March 2024 No. 31 $10.

95

Say, kids,
what time is
it?

IT’S HOWDY DOODY TIME!

Magic Memories of This… is… the… ALVIN SHOW

ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY By Herbie J Pilato

Saturday
morning’s
K-9 cru-
sader…
RUN, JOE,
RUN

Behind the scenes of the classic thriller

A Bewitched
60th Anniversary
Celebration! with NICHOLAS MEYER, MALCOLM
McDOWELL & DAVID WARNER

Visit Camp Crystal Lake (if you dare!) • Peter Gunn • Girder and Panel Building Sets & more!
Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury
Elizabeth Montgomery photograph courtesy of the Classic TV Preservation Society. The Alvin Show © Ross Bagdasarian. Run, Joe, Run © William P. D’Angelo Produc-
tions. Time Af ter Time © Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved.
 New from TwoMorrows!

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 13

The Crazy Cool Culture

We Grew Up With
41

Issue #31 March 2024

Columns and Departments

Special Features
70 2
3 Retrotorial
Retro Television
Bewitched’s Elizabeth
Montgomery 20
23 Too Much TV Quiz
13 TV characters’ hairstyles
37
Voger’s Vault of
Vintage Varieties 37
It’s Howdy Doody Time! Retro Fad
Hula Hoops
23
Oddball World of Scott Shaw!
The Alvin Show

41
Scott Saavedra’s
61 Secret Sanctum
Girder and Panel Building Sets 78
RetroFanmail
51
Will Murray’s 20th Century
Panopticon 80
Peter Gunn ReJECTED

61
Andy Mangels’ Retro
Saturday Morning
D’Angelo Productions

70
Retro Sci-Fi
3 Time After Time’s Nicholas
Meyer, Malcolm McDowell,
51
and David Warner
RetroFan™ issue 31, March/April 2024 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919)
449-0344. Periodicals postage at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RetroFan, c/o TwoMorrows, 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: $73 Economy US, $111 International, $29 Digital Only. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to
the editorial office. Elizabeth Montgomery photograph courtesy of the Classic TV Preservation Society. The Alvin Show © Ross Bagdasarian. Run, Joe, Run © William P.
D’Angelo Productions. Time After Time © Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise
noted. All editorial matter © 2024 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Michael Eury
BY
MICHAEL
EURY
PUBLISHER
John Morrow

Publisher John Morrow and I, when developing this magazine some six years ago, originally
CONTRIBUTORS
planned to anchor RetroFan to Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties pop culture. That decision was pred-
Michael Eury icated both upon the eras of our mutual childhood and adolescent years and our imagined target
Kellie Gormly audience of readers who were similarly saying goodbye to middle age but were interested in “the
Andy Mangels crazy, cool culture we grew up with.”
But we’ve since discovered we can’t ignore the Fabulous Fifties, the decade whose innovations—
Will Murray
particularly the evolution of television into mass-media omnipresence and the emergence of rock ’n’
Herbie J Pilato roll—shaped what was to follow.
Scott Saavedra At first I hesitated when I started receiving pitches from writers wanting to cover material from
Scott Shaw! the Fifties in RetroFan. But I soon gave in.
And I’m glad I did.
Anthony Taylor
What little I experienced firsthand of the Fifties was while I was in diapers. So the stories behind
Mark Voger the TV, toys, films, fashions, and music of that decade are new to me, as they no doubt are to most of
you.
DESIGNER Just about everyone reading this magazine has heard of Howdy Doody, the long-running chil-
dren’s show from the earliest days of television. But most of us grew up with Captain Kangaroo and
Scott Saavedra
Shari Lewis, or Mister Rogers and Big Bird, so this issue’s coverage of one of the first kids’ shows is
remarkably fresh to us. Same with Peter Gunn, Blake Edwards’ jazzy, noirish P.I. drama, which most
PROOFREADER RetroFan’s readers know only through reruns or streaming, if at all. Even my own “RetroFad” column
Eric Nolen-Weathington this issue involves the Fifties, when the Hula Hoop craze started (although that topic was inspired
by another of this issue’s features, on The Alvin Show—and if you don’t already know the connection
between the two, you will after reading the articles).
SPECIAL THANKS Yet we’re not examining pop culture only through black-and-white lenses this issue, as you’ll
Mark Arnold find lots of colorful Sixties and Seventies material ahead, as well as a visit to Camp Crystal Lake,
Andrew Bullock ground zero for the Eighties’ slasher film Friday the 13th. Who needs a time machine when you’ve got
RetroFan?
Hake’s Auctions
Amid this issue’s contents I confess my admiration of the cover-featured star of the beloved
Heritage Auctions sitcom Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery. I grew up watching her as TV housewifewitch Samantha
Tanya Jones Stephens, and was enchanted by her earnestness and beauty. “Samantha” was one of my first TV
crushes, the one I never quite got over (sorry, Ellie May
Clampett). I recall feeling personally saddened when
VERY SPECIAL THANKS
Ms. Montgomery passed, as if I’d lost a friend. Many
NEXT ISSUE
Malcolm McDowell of you felt the same way. And I’ve also been told by
Nicholas Meyer several of my 60-ish male friends that they also never
David Warner (In Memoriam) got over their childhood crushes on this amazing
woman.
Elizabeth Montgomery also put a spell on Holly-
wood journalist and producer Herbie J Pilato, a guest
Don’t STEAL our
to our pages this issue. His portrait of the late actress
Digital Editions! is intimate and inviting—you’ll feel as if you were
C’mon citizen,
DO THE RIGHT sitting next to him during his encounters with the star
THING! A Mom
& Pop publisher
of Bewitched.
like us needs This issue RetroFan is proud to commemorate
every sale just to
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DOWNLOAD
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2 RETROFAN March 2024

RETRO TELEVISION

A 60th Anniversary Celebration PART ONE

What It Was Like to I’ll never forget the day I first

Meet ‘Samantha’
heard Elizabeth Montgomery’s
voice on my “Big ’80s”
answering machine, trailing
off and on tape, in bits and
pieces, with a chipper, near
stuttering rhythm. For months,
I was attempting to contact the
iconic star of Bewitched, which
originally aired on ABC-TV from
1964 to 1972. William Asher,
her former husband and the
show’s core producer/director,
had been playing matchmaker
for us, recommending that she
speak with me.
“You really should talk to
Herbie,” Asher told Elizabeth on
more than one occasion. “He is
sincerely concerned with this
entity known as Bewitched.”
“He never tells me that I
should talk to anyone,” Eliza-
beth would later tell me upon
our first meeting.
But she talked with me.
Elizabeth welcomed me into
her hushed world. I was enam-
ored with the rise, demise, and
rebirth of Bewitched, and she
was intrigued. She marveled
(BACKGROUND) The at my appreciation of not only
eternally bewitching her most famous show, but her
Elizabeth Montgomery.
Classic TV Preservation Society (CTVPS).

My Magical Encounters with

Bewitched Star Elizabeth Montgomery
BY HERBIE J PILATO

RETROFAN
RETROFAN March
March 2024 3
 retro television
Bewitched’s Samantha
Stephens, one of TV’s first
independent women, takes
a stand. CTVPS.
varied accomplishments, talents, and charitable ways. Initially
reticent then unrestrained, she, for the first time in 20 years,
offered in-depth conversations about her life and career. She
explained during the first of what would become four interviews
in the spring and summer of 1989:
“It’s a strange thing... I loathe to chat away about me. I’ve never
liked it. I always hate interviews. I just want to act, and do the best
job I can. Hopefully, people will appreciate it. That’s what my job
is. It isn’t sitting down and talking about me. If I were a gardener
[which she fancied herself as around her home in Beverly Hills],
I would be out there trying to make gardens as pretty as I
could, and not expect people to come up to me and ask a lot of
questions. What it boils down to is this: It’s always easier for me to
talk about other things than it is to talk about me.”
Elizabeth described our conversations as “cathartic.” She
spoke of performing her legendary Bewitched role as Samantha
Stephens, the witch-with-a-twitch; her famous father, film and
TV idol Robert Montgomery; her childhood; years of education;
early motion pictures, stage, and television appearances. She
addressed what it meant to be an actress; her friendships with
President John F. Kennedy (who was assassinated on November
22, 1963—the day rehearsals began for Bewitched) and Carol
Burnett (her co-star in the 1963 movie Who’s Been Sleeping In
My Bed? and her frequent opponent on games shows like TV’s
Password, which Elizabeth loved to play).
Elizabeth also discussed her Bewitched co-stars, including
Dick York and Dick Sargent (who shared the role of Darrin
Stephens, Samantha’s mortal husband), Agnes Moorehead
(who played Endora, Samantha’s feisty supernatural
mother), and David White (who played Darrin’s self-
absorbed but lovable ad-man boss Larry Tate). She talked
about being “Queen of the Witches” on Bewitched, and
her post-Bewitched small-screen films (for which she was
deemed Queen of the TV Movies, long before Jane Seymour,
Jaclyn Smith, Lindsay Wagner, or Valerie Bertinelli).
Elizabeth addressed all she did and did not understand
about herself and her massive following; all she gave, all she
became, all she hoped to be, all she was: a wife, a mother, a
friend, a TV legend, a pop-culture icon, a courageously bold
endorser of human rights.
THE FIRST TIME
My initial interview with Elizabeth transpired on April 18, 1989,
three days after her 56th birthday, following months of leaving
messages with her answering service, and never receiving a
response.
But then one day, upon noticing the flashing light on my
answering machine, I pressed play and heard:
“Hi. It’s Lizzie Montgomery. We’ve been missing each other.
Well—you’ve been missing me. I’m finally back for a while. I will
give you a call again. You call me. I’ll call you. Hopefully, we’ll be
in touch. [pause] This is crazy. [pause, with a smile in her voice, then
adding] Okay. Bye-bye.”
Firstly, it was astonishing to me she referred to herself
as “Lizzie” in such a casual, familiar way, as if we had known
each other for years—which, in a way, we did. But the
crazy reference was a nod to the mere fact that I wanted
to write about Bewitched and, that upon phoning me, she

