated by Years
study guide questions at their Current Events was the creation
own speed. A quiet time for all of Charles Palmer Davis, a
(especially the teacher). That former journalist and school
method of distribution may have board member. When visiting
been common. But RetroFan reader classrooms he noted that the
Doug Abramson wrote to share that school children were largely
during his elementary school years unaware of the greater world
(1977–1984) Weekly Reader appeared around them, not even able
in with the Sunday comics section of to identify the then-serving
his local newspaper. Unfortunately, president of the United States
as we shall see, there are some (the sadly doomed William
areas of MWR history that remain McKinley). Davis was unsettled
somewhat murky. and felt that an education that
In whatever way they got their didn’t “prepare young people
copies, former children recalled for better citizenship” needed
the satisfaction of having their own to be fixed. His proposed
news source like mom and dad solution was to create a
did. Some just enjoyed reading the newspaper for public school
news, while others would sit with kids.
friends later to discuss the stories The first issue of Current
from the latest issue. Early in 2020, Events was published May 20,
author Rick Houser wrote in The 1902. Only a few hundred were
Clermot Sun that “the Weekly Reader printed, but the newspaper,
was the foundation of moving me designed for middle and
towards growing into a thirst to This special section of My Weekly Reader (Dec. 1963) was high school students, grew
want to know more.” He wasn’t intended for second grade students (note the number 2 in in popularity. That first issue
alone. the masthead). Nothing inside even alludes to President put down a marker that would
However, not to be too snarky Kennedy’s assassination. Unless otherwise mentioned, all also apply later to MWR. Each
about it since we are talking about images are from the collection of the author. Junior Scholastic & issue would provide “prompt,
news for children here, MWR could My Weekly Reader TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. All Rights Reserved. reliable, fresh, clean” news
come up short as a news source. without “harmful features

38 RETROFAN September 2021

 Scott Saavedra's secret sanctum

of the daily press.” It would also be affordable so that it could certainly a component of the newspaper’s success. Johnson
be read by all students and present “a broader view of life.” The had experience writing educational material for children with
success of Current Events led to the formation of the American some 50 workbooks to her credit in a variety of subjects, so her
Education Press, Inc. (AEP) around the First World War. About a commitment to education is not in question.
decade later, My Weekly Reader would find a home there. The reason Johnson did not immediately join the staff was
The credit for the creation of MWR is generally given to that she already had jobs in education during MWR’s early years.
educator Eleanor Murdoch Johnson. Much like Davis before her, So while she was not initially an employee of the American
Johnson noticed that elementary school students were getting Education Press, she did meet with its editors and have input on
an incomplete education. She felt weekends until 1934 when she
that “pupils had no idea of what became MWR’s editor-in-chief.
was happening in the world—not Johnson would remain in that
a flicker.” The innovation for her role until 1971 while consulting for
conception of a newspaper for years after that.
students was in creating a targeted As with any publication,
edition for each elementary grade. success is never truly the result of
The first issue of MWR was released just one person. The first editor of
with a cover date of September 21, MWR was Martha Fulton. Fulton
1928 and was quickly successful. was the principal writer as well.
The best available biographical The managing editor of MWR
information about Johnson (and and AEP’s president, Harrison
the source of the preceding quote) Sayre, felt that Fulton’s work was a
is an extended excerpt—in the definite source of the newspaper’s
York Daily Record (Dec. 31, 2007)— success.
from Legacies, an out-of-print York, Though he died in 1921, well
Pennsylvania, history of the area’s before MWR was published,
notable women. the impact of Charles Palmer
Despite MWR’s success, Johnson Davis was also important to the
was not employed by AEP in the publication. He devised Current
newspaper’s early years. It would Events’ mission statement, which
be this absence that, for some, was also used for My Weekly
contributes to undermining her Reader: “To awaken [children’s]
claim to being not just a founder interest in the great world in which
but of having a significant influence they live… prepare them for good
on the early days of MWR. Some of the car safety innovations discussed in citizenship… and help equip them
For such a beloved publication this May 4, 1966 issue eventually became standard, for success.”
there has been very little written on like airbags and shoulder straps. Sliding passen- MWR’s own success was
the subject beyond business-centric ger doors? Not so much. TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. All immediate, a rare beacon of good
(adult) newspaper articles and Rights Reserved. business news once the Great
random blog posts and comments Depression unfurled its dark
(“I looooved it!”). Most everything tentacles across a wounded nation
of significance about the history of MWR has come from a short (you’d never see that kind of purple prose in MWR). No matter
mid-Sixties booklet, History of American Education Publications, Inc., the events of the day, MWR tried to stay positive. Bad news was
1902–1965, by Charles E. Martz, an AEP editor. History does give diminished and ways to overcome obstacles were presented.
Johnson credit for founding MWR. However, an academic thesis, The first headline from the first issue provides not just a prime
The Weekly Reader: A Corporate History, 1965–1995, by Cindi Lee example of MWR’s style but is often a component of articles about
Weldy, notes that Charles Palmer Davis’ son Preston Davis thought the newspaper (ahem): “Two poor boys who made good are now
that some of Martz’s work was flawed (with some details “the running for the highest office in the world!” The candidates were
product of someone’s imagination”). Exactly what was wrong and Herbert Hoover and Al Smith.
how is unknown. Weldy also suggests that Johnson’s contributions The thought that two poor boys, proxies for many children (so
were “over emphasized.” Meanwhile, the Wikipedia entry (yeah, long as they were boys), was a powerfully hopeful message. Of
yeah) for MWR under its more modern name, Weekly Reader, doesn’t course, it wasn’t very inclusive, but it was a reflection of the time.
even mention Johnson as having the idea for the newspaper in the But times change. And to their credit, the writers and editors did
first place. attempt to keep up.
Despite the contradictions of what meager historical record The world grew more connected and complex as the
there is, Johnson herself said she came up with the idea for the turbulent Sixties made way for the political and financial
publication of news for students, and there doesn’t appear to be upheaval of the Seventies before landing in the “greed is good”
any bold contemporary contradiction of that fact. Her concept Eighties. MWR did eventually address tough subjects that might
of a specialized edition for each of the elementary grades was have been given a pass in the Forties and Fifties, as well as
RETROFAN September 2021 39
 Scott Saavedra's secret sanctum
topics that still to this day get folks’ backs up in a crunch, like the
Equal Rights Amendment.
What kind of stories did they cover during our formative years?
Let’s have a look, shall we?
News of a World Getting Smaller Everyday
The Sixties: Technology and science were popular subjects during
the Space Race as the U.S. and the Soviet Union strove for ever-
escalating advances in space science. “The First Satellite Phone
Call” was made from New Jersey to California by bouncing a
signal off of a satellite. The story pointed out that satellites would
allow for live television broadcasts and phone calls around the
globe. As many as 50 satellites were planned.
The Apollo 11 lunar landing (effectively
calling the U.S. as the winner of the Space
Race) was covered in nice detail, though
Neil Armstrong’s famous “One small step
for [a] man…” statement is incorrectly
reported (or more correctly, Armstrong’s
preplanned comments came out wrong but
were reported as intended to be spoken).
The same story has President Richard
Nixon’s VP, Spiro Agnew, indicating that a
trip to Mars should have Americans on the
red planet by 1999.
Time for a joke from the comic strip
Peanut and Jocko (a regular feature). Jocko is a
monkey. Peanut is an elephant, and they are
both warmly dressed (this has no bearing on
the joke but is mentioned to set the scene).
They both see a tall building and Jocko
wonders how many stories it has. Peanut
laughs (“Ha, ha, ha!”). “It’s a building not a
book!” Then Jocko laughs (“Ha, ha, ha!”).
President Lyndon Johnson declares a
“War on Poverty.” The listed descriptions of poverty are sound
enough (lack of food, lack of work, and “not enough clothes”), but
reporting that the United States is the richest nation in the world
because we are a land of “ranch-style homes” is weird.
“Are Paper Clothes Here to Stay?” MWR is non-committal (the
correct answer is no—see RetroFan #14 for more on that).
Amazingly, there was reporting on the Vietnam War, but the
Johnson Administration was less than honest with the public so
I’m not going to trash a children’s newspaper for any reporting
weaknesses. They noted that “Others in the U.S. are against
direct U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam… These people are
Doves.” (Doves aren't people, they're birds. Ha, ha, ha!). Here’s a
fun fact about Vietnam: The country has only two seasons, “hot
and dry” and “hot and rainy.”
On the civil rights front, Thurgood Marshall is lauded as the
first “Negro” judge on the Supreme Court. And in a striking shift
from just a few years earlier when JFK was murdered, MWR gets
right to the point about Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination,
saying up front that he “was struck down by a sniper’s bullet.” In
the more hopeful vein that was a hallmark of MWR stories, they
also reported that Dr. King’s efforts for racial equality would
continue and of a call for a national holiday to be named after the
civil rights icon, which did eventually happen.
40 RETROFAN September 2021
The Seventies: This was the decade when I became more aware
of the world around me, and I’ve got to say at the time that I was
terrified about drug use. I was warned before attending middle
school in 1972 that heroin use was “all over.” Nope. You know what
was “all over” my middle school? Exploded ketchup packages.
Stomping on them was some kind of bizarre ritual or something.
I stomped on a ketchup package exactly once. It shot straight
into my pants and up my leg. So… drugs. MWR warned kids that
they shouldn’t “Meth” with drugs. Just say “no” to those ketchup
packages too.
“New TV Show Enjoyed by All” reports that Sesame (SES-
a-me) Street is a young kid’s program watched and enjoyed
by everybody, regardless of age. It has puppets and cartoon
(LEFT) Students (or more likely, their
parents) could subscribe to My Weekly
Reader during summer vacation. This
copy was mailed to a home in York,
Pennsylvania. Have you heard of York
recently? What important person was
once celebrated in a York newspaper?
(BELOW) Matters of Good Citizenship
were important to the staff of My Weekly
Reader. TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
characters and puppets and games. It even has a photo of
Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson with the caption, “Puppet and
Puppeteer.”
Attention, youths. Your family might have a television set
made in Japan. Quick, go check the back of the TV! One in three
American homes have television sets… “Made in Japan.” This
is actually an interesting piece that explains why Japanese
products were becoming more popular (“nine out of ten”
transistor radios are from Japan!): cheap labor, lower prices,
and good quality are the main culprits. Possible solutions to
this problem mention tariffs (referred to somewhat benignly
as “taxes”) or having U.S. manufacturers giving up on markets
they can’t effectively compete in. Unmentioned is the fact that
not many years earlier “Made in Japan” meant cheap and poorly
made.
Cable television and its benefits were presented in “Is Cable
TV Coming to Your Home?” MWR wanted you to imagine a
world with cable TV where you could watch 20, 30, even 40
channels. One channel might even have weather, news, and the
time continuously on tap. All for only $5, $6, or even $7 a month!
In the early Eighties, one of my brothers worked for a local cable
company, so my parents had a full set-up including HBO. HBO’s
movie line-up was pretty weak, as I recall. My mom and sister
 Scott Saavedra's secret sanctum

watched An Officer and a Gentleman so often you’d think it was the

only film in HBO’s library (and you wouldn’t be far wrong).
WEEKLY READER
President Richard Nixon, following the arrest and conviction of STUDENT PRESIDENTIAL
the Watergate burglars (five men who broke into the Democratic
National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate hotel,
ELECTION POLL
which we’ll revisit next year in RetroFan #19), is quoted as saying in MWR began asking its readers who they’d pick for
“Watergate Whodunnit” that “no one in the White House staff, no president in 1940 (President Franklin D. Roosevelt over
one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in Wendell Willkie) and in the
this very bizarre incident.” decades since has had a pretty
For their part, Nixon’s fellow Republicans were worried about a good track record of reflecting
loss of trust in Government that the ongoing scandal could create. the national mood. On occasion
Yeah, that would be bad. they’d get it wrong, as in 1948
Other stories of import were the Energy Crisis (when, for when students picked Thomas
various reasons, oil supply didn’t meet demand), women wanting E. Dewey rather than President
to enter the work force and do jobs traditionally done by men Harry S. Truman, and when they
(“a big work field for women is expected to be home appliance picked Richard Nixon over JFK
repair”), the popular Hamill Haircut (based on Olympian Dorothy in 1960. But usually, as they did
Hamill’s follicle stylings and not Mark Hamill’s, though, frankly, most recently in 2020 (Scholastic
there wasn’t much of a difference then), and a story about baby News has taken over the poll), kids selected the winner
harp seals with a photo showing a hunter “kill [a] white-coated when they “elected” Joe Biden for president with 61% of the
pup with a crushing blow to the skull.” tally. Scholastic would like you to know that what they now
call “The Student Vote” is just an educational activity (so
The Eighties: By this time, MWR was known as Weekly Reader please, no wagering).
(WR). Students of the Eighties had a very turbulent decade. As the TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. All Rights Reserved.
staff of WR put it, they “responded head-on” with more news than
in previous decades, giving special attention to possible solutions
to national problems. “Afghanistan may never step into the modern world.” All of which,
In “Tribesmen Resist Soviet Invaders,” there is literally no I have to say, is good information to have.
mention of Soviets invading Afghanistan. There are interesting Under a report about U.S. imports into China is a comic strip.
facts about the country and its people like, f’rinstance: “every The comic strip is called The V. P.’s (Vocabulary Pals). A male and
man owns a gun” and “travelers are welcomed into homes” and female V. P. are conversing. The male is a wizard hat with legs. The

(LEFT) In 1968, disposable paper hospital supplies were an innovation, but more recently when the COVID-19 pandemic began, dispos-
able supplies were in the news again. (CENTER) Postmaster General Lawrence O’Brien adds machines and more postal workers to
handle increased mail volume with the aim of “overnight delivery” between U.S. cities within the year. Students were often intro-
duced to such stories as examples of America’s Can Do spirit. (RIGHT) Surprise was the kindergarten edition of My Weekly Reader. The
surprise was that it carried no news (Bonus: this copy belonged to "Steven"). TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. All Rights Reserved.

RETROFAN September 2021 41

 Scott Saavedra's secret sanctum
female is a flapper-style hat with a skirt and legs. The wizard hat
doesn’t like trade reporting because he’s “going to mix up import
and export again!” The flapper hat lets two farmer hats explain
that import means bringing goods in and export means shipping
goods out. The flapper hat then belabors the point by telling the
wizard hat that “Out is ex-, in is im-, get it?” The wizard hat gets it.
(I love that joke.)
Stop the presses: In an unusually lurid (“Jeremy wipes the
blood from his mouth…”) story, “Knocked-Out Tooth Can Be
Saved,” Jeremy Miller gets a hole in his smile thanks to a well-
BEYOND MY WEEKLY READER
Both Scholastic and Weekly Reader had book fairs that
would bring to schools what amounted to a pop-up, kid-
friendly bookstore. At Rhoda Street Elementary School,
our book fairs were in the auditorium. The sensation of
anticipation and excitement as I walked with my mom
down the center aisle toward the front of the stage where
all the beautiful books were remains one of my strongest
childhood memories (that and the whole ketchup package
thing).
Book publishing was another project. There were
Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club editions of a number
of popular books including Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene
Zion; Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber; and Snoopy
and the Red Baron by Charles Schulz. General book collector
advice is to avoid book club editions, but apparently Baby
Boomers get all nostalgic for these.
READ magazine was for older students (grades 6–10)
and featured both non-fiction and
fiction. READ ended in 2012 with
Scholastic’s purchase of Weekly
Reader Corp. Based on the number
of volumes published at the time,
61, the magazine had been around
since 1950–1951. A solid run for sure.
(ABOVE) Weekly Reader Book Club
catalog. Many thanks to Shawn Robare
(Brandedinthe80s.com) for the scans.
(RIGHT) READ magazine reached
the upper-grade students that Junior
Scholastic did (and does, it’s still
around). TM ® & © 2021 Scholastic Inc. Star
Trek © CBS. All Rights Reserved.
42 RETROFAN September 2021
thrown baseball to the face. A dentist returns the tooth to the
kid’s mouth.
“Thousands of Searches are Held Yearly to Find Missing
Youngsters” is the sub-head to the story “Missing Children.” There
is good advice here (we’ve all heard it), but this kind of reporting
had to unnerve kids. (The V. P.’s weigh in as a propeller beanie
asks, “Is kidnapping a child sleeping?”)
A human baby gets a baboon heart transplant. Little Baby Fae
lived for 20 days, which was actually the good news as previous
primate transplant patients didn’t live past three and a half days
following surgery. There was no word on just how the baboon
was persuaded to donate its heart.
In other stories, Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first
woman to be a Supreme Court judge, unemployment reaches
10.1% (“it’s like death,” according to one out-of-work man), and a
story about AIDS is both humane and informative.
News You Can Lose
Weekly Reader celebrated its 60th birthday in 1988. WR continued
to be published for years but suffered from the same challenges
that other publications faced in a changing media environment.
Adding to their difficulties was the shrinking of school budgets.
Shifting ownership also affected WR. The original publisher
was Charles Palmer Davis’ American Education Press. AEP
became American Education Publications in 1949 when it was
sold to Wesleyan University. From there it was sold to Xerox
Corporation in 1965. The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is often
mentioned as an owner of WR, but a specific date of acquisition
could not be found. Ripplewood Holdings bought what was now
Weekly Reader Corp. in 1999. Ripplewood then merged with
Reader’s Digest (at one time having a circulation of many millions)
in 2007. Reader’s Digest declared bankruptcy in 2009, affecting
WR’s resources, and circulation dropped dramatically. In 2012
Scholastic Inc. purchased both Weekly Reader and Current Events.
The company merged the newspaper with its version of WR,
Scholastic News, to create Scholastic News Weekly Reader (a name
change that didn’t last). Current Events joined with Junior Scholastic.
All but five of WR’s 60-person staff were laid off. Like many, many
MWR stories, I saved the worst news for the end of the report. The
idealistic creations of Charles Palmer Davis and Eleanor Murdoch
Johnson were now gone.
For all those who look back fondly to My Weekly Reader
and, better still, those who found the publication life-
enhancing, the good memories live on. That may not be
news, but it is a fact.
Of special help in finding otherwise difficult to track down
information about My Weekly Reader was Walter Duane
Carpenter’s dissertation “Values, leaders and My Weekly
Reader: An historical study.” I am grateful for his research.
SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a Retro Explorer
operating from his Southern California-
based Secret Sanctum. He is a writer
(more or less), artist (occasionally), and
graphic designer (you’re soaking in it).
Check out his Instagram thing, won’t
you, at instagram/scottsaav/
 THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!
Wolfman Jack through the years:
at KUXL, in the movie American
Grafitti, a publicity shot (with
fangs!), on TV’s Midnight Special,
and as the subject of a 1995 memoir,
Have Mercy!, co-written by Byron
Laursen. Photos courtesy of Scott Shaw!
American Grafitti © Universal Pictures.
Midnight Special © NBC. Have Mercy! © Grand
Central Pub.
“Bitten by the
Curse of Radio,
It’s WOLFMAN
JACK, Baby!”
“If someone was to nominate me for the Supreme Court it would
be a shame, because with my two-tone wolfish goatee and all I’d
probably look great in those dignified robes. But I would never get past
the preliminary phase, where they check your closet for skeletons.
’Cause I’ve got enough bones kicking around in there to build my own
dinosaur.”
– Robert Weston Smith, a.k.a. “Wolfman Jack”
As a kid, I liked beatniks,
outlaws, eccentrics, and
weirdos. I still do. Many
of them inspired what
eventually became part of
my oddball personality.
Growing up in San
Diego, California, a border
city, in the mid-Sixties, I
raptly listened to a raspy,
outrageous, and hilarious
fellow who went by the
“air name” of “Wolfman Jack” on XERB, a megawatt “border blaster”
radio station in nearby Mexico that broadcast prerecorded shows.
While in 11th grade, I spoke like Wolfman Jack for a week just to see
if I could get away with it. I drove my parents crazy, especially when
my Spanish teacher, a guy from Germany, met with my parents on
PTA Night and informed them that I “spoke like a colored person.”
(My parents were much more upset with that racist comment than
my entire week of Wolfmanning.) In 1966, during a family weekend
vacation in Los Angeles, after Wolfman Jack was doing his radio
show live from Hollywood, I had a five-minute conversation with
him from a phone booth outside our motel one Saturday night.
(I’ve been told that our session was included on one of his many
LP-record-album collections of his on-air phone calls.) He was a
by complete mystery to me, my friends, and most of the teenagers in
Scott San Diego.
Shaw! Who was this Wolfman Jack? What did he look like? Where did
he come from? Was he a put-on? Why was his voice so raspy? Was he
black or was he white?
RETROFAN September 2021 43
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