heard on my machine the Bewitched theme, punctuated by the
nose-twitch xylophone sound from the show’s opening credits,
pristinely timed with the phone beeper signal instruction to
leave a message. Because this transpired in the pre-high-tech,
non-smartphone days, it was quite a challenge to coordinate and
record that audible welcome.
At the time, I was living in Santa Monica, California, in a tiny
studio apartment. The moment Elizabeth had phoned, I was doing
my laundry in the shared utility room of my apartment building.
After folding my clothes, I returned to my apartment, called her
back, and simply said, “I’m so very sorry that I missed your call. I
was doing my laundry.”
To which she replied, “As well you should.”
We both chuckled, and from that moment on, we became
friends.
Elizabeth was simply “terrific,” a word that both she and
Samantha frequently used. She was a wonderful person; down to
earth, and unaffected by the Hollywood machine.
I made that observation from the moment I drove up to her
gated mansion in Beverly Hills, reached over to the guest-
announcement speaker, rang the bell, and heard her say, “Hello.”
“Hi,” I replied. “It’s Herbie J Pilato.”
“Oh, yes. Come on,” was her response (which later became, “Oh,
goody,” whenever she heard it was I in the driveway).
I then continued up the long private road to her front door with
four new tires on my 1981 Buick Regal, because I wanted the car
to look nice. I passed a large tennis court, and a well-manicured
garden, and closed in on a somewhat disheveled garage that
housed a new Rolls Royce with a license plate that read, Bent Liz (as
in Bentley).
“How funny,” I thought. That was so in tune with the amiable
personality that I had come to know by then, if only through
watching Bewitched and talking with just a few of Elizabeth’s former
Bewitched co-stars (some of whom refused to talk with me until she
said, but we’ll get to that later).
I soon approached her front door, rang the bell, and there she
was: Elizabeth Montgomery, the love of my TV life—and of my
magical dreams.
I was simply stunned upon seeing this simply stunning
woman. There’s just no other way to say it. But then she said, “Hi,”
forthrightly, and in placing her hand out in kind, added, “…pleased
to meet you.”
AND THEN IT HAPPENED
Elizabeth welcomed me inside the front door. I followed her into
the living room, and then… it happened.
I can’t believe it happened.
But it happened.
I did something really silly.
I tripped over her coffee table.
Fortunately, I didn’t break anything—the table or my legs. But I
at least broke the ice. Elizabeth giggled like a little girl at my gaffe,
and we eventually sat down, and the first question she asked me
was, “Why are you doing this?”
In other words, she was wondering why I had decided to write
a book about a TV show that ended its original run some 17 years
before; a production that she had long-distanced herself from for
as long a time.
retro television
In reply, I went on to explain my Bewitched obsession. I can’t
remember exactly what I said, but I’m sure it went something like
this:
“Well—the show is really much more than just a sitcom about
a witch. She’s first and foremost a woman, who happens to be a
witch. And she loves this regular guy for who he is, and not for what
he could do for her. And together they prove that any marriage
can work, despite their differences, or whatever diverse challenges
come their way. That’s really what the show is about… prejudice…
looking past differences, and concentrating on what makes people
the same.”
It was Elizabeth who now appeared stunned. She sat back and
replied simply with an, “Oh… okay,” and we became friends. My
words were earnest, and she knew it. And we went on to have a
wonderful two-hour conversation about Bewitched and her early
life and career, with three more two-hour sessions to follow.
GIFTED
To ensure that our first encounter was memorable, I had prepared
a few gifts for Elizabeth, planning to offer them after our initial
discussion had ended. I did not want her to feel overwhelmed. I
had heard of her sensitivity to and fear of the press, due to being
raised in the public eye as the daughter of famed movie and film
star Robert Montgomery. As it turned out, I became the first
journalist to whom Elizabeth granted an in-depth interview in over
20 years.
So, it was only upon completion of our monumental conference
that I turned to Elizabeth and said, simply, “I have something for
you.”
I proceeded to take out from the black duffel bag I’d brought
along a gold-framed inscription of a letter I wrote to her, which
I had commissioned a calligrapher to prepare, along with a
fine-crystal unicorn (poor William Asher just got brownies) that I
had purchased. I knew that Samantha was fond of unicorns. But
it wasn’t until speaking with Bewitched writer Richard Baer who
Elizabeth’s title set-up cel from Bewitched,
produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for the
show intro. Bewitched © Sony Pictures Television. Courtesy of Heritage.
RETROFAN March 2024 5
 retro television

informed me that Elizabeth, too, in real life, was also fond of the
mythical creatures. She had collected marble, plastic, glass, and
wood unicorns of every shape and size for years.
Consequently, upon seeing the sparkling new crystal unicorn
before her, Elizabeth gasped and said, “Oh, my… You know, don’t
you! You know!” But before she could continue, I reached into
my bag and pulled out the plaque with the special lettering.
The words explained how I felt. I immortalized in permanent
sentiment everything I had always wanted to say to her, closing
with, “Miss Elizabeth Montgomery… I state in truth and with
much conviction, that the world remains blissfully, lovingly, and
enchantingly Bewitched forever, simply due to the fact that YOU
are magic.”
Upon reading the former phrase (which unbeknownst to me at
the time, would become the title of my second Bewitched tome),
Elizabeth turned to me, as if in slow motion, and wrapped her arms
around me with a sweet and gentle embrace.

ENCHANTED
Once Elizabeth embraced me, I was under her spell, in person,
this time, nearly floating out the front door, upon making my
exit. But as I began to walk towards my Buick with the new tires, I
turned slightly back to Elizabeth and observed her standing in the
doorway, holding that unicorn and plaque.
At that moment, I could have sworn some form of white mist
began to form around her figure, as she stood waving goodbye. It
was a tremendous sight.
I then got in my car and, in a daze, began to slowly journey
back down her long driveway, kept repeating, “I just met Elizabeth
Montgomery.”
In what seemed like only seconds, I was back in my little apart-
ment in Santa Monica, which was at least 20 minutes away from
Elizabeth’s sprawling home in Beverly Hills.
But just as I opened my door, the phone rang.
“Hello,” I answered, still somewhat in a daze. Hollywood historian and biographer Herbie J Pilato
“Hi, Herbie. It’s Lizzie.” proudly displays his two Montgomery books, Twitch Upon
I freaked out, silently. “Oh… hiiiii,” I stuttered, clueless as to why a Star (2012) and The Essential Elizabeth Montgomery (2013).
Elizabeth Montgomery would be phoning me not even one half- Twitch is now available in audio book form from Tantor
hour after our first meeting. Media. Photo: Dan Holm.
“Just calling to confirm our appointment for next week,” she
said.
“Uh, uh, uh… okay,” I continued to stumble. “How about the “You are?”
same time? Four o’clock. That okay with you?” “Yes. Remember when I said that I didn’t want you to feel
“Perfect. Oh, how fun. See you then.” overwhelmed with the gifts, and everything?”
With that, I hung up the phone. “Yeah?”
Was I dreaming? Was I drunk?! Was I alive?!! “Well, I was wrong. I think you should be overwhelmed. But in a
I didn’t have time for the answers. The phone rang a second good way.”
time. “Oh, I am. I am! After you left, I thought to myself, You know… it
“Hi, Herbie. It’s Lizzie again.” really must have been difficult for him to meet me?”
“Uh… hiii.” That it was—and Elizabeth knew it but again, she respected my
“Yeah, I was just wondering,” she began to say, “…what are the appreciation because I respected her talent. “I’ll see you next week,”
lyrics to that song I sang as Serena [Samantha’s look-a-like cousin] she said with that giggle of hers and hung up.
in the episode where I wore the blonde wig?” [“Hip, Hippie Hooray”
was the episode’s title.] SHE KNEW PEOPLE
“Uh… uhm… uhm… I have to check my notes,” I said. Before Elizabeth and I met a second time, I had placed calls to
“Oh, okay.” “Second Darrin” Dick Sargent and David White, who had played
But just before we hung up, I said, “You know something? I’m Larry Tate, Darrin’s self-absorbed boss on Bewitched. I needed to
really glad you called back.” contact them to properly complete The Bewitched Book, but they

6 RETROFAN March 2024


refused interviews with me unless I could confirm Elizabeth’s
involvement. So, I called her one day and asked if she would speak
with them.
“Yes, absolutely,” she said, and then to my surprise, asked, “Do
you have their numbers?”
I gave them to her, we said goodbye, and about one half-hour
later, the phone rang. It was Dick Sargent.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m looking to speak with a… Herbie… is it…
Pee-lah-toe?”
“That’s right,” I replied. “This is he.”
“Yeah. Hi, Herbie. This is Dick Sargent. I just got the strangest
phone call from Elizabeth Montgomery, who I haven’t heard from
in years. She said you’re doing some kind of book about Bewitched?”
Before I could respond, Call Waiting interrupted.
“Hold on, Mr. Sargent. I’ve got to catch the other line… Hello?”
“Herbie. It’s Lizzie. Did Dick call you?”
“Yes,” I said, “…I’m on the line with him right now.”
“Oh, goody,” she responded, just like a little kid.
I returned to speak with Dick Sargent. We set up an appoint-
ment, hung up, and then it hit me:
I was just on the phone with Samantha and Darrin—and at the same
time!
That fascinated me because so much of Bewitched had to do
with Darrin calling Samantha at home to see if everything was all
right; if whatever magical mayhem that had been caused by Endora
or the like had subsided. Now, in some surreal way, it seemed I was
living inside an actual episode of Bewitched.
But more of the blur between fantasy and reality was yet to
come.
Elizabeth was stunning in her later years. CTVPS.
retro television
‘LOOK AT HIS FACE! LOOK AT HIS FACE!’
When I went to interview Elizabeth in person for the second time,
she informed me that she was expecting a messenger at 4:30 PM,
which was shortly after we had planned to meet.
Sure enough, at 4:30 PM, the doorbell rang. She excused herself
and went to answer. About one minute later, she returned and,
following behind her, was none other than David White.
My jaw dropped, and Elizabeth relished that fact. “Oh, look at
his face, David! Look at his face!” She could not stop giggling that
giggle of hers and was so delighted that she had surprised me with
David’s visit.
But more amazement was waiting in the wings. As David and I
began to chat, Elizabeth excused herself, this time to fetch us some
drinks (an assortment of fruit juices). In a moment of silence in
her wake, David looked around the patio, and intoned, “Beautiful
house, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I replied, still a bit in awe of the fact that I was sitting with
Larry Tate in Samantha’s backyard. “Yes, it is.”
David then added, “Haven’t been here in 15 years.”
Shortly after he spoke those words to my utter shock, Elizabeth
returned, sipping orange juice, with grapefruit juice for me, and
handing David the same.
The three of us went on to share a wonderful afternoon. I
couldn’t help but believe that I had done a good thing; that I was
responsible for reuniting two old friends.
But before I could continue patting myself on the back, David
was ready to leave. And Elizabeth and I began to walk him to his
car, which was a Toyota Supra. I joked with him, suggesting that
such a vehicle was too youthful a model for someone his age (then
70-something) to drive.
Upon hearing that remark, he just glanced over at Elizabeth,
and with the spot-on comic-timing that he used on Bewitched (a
delivery that William Asher had described as quicksilver), David
just smirked, and drove away, leaving both Elizabeth and me with
additional smiles.
‘DO YOU LIKE ZUCCHINI?’
As Elizabeth and I watched David White trail down that long
driveway, the same path that introduced me to the real world of
Elizabeth Montgomery, she turned to me and asked, out of the
blue, “Do you like zucchini?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you like zucchini?”
“Yeah… I guess so.”
“Oh, goody.”
At that point, Elizabeth lunged a few feet ahead into her garden,
which was the center of the circular driveway in front of her home.
She reached down into the patch, pulled out a significant-sized
zucchini from its roots, handed it to me, and said, “Here… this is for
you.”
Before I could respond, she leaped back into the patch and
selected a second zucchini, this one even larger than the first.
“Here,” she repeated, handing me yet another fresh plant of the
earth, “…take another one.”
This time, I was the one who was overwhelmed. I was standing
with Samantha in her front yard, picking vegetables from her secret
garden.
It was a magical moment in time that I will clearly never forget.
RETROFAN March 2024 7
 retro television

A 60th Anniversary Celebration PART TWO

BY HERBIE J PILATO

the immortal life Elizabeth Montgomery died of cancer on

May 18, 1995, at only 62 years of age. Had
she lived, the beloved pop-culture icon

and career of
would have turned 90 years old on April
15, 2023.
That’s hard to fathom for an actress
who on Bewitched remains eternally

elizabeth
youthful in the eyes of millions of televi-
sion viewers.
The daughter of film and television star
Robert Montgomery and Broadway actress
Elizabeth Allen, Elizabeth followed in the

montgomery
Elizabeth Montgomery with
her father Robert Montgomery
between scenes on Robert
Montgomery Presents. CTVPS.
spotlight footsteps of her parents. But it
was a relatively rocky road to the top. She
had a complex relationship with her father.
He never fully believed she paid her
professional dues and felt she had achieved
fame much too easily via their family name
which he worked hard to retain.
After his father, Henry Montgomery (a
rubber company executive), had committed
suicide, Robert toiled as a railroad
mechanic and an oil tanker to salvage the
family honor before he re-found wealth and
prestige by way of Hollywood.
The infant death by meningitis of his
first daughter, Martha, born before Eliza-
beth, had ultimately ignited and then did
very little to close any emotional distance
between him and Elizabeth.
As a result, Elizabeth spent a good deal
of her pre-and-post–Bewitched life seeking
her father’s approval, only to further incite
his fury by later surpassing his popularity
with her portrayal of Samantha and
subsequent edgier roles in post-Bewitched
TV movies.
Robert was a strict and demanding
father, and he and Elizabeth rarely agreed
about anything. It did not much help
matters that he was a conservative Repub-
lican and she was a liberal Democrat.
Robert initially discouraged Elizabeth’s
acting pursuits, but eventually welcomed
her several times on his Robert Montgomery
Presents anthology series (in which she
made her TV debut with an episode titled
“Top Secret”). But once Bewitched made her
a bigger star on television than he ever was
on the big screen, the elder Montgomery
began to resent his daughter.

8 RETROFAN March 2024


(LEFT) Elizabeth as a young teen with parents Robert Montgomery and Elizabeth Allen. (MIDDLE) Elizabeth with her
younger brother Robert “Skip” Montgomery, Jr. (RIGHT) Elizabeth at 17. CTVPS.
The tension mounted when he divorced her mother, who Eliza-
beth adored, and married yet another Elizabeth: Elizabeth "Buffy"
Grant Harkness, an heiress.
Heartbroken for her mother, Elizabeth tried to keep peace in
the family by inviting her father to play Samantha’s magical dad on
Bewitched. But he declined, which placed a further wedge between
father and daughter. She also was less than thrilled as to how the
elder Montgomery treated her younger brother, Robert "Skip"
Montgonery, Jr., who was also an actor.
With a father seemingly impossible to please, Elizabeth became
a rebel of sorts, marrying four times. Her first husband was New
York socialite Fred Cammann, who her father adored. But the union
lasted just one year. Her second spouse was troubled actor Gig
Young, who her father abhorred, mostly because Gig was 20 years
her senior.
However, there were other issues with Young and, amid rumors
of physical abuse, Elizabeth wisely divorced him, and none too
soon. Years later, Gig committed suicide after killing his fifth wife,
Kim Schmidt.
retro television
In 1963, Elizabeth met William Asher on the set of the film Johnny
Cool, in which she starred and he directed. They fell in love and wed
and, during the Bewitched years, had three children: Billy Asher (a
luthier), Rebecca Asher (who followed her father in directing), and
Robert Asher (a carpenter).
In 1974, Elizabeth met actor Robert Foxworth on the set of
the TV movie, Mrs. Sundance. The two made two more small
screen films (Face to Face, 1990, and With Murder in Mind, 1992) and
remained together until her demise, though they married only in
the last two years of her life.
Beyond Bewitched, Montgomery made more than 200 appear-
ances on stage and screen. She received the Daniel Bloom Theatre
Award for Most Promising Personality of the 1953–1954 season
for her performance as Janet Colby in Late Love (which opened on
Broadway on October 13, 1953).
(LEFT) Elizabeth was an accomplished stage actress before
turning to TV and film. (RIGHT) Resting between scenes
of The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), her first feature
film. CTVPS.
RETROFAN March 2024 9
 retro television

life as a housewife) on-screen, repetitive themes

abounded in Montgomery’s charmed, yet complex life
behind the scenes.
And while Bewitched would later be replicated by
TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie [see RetroFan #18—ed.],
Nanny and the Professor, as well as the short-lived
late-1970s Bewitched spin-off Tabitha, which featured
Lisa Hartman as the grown-up edition of Samantha’s
daughter (originally played by twins Erin and Diane
Murphy), in retrospect, another one of Montgomery’s
early TV guest-star appearances foreshadowed to some
extent her role on Bewitched.
In a relatively risqué race-oriented episode of 77
Sunset Strip titled “White Lie,” which aired October 25,
1963, Montgomery portrayed Charlotte DeLavalle, the
(LEFT) Elizabeth in her Emmy-nominated episode of The conflicted half-white/half-black granddaughter of a
Untouchables, which featured her future Bewitched co-star David character named Celia Jackson, who was played by the
White. (RIGHT) Elizabeth in her famed “Two” episode of The Twilight iconic African-American actress Juanita Moore.
Zone. CTVPS. “White Lie” addressed the theme of prejudice, which
Moore had experienced in real life, and had explored
with her Oscar-nominated performance as Annie
Besides Johnny Cool, Montgomery’s feature films include 1955’s Johnson in the 1959 groundbreaking motion picture Imitation of Life.
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (with Gary Cooper and Jack Lord), The theme of prejudice was also at the core of Bewitched: As
and 1963’s Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (co-starring Dean Martin a witch in a mortal world, Samantha felt out of place. But at the
and Carol Burnett). same time, she and Darrin loved each other despite their cultural
Beyond her multi-Emmy nominations for Bewitched, Mont- differences and displayed one of television’s first mixed marriages.
gomery also garnered Emmy nods for roles in TV shows such as The episode “Sisters at Heart,” Elizabeth’s favorite episode
The Untouchables [see RetroFan #21—ed.], in which she played a (which premiered on Christmas Eve, 1970), involved the friendship
prostitute in “The Rusty Heller Story” (alongside future Bewitched between Tabitha (as played by Erin Murphy) and her friend Lisa,
co-star David White), and in groundbreaking TV movies A Case of who happened to be African American (as played by Venetta
Rape (1974) and The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975). Rogers).
Elizabeth was also lauded for mostly-silent-though-strong- Bewitched began rehearsals on November 22, 1963, the fateful
willed roles, such as “The Woman” alongside another pre-superstar day President John F. Kennedy, an advocate for Civil Rights, was
Charles Bronson (as “The Man”) in The Twilight Zone Adam-and-Eve- assassinated—a horrific incident that occurred approximately one
like episode, “Two” (which originally aired on CBS on September 15, year after that 77 Sunset Strip episode premiered.
1951). Moreover, Montgomery and William Asher were good friends
Montgomery donned brunette hair as that raven-haired, with JFK, as Asher served as director of the President’s famed
fiercely independent “Woman,” which in one sense foreshadowed birthday bash at which Marilyn Monroe sang a breathy “Happy
shades of her performance as Samantha’s twin cousin Serena Birthday.”
on Bewitched. And It was an increasingly volatile era with race rioting, rampant
while both Serena drug abuse, and the Vietnam War, against which Montgomery
and Samantha are protested and as a result, received death threats. Into this
considered liberated, tumultuous mix were the subsequent assassinations of Robert F.
empowered females Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., each of whom, like JFK and
(it’s Samantha’s choice Montgomery, were liberal-minded.
to live the mortal
Shortly before Juanita Moore died in 2012, she
offered some perspective on it all by sharing what it
(LEFT) Elizabeth with Efrem was like to work with Elizabeth:
Zimbalist, Jr. in the “White “She was talented… she was an actress… a fine
Lie” episode of 77 Sunset Strip. actress! She left this world too young… she was so
(INSET) Oscar®- gifted… such a divine person… so easygoing. At that
nominated actress time of 77 Sunset Strip, we [as actresses] had limited
Juanita Moore parts. She told me concerning our parts, ‘Juanita, walk
played Elizabeth’s with it… feel free and walk with it.’ She looked me right
grandmother in the in the eye and that’s what she said to me. And I had
episode. CTVPS. never had that said to me before—like she said it. And
we did just that in that episode—we walked with it.”

10 RETROFAN March 2024

 retro television

Moore, whose additional credits include the Elizabeth Montgomery

1966 feature film The Singing Nun (which also starred with each of her four
Bewitched actress Agnes Moorehead), added: husbands. (CLOCKWISE
“Everyone said that Elizabeth was stuck-up because FROM TOP LEFT) First
of having her own show, but they [were] just jealous husband Fred Cammann.
and very envious actors and nay-sayers. I think she Second husband Gig
was good [as Samantha], and I think she could have Young. Third husband
been better… if they [had] let her loose and allowed William Asher. Fourth
her to stretch herself… and you saw that [when she husband Robert
played] Serena [Samantha’s brunette twin-cousin]… but Foxworth. CTVPS.
[because of] TV you have to tone [things] down.
“Elizabeth was learned,” Moorehead concluded. “She
was ahead of all of them out there in Hollywood… Plus,
she was a nice young lady. To me, she was just like my child… it’s a In Violence, Elizabeth portrayed yet another non-Samantha-like
bond we had, ya know. She was a gift!” character: a TV news writer whose liberal views sparked a brutal
Other of Elizabeth’s co-stars includes husband and wife actors street gang attack.
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett [see RetroFan #9—ed.]. They In an exclusive interview from 2011, Lin Bolen Wendkos, widow
had known and worked with Elizabeth and her second husband Gig to Paul, explained why she thought Elizabeth took such dramatic
Young on Robert Montgomery Presents. departures with her post-Bewitched roles:
Daniels, best known for TV stints on St. Elsewhere, Boy Meets “She earned the opportunity to do so by playing a very commer-
World, and Knight Rider (lending his voice for the KITT supercar), had cial [character] like Samantha. In her mind, she may have wanted
also appeared with Elizabeth in A Case of Rape. Bartlett worked with to give something more of the talent that she was holding back. My
both Elizabeth and Daniels in The Legend of Lizzie Borden, directed husband worked with a lot of interesting actresses and Elizabeth
by Paul Wendkos, who later guided Elizabeth through the 1979 TV was definitely one of his favorites. She was a magnetic personality
movie, Act of Violence. to look at.”
Of the Lizzie Borden part in particular, Bolen
said, Elizabeth “captured that character in a way
that I don’t think anyone else could have. She
became that person she was playing. How many
actresses on TV ever did that? Not many. She gave
herself to that murderous spirit, and she did not
stop until the end.
“Paul didn’t just stage a scene and then
instruct an actor to walk through it. He let the
actor find their moment before he staged the
scene and Elizabeth played into that very well.”
Bonnie Bartlett described Elizabeth as “an
extraordinary actress. She was a major TV star
and she could have done almost anything. She
was very serious about her work and extraor-
dinarily professional. Every little detail was
(LEFT) Johnny Cool (1963), directed by future Bewitched director William important to her.
Asher, who she would fall in love with and marry. (RIGHT) Asher directs “She was also a very cheerful person. She
Elizabeth in an early black-and-white Bewitched episode. Both, CTVPS. came to work with a good attitude, a really good
attitude. She really enjoyed being an actress.