I bought November 1967 issue Since his health situation dictated

of Cheetah magazine (the first that radio would be his main source
publication from The National of entertainment for a while, he
Lampoon’s Matty Simmons) because it embraced it all. Bobby loved to listen
featured the first-ever-in-print photo to Abbott and Costello, The Shadow,
of Wolfman Jack. I also ordered a Jack Benny, and The Green Hornet, with
poster that he constantly mentioned particular attention to the power of
on his radio show, the “Wolfman words and how they can inspire the
Jack Psychedelic Drug Calendar,” imagination. And a career, as Bobby
a cartoon image of a werewolf went on to prove.
inside of a clear gel capsule. When As time passed, the Smith family
it arrived, I immediately taped it to moved to Brooklyn and Bobby fell
my bedroom’s closet door. I was so in with a rough block gang. The
innocent then that I never noticed the Wolfman freely admitted that he was
implication… and fortunately, neither reluctant to get into fights with rival
did my parents. gangs, but once he did, he wailed on
his opponents. He was involved in
Kid Wolfman other juvie crimes, such as stealing
Robert Smith was born in Brooklyn cars for joyriding and shaking down
on January 21, 1938. His father, guys who propositioned them in the
Weston Smith, was a successful, bus station’s bathroom. Eventually,
intelligent, and talented man, an he formed his own gang of actual
Episcopal Sunday school teacher, friends, which included black kids.
writer, editor, and stage magician. One of his pals, a guy nicknamed
The Wolfman has described his “Klepto,” deftly stole dozens of 45
mother, Rosamond Small, as “being a RPM records for Bobby. He built a
little too open-hearted, sympathetic, primo collection of songs—mostly
and trusting.” Bobby (as everyone rhythm and blues but tons of other
called him) was especially close to hip material like Afro-Cuban jazz—
his older sister, Joan, as well as the and put together his own faux “radio
family’s African-American maid, shows,” spinning discs and laying
Frances, a.k.a. “Tantan” (that was spiels on his pals.
toddler Joan’s name for Frances). One Christmas, his father gave
He grew up in a posh apartment him a fancy radio, a transoceanic
in Manhattan, until his father model that received broadcasts
experienced a financial reversal. from all over the world. Bobby and
Weston suddenly had to work as his buddies found tuning in to listen
a shoe salesman, but he was an to all of the frantic, fast-talking
ambitious man and became the disc jockeys lurking in the ether
vice-president of Financial World, to be irresistible. They considered
a magazine that “created” the the deejays to be the coolest guys
Golden Globes Awards. Meanwhile, around, learning to imitate the
Joan (who was ten years older patter, the voices, and the timing. But
than Bobby) began a modeling none of them were into it as much as
career. Things were looking good Buttons promoting the Wolfman’s early radio Bobby Smith was. He was unaware
again until, bizarrely, their parents stints and events have become prized collectibles of it, but he was training himself for
divorced, only to wed their also- among Baby Boomers. Courtesy of Hake’s Auctions. a career in radio—in his eyes, the
recently-divorced best friends! Poor coolest possible job on the planet.
Bobby was having a very hard time
digesting the situation. So did Tantan, who eventually quit over XERFin’ Safari
the uncomfortable “flip.” This was especially upsetting for Bobby, Soon, Bobby Smith became an avid fan of R&B music and the
who loved his black friend like a second mother. Even worse, his disc jockeys who played it. His favorite deejays included Douglas
space was invaded by a stepbrother the Wolfman described as “Jocko” Henderson of Philadelphia and New York’s “Dr. Jive,”
“a creepy kid.” His stepmother, Marge, a mean alcoholic, treated a.k.a. Tommy Smalls. Then he got a second opportunity to
Bobby horribly, even poisoning his dog Rags. Despite a summer escape, this time a physical one, spending a stress-free summer
spent with his real mother, he felt trapped, with no chance of at his newlywed sister’s place. When he returned to Brooklyn,
escape from his his once-happy-now-hellish-household. he started listening to “the weirdest station of all,” XERF. During
When he was eight and laid low with a case of mononucleosis, daytime, it broadcast a bizarre combination of hillbilly music,
Bobby found his way out, at least psychologically speaking. fiery evangelism, and sales pitches for oddball quasi-religious

44 RETROFAN September 2021

 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

items. Then, at midnight, a deejay called “Big Rockin’ Daddy” took he became known simply as “Smitty.” One night, KNJR’s engineer
over, playing song after song of “jump-band music, rhythm and called in sick, and one of the other jocks suggested that Smitty fill
blues with a stripped-down sound.” XERF was essential to the in to run the board. He did such a professional job that everyone
creation of Wolfman Jack. was impressed… except his parents, who’d received his report
Bobby’s powerful radio also made it possible for him to listen card, reporting a majority of absences. They not only busted
to Cleveland’s “King of the Moondoggers,” Alan Freed. When Bobby, they tossed him out of his own home. His father sneaked
the “Moondog” brought his Alan Freed Show to NYC, Bobby not him $300 to “get started” as he was forced out the door.
only was there, he had a fleeting encounter with Freed, who He and his old pal Richie Caggiano bought a ten-year-old Buick
blew him off. But Bobby persevered and schmoozed his way into with intentions of making a roadtrip to Hollywood. Instead, they
becoming a backstage go-fer. When his stepmother learned of wound up at his sister Joan’s, a place he thought of as “a emotional
his show-biz shenanigans, Bobby was immediately grounded oasis,” with a happy household of relatives who truly loved him.
and sent to the Friends Academy, a Quaker prep school. After Bobby especially enjoyed playing with her boys, chasing them
suffering cruel physical punishment for cracking a joke in the around the house, growling and howling, “The Wooolfman is
chapel, Bobby dropped out during his sophomore year of high coming down the hall… the Wooolfman is coming to your door…
school and spent the summer of 1956 mellowing out with his now he’s coming to get you and eat you up! Awoooooo!”
sister’s family, stationed in Key West. But once he was back To chip in on expenses—Joan’s husband was in the military
in Brooklyn, his parents enrolled him in a trade/tech school, and temporarily got stationed in the Midwest—Bobby applied his
planning a bland future for him as an electrician. After almost charming skills to selling Collier’s Encyclopedia door-to-door. Then
electrocuting himself and a classmate, Bobby took his life into he switched to selling all sorts of stuff—and enjoying a lot of wild
his own hands and formally began to educate himself about the experiences in the process—as a Fuller Brush salesman. Bobby
radio broadcasting industry. was ambitious just like his father, and it didn’t take long before
the Wolfman became the
area’s Fuller Brush king.
Have mercy!
Doing fairly well for
himself, Bobby became
a well-dressed ladies’
man… until the night he
got jumped by a bully and
his buddies for getting
too much attention from
a popular girl. He was
injured badly enough
that he finally admitted
to himself that he was
wasting his time selling
brushes. He wanted to
be a disc jockey. With
hesitance, he asked his
father to fund a year of
education at the National
Academy of Broadcasting
in Washington, D.C. After
Bobby’s brother-in-law
vouched for him, Weston
forked over the best cash
he’d ever spent.

Wolfman Jack’s management published this hard-to-find comic book, Wolfman Jack Radio Daze
Comics #1, in 1970, illustrated by Dan Koffman (artwithasmile.com). Shown are its Bobby was finally where he wanted to be.
cover and inside back cover, the latter hyping zany products for sale. He got straight A’s. He became a group
leader. He helped the other students. He
was well liked and respected. But still, he
Every day, Bobby would take the bus to the school, walked didn’t quite fit in because he was the school’s only student whose
a few blocks past the institution, and hung out at a tiny radio career goal was to work at a rhythm and blues radio station.
station, KNJR. He charmed the engineer into allowing him to Before graduating, Bobby recorded an audition tape in the
unofficially intern around the station, on which happened to be style of “John R.” that he planned to send to 75 different radio
one of his favorite deejays, “Mr. Blues.” Young Robert Smith ran all stations. But before he could mail them, Bobby had a casual
sorts of errands for Mr. Blues and everyone else in the place, until introduction to Richard Eaton, the president of the United
RETROFAN September 2021 45
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Broadcasting Company. His business plan was to buy up small, when he rescued her from a lecherous dance school instructor,
unsuccessful radio stations, program them for a specific audience he invited her to drive his new car. That melted the ice. Now all
like an ethnic group, and build this into an empire. The ethnic Bobby had to do was convince her that he was more than guy who
groups were the same ones who dug rhythm and blues. Robert dressed like a pimp; he had no idea that her father was a busted
Smith was hired to work at WYOU in Newport News, Virginia. He moonshiner. An extended visit with his big sister’s family did the
was no longer pretending to be a deejay. Bobby was finally in the trick. The future Wolfman had met his future Wolfwoman.
club. Meanwhile, Bobby had become friends with another
WYOU’s office was in a huge, crumbling building. The station enterprising fellow, Red Guavi. They both enjoyed working
only had one other disc jockey, Tex Gathings, a black man who’d within the black community, so they decided to take Daddy Jules
studied at Harvard. He and Eaton mentored Bobby, who used his Dance Party one big step further, a bring-your-own nightclub
record collection as a way to connect with his audience, who were specializing in rhythm and blues. Bobby and Red leased a
mystified—was this guy black or white? And did it matter? That Quonset hut in Newport News’ industrial zone. They named
was an aspect of his identity that the Wolfman exploited for years. it “The Tub,” decorated its interior with “murals of Jazzbo
In fact, that was exactly why Richard Eaton had hired him. Tex beatnik-type characters in shades and berets,” and booked black
was black but he sounded white. Bobby was white but he sounded entertainers to play live. And despite the increasingly violent
black. Part of the gig was making personal appearances at local reactions to the social mixing of races, the Tub’s crowd was
public events and part was selling commercial airtime to white left alone to dance, drink, listen to exciting performances, and
business owners. Wolfman Jack remembered, “Between us, Tex generally have a great time. They even cross-promoted the Tub
and I had all the bases covered.” and WYOU, but unfortunately those call letters weren’t long for
It was 1960 and Bobby was going by a new air name, “Daddy the world…
Jules”—a sly reference to “the family jewels”! —was a real
go-getter, always living it up, driving a nice car—a new
Ford Galaxie 500, no less—and dressed like the slickest
musician in Sam and Dave’s Soul Review. Maintaining
that cool image wasn’t cheap, but Bobby wasn’t averse
to making a few bucks on the side as long as he was still
spinning records. One airtime booking deal wasn’t so
mundane, since it involved delivering marijuana to a
popular nightclub, the Starlight Room. His connections
where Bobby lived for free (there was a advertising/
lodging trade-off between the Warwick Hotel and
WYOU) came in handy when Daddy Jules was also a part-
time arranger of commercial sexual trysts! Have mercy—
talk about “skeletons in the closet”!
Bobby came up with a great idea to further connect
with his fanbase. Since the building that housed WYOU
was voluminous, he hosted The Daddy Jules Dance Party
every weekday after school, playing those same .45
records that Klepto had illegally acquired for him long
before. The admission to WYOU’s parties were free, but
the station made a nice profit off of the vending machines
Bobby brought in. At first, the attendees were all black
kids, but it wasn’t long before it was equally integrated.
Bobby and Tex braced themselves for trouble from the Ku
Klux Klan, but refreshingly, there was no discernible racial
outrage from anyone.
While introducing the station’s new salesman to
some of its clients, Bobby met a shy young lady who
worked for a low-class advertising agency. Her name was
Lou Elizabeth Lamb… and she didn’t harbor a scintilla
of interest in young Robert Smith or Daddy Jules. But

Wolfman Jack was on the air at Los Angeles’ KDAY

when he co-headlined this July 1, 1972 San Diego
concert also featuring Mitch Ryder & the Detroit
Wheels of “Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss
Molly” fame. Poster courtesy of Heritage.

46 RETROFAN September 2021


Birth of the Wolfman
In 1961, since the station had become so successful, its owner
Richard Eaton sold the place for a hefty profit. WYOU became
WTID, rhythm and blues became “Music in Good Taste,” and
Daddy Jules became “Roger Gordon.” (The Tub was also a casualty
of the sale.) Although he despised the changes, Bobby was still
treated well. He was miserable until he met the station’s new
salesman, an eccentric “brainiac-type,” a brilliant dealmaker,
and a lifetime friend and co-
conspirator, Mo Burton.
Various records by or about
Wolfman Jack. Courtesy of Scott
Shaw!
Between the two of them, they
convinced the new owner to play
less of the “sappy stuff” and more
genuinely cool music. Even better, Lou Lamb and Robert Smith
got married for life.
Weary of WTID’s restrictions and now working with Mo,
Bob and Lou moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1962 to run a
little station his pal had purchased. KCIJ/1050AM was “nothing
but country music, country gospel, and white preachers.”
The station was in serious trouble, so Bobby became—all at
once—its station manager, program director, one-half of the
advertising department, and early-morning disc jockey, “Big
Smith with the Records.” Hooo-wee! Bobby played the hillbilly
schtick to the hilt and within a few months, WTID was back in
The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!
the black. Lou and Bobby also had their first child, Joy, during
this stint.
As time went on, Bob realized that Mo was grooming him to
be a radio businessman. He appreciated the effort, but he greatly
preferred performing on the radio to running things behind the
scenes. While on their trip to Shreveport, Bob became enamored
all over again with XERF, the distant station that he obsessively
listened to on his transoceanic radio as a kid. The station that
aired a wild combination of outrageously passionate preachers,
ads for strange products both religious and carnal, and raucous
rhythm and blues music was exactly what
and where he wanted to be working. He
kept his day job with Mo, but privately,
he was creating a new radio personality,
one that he felt would fit perfectly in the
world of R&B stations. The character he
was working on, refining its personality by
recording entire faux radio shows late at
night, was heavily inspired by a pop culture
fad that swept America only a few years
earlier—monster movies!
The concept of “Wolfman Jack” had
many fathers. Alan Freed was one of Bob’s
boyhood heroes. As “Moon Dog,” he was
integral in promoting and supporting
black rhythm and blues into the rock-and-
roll music community. Freed “borrowed”
his moniker from a New York City street
musician who was known as
“Moondog,” and added wolf howls
from sound effects records during
his early shows as a deejay. Then
there was the influence of the wild
bluesman known as Howlin’ Wolf.
Robert Smith was a also big fan
of monster movies, many of which
he saw for the first time only a
few years before, when Universal
released its classic horror films
to television on Shock Theater in
1957. And as noted earlier, he loved
to chase his two young nephews
around the house while howling,
“I’m the Wooolfman!” The name
Jack, as in “hit the road, Jack,” was
tagged on for coolness’ sake. As
for Wolfman Jack’s gravelly voice,
he credited it for his success,
saying, “It’s kept meat and potatoes on the table for years for the
Wolfman and the Wolfwoman. A couple of shots of whiskey helps
it. I’ve got that nice, raspy sound.”
While Bob had his mind on creating America’s most
recognizable disc jockey, his partner Mo was busy making deals.
He and the owner of K-REB, Lawrence Brandon, decided to join
forces and combine stations. Financially, things were going
well, and Bob was being treated like a third partner, but when
he privately shared one of his tapes of The Wolfman Jack Show,
Mo blew his stack. He felt that Bob was wasting his potential
to become a shrewd businessman in the radio industry. On the
RETROFAN September 2021 47
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

other hand, the new partner Larry was very receptive to Bob’s new
character and vowed to to get him on the air. During all of these
developments, Lou and Bob had their baby boy, Tod, in 1963.