RETROFAN March 2024 11

 retro television

(LEFT) Elizabeth as Samantha

and Agnes Moorehead
as her meddling mother
Endora bedazzled viewers on
Bewitched. (CENTER) Elizabeth
clowns with Dick York, the first
Darrin on Bewitched. (RIGHT).
Elizabeth with second Darrin,
Dick Sargent, plus Erin Murphy
(who played Tabitha) and David
Mandell (who played Adam).
CTVPS.

“And I do know that Paul adored her, and loved working with
her. He had that same kind of enthusiastic spirit that she had. The
[Lizzie Borden] movie was one his favorite things that he had ever
done.”
In another exclusive interview from 2011, acclaimed actor Ronny
Cox, who costarred with Elizabeth in A Case of Rape, once said,
“Elizabeth didn’t want to walk around for the rest of her life being
Samantha.”
That definitely would have changed had Elizabeth not passed
away so young. She had found a new regular TV role playing real-
life crime-story reporter Edna Buchanan in a series of TV movies for
CBS: Deadline for Murder (which aired posthumously in 1995) and The
Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1994).
The Buchanon films were so popular, CBS was planning more,
potentially transforming them into a weekly series. Those plans
never came into fruition due to Elizabeth’s untimely demise.
But as Robert Foxworth, her fourth and final husband, once
said, “Elizabeth never wanted to get old.”
So, she didn’t.
However, Foxworth also once noted, specifically on A&E’s
Photo: Dan Holm.
To have viewers accept her in such an un-Samantha role and
subsequently respect the theatrical diversity that she would bring
to such a part as an accomplished actress was “probably one of her
greatest victories in life,” Foxworth said.
Robert Montgomery, however, thought the Borden storyline cut
a little too close to home.
Borden despised her father and stepmother and brutally
murdered them while, by the time that movie aired, Elizabeth
had still not fully forgiven Robert Montgomery for divorcing her
mother, Elizabeth Allen, and marrying her stepmother Elizabeth
Harkness.
Upon learning Elizabeth Montgomery accepted and then
relished her portrayal of the historic true-story role, Robert Mont-
gomery blasted his daughter with a sardonic response.
“Oh, you WOULD!” he said.
Indeed, she would—and did.
Writer/producer HERBIE J PILATO is the
author of the original Bewitched Book,
which was published by Dell in 1992, revised

Biography of Elizabeth, that she was “thrilled” that she was able to by Summit Publishing in 1996 as Bewitched
surprise her fans and detractors with Emmy-nominated dramatic Forever, and revised yet again in 2004 by
performances like that of Lizzie Borden. Tapestry Press. In 2012, Taylor Trade released
Twitch Upon A Star, Pilato’s biography
of Montgomery, and one year later, The
Essential Elizabeth Montgomery, his encyclopedia of her life and
career. Pilato is also the author of several other media tie-in books,
and produces television shows, including Then Again with Herbie
Elizabeth J Pilato, his classic TV talk show that began streaming on Amazon
relished Prime in 2019.
starring in When Pilato met Elizabeth Montgomery in 1989, William
The Legend of Asher had been developing a new Bewitched spin-off series titled
Lizzie Borden Bewitched Again. A few months before that meeting, Pilato had
(1975). CTVPS. written a script for an intended TV reunion movie about the original
The Legend of Bewitched series. Elizabeth chose not to reprise her role as Samantha
Lizzie Borden Stephens in that potential film, but she did agree to do so in just the
© Paramount
pilot episode for Asher’s proposed new series.
Television.
In Bewitched Again, Elizabeth would have introduced a new
witch who fell in love with a new mortal husband. But as opposed to
Darrin on the original series, the male spouse on the new show would
have welcomed and encouraged his wife to do magic.
Unfortunately, Bewitched Again, which was to be produced in the
United Kingdom, lost its financing, and never materialized.

12 RETROFAN March 2024

 Y
VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES

IT’S
DOOD
WDY TIME!
HO el l were
nd C larab oneers
falo Bob a e-show pi
Buf kiddi BY MARK VOGER
When television was just a baby, it was often called a “visual
medium.” (Back then, this was a novelty. Nowadays, everything is
visual.) But the same could be said about radio, in the sense that we
visualize what we hear with our “mind’s eye.”
In the late Forties, as young listeners heard a bumpkin character
they called Howdy Doody on a children’s radio show titled The Triple
B Ranch, they each formed a mental picture of what this Howdy
looked like. So when certain lucky children were privileged to
witness Triple B Ranch broadcasts in person at the studio, they were
in for a letdown.
Where was Howdy?
“This was radio, so we didn’t have a dummy or a puppet or
anything,” said the show’s host, Robert Emil Schmidt (1917–1998),
better known as Buffalo Bob Smith. “So the kids would see the
show and they’d say, ‘Gee, we’re disappointed. We wanted to see
Howdy Doody!’”
One day soon, they would. Buffalo Bob and Howdy made
the transition from radio to television with The Howdy Doody
Show (1947–1960), a Western-themed kiddie program that may
seem quaint and old-fashioned to modern audiences, but was
immensely popular, and pioneering, in its day. Among the many
precedents set by The Howdy Doody Show, it was television’s first-
ever network children’s program.
Smith, Howdy’s straight man and human buddy, earned a
place in the hearts of millions of children of the Fifties as host of
the show, which aired live on NBC. Howdy was visually realized
as a gap-toothed, freckle-faced puppet whose name supplied the
answer to the question Smith would ask his “Peanut Gallery” of
young fans at the start of more than 2,000 episodes: “Hey, kids,
what time is it?”
Populating the fictional town of Doodyville were characters
both human and puppet: Clarabell the Clown, Princess Summerfall
Winterspring, Phineas T. Bluster, Dilly Dally, Chief Thunderthud,
Trapper John, Flub-a-Dub, Zippy the Chimp, and many others.

Buffalo Bob Smith and Howdy Doody entertained a
generation of children. © NBC Television.
RADIO DAYS
Like so many pioneers of early television, Smith launched his career
in the medium of radio.
“I came to New York, to NBC, in 1946 to do an early morning
radio show,” Smith told me in 1993. (I spoke with the entertainer on
two occasions that year, once in person and once by telephone.)
“I was on every morning, Monday through Saturday, from 6 to 9.
In March of ’47, the boss said he wanted to clear the entire Saturday
morning radio time—9 AM to 12 noon — for kids. This was radio,
now. Frank Weaver did a half-hour. Weaver made a lot of great
albums for kids. Ed Herlihy did a show for Horn and Hardart. Paul

RETROFAN March 2024 13

 Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

Winchell did a half-hour. And I did a half-hour. My half-hour was “In December [of 1947], we did talk with the television people,
called The Triple B Ranch, and it was on from 10 to 10:30. The three Bs and they said they already had it in mind to do a kids’ television
stood for Big Brother Bob.” show,” Smith recalled. “They had some puppets in mind, but they
Smith described the format of the show as a kind of comedy said they would watch our radio show anyway. Well, when they
quiz show. saw the enthusiasm of these kids watching our radio show, they
“I would have four kids from one school vying against four kids said, ‘Gee, this fits in with our plans just great. We have a puppe-
from another school,” he said. “The school kids would be there to teer already hired. He’s got a lot of puppets. We’ll make another
root for their team. The whole show had a Western flavor. The kids puppet. We’ll call him Howdy Doody. And you, Bob Smith, can
got up on wooden horses. One horse would carry four kids from host the show.’
one school, and another horse would carry four kids from another “Now, this was on Tuesday, December 23, 1947. And I said,
school. If they had the correct answers, they stayed on the horse. ‘Okay. When do you want to start?’ And they said, ‘Saturday.’
If not, they were knocked off like in the They said, ‘We’ve got some old silent films. We’ll call them
rodeo—bucking bronco.” “old-time movies.” You can do the narration on those.
This is where the character Howdy We’ll have some kids. We’ll have some games and fun with
Doody came in, though at first he had a the kids. And you host the whole thing.’ So that following
different name. Saturday—December 27, 1947—was our first Howdy Doody
Recalled Smith: “One day my writer Show. It was called Puppet Playhouse in the beginning.”
said, ‘Gee, we need some more comedy But Howdy Doody, the marionette, was not on the show
on the show. Do you do any voices?’ So during those initial broadcasts.
he went into the control room and I did “We got a puppeteer to start working on a puppet, and in
several voices. He liked this Mortimer the interim, we pretended Howdy was in my desk drawer,”
Snerd-ish, country bumpkin-type Smith said with a chuckle. “The camera would take a picture
character I did. We called him Elmer. So
we’d do a little comedy at the beginning
of the show. I’d say, ‘Oh, here’s Elmer! (LEFT) Cantankerous puppet Phineas T. Bluster
Hi, Elmer!’ And Elmer would say [in a earned his surname on The Howdy Doody Show.
cartoony voice], ‘Heh, heh, heh... well, (BELOW) A test pattern-style title card for the show.
howdy DOO-dy!’” © NBC Television.
Basically, Elmer was a voice charac-
terization done by Smith. “I just talked as
myself,” he explained. “I was not a ventrilo-
quist. Never was. It just developed. We’d do
some corny hot dog jokes, and when it was
all wound up I’d say, ‘Well, so long, Elmer,’
and he’d say, ‘Well, howdy doody!’”
In interacting with young listeners,
Smith became aware that children not
only wanted to see Elmer, but they
didn’t call him Elmer. Rather, they called
him by his inadvertent catch phrase:
Howdy Doody.
“This gave us two ideas,” Smith said. “We
won’t call him Elmer anymore; we’ll call
him Howdy Doody. It’s a cuter name. And if
the kids want to see him, let’s talk with the
television people. We were getting good
ratings on that morning show.”

SMALL SCREEN DEBUT

It turned out that the folks in NBC’s
burgeoning TV division were already
thinking along those lines. Smith
happened to be in the right place at the
right time.

The gang’s all here in artwork

from Dell’s comic book Howdy
Doody #2 (1950).

14 RETROFAN March 2024


of my desk drawer. I’d say, ‘You in there, Howdy?’ and he’d say,
‘Heh, heh... yeah, but I’m too bashful to come out!’ Well, he was too
bashful for three weeks.”
The Howdy Doody Show began as a Saturday morning program,
but moved to weekdays in August 1948. For personal appearances,
Smith had a duplicate of the Howdy puppet made that he would
travel with, which he named Photo Doody.
“The Howdy that made all the appearances on the show was a
stringed marionette,” he explained. “To bring him out
[for personal appearances] would require a puppeteer,
a puppet stage, a puppet bridge. It would be very
difficult. So I just had another one made that we call
Photo Doody, strictly for taking pictures.”
The inventive show straddled the past and
the future. Its Western theme harkened to classic
Americana, but cast and crew also pushed the limits
of TV technology (however clunky at the time), using
techniques like chroma key superimposition to thrill the
kiddies.
CLOWNING AROUND
Among actors who played Clarabell the Clown were
Bob Keeshan (who later toplined his own kiddie-show
institution, Captain Kangaroo; see RetroFan #27); Bobby
Nicholson (a trombonist who quit being Clarabell, if not
the TV show itself); and Lew Anderson (a saxophonist
who fronted his own eponymously named band).
“Lew’s been Clarabell since ’54,” Smith pointed out. “He’s done
many more shows than all the rest put together times 10. Lew has a
wonderful band in New York City, a 17-piece called Lew Anderson’s
All-American Band. He’s got the greatest musicians in the world,
I guess, or in New York, at least. They all play for Lew. He’s written
over 200 arrangements. He does a lot of big, classy dates. He has
some place where he plays every Friday night.”
Smith was asked if all of that respect in the music community
made Anderson less amenable to wear Clarabell’s nose.
(LEFT) Ah, the good old days. Howdy and Bob smile on
the cover of TV Guide (1954). © TV Guide. (RIGHT) Howdy is the
cover boy for this 1952 issue of Chicago-based TV Forecast.
Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
(RIGHT) Lew Anderson
clowned around by day
and played sax in watering
holes by night. (BELOW)
Judy Tyler was the longest-
running actress in the role
of Princess Summerfall
Winterspring. © NBC Television.
“Heck, no!” Smith came
back. “We still do mall dates.
Oh, no, no, no. He loves being
Clarabell. He’s a Jekyll and
Hyde. Without the suit, he’s
Lew Anderson. With the suit…
I’ll tell you one thing. He’s
Clarabell.”
On this point: It was a bit of a time warp when, in 2003, I spoke
with Anderson, who was in make-up and costume as Clarabell.
(This was during a personal appearance; I sometimes wondered if
I was interviewing Anderson or Clarabell.) I soon learned that one
of the most famous clowns on television had no aspirations to wear
rubber noses or floppy shoes. It just happened.
Anderson recalled that he was “just a singer” when a career
switch came out of the blue.
He explained: “When Bob Keeshan left the show, then Bobby
Nicholson was the second one. And then Nicholson wanted to stop;
he wanted to do something else on the show.
“Besides The Howdy Doody Show, Bob Smith had another
radio show and television show, like a variety show with a vocal
group and a band and all that stuff. I was in the vocal group.
The same production people were doing both shows—the
director, producer and so on. They asked me if I wanted to do it.
I said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.’ Because I was too old to
watch it. They said, ‘Come on, we’ll put on the make-up over at
the studio and see if the stagehands can tell the difference.’ So
they did.
“Then they said, ‘Can you do any magic tricks?’ I said, ‘No.’ They
said, ‘Can you do any juggling?’ ‘No.’ ‘Can you do any dancing?’
‘No.’ ‘What can you do?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ And they said, ‘Perfect.
You’ll start in two days.’ ”
I asked the actor-musician what it was like to work in the
medium of television when it was still in its infancy.
“Well, you’re right, it was in its infancy,” Anderson said. “At
NBC, Howdy Doody was the first thing on. There was a test pattern
all day until 5:30 at night when the Howdy show started. Of course,
people took to it because it was such a new idea of viewing,
especially for the kids. It was like having a babysitter. The kids
would all gather at somebody’s house, and parents knew where
their kids were.”
RETROFAN March 2024 15
 Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
According to Anderson, he was able to shine as the mute
clown—Clarabell honked a horn, à la Harpo Marx—by following
Smith’s lead.
“He and I got along very well,” Anderson said, “because he had
a predominantly musical background, and I did too. That’s all I’d
been doing before. So we took to each other. It was easy for us to
do appearances and so forth. He had a way of charming people.
He was good at remembering people’s names the first time he met
’em. If he saw ’em two years later, he remembered their names!
People appreciated that.
“He was interested in the scripts and the songs. We did a lot
of music on the show. He wasn’t a boor about it or hard-nosed or
anything. Nobody ever got mad on the show or yelled or screamed
or any of that stuff, because we’d say, ‘Come on, now. Stop that.’ The
whole show was very easy to work, from the production people to
the cast.”
The shows were broadcast live, so yes, bloopers happened.
“There were things that went wrong,” Anderson said. “We were
live as the devil all the time, so some things were bound to happen.
They usually did. Or we got laughing so hard that we couldn’t go on.
But we always managed to pull it off.
“Our rehearsals were something else. All the people at NBC used
to come down just to watch our rehearsals, because they were
usually a little off the wall. Bob and Ray”— the comedy team of Bob
(LEFT) Howdy, Clarabell, and Flub-a-Dub grace the box of
Milton Bradley’s Howdy Doody’s T.V. Game (1950). (RIGHT)
Howdy grins at players on the spinner from game. © Milton Bradley.
(ABOVE) There were at least ten Howdy Doody Little Golden Books
throughout the Fifties. Other formats included (CENTER) a Big Golden
Book and (RIGHT) at least two Tell-A-Tale Books.
16 RETROFAN March 2024
Elliott and Ray Goulding—“and whoever else was working there
with the network would watch the Howdy show rehearse.”
The immense popularity of The Howdy Doody Show became
apparent to Anderson when he “stumped”—that is, traveled for
personal appearances—on behalf of the network.
“I never realized the power of our show or the importance of the
show to certain people until I started going out for NBC,” he said.
“They were opening a lot of new stations at that stage in television,
you know, along the network line. So once in a while, I went out to
see people in different cities that were opening stations.
“That’s when I found out. We were just mobbed! They came to
see Howdy and Clarabell more than the other big stars. So that’s
when we first found out the impact the show had on kids.”
DOODY SWAG
The mass marketing of children’s entertainment goes back to
Jackie Coogan paper dolls in the Twenties. But the trend really
came to the fore during the Fabulous Fifties. A concurrent
craze was built around the Disney series Davy Crockett starring
Fess Parker. (Coonskin cap, anyone?) It’s no coincidence
that Davy and Howdy were both Western-themed; the old-timey
genre still ruled children’s entertainment, before the anything-goes
Sixties came along and everything went kablooey.
If a buck could be made, Howdy was there. His speckled face
appeared on Welch’s Grape Juice, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, Royal
(ABOVE) The mouth was moveable on
this plastic Howdy Doody puppet from
Tee-Vee Toys (1950s). (RIGHT) Peter
Puppet’s Howdy Doody marionette
(1950s) was close in form to the real
Howdy.
 Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

A REAL PRINCESS
At 96 episodes, Judy Tyler (1932–1957) was the longest-run-
ning actress in the role of Princess Summerfall Winter-
spring on The Howdy Doody Show. Milwaukee native Tyler
left the show to pursue a film career, and judging from
some early achievements, she was well on her way. In
1957, Tyler landed two starring movie roles. She played the
titular heroine in Howard W. Koch’s Bop Girl Goes Calyp-
so—now, that’s a promising title—and was Elvis Presley’s
leading lady (if not exactly a love interest) in Jailhouse
Rock. But Tyler never lived to see the latter film’s release.
Filming for Jailhouse Rock ended on June 14, 1957. On
July 3, Tyler and her husband Gregory Lafayette were
driving along Highway 30 in Wyoming when Lafayette
swerved to avoid one car and collided with another. Tyler
was killed instantly; Lafayette died the following day. A
passenger in the other vehicle also perished.
On the Elvis History Blog, Presley’s friend, disc jockey
George Klein, is quoted: “He took it pretty tough.” Presley
told a reporter for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis: (LEFT) Elvis Presley snuggles with Judy Tyler in Jailhouse
“Nothing has hurt me as bad in my life. … I don’t believe Rock (1957). © Paramount Pictures. (RIGHT) Tyler played the title
I can stand to see the movie we made together now, just bopper in Bop Girl, also known as Bop Girl Goes Calypso
don’t believe I can.” (1957). © United Artists.

Chocolate Pudding, Blue Bonnet Margarine, Hostess Cupcakes,

Little Chief Apples, Burry’s Cookies, King Cone Corp.’s TV Popcorn,
and, fittingly, Wonder Bread. From Doughnut Corp. of America
alone there was Howdy Doody ice cream, twin pops, fudge bars,
and something called Clarabell Banana Bars.
Howdy’s face was plastered on things you’d never expect, such
as adhesive bandage strips, Kunkel’s shoe polish, California carrots,
and Kagran’s slipper socks.
Many of these tie-in products were noted in a mailing to poten-
tial commercial partners bearing the slogan “Meet Howdy Doody,
the super-popular salesman on strings.” A chilling sentence from
that mailing: “It is even conceivable that your TV-tutored 2-year-old
clearly enunciated ‘Howdy Doody’ before learning to say ‘mommy’
or ‘daddy.’” Yikes!
But the forms in which Howdy and his fellow Doodyville
denizens were most at home were toys, dolls, puppets, and games
(ABOVE) Kagran like Milton Bradley’s Howdy Doody’s T.V. Game and puppet sets
Corporation’s Howdy from Tee-Vee Toys, Kagran, and Peter Puppet Playthings. There
Doody Puppet Show were Howdy Doody crayons, puzzles, coloring books, Shura-Tone
(1952). (ABOVE RIGHT) “phonographs” (a.k.a. record players), Kohner Bros. cast figures,
Hey, kids, eat lots of ice Model Headware Co.’s “novelty” hats, Rushton’s plush toys,
cream! Relax, Nutrition cardboard masks, Howdy Doody’s Electric Doodler, and records
Police. Howdy also sold such as Howdy Doody and the Air-O-Doodle and Howdy Doody’s
carrots. (CENTER) Christmas Party.
Howdy picnics with Princess Summerfall Howdy did exceptionally well in print.
Winterspring on Adco’s lunch box (1955). Dell Comics put out 38 issues of the Howdy
(RIGHT) In Fifties television, it was not Doody comic book (1950–1956), while
unusual to see a given show’s host do Western Publishing put out at least ten
double duty as a pitchman. Here, Smith Little Golden Books. There was also a Sunday
hawks Nabisco’s Wheat Honeys and Rice comic strip from United Feature Syndicate
Honeys. © NBC Television. (1950–1953).
When this kind of money is involved, legal
challenges will happen. There was a skirmish