I’m on the Mexican Radio

That same year, since they already had a relationship with most of
the preachers on XERF, Bob and Larry decided to take a road trip
to Cuidad Acuña, a small but sinfully “popular” border town on the
Mexican side of the Rio Grande across from Del Rio, Texas. They
brought along Bob’s demo tape of The Wolfman Jack Show in hopes
of making a deal to air Bob’s show after midnight. Even though
XERF wasn’t interested, the trip wasn’t wasted—at least they
could have a good time. From there, the boys paid a cabdriver to
take them out the station so extremely removed from civilization,
every one of its broadcasts was a “remote.” But XERF was a border
blaster with the most powerful signal in the world, one that
resonated on teenagers’ braces, lit up automobile headlights,
killed any birds that happened to fly near its tower… and had an
incredible range that allowed most mainland Americans to tune
in. After a few hours, new employees felt dazed, then had to lie
down for a nap until they got used to the electrical vibrations in
the air.
After getting a tour of the place, Bob and Larry entered a
lounge and encountered a tense situation that felt like a stick
of dynamite with the fuse lit. The station had a long history of
grifting, false advertising, and government corruption. XERF
began its reign in 1923, when a man named John Brinkley,
a fake “doctor,” established one of the first commercial
radio stations in the country, XER. America was hungry for
inexpensive entertainment, so it didn’t take long for the radio
industry to achieve true power, including Brinkley’s station. A
lot of them tailored their content to match the tastes of poor, In Japan, they clap for the Wolfman! American Graffiti’s Disc
uneducated people in rural areas, those who were desperate to Jockey made the movie poster when the 1973 film was distrib-
be entertained. Since commercial radio was a new concept, the uted to the Land of the Rising Sun. © Universal Pictures. Poster
FCC and other overseeing organizations didn’t yet exist. Brinkley courtesy of Heritage.
and many other station owners took full advantage of this,
selling various snake oil products themselves and through radio
preachers to their somewhat naive listeners. Brinkley’s specialty and Larry bought a lot of favors and a lot of firepower, bracing
was luring men to his clinic for the bizarre surgical procedure of themselves for trouble, which did eventually show up. But in
implanting goat parts in men to increase their sexual potency. Bob’s POV, the opportunity to share The Wolfman Jack Show on his
But in 1930, his medical and broadcasting licenses were revoked, favorite radio station ever was absolutely worth the risks, which
so Brinkley concentrated on running for the governorship of were like hurdles he and Larry got very good at jumping over.
Kansas… and lost. Then he moved his family to Mexico and Things were looking good and Bobby made a lot of new friends
created a new million-watt station, XER, whose range covered with Mo’s money. Despite their success, when they told him what
the U.S. and at least 15 other countries. When Brinkley tried suing they were up to, Mo fired them both on the spot for illegally
his biggest critic, the trial went sideways and he was sued by a appropriating his funds, money they fully intended to repay. One
number of his “patients before he died, penniless.” XER eventually night, there was even an armed attack on XERF by the men they’d
became XERF, but the laws against peddling shoddy products on outsmarted in winning over the evangelical crowd. A band of
the airwaves were not in practice yet. pistoleros circled the XERF building on horseback like crazy extras
The current owner made a deal with the preachers: $1,000,000 in a Sam Peckinpah movie, raining bullets on the men inside the
for a permanent slot in XERF’s schedule. The preachers were so radio station. Two attackers were killed and the Wolfman got a
wealthy that most of them signed. But when the station got in big bullet crease across the tip of his nose. The harassment continued
trouble with the Mexican government over tax issues, they placed for a while, but the criminal element finally went silent regarding
a corrupt official there to keep an eye on things. He tried to shake the wonderfully outrageous radio station. Bob and Larry repaid
down the preachers due to a sneaky clause in the first agreement. Mo Burton with a large bonus attached, so all was right at XERF.
It was a big problem, and in those days, big problems in that area
of Mexico were “solved” with bullets. ‘The Life of the Party’
Using cash “borrowed” from Mo’s company and hefty Lou and Bob stayed in Del Rio for less than a year, but he
“donations” from rich radio preachers lining up for signing up, Bob used the time as an opportunity to hone Wolfman’s style and

48 RETROFAN September 2021


(TOP) Wolfman Jack as Disc Jockey in an iconic scene with Richard Dreyfuss as Curt
in American Graffiti. (BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT) Promotional stills from the film.
© Universal. Stills courtesy of Heritage.
The force is with ’em, baby! Universal publicity photo of Wolfman
Jack and a pre-Star Wars George Lucas at a 1973 theater owners’ event
promoting American Graffiti. © Universal. Courtesy of Scott Shaw!
persona. Wolfman Jack readily admitted that his specialty
was always being “the Life of the Party.” And he understood
that genuine rhythm and blues music is loaded with sexual
innuendo, so that became part of his patter, too. Not dirty,
just uniquely weird and funny, outrageous stuff that probably
had the FCC scratching its collective head. His dad had been
an excellent stage magician, and Bob applied that same sort of
The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!
performance to his live advertisements of
some of the strangest products ever sold in
the Western world, including weight-loss
pills, dog food, live rose bushes, weight-
gain pills, live baby chicks, libido-inciting
“Florex” tablets with “some zing for your
ling nut,” record albums collections of
R&B classics, and the Wolfman Jack
Official Roach Clip. And best of all, he was
a complete mystery to his listeners, but
we loved him anyway. Radio was never
this much fun before. Yet the best was yet
to come for the man who called himself
Wolfman Jack.
He was definitely getting a lot of
attention, from the music industry and
the press, but Bob avoided payola and
photographers. All the same, if certain
celebrities—like “The Hardest Working
Man in Show Business,” James Brown—
showed up unexpectedly for a tour
of XERF, the Wolfman was suddenly
available. But Lou, Bob, and the kids were
getting tired of living in such isolation, so
they moved back to Louisiana. Bob got
a great reception from the locals who
fondly remembered him as “Big Smith
with the Records,” and they absolutely
loved Wolfman Jack from listening to his
show on XERF. Bob was offered a gig at the
Peppermint Lounge, a club named after
the one in New York City but actually in
nearby Bossier City. The plan was to record
the Wolfman as he was hosting an R&B dance party with
live music.
But they’d never seen Wolfman Jack before. In fact, no
one had! And what did Wolfman Jack look like, anyway?
Bob had to come up with something fast. Although the
Wolfman’s on-air voice gave many of his listeners the
impression that he was black, Bob rejected the idea
of going in blackface. So he decided to create a look
that was intentionally confusing, racially speaking. He
hacked up a Beatle wig, bought a cape, claw-like glue-
on fingernails, a fake beard, and make-up that would
slightly darken his skin. Sometimes he’d wear a huge Afro
wig and oversized sunglasses. Bob described himself as
“the offspring of a Greek Mexican from Nairobi and the
Portuguese-French woman he met one carefree night in
a Bangkok backstreet.” He was so nervous he drank half
a bottle of whiskey before going onstage to sing, prowl,
and swear like, well, Wolfman Jack. He was such a hit
that the club’s owner asked him back two more nights in
a row. Again, everything went well until the last night. When
the attendees left the club, they were greeted by the sight of a
flaming, nine-feet-tall Ku Klux Klan cross right across the street.
Even worse, when Lou and Bob went home, they saw two Klan
members light up another KKK cross, this time on the Smith
family’s front lawn. It was clear to Bob that the Wolfman should
stay safe by restricting his presence to the interiors of radio
RETROFAN September 2021 49
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

stations for the next four years. But even vocally, the ambiguity actually broadcast from this location during the early-to-mid-
of his race kept people talking about Wolfman Jack. Sixties, although they more likely were pre-recorded shows. (The
While keeping a low public profile, The Wolfman Jack Show space was very similar to the small broadcast studio depicted in
continued to hold a slot on XERF but one filled with Bob’s pre- American Graffiti, which was filmed at KRE in Berkeley.)
taped broadcasts. Meanwhile, Bob was back to being Mo Burton’s
broadcast businessman. He was given the assignment of running California Screamin’
KUXL, yet another small radio station, this time in Minneapolis, In 1965, the Smiths moved to Los Angeles, and settled down with
Minnesota. Wolfman Jack never appeared on KUXL, though, just the aid and encouragement of his sister’s family, who’d relocated
Bob Smith stalking the hallways. He and Lou enjoyed living in there a few years earlier. How cozy can you get? Bob brought
Minneapolis, with gorgeous along his pal Arthur Henning,
Lake Minnetonka and a racially a black man who was not only
diverse population. Bob added a radio technician but also a
new shows to KUXL’s schedule, deejay going by the moniker
ones that played to specific “Fat Daddy Washington.” After
cultural niches around town they tested XERB’s reception
and built new audiences. around the L.A. area, Bob and
Before long, the station Arthur paid a visit to the city’s
was performing up to Mo’s dominant black radio station,
expectations. Bob should have pretended they were potential
been delighted, but he was clients with money, and walked
getting antsy under Mo’s thumb out with a carefully researched
and was yearning to call his demographic rundown on
own shots. More than anything, Southern California’s black
Bob Smith missed one thing community. After cutting his
and missed it bad: working live ties with Mo Gordon (who
as Wolfman Jack. There was no still didn’t understand Bob’s
turning around. urgent and genuine need to
Bob’s determination to perform), Bob began his search
get back on the air led him to the heart of Hollywood for the
approach Chicago’s Harold perfect office for his dream
Schwartz, the “king of border station. Finally, in January of
radio.” He and his new partner 1966, Bob signed a lease for the
Teo Bacera were the official bottom floor of a pink stucco
American representatives for building on Sunset Boulevard
four of the key Mexican border and ordered a red neon sign to
blaster stations in the U.S., identify the joint as XERB.
including XEG, XELO, XERF, and For about five years,
XERB. Bob convinced Schwartz Wolfman Jack spread his
to start running on three of the outrageous personality via
four stations simultaneously. airwaves that not only covered
(For some reason, XELO was left California, but also reached
out.) It wasn’t difficult to make into Arizona, New Mexico,
the deal; Wolfman Jack was Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana,
already essential to Schwartz’s Poster for Wolfman Jack’s 1975 traveling stage show, I Saw Washington, Oregon, Alaska,
beloved XERF. Even better, Radio. The art shown is repurposed from the Wolfman’s Fun & and even Canada. He recorded
the Wolfman would attract Romance LP cover. © 1975 American International Associates. Courtesy his shows in Los Angeles and
even more nutty preachers of Heritage. shipped his tapes across the
to all three stations. But as border to Rosarito Beach to
time went by, Bob researched beam it back into the U.S. and
the numbers and realized that XERB, the smallest of the three beyond. Life was good for Bob Smith and his family, and at least a
stations, was wildly outperforming them, due to an influx of new little bit better for those of us who grew up listening to Wolfman
stations. But XERB reached San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Jack. Radio was never funnier, freakier, nor funkier than his stint
and more. on XERB.
XERB—still broadcasting as XEPRS-AM—was a border blaster We never knew what to expect and I cannot come even close
station in Rosarito Beach, in Baja, Mexico. It became branded to the vibe, the humor, the excitement, and the taboo aspects of
as “The Mighty 1090,” with “50,000 watts of Boss Soul Power.” his nightly show. Suffice it to say there was plenty of tasty R&B
XERB also had an office in the rear of a small strip mall on Third cuts, lots of almost-dirty exclamations, howls, and laughter,
Avenue in Chula Vista, located only ten minutes from the Tijuana/ phone-call conversations with fans, song dedications, surprise
San Diego border crossing. It was rumored that the Wolfman guest appearances of soul superstars like James Brown and Ray

50 RETROFAN September 2021

 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

Charles, and numerous ads for Zeidler and Zeidler stylish threads they judged those programs to be detrimental to the youth of
and Wolfman Jack-related merchandise. Mexico. There went 80% of XERB’s revenue.
When the Wolfman wasn’t blistering the airwaves, Bob also And that’s how Wolfman lost his howl for a while. Bob and Lou
built a team of disc jockeys and preacher pitchmen: New York owed about $300,000 to the Bank of America. Rather than declare
City’s Magnificent Montague, Brother Henderson, Minneapolis’ bankruptcy, he charmed the bankers into further extending him
Preacher Paul, Reverend Ike, and a fortune-teller named Sister credit in order to spring back. Bob realized that the success he
Sara. lost was due to Wolfman Jack, a fictitious character he created
It was 1967 and everything was going great for the Wolfman. from a hidden aspect of his personality. Therefore, Wolfman Jack
Then his old boss Mo Burton showed up in town to buy another was the guy to turn things around, not Robert Smith. “I became
radio station. He and Bob hadn’t spoken to each other since the my own invention; my invention became me,” he said. “Just
Wolfman switched over to Mo’s rival station, but it didn’t take like Samuel Clemens gradually became Mark Twain or Robert
long for them to be buddies again and concoct big plans together. Zimmerman became Bob Dylan.” There were plenty of people out
They bought a huge building that was previously a Fred Astaire there who would pay Wolfman Jack to work for them.
dance Studio east of downtown L.A. They spent millions of dollars The Wolfman moved on, accepting a rather low-paying
on interior décor and equipment, with a publishing company gig—one-tenth of his previous salary—as a jock at L.A.’s KDAY
and a video production house 1580AM. The station had an
added to the mix. The Wolfman odd broadcast pattern that
even cut a record album there made it sort of hip, specializing
with a number of heavyweight in extended album cuts rather
musicians. Of course, business than clusters of shorter songs—
was business anywhere, so Bob what became known as “album-
and Mo had a fund to lubricate oriented rock.” KDAY made
the wheels of progress, too. a public fuss about acquiring
Bob was a smart man Wolfman Jack and even paired
with an eye on the future and him with Alice Cooper for a live
was recording every single performance at the Hollywood
Wolfman Jack, then sending Bowl. His nighttime radio show
tapes the next morning down started attracting drop-in
to Rosarito Beach early the next guest stars like John Lennon.
morning. Those tapes would The Wolfman was on the prowl
benefit him throughout his again.
life… and beyond. Since the Wolfman was
now doing a different shtick
Good Moon Rising Hallelujah! Wolfman Jack as Reverend Billy testifies to and needed income more than
Now that Bob felt more sausage-lady Ida Smith (Nancy Parsons) and her hubby ever, he and his manager—and
comfortable with his Wolfman Vincent (Rory Calhoun) in this lobby card from 1980’s now business partner—Don
persona, he also started gruesome but hilarious slasher flick, Motel Hell. © United Kelley found a way to monetize
hosting live, in-person West Artists. Courtesy of Heritage. his XERB radio shows that
Coast R&B revues every he recorded. The plan was to
weekend, all over California, offer pre-recorded rock-and-
in nightclubs, roadhouses, and armories. These events not only roll radio shows to stations everywhere, creating the concept of
extended Wolfman Jack’s brand while bringing in a lot of cash, syndicated radio. They re-cut the old tapes to acceptable in any
they also gave many music groups—mostly black kids—some town in America. He also appeared on Armed Forces Radio from
prime exposure to talent scouts. These gigs led to a one-month 1970 to 1986. It worked, and not only did Wolf and Don make
contact to perform live at Las Vegas’ Bonanza Hotel. It was there money, other radio stars jumped on the same scheme, including
that he met Don Kelley, a guy who looked like Paul McCartney the voice of Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy Rogers, Casey Kasem. (As time
and sang for a polished vocal group called the Swinging passed, they were also marketed to oldies stations.) At his peak,
Lads. He’d been in show business since he was a kid and had Wolfman Jack was heard on more than 2,000 radio stations in 53
a lot of solid advice, so he became Wolfman Jack’s manager countries.
and transformed him from a cult figure into a mainstream
entertainer in recording, television, and film. But he never lost Multimedia Wolfman
the funky essence of the Wolfman. Don Kelley promoted the Wolfman to the major media and had
1971 was a pivotal year for Bob Smith. XERB was nearing its good relationships with journalists. Thanks to him, the Wolfman
fifth anniversary and the station was doing quite well and paying began to expand his territory into other media. The Midnight
most of its debts. That was primarily due to the stacks of money Special was the first television series to be based totally on live
coming in from all of those radio preachers. But a few weeks into rock-and-roll performances. At this point in time, professional
January, the XERB brass got really bad news: Decisions rendered rock-and-roll musicians only knew how to lip-synch and pretend
by the government of Mexico banned the Pentecostal preachers to be playing their instruments while faking it on an American
from radio. Most of the Mexican public is of the Catholic faith, and Bandstand rip-off. The Wolfman convinced the TV series’ producer
RETROFAN September 2021 51
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!
that he was the person who could coax the best possible live
television performance by the guest-star musicians. That’s
how Wolfman Jack appeared on more than 400 episodes of The
Midnight Special.
Around this time, Universal Studios contacted the Wolfman
about appearing in a movie with a tyro director. After he
read the script, he joked to Don, “How much do I have to pay
’em?” because he saw the role as free publicity, since the role
was “Wolfman Jack.” Of course, the film was American Grafitti
(1973), and the director was the George Lucas. The two of them
bonded over the fact that in 1967, while he was a student at the
University of Southern California’s Film School, George planned
to shoot a documentary about… Wolfman Jack! The deejay
lycanthrope agreed to play himself in the movie for $3,000.
It wasn’t much for two days of shooting a single scene with
Richard Dreyfuss, but Wolf truly was grateful for the publicity…
and the cash. Lucas gave him a fraction of a “point” of American
Graffiti, which was so successful that it provided him with a
regular income for life. He also appeared in the film’s 1979
sequel, More American Graffiti, though only through voice-overs.
Unfortunately, the bosses at Universal weren’t impressed with
the final product. They even turned down the ambitious sci-fi
film Lucas was hoping to interest them in. Of course, they didn’t
understand that the movie industrial was rapidly mutating.
American Grafitti not only made a lot of money, it won a lot of
awards.
Wolfman Jack as a talking tree in a production cel for a 1980 Halloween animated
special directed by animator Bob Kurtz, who signed this cel. Courtesy of Heritage.
52 RETROFAN September 2021
If that wasn’t enough good news, New York City’s WNBC
couldn’t beat WABC’s disc jockey Cousin Brucie. Thanks to a
referral from Don Imus, Don Kelly brokered a deal that promised
Wolfman Jack with the most money he’d ever made in a year,
$350,000. And those were 1973 dollars! Wolf joined the WNBC
team in August 1973—the same month that American Graffiti
premiered—to spin Top 40 sides. The station did a huge ad
campaign proclaiming, “Cousin Brucie’s Days are Numbered.”
Time magazine published a profile article about Wolfman Jack. He
was getting so much attention, the Wolfman’s head was spinning
and his judgment was slipping. Sex and drugs are often tied to
rock and roll, and Lou split for North Carolina rather than put up
with the Wolfman’s prowlin’ ways. He was trying to fix himself,
but that meant escaping the crazy schedule and demands of too
much success. Suddenly he had an incredible offer that would
allow him to return to L.A.
Clap for the Wolfman
The Guess Who had recently recorded a minor hit song called
“Clap for the Wolfman.” They were going on tour and offered
Wolf a gig touring with the band for 37 dates in six weeks, with
a paycheck bigger than he made in a year. The bosses at KDAY
weren’t werewolf fans, so they were elated when the Wolfman
convinced Cousin Brucie to leave WABC when his contract ran out
and take over his slot on WNBC’s schedule. Everyone was happy,
especially the reformed, reunited Wolf and Lou.
 The Oddball World of Scott Shaw!