RETROFAN March 2024 17

 Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
between the network and puppet maker Frank Paris over the rights
to Howdy. Following Smith’s 1998 death, there was a battle over the
rightful ownership of Smith’s original Howdy puppet. What are ya
gonna do?
WORKING FROM HOME
The grind of daily television took its toll on Smith. On Labor Day
1954, he suffered a myocardial infarction. “It was called a heart
attack back then,” he quipped.
Smith was hospitalized for six weeks, during which at least two
actors briefly filled in for him: Ted Brown (calling himself Bison Bill)
and George “Gabby” Hayes (Roy Rogers’ old sidekick).
Following Smith’s release, his doctors advised against resuming
his full schedule. When sponsors pushed NBC for Smith’s return, he
was faced with a dilemma. The network came up with a solution: If
Buffalo Bob couldn’t come to the studio, the studio would come to
Buffalo Bob.
“They got together and built a studio in my home [in New
Rochelle, New York],” Smith said. “They called it Pioneer Village.
And although the show was still done from New York City—the
RCA Building—they’d pipe me in and say, ‘Let’s see what Buffalo
Bob’s doing in Pioneer Village!’ We told the kids I was on a secret
mission, you see.
“I would report on what was going on. One day, Clarabell might
come out and be on the show with me in New Rochelle to do a bit.
Another day, Chief Thunderthud, Zippy the Chimp. I guess one of the
characters was on, oh, once a week or a couple of times a week. I did
the show from Pioneer Village from January 17 until the following
Labor Day, 1955, when I came back to New York City every day.”
Smith’s first day back on the job was a landmark: the first Howdy
Doody Show to be broadcast in color. According to Smith,
it was also the first
television show of
any format to be
broadcast daily in
color.
“At the time, the
color television set was
becoming an entity,”
Smith recalled. “Gen.
Dell Publishing put
out 38 issues of the
comic book Howdy
Doody from 1950
through 1956.
18 RETROFAN March 2024
Howdy’s record albums: (LEFT)
Howdy Doody and the Air-O-
Doodle (1949) and (CENTER)
Howdy Doody’s Christmas Party
(1951).. (RIGHT) The Story of
Howdy Doody was, by 1974, an
exercise in nostalgia. Howdy Doody
© NBC Television.
Sarnoff [then-NBC chairman David Sarnoff] thought, ‘Gee,
who better to have the kids sell the parents on getting a color
television set than Howdy?’ Gen. Sarnoff always said that Milton
Berle and The Howdy Doody Show sold more television sets than
any two shows ever on television.”
TEARJERKER
The final episode of The Howdy Doody Show on September 24,
1960, was a bittersweet affair. It opened with Smith going
through souvenirs from the show while packing up to make
way for his replacement, The Shari Lewis Show. (From the
distance of decades, the newer show—an upbeat human
interacting with puppets—doesn’t seem like a radical depar-
ture from Howdy.)
When Smith addressed the children watching, he didn’t
sugarcoat the situation. “Well, kids,” he said with a sad smile,
“this is our 2,343rd Howdy Doody Show. And kids, it’s also our
last Howdy Doody Show. And you know, after almost 13 years, The
Howdy Doody Show will end today.” Smith spent the rest of the
hour bidding farewell to humans (Clarabell, Corny Cobb) and
puppets (Windy the dog, Mambo the elephant, Hyde and Zeke
the bears, Tommy Turtle). Smith often appeared to be on the
verge of tears.
A “big surprise” was hinted at throughout the episode, which
was unveiled in its final moments: Clarabell can talk! Smith urged
his co-star to speak; the camera dollied in as Clarabell’s eyes
fluttered; and in a cracking voice, he choked out “Goodbye, kids.”
Then one of the saddest songs on the planet, “Auld Lang
Syne,” played on a celesta as the credits rolled. The final Howdy
Doody Show is the very definition of a tearjerker.
 Voger’s vault of vintage varieties

According to Anderson, it was corporate accounting, not a drop

in popularity, that killed the show.
“Oh, we knew why it happened,” he said.
“The networks and the sponsors were going for a different
audience. They were going for syndicated audiences so they could
use the same material, the same kind of shows that appeal to kids.
Of course, they rammed it down their throats. That was the reason
why. Actually, CBS with Captain Kangaroo was the last network kids’
show. They knew that financially, it wasn’t going to work forever.
That’s what happened with most of the kids’ shows, especially
ours.”
What did fans tell Anderson when they met him at personal
appearances?
“They say how important we were to their ‘growing up’ years,” he
said. “I just got a letter today from a couple in Virginia saying that
they first got a television set because they got so used to Howdy
Doody, they sacrificed everything they had to get it. They say
what an impact the show had on their lives growing up, and they
wish they could have a show like that today. That’s what almost
all of them say. That’s very gratifying, of course. We’re glad that
something was got out of that thing.”
Smith played himself on a 1975 episode of Happy Days in
which Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) enters a Howdy Doody
lookalike contest—not a stretch. A TV revival, The New Howdy
Doody Show (1976–1978), teamed Smith and Anderson with Marilyn
Arnone (wearing Seventies hot pants and bangs) and pianist Jackie
Davis (who once recorded with Ella Fitzgerald). The show was silly
and anachronistic, but you already guessed that.

BARNEY WHO?
I asked Smith his opinion of the current crop of children’s programs
at the time of our discussions in 1993. For instance, what did Smith
make of the giggly purple dinosaur Barney?
“I’ve never seen Barney,” he deadpanned. “I don’t even know
what Barney is.”
How about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? They were a
lo-o-ong way from Doodyville.
“Well, I don’t think they’re going to have revivals for them in 40
years, like they do for Howdy.”
At the time, the TV icon was keeping busy at 76. Smith stepped
before the TV cameras once again, appearing live on the QVC
Network—then a prominent cable TV shopping channel—to
promote autographed offset black-and-white prints of himself and
Howdy in a sensitive penciled likeness by artist Glen Fortune Banse,
who became Smith’s agent for personal appearances.
“We sold 600 prints in 15 minutes,” Banse (who died in 2018) then
told me of the QVC segment. “We got to be good friends. I knew the
autograph circuit. The man never realized what his signature was
worth.”
At autograph shows and fan conventions, white-haired Smith
still resembled his old self while wearing his trademark Western
costumes trimmed with fringe, and cradling Photo Doody as he
greeted the grown up Baby Boomers he once entertained.
“Some of the gals have tears in their eyes. Some of the fellas
want to give me a big hug,” Smith said of meeting his lifelong fans.
“It’s just—what can I say?—a great reunion. I don’t think any of
us realized what an integral part of the kids’ lives The Howdy Doody
Show played. We really enjoy meeting our alumni. They have the
greatest stories.
(TOP) Looks like Buffalo Bob Smith has found the perfect
Howdy in a 1975 episode of Happy Days. © ABC Television.
(ABOVE) Smith belts one out with Marilyn Arnone on The
New Howdy Doody Show (1976–1978). © Memorylane Syndication.
“One gal came up with her mother and said, ‘Go on, Mom. Tell
him!’ So Mother told it that there were four kids in the family. And
whenever it was Howdy Doody time, if you ever walked into the
living room, you’d know if one of the kids misbehaved. Because he’d
be the one with his back to the television set! In other words, if one
of the kids did something wrong, Mother didn’t have the heart to
take Howdy away from him altogether.”
MARK VOGER is the author and designer
of six books for TwoMorrows Publishing,
including Britmania, Monster Mash (a
Rondo Award winner), Groovy, and Holly
Jolly. Voger worked in the newspaper
field for 40 years as a graphic artist and
entertainment reporter, and lives at the
Jersey Shore. Do yourself a favor and don’t
ask him to discuss the sociopolitical implications of the Japanese
monster movie Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966). Please visit
him at MarkVoger.com.

RETROFAN March 2024 19

 If your old man used to gripe that

Too
you’d never learn anything with your
nose glued to the boob tube, here’s

Much
your chance to prove him wrong.
(Father doesn’t always know best.)
Each hairstyle shown in Column

TV
One corresponds to a television
character or host listed in Column
Two. Match ’em up, then see how you
rate!

4
3
COLUMN ONE

20 RETROFAN March 2024

 RetroFan Ratings
10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan
Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know theme

You’ll song lyrics too!

flip over
7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan
Dy-no-mite! You wasted your childhood with
the rest of us!
these 4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned RetroFan

TV Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til you spend

more tube time!

’dos! 0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan

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

COLUMN TWO

A) Don Cornelius, host of Soul

Train

1 B) Joe Mannix, Mannix

C) Helen Roper, Three’s

5
Company

D) Linc Hayes, The Mod Squad

E) Steve McGarrett, Hawaii

Five-0

F) Ginger Grant, Gilligan’s

Island

G) Mork (from Ork), Mork &

9 Mindy

H) Vinnie Barbarino, Welcome

Back, Kotter

2 I) Mary Richards, The Mary

Tyler Moore Show

10 J) Ann Marie, That Girl

The Brady Bunch, Mannix, Mork & Mindy, The Mod Squad,
Soul Train, That Girl © Paramount Global. Gilligan’s Island,
Welcome Back Kotter © Warner Bros. Television. Hawaii
Five-0 © CBS Television. The Mary Tyler Moore Show ©
MTM. Three’s Company © DLT Entertainment. All Rights
Reserved.
ANSWERS: 1–E, 2–H, 3–A, 4–J, 5–C, 6–F, 7–B, 8–G, 9–D, 10–I