series Wolf Rock TV finally sold,

but ABC cancelled it after three
episodes aired in 1984. It’s
noteworthy to mention that
during promotions for some of
these projects, the Wolfman
was bitten by a wolf pack as
well as the grizzly bear known
as Gentle Ben. Have mercy!
Record albums by Wolfman
Jack include Boogie with the
Wolfman by “Wolfman Jack &
Who remembers the the Wolfpack” on the Bread label (1965);
short-lived television Wolfman Jack (1972) and Through the Ages
toon Wolf Rock TV? (1973) on the Wooden Nickel label; and
This 1984 program Fun & Romance on the Columbia Records
quickly disappeared, label (1974). Wolfman Jack’s also been
but Wolfman Jack’s in a number of songs: The Bobby Fuller
popularity inspired Four’s “Wolfman” and the Grateful Dead’s
the release of these “Ramble On Rose” mention him, but Todd
and other merchan- Rundgren’s “Wolfman Jack,” the previously
dised items tying in mentioned Guess Who’s “Clap for the
to the series. © 1984 Wolfman,” and the Stampeders’ “Hit the
DIC Enterprises/Dick Clark Road, Jack” all include guest vocals by
Productions. Wolfman Jack.

The Wolfman Signs Off

In 1975, the Wolfman hosted an old-school-style traveling
stage show called I Saw Radio. It was composed of wild Fifties rock
and roll and the stage set was designed to resemble a 40-foot-
tall radio. The show featured singers (including the Wolfman!),
dancers, musicians, and the voices of classic deejays, including
Gary (Space Ghost) Owens. Next, Canada’s CBC network signed the
Wolfman to do 26 episodes of The Wolfman Jack Show, a variety
series.
Wolfman Jack went back to California to concentrate on his
syndicated radio show, which was carried on KRLA-Pasadena
(Los Angeles) from 1984 to 1987. In the 1980s, he did a brief stint
at XEROK 80 then went to Y95 in Dallas, Texas. From 1975 to 1980,
Wolfman Jack hosted the annual Halloween Haunt event at
Knott’s Berry Farm. It was the most successful special event of any
theme park in the country, and often sold out.
Of course, being back on the West Coast meant even more
television and movie appearances. In addition to American Grafitti,
the Wolfman also appeared in these films: A Session with the
Committee (1969), The Seven Minutes (1971), Deadman’s Curve (TV)
(1978), Sgt. Pepper’s Hearts Club Band (1978), Hanging on a Star (1978),
More American Graffiti (1979), Motel Hell (1980), Galactica 1980 (1980),
Mortuary Academy (1988), and Midnight (1989). His list of television
appearances is even longer: The Midnight Special (1972–1981), The
Odd Couple (1975), Emergency! (1975), What’s Happening!! (1976), The
Wolfman Jack Show (1977), Police Story (1978), Vega$ (1980), Wonder
Woman (1978), The Hollywood Squares (1979), The Midnight Hour
(1985), Swamp Thing (1992), Married… With Children (1995), and
more. He also did voiceovers for Garfield in Paradise and Garfield
and Friends (1986), and The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang series
(1980). In the early Eighties, all of the animation studios were
working on cartoon concepts to star the Wolfman. DIC’s animated
In 1989, Bob “Wolfman Jack” Smith moved
to Belvedere, North Carolina, to be closer to his extended family.
Wolfman Jack believed that life was for having a good time and
he went out rockin’. Due to a heart attack on July 1, 1995, the man
once known as Robert Smith died at his house in Belvedere. A few
hours before, the Wolfman was finishing one of his weekly radio
broadcasts. He’s buried at a family cemetery in Belvedere.
But like the real thing, it’s hard to get rid of the Wolfman. In
2012, Wolfman Jack’s estate released a hip-hop single featuring
sound bites of Wolfman Jack. In 2016, clips from his XETV show
were used in Rob Zombie’s film 31. Videos of The Wolfman Jack
Show were reintroduced to syndication in 2005.
Even in death, Wolfman Jack will always be “Number One with
a Silver Bullet” in pop culture history.
For 48 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW!
has written and drawn underground comix,
mainstream comic books, comic strips, graphic
novels, TV cartoons, toys, advertising, and
video games. He has worked on such characters
as Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew
(which he co-created with Roy Thomas),
Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the
Futurama gang, the Muppet Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids,
and yes, even Annoying Orange. His career has garnered him four
Emmy Awards, an Eisner Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is
also known for his “Oddball Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the
craziest comic books ever published” and for his regular participation
in “Quick Draw!” with Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also
one of the teenagers who co-created what is currently known as Comic-
Con International: San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He
can be reached at shawcartoons.com.
RETROFAN September 2021 53
 RETROFAD

Patrick Swayze rocked it. Superman… not so much. see but still observe in
It’s easy to wince when confronted with your hairstyles of rubbernecking awe.
yesteryear, especially when your kid or grandkid is mocking your You might want to
yearbook photo or wedding portrait. While absolution for past wag a finger at the late
transgressions of beehives or high-top fades can be obtained with David Bowie for planting
a shoulder-shrugging “It was the times” apology, one disreputable (or dyeing) the root of this
’do has earned a spot on almost everyone’s Bad Hair Day lists: the craze. During his Ziggy by
mullet. Stardust phase beginning Michael
Yes, the mullet, the hairstyle that defied boundaries of gender, in 1972, Bowie shocked Eury
ethnicity, sexual orientation, and decorum. It has inspired the meek (and probably
costumers (mullet Halloween wigs), musicians (The Beastie Boys’ his grandmother) with his
“Mullet Head”), documentarians (American Mullet), Hollywood androgynous, carrot-orange
comedies (Joe Dirt and Joe Dirt 2, Mulletville), and authors (two hairstyle that was spiky
books: Barney Hoskyns and Mark Larson’s 2000 The Mullet: short on top and long in the back. Glam rock artists and punk
Hairstyle of the Gods, and Alan Henderson’s 2013 Mullet Madness!: rock musicians aped the look, and it took wing in a big way when
The Haircut That’s Business Up Front and a Party in the Back). It’s former “cute Beatle” Paul McCartney not only let it be but let it
like the horrific auto accident we pass that we don’t want to all hang out (in the back, but not the front). Lest you think this
brazen hairstyle was the exclusive domain of Seventies rock-
and-rollers like McCartney
and fellow mullet head Rod
Business (front) Stewart, one of television’s
Party (back) most beloved matriarchs
sanctioned the mullet.
Florence Henderson, who, as
Carol Brady, sported more
wig and hairstyle changes
throughout The Brady Bunch’s
five seasons than you’ll find
in an average episode of
RuPaul’s Drag Race, is best
remembered with her “flip”
look, a proto-mullet. (While
daughters Marcia, Jan, and Cindy all had hair of gold, like their
mother, they did not go the mullet route.)
If you crack the dust layer off your old history and world
cultures textbooks, you’ll discover that while David Bowie may
have been a trailblazer both in fashion and music, the mullet was
not his invention. There’s historical conjecture that primitive man
might have worn the mullet, chopping off hair on top to keep it
out of their eyes but allowing a mane to grow for neck warmth.
Short-topped, long-backed hairstyles definitely go back
to Ancient Greek statues. Some Native Americans wore
The Brady Bunch ©
Paramount Television.
the style, often with a Mohawk on top. According to
Captain Planet © Captain History.com, one of the founding fathers of the United
Planet Foundation. Joe States, Benjamin Franklin—arguably the smartest
Dirt © Columbia Pictures. guy in the room during his day—eschewed the
Lethal Weapon © Warner customary powdered wigs worn in French courts
Bros. Pictures. The Mullets
© Warner Bros. Television.
when, in the late 18th Century, he petitioned
Superman © DC Comics. France for increased financial support for
the nascent America by dressing down for

54 RETROFAN September 2021


the occasion, including his own very-short-on-top
(balding), long-backed natural hair… a “skullet.”
But we can trace the hairstyle’s emergence as
a cultural trend to Bowie. His Ziggy Stardust cut,
a convergence of male and female hairstyles,
became a symbol of gender fluidity and was co-
opted by many lesbians who in a closeted era
dared to come “out.”
Then came the Big Eighties, the decade of
excess (including big hair), when the mullet
enjoyed its widest exposure. You have to
wonder if Hollywood agents weren’t inserting a “mullet clause”
into their clients’ contracts, since numerous stars were going
the “business up front, party in the back” route. Richard Dean
Anderson brought the mullet into your living room each week
as television’s MacGyver. The mullet helped new TV star George
Clooney look hip. On the big screen, Mel Gibson, especially in
the Lethal Weapon movies, made the mullet cool. So did Kiefer
Sutherland, who stole teen girls’ hearts and a lot of scenes as a
mulleted vampire in The Lost Boys.
There were cases, however, when the fashion
police should have issued mullet citations. John
Stamos, a guy so handsome that even straight-
arrow heteros like me can’t help but gasp, “Good
Lord, that’s a purty man,” misfired with his Full
House, full-headed mullet that was so large it
could have provided shelter for his co-stars.
Other flagrant violators include martial artist
Jean Claude Van Damme and wrestling he-man
Hulk Hogan, but no one dared ridicule their respective kinky or
bleached mullets for fear of a fractured jaw.
Lots of professional athletes favored the
hairstyle, and who could blame them? The
long hair in the back made them look trendy,
as Larry Bird demonstrated as his locks
flapped behind him when dribbling down the
basketball court, but the short hair in the
front kept sweating to a minimum—
and warded off hair pulling, a
frequent assault found in hockey
clashes. The style became so popular
on ice that some dubbed it “Hockey
hair.” If you don’t believe me, ask
Wayne Gretsky.
Mario Lopez’s mullet in the TV teen show Saved by the Bell
helped the haircut transition from the Eighties into the Nineties,
and Captain Planet picked up the look as one of several mulleted
cartoon characters. When you think of country star Billy Ray
Cyrus, what first comes to mind, his mullet or his 1992 hit, “Achy
Breaky Heart”?
Up to this point, the mullet was like Clint Eastwood in
spaghetti Westerns, a haircut with no name. Back then, if you
walked into a salon and asked for a mullet, you’d be directed to
the nearest grocer or fish house (for the benefit of our landlocked
readers, the oceans are full of gray fish called mullets).
The hairstyle’s name wasn’t officially coined until 1994,
when the aforementioned Beastie Boys screamed
the lyrics “Cut the sides, don’t touch the back” in
their hard-rock anthem, “Mullet Head.”
But by then, this RetroFad was frizzing
out. The mullet had become commonplace,
and soon only commoners dared become
mullet heads. Mulleted unfaithful husband
Joey Buttafuoco certainly didn’t help the
hairstyle’s rep when his ugly 1992 sex scandal
involving “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher
dominated the headlines. The haircut
was now synonymous with rednecks
and lowlifes, earning derogatory
nicknames like “The Mississippi
Mudflap” and “The Kentucky Waterfall” and giving David Spade
a chance to play a signature film role. DC Comics misfired when
following their bestselling 1992 “Death of Superman” storyline
with the following year’s resurrection of the world’s first super-
hero wearing a Mullet of Steel, which was ridiculed by fanboys.
Remember the sitcom The Mullets? You’re excused if you don’t,
as it only ran 11 episodes in 2003. It was about a pair of polar-
opposite brothers, Denny and Dwayne Mullet, who shared the
same hairstyle but little else. The Mullets might have performed
better a decade earlier, before the fad had run its
course, but was an embarrassing example of milking
a dead trend. Co-stars Loni Anderson and John
O’Hurley no doubt are sorry they signed on to that
stinker. The mullet was dead. Rest in pieces (on the
barbershop floor).
Some former mullet heads like Bono have publicly
regretted ever sporting the look. Billy Ray Cyrus,
however, crooned “I Want My Mullet Back” in his
2006 song. There have been brief attempts to resurrect
the mullet, from adventurous hair stylists to
courageous starlets like Scarlett Johansson and
Zendaya. They also continue to love the mullet in the
Land Down Under. There’s an annual “Mullet Fest”
in Australia, and the Melbourne comedy troupe the
Travelling Sisters pokes fun at the hairstyle in their
mockumentary web series Meet the Mullets.
These folks are lucky they don’t live in Iran. There,
in 2010, the mullet was outlawed as a “decadent
Western haircut.”
Today in the U.S., you’re only breaking the laws of
good taste if you’re a mullet head. But who am I to
judge? Maybe you’ll get cast in a supporting role if David Spade
makes Joe Dirt 3.
RETROFAN September 2021 55
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RETRO HOLLYWOOD
FROM FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT TO
TEENAGE PASSION PIT AND BACK AGAIN
by Jim Trautman
Each day the American flag
flies over the U.S. Capitol in
Washington, D.C., it is to recognize
an important event, person, or
organization. On June 6, 2008,
it was flown to recognize the
75th anniversary of the first
drive-in movie theater, opened by
Richard Hollingshead in Camden,
New Jersey, on June 6, 1933. The
admission charge was 25 cents per
person and car.
The first night at Hollingshead’s
Drive-in movie drive-in featured the long-forgotten Adolphe
speaker being Menjou movie Wives Beware (1932), which
hooked onto car ran a mere 61 minutes and was so short
window. Photo by that the movie was shown three times that
Bob Matti. first night. After each showing the parking
lot was cleared and new customers were
admitted. The coming and going to this new novelty brought in
600 customers on that opening night. Sounds like doubleheader
baseball games of today.
The sound system was actually behind the movie screen,
since what we remember as the speaker in the car was not
invented by RCA until the mid-Forties. The screen measured
40 feet by 50 feet. In the Fifties, actress Natalie Wood would
appear in print advertising for in-car, silver-aluminum speakers,
two to a pole, a new innovation for the drive-in. You’d roll down
your window and clip the speaker onto the door to bring the
movie’s audio into your car.
Much of life is based on
events that become part of
the “myth culture” of society.
It is said that Hollingshead
founded the drive-in for a
simple reason: his mother was
too fat to fit in a traditional
theater seat. Fact or not? In
addition, it is believed that a
version of a drive-in existed
in the Twenties, and since the
movies were all silent at that
time it would seem that could
be a fact.
No matter the real story
of the drive-in’s beginnings,
a social culture was created
around the venue that has
taken us through various
phases of life: young families
and their children, then the
“teenage passion pit,” to
(TOP) Ad from the Leamington,
Ontario, Drive-In. Movies at
the drive-in changed quickly to keep the customers coming in.
(BOTTOM) This ad for the Skyway in Malvern, Ohio, promoted
not only its feature but also the facility’s concession stand and
playground. Courtesy of Hake’s Auctions.
RETROFAN September 2021 57
 retro hollywood

The Grove City Drive-In Theatre, Springdale, Arkansas. John Margolies Roadside
America Collection, The Library of Congress.

adult movie houses, and finally back to the family business. I The car culture of the mid-Twentieth Century created not
have lived through all these phases and have personally been just the drive-in theater, but a new wave of drive-in or drive-to
involved in the drive-in theater culture, a culture rooted with eateries. Prior to World War II only ten Dairy Queen restaurants
the Baby Boom generation and the automobile. It is the story existed. By 1950, there were 1,446. A&W Root Beer stands joined
of our lives, which in many ways is like a drive-in movie we that explosion, although they weren’t constructed in the big cities,
watched.  but in the outlying suburbs; same with McDonald’s.
Prior to the start of World War II, several other drive- When the UFO craze was upon us, with flying-saucer sightings
ins opened across the United States, including one at in our daily newspapers and Earth-invasion flicks showing in
Shankweiler’s Auto Park in Orefield, Pennsylvania, which is still movie houses, we rushed to Carvel Ice Cream drive-ins to get the
in operation.  new “flying saucer” ice cream sandwich filled with either vanilla or
chocolate ice cream. 
The Car Culture Drive-in theater owners had to purchase movies from
Drive-ins did not do very well during World War II for a distributors, and since customers appeared to like the movies
simple reason: gasoline was being rationed as part of the to change often, profits were tight for the theater operators.
war effort, and moviegoers had to depend on walking or Savvy owners hit upon the answer to increasing profitability:
taking a bus to the local movie house. That changed once the making the drive-in a family experience that started long
war ended and the Baby Boom began, which created mass before the onset of darkness that would allow the movies to
migration to the suburbs. America’s love of the automobile be shown. Patrons were enticed by advertising to arrive early.
was born. New highways were built, jobs flowed, and Many drive-ins had a playground for the kids, and several had
disposable income soared. Cookie-cutter housing swimming pools and bottle-warming stations for babies. Some
developments that are now often mocked (think Levittown, even allowed you to bring your laundry and pick it up on the way
New York) were being built across the country, affordable out. In the early days, some cars (including my parents’) had a
for most, and the “American Dream” was born. My parents searchlight next to the driver’s window, allowing patrons to play
moved into a little house that cost $10,000. Like the Roaring “light games” on the blank movie screen prior to the show while
Twenties—the good times had arrived!  the kids amused themselves in the theater’s playground.
Drive-in theaters exploded across the United States and An ad for a drive-in theater promoted, “Smoke, talk, relax in
Canada. By the early Fifties there were over 4,000, including the wide seats of your car, and hey, how about having a tasty
a canoe-in drive-in and a fly-in model in Asbury Park on the meal?” Approximately 60% or more of the drive-ins’ profits
New Jersey seashore. It actually could accommodate 25 small come from the concession stand. The concession booth usually
planes and 500 cars. Wonder if a car ever became lost and had many employees and was better organized than a military
ended up on the runway? operation! 

58 RETROFAN September 2021

 retro hollywood

2008, recorded a visual history of drive-in theaters over the

The Concession Stand years. Margolies donated his entire collection of photos of
Advertising for drive-ins in early TV ads from the Fifties drive-in theaters across the United States and Canada to the
concentrated on the concession stand. A boxed chicken dinner Library of Congress. As his photos show, almost every drive-in
could be purchased for $1.50: half a Southern fried chicken, hot was different. The ones created in the Space Age of the Fifties
buttered bun, French fries, and sauce. Hot dogs toasted to a and Sixties often had marquees with satellites and rockets.
turn—just watch them turning on that grill—a mere 24 cents! Sometimes their looks reflected the local legends, with
In New England and its coastal drive-ins, one could get a shrimp architectural elements in different regions such as a Viking
roll full of meaty shrimp and seasoning, or a pizza made to order, boat, a painted ski scene, or a Western wagon trail motif. My
from ten inches to a whopping 65 inches… and in the South, many favorite was an Olympics painting of a man and woman surfing
drive-ins had pit-cooked barbecue. Like ballparks of today, the in the Pacific Ocean. Each drive-in attempted to set itself apart
food available at drive-ins differed between regions and included from the others. The local one near where I live in Canada, the
the specialties of that area.  Mustang Drive-in, which is still open, has a large neon cowboy
Oh, the smells that came from the concession stand…! Hot marquee. 
dogs, hamburgers grilling, fried chicken… I can smell and taste Marquees were always made to be eye-catching, to
them now. There’s draw the driver’s eye into looking to see what was playing.
nothing like the fresh This enticing
aroma of popcorn. If you (BELOW) A typical concession stand information
filled with tasty treats. John Margolies
didn’t want popcorn, was designed
Roadside America Collection, The Library of
there were shelled to program the
Congress. (RIGHT INSET) “Sport” (or is
peanuts, a popular item passing motorist
at these outdoor venues that “Tad”?) makes a concession stand to say, back in
run for his famished family. (BELOW
since, as the ads stated, the Fifties when
INSET) Hurry back to your car! The
a moviegoer didn’t have schlocky horror
to worry about where the show’s about to resume! movies were the
empty shells would go. rage, “Hey, did
You had to be careful you hear The Skull
on the journey from the and Premature
concession stand back Burial will be playing this weekend?” Or
to the car to remember in the Sixties, “Guess what? Frankie and
where you had Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo will be
parked! Some families playing this weekend!” In later years,
designated one of their when the multiplexes had replaced
older kids to keep track the drive-in as the main attraction
of where the car was for movies, you might spy a drive-in
parked. Another peril marquee promoting a Saturday or
on your journey from Sunday flea market or an outdoor
the concession stand to church. 
your car was reaching
your vehicle before the The Drive-in Experience
mosquito-spraying jeep passed by! In the Most drive-ins began with two cartoons
summers of the Fifties and early Sixties, before for the kids, coming attractions, a feature,
Agent Orange during the Vietnam War alerted then an intermission to get food, followed
people to the dangers of such activities, DDT by the second feature… and on special
was sprayed on the drive-in theater grounds horror nights, usually a third feature. (The
during the pictures, creating a heavy fog. Hey, concession stand made lots of money on
the ads back then said DDT would only harm those nights.) 
the mosquitoes… who knew?? There was always a long pause for the
intermission. If you weren’t hungry when you entered, then
Layout and Architecture the intermission’s cartoon commercial of dancing and singing
One arrived early to the drive-in, since some theaters were hot dogs, French fries, and ice cold sodas—or, if it was chilly,
large, and being stuck in the back row made it difficult to make coffee or hot chocolate—might get you salivating.
out the action on the screen that might be 140 feet away. Cars Afraid if you went you’d miss part of the second feature?
were parked on an incline so the view was not obstructed by No problem. On the screen in between the dancing hot
other vehicles. By the Sixties, most drive-ins had a Cinemascope dogs and other food would be reminders: “Ten minutes to
surround screen. show time”… “Five minutes to show time.” (I wonder if that
John Margolies, the legendary Roadside Americana is where the atomic scientists picked up their idea for the
photographer and architectural critic who passed away in doomsday clock?)
RETROFAN September 2021 59
 retro hollywood

Along with the coming attractions

there was always the announcement:
“If you should accidentally tear a speaker
loose, please return it to the snack bar or
box office.” (My father was guilty of doing
that one night, but his excuse when he
returned it was there were several others
inside with him who were equally guilty of
his “crime.” For some reason he thought he
was at the White Castle Hamburgers drive-
in restaurant, where a carhop removed
your food tray when you started your car
and began to back out of your spot. This is
why wives often claim that husbands are a
“special breed.”)
Drive-in patrons who were short of
cash at times would stuff the trunk of the
car with four or five friends who hopped
out once the car was parked. (We’re lucky
we survived!) 
The Airway Drive-In, St. Louis, Missouri,
could accommodate 800 cars. It opened on
September 23, 1948 with Walt Disney’s Song
of the South. It has been closed for over 36
years, but the beautiful neon sign with the
female drum major has been preserved.
(BOTTOM LEFT) The Campus Drive-In
Theatre, San Diego, California. Many drive-
ins were simple in appearance but used
neon lights to attract attention. (BOTTOM
RIGHT) The painted back of the movie
screen of the Olympic Drive-In, Los Angeles,
California. John Margolies Roadside America
Collection, The Library of Congress.

Crank ’em Out

The major movie studios—MGM, 20th
Century Fox, Paramount, and
Warner Bros.—controlled
distribution and did not
provide their films to drive-ins
for a simple reason—money!
The large, indoor movie
houses could show the same
movie several times a day,
generating more profit from
the number of tickets sold.
Drive-ins were limited to one
nighttime showing, or on
some special days, all-night
shows. And rainouts could
be a problem. If you look at old advertising for drive-ins, big As the number of drive-ins and Baby Boomers grew, more
studio movies are rarely listed. Distributors would not send a movies were needed to fill the demand. The new motto of
major Hollywood production to drive-ins until it had run for Hollywood became “Make them fast, make them cheap, make
a year or two in the usual permanent city theaters and it was them fun.” One take… and if someone forgot their lines, no retake.
determined that the maximum number of tickets had been Once on an Al Adamson movie there were six takes, but he
sold.  was so overjoyed when he got that useable take that he forgot
Thus, in the beginning, most of the movies shown at to put film in the camera. (Saved money on that one.) Adamson
drive-ins were old releases, many Westerns starring the likes became famous for rereleasing the same movie three times. His
of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, or comedies like Blondie and mindset was, change the feature’s name and its posters, and it
Dagwood. A new movie industry was developed to create was a “new” movie.
low-budget entertainment focused on the drive-in movie Sometimes, movie plots were recycled. If you watch Cat-
market, a genre that could be called B-movies, or grindhouse Women of the Moon (1953) and Missile to the Moon (1958), you’ll
or exploitation movies.  notice there are different casts but the storylines are the same.
With the rise in popularity of drive-ins, the demand was Susan Morrow, who starred in Cat-Women, became famous for
unlimited for new releases each week. There was money two things: being married to Gary Morton, who would become
to be made on these low-budget flicks by companies, Lucille Ball’s husband, and being the sister of Judith Exner, who
directors, producers, and new actors or actresses looking to was gangster Sam Giancana’s girlfriend and rumored to be
break in. The key to their production was keeping costs low, connected to JFK.
which sometimes led filming to take place in environments Movies were shot in six days, some less, on shoestring
less costly than Hollywood, such as the Philippines or Hong budgets. On a Roger Corman movie, one actress remarked that
Kong. oxygen tanks were needed for an underwater scene, but Roger

60 RETROFAN September 2021

 retro hollywood

Ads for drive-

in horror
shows like
these packed
’em in on
weekend
evenings.

(ABOVE) From the author’s collection, a

lobby card for a tawdry 1964 release filmed
in “Voluptuous Color,” definitely indicative
of standard drive-in fare. © Dominant Pictures
of the Carolinas.

(LEFT) The ad for this 1956 release implied

more sex than actually happened in the
movie… sort of like the sensationalized
cover of a comic book you bought as a kid
but soon discovered misrepresented the
story inside. Two in a Sleeping Bag starred
Susanne Cramer, who sadly took her life
when she was in her early thirties. © Holt
International. Courtesy of Heritage.

RETROFAN September 2021 61

 retro hollywood

said, “Watch the breathing, since it costs money to put air in

the tanks.” ROGER CORMAN
Roger Corman (b. 1926) left a
Grindhouse Genres major studio over a dispute

Angela George/Wikimedia Commons.

The major studios, with the advent of television, seemed to lose
sight of the trends in moviegoers’ tastes. Not so with the makers
of B-movies.
In the Fifties, science fiction was the thing, with invaders
from Mars and UFOs in movies like This Island Earth and The
Thing—movies about fear of the consequences of atomic bombs
that would unleash prehistoric monsters or create giant bugs.
Giant-insect movies are my favorites, such as The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms (1953) and my all-time favorite, The Spider (1958),
which starred Ed Kemmer of the TV show Space Patrol. The Spider’s
advertising screamed, “Bullets can’t kill it! Flames can’t hurt it!
Nothing can stop it! The spider will eat you alive!” [Editor’s note:
See RetroFan #9 for more about the filmmaker behind The Spider,
Bert I. Gordon.]
B-movie directors and producers of drive-in movies would
become famous not so much for the movies, but the advertising
campaigns that preceded them. Many designed their own
posters and movie books sent out by the distributor to line up
bookings. If enough orders were received, then the actual movie
was shot. Since a B-movie was completed in only six days, it was
not that difficult to work with such a short lead time.
Next, enter the juvenile delinquent phase of the drive-
in movies! Fear gripped the nation and U.S. congressional
hearings were held about what was happening to all those kids,
and what was polluting their minds. First up under scrutiny was
comic books, and publishers like EC Comics’ Bill Gaines were in
involving his work on The
Gunfighter (1956) starring
Gregory Peck. Corman
scrambled for resources to
begin producing B-movies
that became legendary at
drive-ins. Corman made a
series of horror movies based
on Edgar Allan Poe’s works for American International
Pictures, to compete with the Hammer horror films
being imported from the United Kingdom. The Poe
movies—including The House of Usher (1960), The Pit
and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven
(1963), and Masque of the Red Death (1964)—made a star of
Vincent Price and resurrected the careers of forgotten
stars Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Other Corman-
produced films that were favorites at the drive-in were
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960); The Wild Angels (1966); The
Trip (1967), a movie about LSD starring Peter Fonda that
was shot on a $100,000 budget but made $10 million;
Bloody Mama (1970), featuring a young Robert DeNiro;
and Barbara Hershey in Boxcar Bertha (1972), the second
movie directed by Martin Scorsese.
Corman received an honorary Academy Award® for
achievement in 2009. Quentin Tarantino continues in
Corman’s tradition today.
Corman has since sold his entire movie catalogue to
a Chinese company for hundreds of millions. Who says
no one watches drive-in movies?

hot water. Parents were concerned about stories of wild rock-and-

roll dances and kids going mad.
In 1961, United Artists released the movie musical West Side
Story, about gangs in New York City. Cheaply made B-movies
followed at the drive-in, where you could see a double bill of Girls
in Prison and High School Hellcats. On another weekend you could
catch The Mini-Skirt Mob or She-Devils on Wheels.
Horror movies were also a drive-in staple. The success of the
drive-in assisted in the establishment of American International
Pictures (AIP), founded in 1954 by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H.
Nicholson. When Hammer Pictures of the United Kingdom was
filing the theaters with monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula, in
the U.S. Roger Corman signed a six-movie deal with AIP to make
competing films for the drive-ins. Each was focused on an Edgar
Allan Poe story like Premature Burial, The Raven, and The Tomb of
Ligeia. American International Pictures became the employer of

(LEFT AND OPPOSITE PAGE) Sometimes creepy, sometimes

cheesy, spooky B-movies of the Fifties and Sixties were drive-in
staples, resurrecting careers of old-timers and providing early
credits for up-and-comers. Both, © American International Pictures.
Posters courtesy of Heritage.

62 RETROFAN September 2021

 retro hollywood

vintage Hollywood actors who had been left behind by the major
studios.
Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Elsa Lancaster, and
even Buster Keaton began to appear in Sixties’ beach movies
with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Beach Blanket Bingo,
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Bikini Beach, Ghost in the Invisible Bikini…
Beach movies had lots of singing, go-go dancers with boots,
and guitars, although no one seemed to know where were the
electric guitars were plugged into. And no one seemed to ever
notice if the sand was burning hot or not. When the summer
was done, the shindig moved to the slopes, like 1965’s Ski Party
with Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman. The drive-in became
the “passion pit” for teenagers who would make out in their cars
during these movies. (Once, when I was on a date at a drive-in,
there was a knock on my car window. I rolled it down and the
attendant requested that I and my date leave. When I wiped

TED V. MIKELS AND

AL ADAMSON
Ted V. Mikels (1929–2017)
Cover of the boxed DVD set of B-movies by filmmaker Al Adamson. Grindhousedatabase.

and Al Adamson (1929–1994)

would become major players
by making B-movies for
drive-ins. Both contended
away the steam from the windshield, I realized my car was
their audiences did not care
the only one left on the lot!)
about reviews or bad acting,
It was also the time of “sex, drugs, rock and roll.” While
but wanted to be scared or
Beach Blanket fans were watching movies that delivered
entertained. 
good, clean romance, the roar of motorcycles could be heard
Mikels’ films were often
on some drive-in lots—and on the screens, as motorcycle
big on blood and gore. They included The Girl in the
outlaw gang movies became the drive-in theater competition
Gold Boots (1968), a product of the James Bond craze;
to sweet and romantic beach movies! “Their credo is violence,
The Corpse Grinders (1972), a grindhouse favorite so
their God is hate, they call themselves The Wild Angels.” In that
successful that Ted came back to it for two later
1966 biker movie from Roger Corman, Peter Fonda and Nancy
versions; the Charlie’s Angels prototype The Doll Squad
“These Boots Are Made for Walking” Sinatra were members of
(1973), starring Michael Ansara and Francine York, a
a motorcycle gang. America in the Sixties and Seventies was
movie whose production budget was so small it reused
a time of contrasts, with its “summers of love” that took place
the same borrowed machine gun footage over and over
while the body count from the Vietnam War climbed. Drive-in
again; and Violent Women in Prison (1982). Ted’s budgets
movies were part of the diversion from the real world. The
were so tiny he usually gave himself a big part in his
high point of the outlaw biker movies was 1969’s Easy Rider,
movies.
starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. 
Adamson loved the title “blood” in his movies, and in
The rise of Blaxploitation films and martial-arts movies
the Sixties also made lots of movies about go-go dancers
filled lots of drive-ins in the Seventies. Marquees featured
and motorcycles. In some of his movies the same actor
African-American-starring fare like the horror movie Blacula
played one to three parts. His films included Psycho
and James Bond-like characters in movies shot on the cheap
a Go-Go (1965), which appeared with several different
such as That Man Bolt, Black Heat, and Black Samurai. There
titles over the years; Satan’s Sadists (1969), shot on a
were kung-fu movies of all types, like King of Kung Fu and
budget of $100,000 and earning several million dollars;
Karate Warriors. 
Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970); Horror of the Blood Monster
Drive-ins became home to a new trend in adult movies.
(1970); The Female Bunch (1971); Blood of Ghostly Manor
Filmmaker Al Adamson exploited this trend with movies
(1971); The Naughty Stewardesses (1973); and Brain of Blood
like Nurse Sheri, Naughty Stewardesses (“They fly first class all
(1974). Tragically, Adamson’s life ended like a scene from
the way”), and Blazing Stewardesses. Adamson formed a fake
one of his movies. He was murdered on June 21, 1995 by
organization of women who were “picketing” against the
a handyman he had hired who had stolen money and
movies outside drive-ins to drum up attention to the films.
checks from him. Adamson’s body was buried under the
Like with the controversies over banned books, drive-in ticket
sauna in his house and covered over with concrete. 
sales skyrocketed—peopled wanted to see what was so bad. 
RETROFAN September 2021 63
 retro hollywood

(LEFT) The Mendon Drive-In, Mendon, Massachusetts, where the author’s daughters saw Disney movies in Eighties. The drive-in is still
operating and even has shows in the winter months. Courtesy of the Mendon Drive-In. (RIGHT) The Mustang Drive-In, Guelph, Ontario. The
theater sits in the middle of a cornfield and still operates, although its former grandeur is gone. Photo by Jim Trautman.