RETROFAN March 2024 21

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!
Witch Doctors, Chipmunks, an
BY SCOTT SHAW!
By the time I was ten years old, I not only owned a healthy “funny-
book” collection, I’d convinced myself that I definitely was going
to become a professional cartoonist. I also considered myself to
be the Roger Ebert of animated cartoons, with annoyingly specific
opinions of the “best” and “worst.” I kept track of the storylines on
Rocky and His Friends. I drove everyone I knew crazy by obsessively
imitating the “Nyah-hah-hah!” laugh of Beany and Cecil’s “Dishonest
John.” I even determined the specific color scheme of The Flintstones
(which I’d only watched in B&W!).
Due to my father being a Pearl Harbor survivor, I had a rough
approximation of the history of animation, thanks to all of the
WWII cartoons that were being shown on TV. My first favorite
cartoons were classic theatrical Max Fleischer’s Popeye (possibly
because my dad was by then a Navy officer) and MGM’s Tom and
Jerry. (Every time I watch one of the classic T&J shorts of the Forties
and Fifties, I get emotional because I worked for their creators,
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, my boyhood heroes.)
But by 1957, I had already memorized almost all of the theatrical
shorts on the air, almost all of which were created in the Twenties
through the Forties. I was starving for some new cartoons that
represented the present, therefore Bill and Joe’s The Ruff and Reddy
Show immediately became one of my first TV favorite cartoons, as
did Gene Deitch’s Tom Terrific on Captain Kangaroo and Jay Ward’s
Rocky and His Friends. The live-action how-cartoons-are-made
A commissioned illustration of Alvin the Chipmunk by—
whaddaya know—Scott Shaw! © Ross Bagdasarian. Alvin Show logo
courtesy of Fandom.com.
d Crashcups
segments with Walter Lantz on The Woody Woodpecker Show were
even better than the “other” Walt’s similar presentations on Disney’s
Wonderful World of Color. Then came H-B’s Huckleberry Hound Show,
The Flintstones, The Quick Draw McGraw Show, and Bob Clampett’s
Beany and Cecil, and... well, y’know.
As a kid, they were my animated textbooks. I loved them
all and still do. But after finally becoming an equally irritating
cartoonist with extremely hard-to-please standards, there’s one
other made-for-television cartoon series that made a mark on me.
Unlike most of the cartoons I grew up watching, its characters are
still quite familiar with children and generations of adults. In many
ways, its characters and their designs, clever voiceovers, scripts,
and animation, as well as a somewhat “insider” vibe due to the
built-in celebrity of the show’s three stars, made it the hippest and
most experimental cartoon series of its time.
It was The Alvin Show, which aired on CBS in the early evening
from October 4, 1961 to March 28, 1962. I was ten years old. And I’d
already realized that this show was special.
COME ON-A ROSS BAGDASARIAN’S HOUSE
Ross Bagdasarian (January 27, 1919–January 16, 1972), full name
Rostom Sipan Bagdasarian, was born into an Armenian-American
family in Fresno, California. His family owned a vineyard and his
first cousin was the prolific novelist, playwright, and short story
writer William Saroyan, who received the Pulitzer Prize for “Drama”
in 1940 and an Academy Award for “Best Story,” both for early
iterations of his book, The Human Comedy (1943).
After graduating from Fresno High School in 1937, he visited
his cousin William in New York City to seek work as an actor. Ross
RETROFAN March 2024 23
 The oddball world of scott shaw!

spent “one miserable year in college and

boredom really set in. I wanted to be an
actor, and the man in charge, they called
him ‘Prof,’ said I should start by painting
some walls a deep green. I told him that
I wanted to be an actor and then I quit.
After I quit college, I decided that if I was
going to be an actor, the thing to do was to
go to a place where they did some acting.
They didn’t do much acting in Fresno. It
was a good place to stay and learn to pick
grapes, but I wanted to act so I went to
New York. This was in 1939 and I was 20
years old. I went straight to the Theatre
Guild and after three days I got to see Theresa Helburn.
She was one of the directors of the guild.”
After appearing in the shows Love’s Old Sweet Song and
his cousin’s The Time of Your Life, Ross and William made
a trip back to California. “It was during this period that
I drove back to Fresno with Bill Saroyan, and while we
were in New Mexico I started singing a song that I had
been thinking about. It was called ‘Come On-a My House.’
Saroyan liked it and helped me finish it.” After William
premiered it in his off-Broadway musical The Son, Ross and
his cousin recorded their song together, now peppered
with spoken-word segments. The song was rejected
by many record companies as being “too ethnic,” but it
was eventually released by Coral Records in 1951; unfor-
tunately, it failed to chart with the public and bounced
around the music scene with a few different performers (TOP) Detail from a
and bands for a few years. poster for a Rosemary
After the Pearl Harbor attack, Ross enlisted in the Clooney performance
U.S. Army Air Forces and became a staff sergeant after of Ross Bagdasarian’s
four years as a control tower operator. During his service, “Come On-a My House,”
he spent time in England, France, and Spain (the latter which became a hit. Courtesy
country became an obscure influence on Bagdasarian’s of Heritage. (ABOVE) Ross
future career). After returning home, Ross married Arme- and Judith Evelyn listen
nouhi “Armen” Kulhanjian (January 13, 1927–November to an album in Alfred
11, 1991) in 1946 and made a literally fruitless attempt to Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
grow grapes like his father. The young couple decided to © 1954 Patron, Inc. (LEFT) David
relocate south to Los Angeles in 1950, where Ross cleverly Seville (stage name of
launched his career as a songwriter. Once there, Ross and Ross Bagdasarian). © Ross
Armen had three children, Carol Askine Bagdasarian (b. Bagdasarian.
July 4, 1947), Ross Dicran Bagdasarian, Jr. (b. May 6, 1949),
and Adam Serak Bagdasarian (b. March 25, 1954).
Ross sent a copy of “Come On-a My House” to Mitch
Miller, a powerful artist-and-repertory executive with Capit0l launched Rosemary Clooney’s career, reaching No.1 on Billboard
Records. Miller reacted by immediately contacting pop singer charts and was N0. 4 on Billboard’s year-end “Top 30 Singles of 1951.”
Rosemary Clooney, the aunt of actor George Clooney. She recalled, The song sold 750,000 records in one month. By summer’s end,
“Mitch had a demonstration record of it and he heard it one day William and Ross split more than $30,000.
and wanted to record it the next, and he was absolutely sure that Part of that money helped the cousins to rent a small office
it was going to be a huge success for me. Now, the fact that it was in Beverly Hills devoted to extending their variety of talents
an Armenian folk song, he wanted an accent. I don’t know how to in entertainment, including Americanized Armenian. Saroyan
do an Armenian accent, so I used what I laughingly called an Italian said, “What we do with these songs is, we just grab them. If
accent because that was the band I sang with, an Italian band, Tony they ain’t in the public domain, why, we sort of ease them into
Pastor. It is a strange piece of material, but it took off like a house the public domain. ‘Oh, Beauty’ had been ‘Akh, Yavroos’ in the
afire. It was the whole summer. That was the one that Mitch Miller original Armenian, and like the others and despite its merit,
called the sales department and said, ‘Ship 300,000 on consign- failed to replicate the success of ‘Come On-a My House,’ with its
ment,’ and if he does that, everybody listens. And they did it.” It recitations of delights, including the most Armenian of produce

24 RETROFAN March 2024

 The oddball world of scott shaw!

(CLOCKWISE, Donkey and the Schoolboy,” “The Gift,” and “Judy.”

LEFT TO RIGHT) In 1957, Liberty Records released an LP album, The
The Music of Music of David Seville, including many of those tunes
David Seville and with liner notes by William Saroyan. Other new
(1957), David at songs followed, including “Camel Rock,” “Cecilia,”
work singing (or “Pretty Dark Eyes,” “Bagdad Express,” “Starlight,
possibly yelling) Starbright,” and “Bonjour Tristesse.”
into his reel-to- By that time, Ross Bagdasarian was also regularly
reel tape recorder, working as an actor in film and television, including
and the 1959 UK The Greatest Show on Earth and Viva Zapata! (1952); The
issue of The Witch Stars are Singing, Destination Gobi, The Girls of Pleasure
Doctor and Friends. Island, and Stalag 17 (1953); Alaska Seas and Alfred
© Ross Bagdasarian. Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954); The Ray Milland Show,
The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, Big Town, and Kismet (1955);
Hot Blood, The Proud and Profane, and Three
Violent People (1956); Studio 57 and The Devil’s
Hairpin (1957); and The Deep Six (1958). These
acting roles were bringing more money
into the Bagdasarian household than the
novelty songs were, but the combined total
still wasn’t nearly enough to operate a
family of increasing size for long.

‘THE WITCH DOCTOR’

items, pomegranate.” Meanwhile, Ross
was writing songs, including “Hey Brother,
Pass the Wine” for Dean Martin, “Not
Since Nineveh” and “Zubbediya” for Kismet, and “Let’s Have a
Merry, Merry Christmas” for Mercury Records, all in 1953. In 1955,
Bagdasarian was signed by Liberty Records, originally to record
as “Alfi and Henry,” then as himself, then back to “Alfi and Henry.”
“Their” most popular song was “The Trouble with Harry” (not
coincidentally with the same title as the film by Alfred Hitchcock
released earlier that year), which reached No. 44 on the Billboard
chart and was a bigger hit in the United Kingdom, reaching No. 15.
Then, in 1956, Ross decided to become someone else.
MEET DAVID SEVILLE
In an effort to simplify and Americanize his name, Ross
Bagdasarian created an alter ego named “David Seville,” based
on the name for a son that he and Armen once fantasized about,
“David,” and his service for the Army Air Forces in Seville, Spain.
From that point on, “David Seville” would be the name of the man
who supposedly wrote, performed, and recorded the songs, char-
acters, and stories that were hatched in Ross Bagdasarian’s fertile
and prolific mind. Liberty’s “Armen’s Theme,” an instrumental
tune that would eventually become a Muzak elevator standard,
was Ross’ first recording to be attached with the name “David
Seville.”
Novelty songs became David’s go-to gimmick: “Gotta Get to
Your House,” “The Bird on My Head,” “Little Brass Band,” “The
In 1958, while living in Van Nuys, California,
the Bagdasarians found themselves
to be very close to broke. Out of sheer
desperation, Ross spent the last of their
$200 savings (adjusting for inflation,
around $2,000!) on the latest state-of-
the-art reel-to-reel tape recorder he could
afford. The idea was in part from the
unusual voices created by reel-to-reel tape
recorders for the Munchkins in 1939’s The
Wizard of Oz. Attempting to come up with
a silly song that could be audibly unique with the help of the tape
recorder, he noticed a book on his desk: Duel with the Witch Doctor.
Without possessing the ability to read or write music nor play a
single musical instrument, he quickly whipped up an unforgettable
novelty tune unlike any other, “The Witch Doctor”:
♪♪ “I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you
I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you
And then the Witch Doctor, he told me what to do
He said that OO EE OO AH AH
Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang
OO EE OO AH AH
Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang!!!” ♪♪
After recording the song, Ross experimented with how to use
the tape recorder to distort his voice. Using his wife and kids as an
ad hoc focus group, he doubled the speed of his singing voice to
achieve the wild, weird, and wacky voice of the Witch Doctor. Then
he pitched the song to Liberty Records’ president Si Waronker, who
loved it but had to convince his label president Alvin Bennett that
kids were already eager for new rock ’n’ roll novelty tunes. He was
right. “The Witch Doctor” sold close to two million records and
immediately attained the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Top 40 starting on
April 1958 and lasting for three weeks. It was the No. 4 song for 1958

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 The oddball world of scott shaw!