The drive-ins might have inspired a Seventies TV hit. In 1973, The End of the Drive-in
director Ted V. Mikels released The Doll Squad, about a group of Sadly, drive-ins began to disappear once the late Seventies
sexy female government agents. Watch it today, and then watch arrived. Mainstream Hollywood was making more of the type of
Charlie’s Angels. Was Angels’ producer Aaron Spelling in the drive- movies that had been the bread and butter of the drive-in owners.
in audience? Three years later, his similar show premiered. (And Also, when constructed the drive-in theaters were located outside
the main character in The Doll Squad was named Sabrina.)  of cities, but as metropolitan areas grew and land became
very valuable, the drive-ins were now
B-Movies’ A-List competing with giant multiplex theaters
There’s a large cast of unknowns that would which were not showing just movies, but
move on to become famous and win Oscars hosting birthday parties and games—the
but started out in low-budget drive-in multiplex had taken over the drive-in
movies, such as Francis Ford Coppola and model. Most drive-ins disappeared. 
Martin Scorsese. Roger Corman met Jack There have been attempts to once
Nicholson in an acting class. Reach back again market drive-ins to families.
to about the first ten years of Nicholson’s When my girls were growing up, it was
career and discover the many Corman like the old days, taking them to a still-
movies he appeared in until his breakout standing drive-in, both girls in their PJs,
in Easy Rider in 1969—his first appearance and watching Disney movies like The Fox
was in 1958 in The Cry Baby Killer. Same and the Hound and The Black Hole. And
with other B-movie grads like Bruce Dern, The Movieland drive-in theater toy from when the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020
Peter Fonda, and Dennis Hopper. B-movie Remco allowed kids to drive in past the temporarily closed many multiplexes,
companies employed a regular stock of marquee and into the ticket booth, and some of the few remaining drive-ins
actors, actresses, and cameramen.  park one of the six beautiful cars before a reopened, many showing older movies.
King Brothers Studios which turned out giant screen. It contained six movie reels: If you long for classic drive-in
monster movies, crime movies, and general Have Gun Will Travel, Heckle and Jeckle, nostalgia, search eBay for Remco’s
schlock, some of which was written by the Mighty Mouse, Captain Kangaroo, Dinky Movieland drive-in theater toy. Made
famous two-time Academy Award winner Duck, and Farmer Alfalfa. Released in time in 1959, it features a screen and six film
Dalton Trumbo in his blacklisted years. for Christmas 1959, it originally retailed strips… or, as its TV ad said, “Beautiful
Famous drive-in B-movie director Al for a mere $5.98. Brian Monroe collection. Also, cars, a marquee, and ticket booth.” The
Adamson convinced actor Russ Tamblyn, manufacturer Selchow & Righter Co. ad closed with, “Every boy wants a Remco
who had received an Academy Award® produced Drive-In: The Money Making toy,” and a young actress wearing the
nomination for West Side Story, to come Movie Game, a board game. ticket taker hat added, “and so do girls,”
out of retirement to play in 1969’s Satan’s winking to the camera. That was a young
Sadists, billed as “wild beyond belief.” Satan’s Sadists had a Patty Duke, who was featured in other Remco toy ads as well.
Vietnam theme, as the hero was a U.S. Marine vet, and was a Remco’s Movieland originally cost $5.98, and can be yours today
box office smash only with drive-in audiences. Adamson’s The for about $200.
Female Bunch (1971), featuring a motorcycle gang of women,
was filmed at L.A. County’s legendary Spahn Ranch while the Pop culture historian JIM TRAUTMAN has written about antiques
Manson family was in residence. and collectibles for World Class Antiques, The Wayback
If you were at the drive-in for the double feature of Bloody Times, and Antique Week. He is the author of the book The Pan
Mama (1970) and Boxcar Bertha (1972), you watched a young American Clippers: The Golden Age of Flying Boats. Unless
Robert DeNiro in the first and Barbara Hershey in the otherwise noted, all photographs accompanying this article are
second. Boxcar Bertha was directed by Martin Scorsese. courtesy of Mr. Trautman.

64 RETROFAN September 2021

SUPER COLLECTOR

Collecting
Comic
Art
by David Mandel

I was in third grade, about eight years old, and drawing a

picture of the human heart for a school report on the floor
of my parents’ bedroom when my stomach started hurting.
It was not exactly my stomach but rather my side that hurt. I
had a mild fever and I vomited once, and before I knew what
was happening, they were taking out my appendix at Mt. Sinai
Hospital. This was before laparoscopic surgery, which meant
they made a large incision to get the
appendix out, and the recovery was
painful, especially at first, and I stayed in
the hospital for over a week.
It was kind of scary, the food was
terrible, and I hated when they woke me
up early in the morning to take blood.
But what I remember most about my stay
in the hospital was X-Men Annual #4. To
cheer me up, my parents had picked up
a whole bunch of comic books for me,
and on top of the pile was a new issue
of the X-Men, and it was a double-sized
one at that. Written by Chris Claremont
© Marvel.

(TOP LEFT) Star Wars Marvel Treasury Edition and

(BOTTOM LEFT) the original art by Rick Hoberg and Dave
Cockrum. © LucasFilm Ltd.

RETROFAN September 2021 65

 super collector
(ABOVE) Daredevil #184 and (RIGHT) the
original art by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson.
© Marvel.
with cover and art by John Romita, Jr. and Bob McLeod,
“Nightcrawler’s Inferno” had the X-Men, with help from
Dr. Strange, journeying through Dante’s Inferno to save
Nightcrawler’s soul from his… mother! There were other
comics in that pile, but that was the one I read over and
over and over. That was the comic book that got me through my
surgery. And it took me just a little less than 25 years to track
down and buy the original art to the cover. I would have paid
anything to get it. I had to have it.
In case it was not clear, I collect original comic art. If you do
not know what original comic art is, it is the original, hand-drawn
pages that are used to make comic books. Often one artist pencils
them, and then a second artist inks them, and they are black and
white—the color is added later before the comic book is printed. I
used to joke that I collect original art because regular comic book
collecting was not nerdy enough for me, but it is really so much
more than that.
So, what is original comic-art collecting?
Original Comic Art is Nostalgia
All collecting is nostalgia, of course, but comic art for me is doubly
so. Not every piece of comic art in my collection is connected to
a hospital stay, but for most of my pieces, I can remember where
and when I read the original issue. Some comics, I bought with
66 RETROFAN September 2021
my friends first on the upper west side of New York City at West
Side Comics and then later at Big Apple Comics on 92nd Street,
across from where my grandmother lived. Some are from comics
my parents sent me as a “Care Package” at sailing camp, which I
hated because everyone seemed to know how to sail already. I
own the original art to the cover of the Star Wars Treasury Edition.
And that cover not only reminds of seeing Star Wars—twice in
a row—when it came out, but more importantly, I specifically
remember reading the treasury with my dad on the beach in Cape
Cod during a summer vacation. We had seen the movie together
and now we were reading the treasury edition together. And later
that same day, we went out in the ocean and got the crap knocked
out of us by a big wave that stole my father’s sunglasses. Pure
nostalgia. But it is more that, too.
Original Comic Art is Ego
Comic art also does something that seems to stoke what I like to
call my “collector’s ego.” You see, anyone can have a copy of X-Men
Annual #4. X-Men was among Marvel’s bestselling comic books

at the time, and they printed a lot of copies. It is not a rare book,
even in “mint condition,” but there is one and only one, original,
hand-drawn cover to X-Men Annual #4 by Romita, Jr. and McLeod.
There is something very pleasing about that as a collector. No
matter how nice a copy of the comic book you have, someone else
has one, too. I have the only original art to the cover. The only one.
Me. Not you. It can be intoxicating.
There are comics in the collecting world that were hard to
find—anyone who grew up in the Eighties remembers that some
“issue #2s” like G.I. Joe #2 were very collectible because retailers
ordered fewer of them. I remember going store to store to find
G.I. Joe #2, in which the Joe team races across the frozen tundra
to fight Cobra, so imagine my pleasure years later in acquiring
the original art to the cover to G.I. Joe #2 by Herb Trimpe and Jack
Abel. Again, I have it, and you do not!
super collector
(ABOVE) G.I. Joe #2 and (LEFT) the
original art by Herb Trimpe and Jack
Abel. © Hasbro.
Comic Art is a Peek Behind
the Curtain
I love seeing the process of how a comic
book gets made through a piece of original
art. Did they shrink the cover? Did they
redraw a face? Are there notes from the
artist to the editor or the colorist?
I have a wonderful Daredevil cover
by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson in my
collection. It is the cover to Daredevil #184, although comic fans
remember it as the “No More Mr. Nice Guy” cover, with the
gun. And there on the bottom of the cover is a hand-written
note from Mr. Janson requesting that cover be printed with
a “very dark background.” The finished printed cover? It is…
bright yellow. I love that.
Or how about an original Jack Kirby piece of X-Men art from
one of the early issues? Kirby would fill the margins with pencil
notes to himself and to Stan Lee about what the story was. I
love reading the notes as much I love the art.
Comic Art is a Salve to Frustrated Artist
I am perpetually frustrated by how terrible an artist I am.
But when I look at the X-Men Annual cover, I can remember
how when I get out of the hospital and got back home, I tried
RETROFAN September 2021 67
 super collector

drawing my own version of that cover over and over. Romita, Jr. Comic Art is About Artists
had nothing to worry about, but it made me want to own the I have fond memories of the bar at the Oakland Marriot where
original art even more. WonderCon used to take place. That was one of the nice things
There was another Miller Daredevil cover that I drew all the about the comic conventions I attended in the Nineties, they were
time: issue #189, the one with Daredevil and all the arrows small enough that you could actually meet people. That bar is
flying at him. I bought the original art in the late Nineties from a where I became friends with Arthur Adams and Joyce Chin. We
collector who had a comic shop. Again, I had to have it. started doing regular dinners that have lasted to this day and now
include our kids and… Bruce Timm. I remember hanging out to all
Comic Art is About the Journey hours of the night with Dan Brereton getting watercolor lessons
I once made my college roommate drive with me into New Jersey from him that did not quite take. And somewhere along the
during rush hour to get to a comic shop that was selling a Dark way, I got to know Dave Stevens, who’s friendship I miss to this
Knight Returns splash featuring Superman. It should have taken 20 day, but led to my helping getting The Rocketeer republished. I
minutes, but it took almost two own art in my collection, drawn by
hours. Worth it! my friends.
And I will never forget driving
down to San Diego with my then Comic Art is About
assistant and future comic-book the Writers
writer JT to do a comic-art deal super collector If ten-year old me knew that one
in a strip mall behind a grocery day I would be sitting at a poker
store. I opened my car trunk game playing with Marv Wolfman
like a drug deal, so the pile of AND Len Wein, his head would
original Frank Miller Daredevil have exploded. Original comic art
art could be loaded in, and I pages are not just about the art,
handed over a mix of checks and they are about the words, too. I
cash. have pages that I own because of
And then there was the time memorable lines of dialogue and
I did a giant deal in the middle story moments that future TV and
of the night, deep in the San movie writer in me have never
Fernando Valley. By the time forgotten.
we finished negotiating, I had These days the lettering is sadly
added some amazing gems done later, but there is nothing like
to my collection including a paging through my collection and
Kirby Fantastic Four cover and a stopping on an Alan Moore Swamp
Ditko pre-hero story. It was the Thing page to “hear” Batman
biggest deal I had ever done at referring to Superman as “what’s
that point, and the date on the his name.”
check: April 1. It seemed like a Back to the poker game: I had
joke. gotten to know Mr. Len Wein
through a mutual friend (inker/
David Mandel with comic art-collecting friends Kelvin
Comic Art is about documentarian Steve Mitchell) and
Mao and Joseph Melchior. And Batman.
the People eventually got invited to play in
When I look back, I realize that his regular game. There was Len,
many of the friends I have made Marv, and Steve, and artist Jerry
in my adult life are actually from comic-art collecting. Bingham (Batman: Son of the Demon). It was a very serious game
The first time I spoke with Kelvin, we argued on the phone for incredibly low stakes, but they took it very personally. I could
about a piece of John Byrne art and vaguely threatened each have cared less about the poker! Over the years, Len and I would
other (more than vaguely). Ten years later, we were in each other’s try to meet up for a bite—usually deli, he loved Brent’s in the
wedding, and we speak almost every day, starting most of our Valley—and I was honored when he decided to sell me the cover
calls with “anything new collecting-wise?” to Giant Size X-Men #1, a piece of art that was as much a dream at
My friend Jim and I have a standing plan to drive to San Diego the poker game. I miss our lunches.
every year together, and we make sure our rooms are on the same
floor of the hotel. When we first got to know each other, Jim had Comic Art is… Art
young kids. Now he’s retired and has his first grandchild, and I am At the end of the day, what I love about comic art is framing a piece,
the one with young kids. hanging it on the wall, and just looking at it. I see so much.
As the years went by, even the dealers who I once approached
so timidly have become good pals and dining compatriots. You DAVID MANDEL is the Emmy Award-winning showrunner of the
could have easily set up a mini comic-con at my wedding just HBO comedy Veep and was an executive producer and director for
based on the number of dealers and customers that attended. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld.

68 RETROFAN September 2021

 ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING
by Andy Mangels
(BACKGROUND) H. R. Pufnstuf title card. (INSET) Promotional image for Sid
and Marty Krofft's Kaleidoscope. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.
Television of the late Sixties and early Seventies was not without
its far-out candy-colored mod/hippie-influenced shows, but
rarely did the world of the counterculture creep into children’s
television. Such was not the case with one series… a series that
has stayed in the public eye as a psychedelic cornucopia of
oddity… a series that despite everyone in the world claiming it is
chock full of drug references, the creators claim it is not…
That series was H. R. Pufnstuf, and its producers, Sid and Marty
Krofft, built a legacy on its bizarre tales. With only one full season
of shows—and a lesser-known feature film—how has H. R.
Pufnstuf’s influence lasted for over 50 years?
The Krofft Kaleidoscope
In the world of Sixties/Seventies
Saturday morning television, only a
few companies ruled the roosts on
the three networks: Hanna-Barbera
Productions, Filmation Associates,
DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, and
Sid and Marty Krofft. Though
Filmation had been dabbling
with live-action among its
H. R. Pufnstuf and Jack Wild
as Jimmy. © Sid and Marty Krofft
Productions.
animated offerings, the
Kroffts would almost single-
handedly keep live-action
alive on Saturday mornings,
first designing The Banana
Splits for Hanna-Barbera in
1968, then debuting their
hallucinatory (some would
say hallucinogenic) hit H. R.
Pufnstuf in 1969.
The Montreal-born
brothers Sid and Marty
Krofft were the sons of
a watchmaker, and Sid worked in vaudeville as a puppeteer,
eventually being featured in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey Circus shows. His one-man puppet show, “The Unusual
Artistry of Sid Krofft,” toured the world in 1940, where he worked
with his father. Younger brother Marty eventually learned the
puppet trade on stage, and began working with Sid. In 1957, they
even produced a touring risqué puppet production called Les
Poupées de Paris.
The Kroffts created the costumes and world of The Banana
Splits for Hanna-Barbera in 1968, working for the first time with a
respectable budget and national audience. They decided to break
off on their own the following year, and the show they created,
H. R. Pufnstuf, was their first opportunity to let their fertile
imaginations run wild with oversize puppets interacting with
humans, kaleidoscopic colors and production design, and even
crude special effects.
The H. R. Pufnstuf character actually began his “life” as a
character named Luther, a mascot for the 1968 World’s Fair,
also known as HemisFair ’68. Held in San Antonio, Texas, from
April 6–October 6, 1968, the fair included a Coca-Cola-sponsored
RETROFAN September 2021 69
 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

pavilion called
Kaleidoscope, which was
created by the Kroffts.
The mascot for the
pavilion was Luther,
an anthropomorphic
dragon with an over-
sized blue head and
friendly smile. He also
had a cowboy hat,
wore cowboy boots,
and talked with a bit
of a Southern drawl…
apropos for a Texas
location.
The plot of Kaleidoscope was described on
the back of a souvenir puppet book, which
allowed viewers to recreate the show using
punch-out cardboard puppets on strings:
“Kaleidoscope takes you into a magical world
of illusion and surprise… where comedy,
music and dance are spectacular, and
anything is possible. It boasts a cast of
over 120, and features the talents of many
Hollywood stars. There have never been so
many elaborate effects in one production,
where the entire audience becomes
involved in the spectacle. You are taken
back to the beginning of time where a Super
Hero is changed into a monster by a terrible
witch and the only way the monster can be changed back is to (TOP LEFT) Exterior of the Coca-Cola-sponsored Kaleidoscope show.
be kissed by someone. For thousands of years he can get no help (TOP RIGHT) Marty Kroft with Kaleidoscope's star, Luther. (ABOVE)
until he meets a famous young girl, and the two travel thousands Production art for the show. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.
of feet through space searching for the wicked witch who might
help. They are entertained by many well-known characters along
the way and also go through a few horrifying moments. Finally riots occurring in many cities, the “Luther” name might have struck
the show swings to happy times and you find out who the Super the wrong chords in audiences. Perhaps this is why the puppet
Hero is…” program only references “Enchanted Dragon” as his name?
In the story above, the characters included Luther the
Enchanted Dragon, Wicked Ol’ Witch (who “flew” over the Creating a Television Trip
audience), Senor Ole’, Bull, Ape, and Dog. It is unknown who NBC daytime executive Larry White and his “people” visited the
the “famous girl” was, or which celebrities were involved in the sets of The Banana Splits while the show was in production, and
production (although puppets of Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, marveled at the craft that went into the life-size creature suits
Marlene Dietrich, and John Wayne were used). Somehow and puppets working together. NBC suggested to the Kroffts
cowboys and giant spiders were also involved, and 16-foot-tall that they try to sell them their own show, but White was leaving
puppets of historical figures like Davy Crockett. Nor do we know Hollywood by train at the end of the week. Sid pulled together
who the Super Hero was… According to a souvenir postcard and repurposed elements from Kaleidoscope, and three days
from Coca-Cola, though, at some point in its story, Kaleidoscope later (a Friday) the Kroffts delivered the “Luther Land” proposal
explained “man’s interest in, and need for, refreshment.” to White. The exec studied it on a train cross-country, and the
Kaleidoscope was presented in a 500-seat auditorium, with the following Monday, informed the Kroffts that they had a sale. NBC
building surrounded by a lagoon. would debut their Saturday morning live-action life-sized-puppet
The Kroffts had a second show—this one adults-only due to its series in Fall 1969!
risqué puppets—Les Poupées de Paris, at the nearby Lido Theatre NBC quibbled though about the name, feeling “Luther Land”
pavilion, but this one was devoid of Coca-Cola branding (though would sound too much like “Lutheran Land.” Marty asked a friend,
it did have pre-recorded material from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, screenwriter Michael Blodgett, for ideas. Blodgett considered
and Dean Martin). that the most famous dragon in the world was “Puff the Magic
The only fly in the ointment for the enchanted dragon star was Dragon,” made popular from the 1963 song by Peter, Paul and
his name; two days before the World’s Fair opened, the Reverend Mary. By playing around with the concept “Puff and all his
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. With racially motivated stuff,” Blodgett suggested to the Kroffts that they call the show

70 RETROFAN September 2021

 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

“Pufnstuf.” Sid added the honorific “H. R.” in front of it—which Gamonet as passing away in 1972, while a newspaper source cites
reportedly stood for “Highness Royal”—and the series had its a puppeteer by that name working in 1976; either way, his later life
new name: Luther Land was now H. R. Pufnstuf! is unknown.
Of course, once it was changed, NBC wasn’t happy with the Bedeviling the Living Island was Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo,
name H. R. Pufnstuf for the series either. They feared that it essentially the same character from the live production, though
sounded too feminine—and might remind children of powder this one rode around on a broomstick-like flying vehicle called
puffs—but the Kroffts refused to change it again. the “Vroom Broom.” While Witchiepoo lived in a castle, her magic
As the new show took shape, Pufnstuf, the now green-and- could not always affect Pufnstuf, though sometimes it could.
yellow dragon, was the mayor of Living Island, a fantastic land Witchiepoo was played by stage actress Billie Hayes, who was one
where everything inanimate was actually alive! Performer of two actresses that the Kroffts had to finally choose between.
Roberto The first was a then-unknown Penny Marshall, years before her
Gamonet was success in Laverne & Shirley. But then Hayes came into the room
inside the eight- with a cackle and leapt onto a desk, then sang a song a capella for
foot costume, the Kroffts and director Hollingsworth Morse. Hayes had been
but he was suggested to the Kroffts by Peter Walker, who worked with her in
gifted arms in a Las Vegas touring production of Hello, Dolly! The Kroffts knew
the redesign they had their star.
for the series; The third main protagonist for the series was set as an
Kaleidoscope’s 11-year-old boy named Jimmy. Lured to the Living Island aboard
Luther had Witchiepoo’s enchanted boat, Jimmy had a magic talking flute
been armless. named Freddy. When searching for Jimmy, Sid Krofft had fixated
Gamonet had on an unknown British actor he had recently seen. His friend,
been a famous Lionel Bart, showed Sid a
puppeteer in rough cut of his Dickens-based
British Honduras; musical film Oliver (released in
Pufnstuf would September 1968), and young
be his only major Jack Wild had a leading role
screen credit. there as the Artful Dodger.
One book lists Because the 16-year-old
actor was underage, he had
to have a guardian to work
in Hollywood; Marty Krofft
accepted guardianship of the
youth. Wild worked to tamp
down his natural Cockney
accent; he could sound British,
but not too British. He didn’t
have to do much with his
singing voice, though; he
reportedly hit puberty at the
late age of 19, so was able to
do fine with the songs. A slight
speech impediment meant he
couldn’t say “r” easily, meaning
that his companion was always
referred to by him as “Fweddie
the Flute.”
Other main characters of
the cast included: the large
scientist owl, Dr. Blinky, in
charge of the “Anti-Smog,
Pollution, and Witch
Committee”; a singing and
dancing sequined frog based
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) Sid and Marty Kroft greet Jack Wild on Judy Garland, coincidentally named Judy the Frog; shady
as he comes to America. Concept art for Witchiepoo and H. R. W. C. Fields-like peddler Ludicrous Lion; famous dragon actress
Pufnstuf. Jimmy and Luther have a tense introduction. © Sid and and Shirley Temple clone Shirlee Pufnstuf; Witchiepoo’s hench-
Marty Krofft Productions. creatures Orson Vulture, Seymour Spider, and Stupid Bat; the
mute Rescue Racer Crew police creatures Cling and Clang; and
RETROFAN September 2021 71
 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

(LEFT) H. R. Pufnstuf, Witchiepoo, and Jimmy have a laugh. (BELOW) Everything is alive
on the Living Island including trees, seen in this production sketch, and whatever Keystone
Cop-esque Cling and Clang are. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

assorted anthropomorphic clocks, lollipops, birds, trees, houses,

The only way on or
mushrooms, and even winds!
off Living Island.
Other than Jack Wild and Billie Hayes, pretty much every
© Sid and Marty Krofft
other creation on H. R. Pufnstuf was a performer in an elaborate
Productions.
costume, or a puppeteered object or animal. Because the Living
Island was entirely alive, almost anything could open its mouth
and speak or sing. Many of the characters had voices that were
reminiscent of famous film stars of the era, including the afore-
mentioned Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, and W. C. Fields, as well
as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mae West, Bela Lugosi, Edward G. Robinson,
John Wayne, Peter Lorre, Jimmy Cagney, Boris Karloff, and others.
The voice performers were almost always the show’s writer Lennie
Weinrib, as well as Walker Edmiston and Joan Gerber.
The costumed performers—who were rightfully called
“puppeteers” because they had to puppeteer their costumes and
perform in them—included several dancers (including former
Mouseketeer Sharon Baird) and shorter/little people (such as Felix
Silla, Angelo Rossitto, Johnny Silver, Harry Monty, Joy Campbell,
and Patty Maloney). Famed little person actor Billy Barty had quest just a bit—adding multiple barriers to Jimmy’s exit
helped spread the word to diminutive actors that helped them leaving the island—because he had been watching the British
get hired by the Kroffts. The performers got the SAG minimum of television series The Prisoner, a 1967 series about a secret agent
$420 a week. Remember that number. It will be important later… trying to leave a mysterious village. Weinrib’s first writing
partner was Bob Ridolfi, who had only worked on the pilot script
Filming the Living Island as he was killed in a car accident, on New Year’s Eve 1968. Shortly
The designs and stories for Pufnstuf were changed from the after the series sold, Weinrib met writer Paul Harrison during a
Beauty and the Beast plotline in Kaleidoscope to one that more dispute over a parking space, and the two worked on the rest of
closely resembled the Land of Oz, from L. Frank Baum’s book the series together.
series and the 1939 MGM musical film. Like Dorothy, Jimmy was Longtime television director Hollingsworth Morse came on
a stranger in a strange land, who was befriended by multiple to direct the series; years later, he would jump ship to Filmation
magical characters even as he faced the wrath of a wicked witch to direct Shazam!, The Secrets of Isis, and Ark II. The Kroffts made
who wanted something from him (substitute a magical flute for the decision to have Morse shoot Pufnstuf on film, rather than
magic slippers). Like Dorothy, Jimmy wanted nothing more than videotape; it was the only Krofft production that they would ever
to go home, even if it meant leaving his friends behind. Even one shoot on film.
of Jimmy’s potential ways home—the Magic Path—was a yellow NBC requested to see a rough cut of the first episode, but
brick road! the music and sound effects had not yet been added in. They
In charge of writing the series was Lennie Weinrib, who reportedly hated the results, and told the Kroffts to reshoot the
worked on all 17 scripts. Weinrib was inspired to change Jimmy’s entire show. The producers added in the music and effects and

72 RETROFAN September 2021


The Krofts and Jack Wild on set. © Sid
and Marty Krofft Productions.
sent it back to the network, without telling
them it was otherwise the exact same
footage. The executives loved the “revised”
episode, and approved it.
Si Rose, a sitcom writer brought in
to punch up the scripts and produce the
series, convinced the Kroffts to add a
laugh track to the series as well. Although
they initially resisted, Rose convinced
them that children would need the
track as a cue to know when it was okay
to laugh. The producers relented, and
Pufnstuf got its laugh track.
Although the opening sequence
with Jimmy and the boat was shot at Big
Bear Lake, a resort area in California,
the remainder of the show was shot at
Paramount Studios on elaborately colorful
sound stages. The sets accommodated not
only the performers and their costumes,
but were designed to hide the puppeteers
and wires needed for stunts such as flying
objects or creatures (or an occasional
witch). Art director Nick Nadeu had been
brought aboard the team by Si Rose,
and although Wes Cook produced the
fanciful designs for the show on paper,
Nadeau was responsible for the colorful
sets and general distinctive look that
eventually became known in Hollywood
as “the Krofft look.” Coral Kerr holds
the distinction of designing Freddy the
Flute, a character the art department was
concerned might be a bit too phallic for a
preteen boy to be handling!
Most H. R. Pufnstuf episodes
highlighted musical numbers sung by
Jimmy, occasionally with others joining
in. The songs were short and repetitive,
designed for younger audiences, and all
written by Les Szarvas. Choreographer Hal
Belfer came in to oversee dancing on the
show, and he was aided by Hayes, Wild,
Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning
FA ST FAC TS
H. R. Pufnstuf
` No. of seasons: One
` No. of episodes: 17
` Original run: September 6,
1969–September 5, 1970 (NBC,
Saturdays)
Primary Physical
Performer Cast
` Jack Wild: Jimmy
` Robert Gamonet: H. R. Pufnstuf
` Billie Hayes: Wilhelmina W.
Witchiepoo Jack Wild mugs for the camera between
` Sharon Baird: Stupid Bat, Judy
scenes while Roberto Gamonet gets some
Frog, Shirlee Pufnstuf, Lady Boyd air. John Silver as Dr. Blinky is in the
` Joy Campbell: Orson Vulture,
middle. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.
Cling
` Angelo Rossitto: Seymour Spider,
Clang and Sharon Baird, all of whom had stage
` John Silver: Dr. Blinky, Ludicrous musical and dancing backgrounds.
Lion The costumes for most of the
` Andy Ratoucheff: Tick Tock, players were oppressively hot, and one
Polka-Dotted Horse puppeteer—a Russian little person
` Felix Silla: Polka-Dotted Horse, named Andy Ratoucheff—would often
Cling have to take breaks due to an asthma
` Also starring Jerry Landon, Jon attack. Although many of the performers
Linton, Scutter McKay, Harry puppeteered their mouths, including
Monty, Robin Roper, Patty some that had animatronics, Gamonet
Maloney had to work Pufnstuf’s mouth with his
hands, leaving him unable to use his arms.
Primary Voice Performer Sometimes the dragon mayor had one
Cast “swinging dead arm,” while in one of the
costumes, the arms were both stuffed,
` Lennie Weinrib: H. R. Pufnstuf, or even puppeteered through the use
Bela Lugosi Tree, Dr. Blinky’s of strings! Eventually the Pufnstuf head
Talking Book, Stupid Bat, Pop was given controls so that Gamonet
Lolly, West Wind, Max Von
Toadenoff the Great, Orson
Vulture, Polka Dotted Horse,
Jimmy as Movie Villain
` Walker Edmiston: Boris Karloff
Tree, Dr. Blinky’s Candle, East
Wind, Grandfather Clock, North
Wind, Chief Redwood, Alarm
Clock, Dr. Blinky, Dr. Blinky’s Test
Tube, Ludicrous Lion, Seymour
Spider
` Joan Gerber: Freddy the Flute,
Grandmother Clock, Judy the Frog,
Madame Willow, South Wind,
Lady Boyd, Shirlee Pufnstuf
(RIGHT) Roberto Gamonet gets help
with his H. R. Pufnstuf costume. © Sid
and Marty Krofft Productions.
RETROFAN September 2021 73
 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

© Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

could properly act with both arms and mouth movement. During
shooting, the lines for the characters were read by the female
dialogue director, and the voice actors would dub the lines in later
in ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement, a.k.a. “looping”). The
only “traditional” puppet on the set was Freddy the Flute, which
was operated with cables from below, sometimes by Sid Krofft
himself!
Filming for Pufnstuf was from 7:30am to 7pm daily, with all
17 shows shot in three months. It was an expansive schedule
H. R. PUFNSTUF
compared to some later live kids’ shows, but with the amount of THEME SONG
technical wizardry involved, the pace was always frenetic.
Written by Les Szarvas (and Paul Simon),
Throughout the first season, due mostly to Sid Krofft refusing
performed by The Ron Hicklin Singers
to compromise his vision for the series, Pufnstuf went wildly over
budget. The show was budgeted at $52,000 per half hour, or
H. R. Pufnstuf
around $884,000 for the season; by the end, it was reportedly a
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
million dollars over, an astronomical cost for the time! By the time
H. R. Pufnstuf
the show came to its final episode, the producers had to engineer
Can’t do a little cause he can’t do enough.
a “clips show” to even make it, utilizing minor new footage and
reused footage from other episodes. Thankfully, the Kroffts were
Once upon a summertime
making money from their puppet shows at four Six Flags theme
Just a dream from yesterday
parks, and they funneled the money into Pufnstuf. But the cost
A boy and his magic golden flute
could have buried the company if Pufnstuf wasn’t a hit.
Heard a boat from off the bay
“Come and play with me, Jimmy
Pufnstuf on the Air
Come and play with me.
H. R. Pufnstuf debuted with NBC’s new season on Saturday,
And I will take you on a trip
September 6, 1969, at 10am, just before The Banana Splits Adventure
Far across the sea.”
Hour. Pufnstuf was a monster-sized hit, and the Kroffts were
picked to do further Saturday morning development. They
But the boat belonged to a kooky old witch
created the insect-themed musical series The Bugaloos for NBC
Who had in mind the flute to snitch
From her Vroom Broom in the sky
She watched her plans materialize
She waved her wand
The beautiful boat was gone
The skies grew dark
The sea grew rough
And the boat sailed on and on and on and on and
on and on.

But Pufnstuf was watching too

And knew exactly what to do
He saw the witch’s bold attack
And as the boy was fighting back
He called his Rescue Racer Crew
As often they’d rehearsed
And off to save the boy they flew
But who would get there first?

But now the boy had washed ashore

Puf arrived to save the day
Which made the witch so mad and sore
She shook her fist and screamed away.

H. R. Pufnstuf
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H. R. Pufnstuf
Can’t do a little cause he can’t do enough.
Beautiful production art by Wes Cook. © Sid and Marty Krofft Produc- (repeats)
tions. Courtesy of Heritage.

74 RETROFAN September 2021

 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

(1970–1972), the anthropomorphic hat series Lidsville for CBS
(1971–1973) [see RetroFan #6 for an interview with Lidsville and The
Munsters actor Butch Patrick—ed.], the humans-adopt-a-cute sea-
creature show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters for NBC (1973–1975),
the adventures of a family trapped in an alternate world full of
dinosaurs and lizard-men Sleestacks known as the Land of the Lost
for CBS (1974–1976), and androids from the future trapped in the
present in ABC’s The Lost Saucer (1975). Even more hits followed…
While the Kroffts were still producing the first season of the
television series, Universal Pictures approached them about doing
a Pufnstuf feature film, to be co-produced by Kellogg’s Cereal.
The film, written by John Fenton Murray and Si Rose, featured
elements that predated the television series (including Jimmy’s
pre-Living Island life), and elements that were concurrent with
the show. With a (slightly) bigger budget, many characters and
sets got redesigned a bit, and new characters were introduced:
Googy Gopher, Orville Pelican, and chauffeur Heinrich Rat.
Most specifically new were Boss Witch (diva Martha Raye) and
Witch Hazel (Sid
Krofft’s neighbor
Mama Cass Elliott).
Lennie Weinrib
did not contribute
any voices; his
parts were mostly
taken by either
Don Messick or
Al Melvin, the
latter taking over
Pufnstuf’s voicing.
The 98-minute
Pufnstuf was
released to theatres
in June 1970, while
the first season was
in its first round of
reruns. Even though
it had a small
budget, compared
to Pufnstuf on TV,
the feature was
Colorful poster for the theatrical release, considered a flop.
Pufnstuf. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions. Still, it was brought
back to theatres
over the next few years as a matinee seat-filler, often paired with
June 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Strangely, despite its TV success, H. R. Pufnstuf did not go to a
second season; new NBC executive George Henemann offered
another 17 episodes, with a meager budget increase of 5%
additional over the $52,000 per episode, but the million-dollar
budgetary overrun and the losses to the Kroffts could not be
overcome by the pittance. The Kroffts turned the deal down.
But the series did not leave the air for the 1970–1971 NBC season,
nor for 1971–1972 (though it aired spottily this final year). When
NBC dropped the show, ABC picked it up, airing it on Saturdays
in 1972–1973, and Sundays for the 1973–1974 season. Following
its five seasons of network airing, Pufnstuf went into syndication,
from September 1974 to June 1978. Following that, it remained on
the air in syndication as part of a package called Krofft Superstars
from 1978 to 1985! Since that time, the show has aired on TV Land
and MeTV, among others.
H. R. Pufnstuf was also a licensing bonanza for the Kroffts.
Characters from the show would appear on cereal boxes,
soundtrack albums, toys,
puzzles, games, coloring books
and storybooks, hand puppets,
comic books from Gold Key,
lunch boxes, and much more.
Additionally, the Kroffts
would reuse—or loan out—
their characters to other
television productions. H. R.
Pufnstuf appeared in episodes
of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,
Lidsville, and The Krofft Superstar
Hour segment The Lost Island.
Witchiepoo later appeared
on Lidsville, and The Krofft
Superstar Hour segment Horror This H.R. Pufnstuf Press Out
Hotel (alongside Orson Vulture, book was just one of many
Seymour Spider, and Stupid licensed items generated by the
Bat). Witchiepoo also appeared show. © Sid and Marty Krofft
in ABC’s 1976 bizarrely campy Productions.
The Paul Lynde Halloween Special,
where she was the sister of The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of
the West (portrayed by Margaret Hamilton)! Hayes reprised her
role as Witchiepoo in all cases, but Pufnstuf was now played by
actor Van Snowden, who took over the role in 1972 from Roberto
Gamonet. Snowden would be Pufnstuf from 1972 to at least 2007.
Pufnstuf and his friends appeared in many theme park
shows—mostly for Six Flags parks—since 1971. There were
also stage show tours that travelled the U.S., and special events
such as 1973’s H. R. Pufnstuf & The Brady Kids Live at the Hollywood
Bowl. The entire cast (including a faux Jimmy) appeared in an Ice
Capades touring show in the early Seventies. Additionally, Pufnstuf
has appeared on episodes of CHiPs, My Name is Earl, George Lopez,
Billie Hayes (CENTER), Mama Cass (LEFT), and Martha Raye
(RIGHT) get witchie in this theater photo promoting the film
Pufnstuf. © Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

RETROFAN September 2021 75

 Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning

© Sid and Marty Krofft Productions.

and the Kroffts’ 2016 Nickelodeon series Mutt & Stuff, and the
series has been parodied on The Simpsons and Mr. Show with Bob
H. R.
and David, among many others. PUFNSTUF
Fans could also recreate Jimmy’s journey for themselves for
a brief time as there were Pufnstuf elements at the World of Sid
FEATURED
and Marty Krofft, a six-floor indoor amusement park in Atlanta, SONGS
Georgia which was opened in May 1976. The lowest floor held the
Written by Les Szarvas
Living Island Adventure, and it featured the Living Island forest
* Note that song titles varied
and an actress playing Witchiepoo to heckle the visitors. Sadly,
from copyright entries to songbooks to soundtracks, but
the indoor park was a colossal failure, and it unceremoniously
these are the “most” correct titles.
closed in November 1976.
“When We Woke Up This Morning” (Jack Wild)
Cloned Songs, Thieving Burger Burglars, and
“How Lucky I Am” (Jack Wild, Lennie Weinrib)
Something Smells Skunky
“Pronouns” (Jack Wild)
Three legal issues arose for the Kroffts out of H. R. Pufnstuf. Well,
“Oranges Smoranges” (Billie Hayes)
two legal issues and a 50-year controversy…
“(I’m A) Mechanical Boy” (Jack Wild)
The first related to the theme song, written by Les Szarvas.
“Campfire Grannies” (Billie Hayes)
None other than Paul Simon sued over the track, claiming that
“(The) End of the Road” (Jack Wild)
it was far too close to his own hit, “The 59th Street Bridge Song
“(A) Bucket of Sunshine” (Jack Wild, Lennie Weinrib,
(Feelin’ Groovy).” The exact nature of the settlement of the lawsuit
and company)
is unknown, but Simon is now listed as co-writer on the song in
“Ice Cold Lemonade” (Billie Hayes)
credits.
“I’m So Happy To Be Here” (Joan Gerber, Jack Wild)
The second related to McDonald’s. An advertising
“Moonwalk” (Joan Gerber)
representative for the fast food chain had come to the Kroffts
“The Loneliest Witch in Town” (Billie Hayes)
in early 1970, to ask them to develop ideas for a McDonaldland
“(The) Beggar’s Song” (Jack Wild)
group of characters that they could use in advertising. In August
“I’m Just a Bundle of Sunshine” (Billie Hayes)
1970, after the Kroffts designed some characters, the ad exec
“Pufnstuf for Mayor/Witchiepoo For Mayor” (Jack Wild
told them they were going to go in another direction. In January
and company)
1971, the Kroffts saw the “new” direction; that being that Mayor
“The Fastest Hoof in the Whole Darn West” (Lennie
McCheese directly ripped off H. R. Pufnstuf, and that Officer
Weinrib)
Big Mac, the Apple Pie Trees, Hamburgler, Grimace, Captain
“Someone Who Cares” (a.k.a. closing theme) (The Ron
Crook, and other characters bore more than a tiny passing
Hicklin Singers)
resemblance to the Krofft designs! As they would later learn,
not only had the ad exec hired
former Krofft employees to
produce the McDonaldland
suits, but he had also hired
Pufnstuf voice actors to
provide voices! The brothers
filed a copyright infringement
lawsuit in November 1973.
After a three-week trial, a jury
found in favor of the Kroffts
and awarded them $50,000,
but both sides appealed. In
late 1977, the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals heard the
appeals on Sid & Marty Krofft
Television Productions Inc.
v. McDonald’s Corp., 562 F.2d
1157, and decided again that
McDonald’s had lost. Now, the
case was remanded to find

Jimmy and Cling and Clang

find themselves trapped and at
the mercy of Witchiepoo. © Sid
and Marty Krofft Productions.

76 RETROFAN September 2021


out how much money was owed. Many years after the lawsuit
began, the Kroffts got their answer; McDonald’s owed them
$1,044,000! According to some sources, McDonald’s still sends
regular checks to the Kroffts even today.
The aforementioned controversy came about due to the
general public being certain that not only was the wildly
colored psychedelic land and characters—like talking magic
mushrooms—inspired by the use of illegal drugs… but that
Inventive character and set designs were a hallmark of the trippy
H. R. Pufnstuf… and none of it had anything to do with drugs. © Sid
and Marty Krofft Productions.
the title character himself was, in fact, promoting drug use
through his very name! After all, not only was Pufnstuf literally
pronounced “Puffin’ Stuff,” but H. R. meant, in marijuana
terms, “hand rolled.” In other words, the popular thinking went,
“hand-rolled puffin’ stuff” with its hallucinogenic imagery, and
mushrooms, was clearly all about drugs…
Over the years, the fan claims have become more strident,
asking for the Kroffts to just come clean and narc on
themselves. The dragon mayor even sounded like a hippie,
albeit a laid-back Southern hippie. Even Lennie Weinrib, in a
December 24, 2000 episode of The E! True Hollywood Story: H. R.
Pufnstuf and the Strange World of Sid and Marty Krofft, said, “I think
fans gave it a kind of mysterious code-like meaning, like, ‘Ah,
was Pufnstuf puffing stuff? Like grass?’ Was it psychedelic? Was
it drug oriented? Not to us, it wasn’t.”
In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in February
2004, responding to the question, “Is H. R. Pufnstuf just one giant
drug reference?,” Marty Krofft said, “We’ve heard that for 35 years.
We did not intentionally do anything related to drugs in the story.
People thought we were on drugs. You can’t do good television
while on drugs. People never believe you when you say that, but
you can’t. The shows were very bright and spacey looking. They
may have lent themselves to that culture at the time, but we
didn’t ascribe that meaning to them, and I can’t speak to what
adults were doing when they were watching the shows. We just
set out to make a quality children’s program.”
Despite the fact that most fans (and publications) insisted
Pufnstuf and other shows were drug-inspired, the Kroffts have
Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning
continually maintained otherwise for years. “You cannot be
creative and do a show stoned,” Marty Krofft said in a 2016 video
interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It just isn’t going to work.
Sid and myself really never did the drugs. The bottom line is, the
audience was probably getting loaded.”
Okay, but remember the SAG scale the actors were paid
to work on the show? $420 a week? “420” is slang for “pot
consumption in progress.” Coincidence?
About the closest to an admission of guilt that anyone
has ever gotten was when Marty Krofft, in a February 2004
interview with Albany, New York’s The Times Union, stated, “I
think we probably messed around a little bit with what we
said and did sometimes, but the shows had nothing to do
with drugs.”
Okay, Marty, we get the denials, loud and clear. If you’re
holding, you aren’t sharing. But maybe once the marijuana
laws have been changed across the country, we’ll finally get
the “true” True Hollywood Story.
Pufnstuf’s Legacy
Today, H. R. Pufnstuf has slotted highly in many polls of cult
TV shows, and the show is available on DVD and digitally
online. The Kroffts have worked with Sony for a proposed
feature film, and the original series is trotted out any time
a celebration of kitsch or retro TV is prepared. When the
brothers Krofft appear at conventions or public appearances,
a live Pufnstuf is often with them, still an audience favorite.
In the 50+ years since its debut, H. R. Pufnstuf has remained a vital,
psychedelic part of the fabric of American television.
So, what will be the legacy for Luther the Enchanted Dragon,
or Highness Royal Pufnstuf, or the Living Island? At its base, H. R.
Pufnstuf succeeds at being wildly vibrant and colorful, packed
to the rafters with outrageous performances and puppetry
unrivalled until The Muppet Show. Homages and parodies of
vintage celebrities, groan-inducing puns, punchy songs… and,
whether the creators wanted to intend it or not, the inescapable
smoky element of an escape to an altered consciousness.
H. R. Pufnstuf is appealing and entertaining, for both kids and
adults who want to escape. It seems that the dragon really is “your
friend when things get rough!”
Artwork and photos are courtesy the collection of Andy Mangels, unless
otherwise credited.
ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling
author and co-author of 20 books, including
the TwoMorrows book Lou Scheimer:
Creating the Filmation Generation, as well
as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man:
Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books.
He recently wrote the bestselling Wonder
Woman ’77 Meets the Bionic Woman series for Dynamite and DC
Comics, and has written six Fractured Fairy Tales graphic novels
for Junior High audiences, for Abdo Books in 2021. He is currently
working on a book about the stage productions of Stephen King and
other projects. Additionally, he has scripted, directed, and produced
Special Features and documentaries for over 40 DVD releases.
His moustache is infamous. www.AndyMangels.com and www.
WonderWomanMuseum.com
RETROFAN September 2021 77

Thanks for all the wonderful issues of
RetroFan. Your magazine gives me hours of
entertainment when I am out on the road. I
truly enjoyed the latest issue [#12] spotlighting
Three’s Company. The trio never failed to keep
me laughing! Keep up the good work and I look
forward to the next issue.
CHARLES ROBINSON
You’re welcome! And thanks for your
support, and the photo (BELOW) you
included… a celebrity endorsement! For
readers who don’t follow professional
wrestling, Charles Robinson is a WWE
referee and a former wrestler himself.
I was amused that Sheena [RetroFan #12]
was before my time, Three’s Company after,
and Good Morning World, though of the correct
era, completely off my radar as a kid. Still, I
enjoyed that article best as it had three actors I
pleasantly recall: Ronnie Schell, Billy DeWolfe,
and Goldie Hawn. Schell was a guest on a lot
of shows. DeWolfe, briefly, on some program
with Larry Storch called The Queen and I. Goldie
Hawn, of course, on Laugh-in. Imagine how her
career would have changed if GMW had been
renewed for a second season. Enjoyed Schell’s
reminiscing about other shows on the lot or
various comedians he interacted with. The
most pleasant aspect is that he’s still around!
The Popeye cartoons I must have seen at the
time but don’t remember much aside from the
music when he downed a can of spinach, and
his calling his opponent “Brutisk.”
The coverage of Rudolph’s 1964 TV special
was intriguing for an unexpected connection:
Some of the folks did voices, shortly thereafter,
on the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes TV cartoons.
Better still, you even included photos. A large
one of Bernard Cowan, and tiny shots of Peg
Dixon, Paul Kligman, and Paul Soles. If you
include them in #16, please, just a tiny bit
larger. Or, if not, a heads-up so I can get Lasik
surgery and a magnifier. willing to work, and a genuinely pleasant fellow.
Laughed at seeing coverage of CB radios
in 2020. So dated a trend! Yet once pervasive
at the time. That was the one instance I gave
my dad actual good advice. He mused about
investing in it. I suggested: “Don’t.”
Hilarious.
An unexpected hit with me was Andy
Mangels’ Saturday Morning Holiday
Cards, specifically, the large one from
1965. Fun seeing how many I could
name after all this time. Of the 50-plus
characters, I recognized about 30. Not
bad. I’d have done better with the
Jetsons and Jonny Quest included. Or
Space Ghost characters, but they were
still a year away. How much brain space
was wasted remembering obscure ones
like Touche Turtle and Morocco Mole for
half a century?
The Dr. Seuss article was interesting
for the correct pronunciation of the
author’s penname. Turns out I’d been
incorrectly pronouncing it forever—
along with Dormammu and Mjolnir.
Or that there was ever a Cat in the Hat
model kit. News to me.
JOE FRANK
Joe, sometimes our images run small
because we only have small, low-
resolution images available, which was
the case in the Rudolph voice cast pic.
Hey, CB radios! I got in on that craze after
someone sold his radio to me for $50. I talked
like an idiot on it for a while (honestly, I don’t
know how those truckers made it sound so
cool), then gave up.
I was also relieved to score a perfect 10 on
the Too Much TV Quiz, especially after having
a disastrous crash-and-burn in the previous
issue. Keep these quizzes coming, they’re a lot
of fun! And I smiled when you referred to the
Professor by his real name, “Roy Hinkley.” After
all, this is not a quiz for the casual TV viewer;
if you watch too much TV, you’d better know
inside information like this.
Ironically, I loved the interview with Irish
McCalla, even though I’ve never seen a single
episode of Sheena. She just sounds like a
delightful woman. I would have loved to see a
current photo of her to accompany the article.
Whenever possible, I’d like to see “then and
now” photos, like you did with the Ronnie
Schell article.
Which brings me to my favorite article.
Seriously, this is why I love this magazine
so much; where else would I get photos and
inside info on a TV show that was only on for
one season? Good Morning World is one of many
TV shows I really liked as a kid, and are all but
forgotten today. Forgotten by everyone, that is,
but RetroFan. 
Ronnie Schell was one of those character
actors that was on nearly every show I watched,
and when he was on it was always a treat. He
strikes me as a man who is versatile, talented,
I’m not surprised he was, as he told us, never out
of work for more than three weeks.
Speaking of people we saw all over the dial,
I’d like to see articles about Jack Gilford and
Alice Ghostley. With beautiful women and
men with chiseled features burning bright for a
year or two, these two character actors quietly
racked up role after role as ordinary-looking,
relatable (but very funny) people and, like
Mr. Schell, always brightened up any episode,
movie, or commercial they appeared on.
Keep bringing us articles about the stuff
we cared about! I can’t wait for the Lost in Space
interviews next issue… I loved that show!
MICHAL JACOT
Michal, Irish McCalla’s quotes were from
archives. She passed away in 2002. We do,
whenever possible, run contemporary photos
of our faves from yesteryear, such as the
Michael York photo seen in this issue.
Just wanted to write in and say what a great
read issue #12 was. I especially enjoyed the
Three’s Company retrospective and tribute to
John Ritter. Have you ever considered adding
in a collector spotlight? I would love to glimpse
photos of super-fans’ collections.
BILL DESMOND
Thanks for the kind words, Bill! You must be
a new RF reader, because “Super Collector”
is an occasional feature in our pages. It was
a regular feature in our earliest issues but
has tapered off a bit, but is back this ish, with
David Mandel’s comic art collection featured.
And while on that topic, a shout-out to you
super collectors out there: If you’d like to
spotlight your collection, and your reasons for
collecting, in our magazine, email me at the
address below.
Tell your friends about us, and share your
comments about this issue by writing me at
euryman@gmail.com.
MICHAEL EURY
Editor-in-Chief
RETROFAN September 2021 79
 ReJECTED!

Just keep telling yourself, "This isn’t a real cover... this isn’t real a real cover..."

by Scott Saavedra

A
PUBLISHING
HISTORY
FIRST!

TO󰈜󰈜󰉝󰉝󰈳󰈳L󰇳󰇳󰇳
AN󰈾󰈾󰈲󰈲󰉚󰉚󰈙󰈙ED
CO󰈐󰈐󰉋󰉋󰈣󰈣󰈣󰈽󰈽N
T󰉀󰉀E
MA󰈰󰈰󰈰󰈰󰉋󰉋R
OF 󰈜󰈜󰈿󰈿󰉋󰉋
MARVEL SUPER HEROES
TV CARTOONS OF 1966

80 RETROFAN September 2021

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