The start of something big: The Chipmunk Song 45 (1959) from

Liberty Records. “Alvin’s Harmonica” is the B-side.
© Ross Bagdasarian. Courtesy of Worthpoint.

reindeer or elephants and he was driving along near the Sequoias

and one day a chipmunk actually jumped out on the road and
dared he and his 4,000 pound car to drive by and as he picked
himself out of the road after laughing hysterically at this little chip-
munk, he figured it’s going to be three singing chipmunks.” (That’s
a cute run-on story, as were the “official” origins of Mickey Mouse
and Woody Woodpecker, but having worked in entertainment for
decades, I suggest that we take these corporatized stories with a
healthy pinch of salt.)
Here’s how Ross explained it: “In September of 1958, I decided
to try for a Christmas novelty song. I thought of a melody on my
way to work, and I went right to the studio and whistled it into a
tape machine, so that it wouldn’t be forgotten. Since I can’t read or
write music, I whistle into tape machines.

and was nominated for the year’s Grammy for Best Children’s
Recording. Ross performed “The Witch Doctor” live on CBS’ The
Ed Sullivan Show on May 4, 1958, the first of six appearances on
the variety program. Due to a few tech glitches, the presentation
was somewhat flawed but still a lot of fun.
Finally, Ross Bagdasarian/David Seville was/were established
as a songwriter.
Using a similar process to control a voice’s speed, David Seville
had a minor hit with Liberty Records’ “The Bird On My Head”;
it reached No. 34 in June 1958. Ross appeared on The Dick Clark
Beech-Nut Show to perform it and “The Witch Doctor,” with puppets
designed and operated by Morey Bunin. David had two more
releases from Liberty, “Little Brass Band”/”Take Five” and “The
Mountain”/”Mr. Grape,” most of which appeared in David Seville
and His Friends’ The Witch Doctor LP record (Liberty, 1958). When reader Scott Foltz heard that Alvin and the
Chipmunks were going to be a topic of an article this issue,
‘THEY SOUNDED LIKE CHIPMUNKS’ he generously offered to share photos from his bigger-
By that time, David Seville’s material was one of Liberty Records’ than-a-chipmunk-sized collection. We begin with items
top moneymakers. In the summer of 1958, the brass at Liberty from the pre–Alvin Show merchandise, with more neat
contacted Ross to ask him to come up with another novelty song stuff to follow. Thanks, Scott. © Ross Bagdasarian.
for the upcoming holiday season. But what to do in an industry that
was already swollen with Christmas music?
Fortunately, his youngest child unintentionally sparked Ross’
imagination. Little Adam was driving his family crazy, constantly
asking if it was Christmas yet because he knew that meant a lot of
presents were on the way. That was a refreshingly honest theme
that even impatient and greedy kids could relate to.

♪♪ “Christmas, Christmas time is near

Time for toys and time for cheer
We’ve been good, but we can’t last
Hurry Christmas, hurry fast.” ♪♪

Now that he had a theme and some lyrics, Ross was scouring his
mind for the perfect characters to sing them. According to his son
Ross, Jr., “...He wanted to use that sped-up sound for some charac-
ters and didn’t know whether they should be singing alligators or

26 RETROFAN March 2024


More early Chipmunks
merchandise courtesy of super
Alvin fan, Scott Foltz. © Ross
Bagdasarian.
“Then I wrote the words and decided that the singers should
be animals or maybe even insects. I don’t know why, but that’s
what I decided. I recorded the song with the half-speed little
voices (my own) and sang an introduction in my normal-speed
voice. When I finished the first recording, the voices sounded like
butterflies—or mice—or rabbits, but most of all, they sounded
like chipmunks. The brass of Liberty Records listened with me
and we all agreed that something was missing. Everybody liked
the melody, so I wrote some new lyrics and called the song ‘In
Alvin and David ’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show
(1958) was a knock-out. © Ross Bagdasarian.
The oddball world of scott shaw!
a Village Park,’ the more I could hear the chipmunks singing
‘Christmas, Christmas time is near, time for toys and time for
cheer.’ So I recorded it again, this time with no words, as an
instrumental. This, too, was nowhere.
“I decided against doing anything further and gave up the
whole project, but the project wouldn’t give me up. By the end of
November, the chipmunks in my head were driving me crazy, so I
decided to try it again, but this time to give the chipmunks some
kind of identity, I gave them names and had a conversation with
them. The record was finally finished after three months and four
versions. All I can say is that I love Witch Doctors, Chipmunks,
and—most of all—tape machines.” (That sounds much more like
the creative process to me.)
SECRETS OF THE SINGING CHIPMUNKS
One thing is certain: Ross based the names of those three singing
chipmunks on the names of the executives who ran Liberty
Records.
“Alvin” was named after Liberty Records’ president/direc-
tor/”music business wizard” Alvin “Al” Bennett; “Simon” was named
after Liberty Records’ founder/chairman Simon “Si” Waronker;
and “Theodore” was named after audio engineer/record producer/
Liberty Records co-founder Theodore “Ted” Keep. The tune
originally titled “Christmas, Don’t Be Late” became “The Chipmunk
Song” and was completed on November 7, 1958. An amazing
4,500,000 copies of the Liberty 45 RPM record were sold over
the first seven weeks. It was also awarded three Grammys: “Best
Selling Children’s Record,” “Best Comedy Performance,” and “Best
RETROFAN March 2024 27
 The oddball world of scott shaw!
Engineered Record.” “‘The Chipmunk Song’ was so overwhelmingly
popular that it sold in stores that had never before sold records, such
as lingerie shops and flower stores,” remembered Ross. “It was a
wonderful sight to see stacks of my records piled high in a cigar-store
counter and selling it as fast as the clerk could take the money.”
It wasn’t easy. Bagdasarian had an extremely complex process
for recording the song. First, after having set down a melody,
he recorded it with a simplified orchestra—two saxophones,
four rhythm instruments—at normal speed. Then on a second
tape, he recorded two pianos playing at half speed. Played back
at normal speed, the pianos had a tinkly mandolin-like sound.
Bagdasarian made a third tape of his own normal voice at normal
speed, shouting, “Alvin! Stop that!” and the like. The fourth tape
was Simon, the lowest voice of the three chipmunks in the song.
His lines were recorded in a normal voice at half-speed, then
played back at normal speed to produce a squeaky tone. By this
time, the control booth at the recording studio was filling up
with tape like a cauldron of spaghetti, so the first four tapes were
combined on a fifth. The sixth tape was a variation for Theodore,
the laughing chipmunk: ‘Ha... Ha... Ha...’ spoken carefully at half-
speed in a tone pitch slightly higher than Simon’s. The seventh
was Alvin’s, also at half-speed and pitched highest of them all. An
eighth track was added for the harmonica, normal speed. Finally,
one master tape combined all of the others in one glorious
conglomeration.”
But Alvin’s plea for a hula hoop—an extremely popular fad at
the time [see this issue’s “RetroFad” column which follows—ed.] is
the ridiculous cherry on the top of this aural sundae.
David Seville was invited to appear once again on The Ed Sullivan
Show on December 21, 1958. That meant Ross needed puppet
representations of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, so he turned to
cartoon director Bob Clampett, creator of the puppet show Time
for Beany (1949–1955) and ironically, his animated series Beany and
Cecil (1962). [Editor’s note: If you missed Scott Shaw!’s deep-dive into
Bob Clampett’s Beany and Cecil in RetroFan #29, zip to twomorrows.
com to order a copy today!] Clearly, Alvin and the Chipmunks
were just getting started, with three successful sequels—“Alvin’s
Harmonica,” “Ragtime Cowboy Joe,” and “Alvin’s Orchestra”—and
three LP albums in their first two years (see sidebar).
28 RETROFAN March 2024
(LEFT)
Animation
pencil art of
David Seville
and Alvin.
Courtesy of Heritage.
(BELOW)
Two Alvin
Halloween
masks: (LEFT)
Early Alvin
and (RIGHT)
Animated
Alvin. © Ross
Bagdasarian. Courtesy
of Scott Foltz.
Of course, David Seville’s big hit attracted cover versions,
including “The Chipmunk Song,” narration by Paul Sherman;
“Chipmunk Song,” by the Grasshoppers; and “The Chipmunk Song,”
by the Bunnyhoppers. There were also two blatant imitators, “The
Nutty Squirrels” (who had their own TV show!) and “The Happy
Reindeer.”
David Seville and the Chipmunks returned to The Ed Sullivan
Show on December 13, 1959. This time, the puppets were designed
by Morey Bunin, but there were some new designs lurking around
the corner for them all.
UPA AND FORMAT FILMS
The late Fifties/early Sixties was the era of early evening/prime-
time network cartoons: Jay Ward’s The Bullwinkle Show (NBC, 1959),
Warner Bros.’ The Bugs Bunny Show (ABC, 1960), Hanna-Barbera’s The
Flintstones (ABC, 1960) and Top Cat (ABC, 1961), and Bob Clampett’s
Beany and Cecil (ABC, 1962), with more on the way. However, the very
first prime-time original cartoon show was UPA’s influential The
Gerald McBoing-Boing Show on CBS in 1956.
UPA (United Productions of America) was a Hollywood anima-
tion studio founded in 1941 by former Walt Disney Productions
employees. As an “Industrial Film and Poster Service,” UPA started
by producing industrial and political promotions and WWII
training films for the military. Once segueing to the production of
theatrical shorts, the studio became best known for its cartoons
featuring Gerald McBoing Boing (created by Theodore Geisel,

a.k.a. Dr. Seuss), the nearsighted Mr. Magoo, Dick Tracy, and a lot of
artistically experimental shorts. UPA also produced two animated
feature films—1001 Arabian Nights (1959) and Gay Purr-ee (1962)—
but its best-known production remains Mister Magoo’s Christmas
Carol (1962).
As with the major Hollywood studios, UPA found itself in
financial straits and cutting back in the late Fifties and early Sixties,
and company owner Stephen Bosustow began to alienate himself
from his staff. On October 26, 1959, UPA’s Herb Klynn, Bud Getzler,
and Jules Engel announced the formation of their own animation
company, Format Films. Much of the UPA staff went with them.
Primarily producing animated TV commercials, UPA eventually
subcontracted to make 100 Popeye shorts for televised syndication.
[Editor’s note: Blow me down! Check out RetroFan #12 for our article
about Popeye’s television cartoons.]
Ross Bagdasarian had been occasionally dropping by Format
Films, sometimes huddling with Leo Salkin. They were working
together on rough storyboards for “The Good Neighbor,” a pilot
cartoon short featuring Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and David Seville.
Herb Klynn had a connection at CBS and invited some of the
network’s executives to come by the studio. A few weeks later...
well, let’s hear it from the “kid” at the studio, Bob Kurtz:
“For the Chipmunk characters themselves, Leo Salkin did the
first rough drawing,” according to Kurtz. “He did storyboards with
the characters. They don’t look anything like what we know them to
be now, but they were great drawings. I had been there when Leo
had done the network presentation so when we were starting to
design the show, I did my own variation of what Leo had drawn.
“Herb Klynn, again, very knowledgeable, was bringing in outside
character designers to design the new Chipmunks. Herb was trying
to control Ross and Ross is not controllable. What Herb would say
to Ross is, ‘Well, this guy’s got ten years’ experience and this guy’s
got 15 years’ experience.’ And Ross would say, ’I don’t care how
much experience he has. These drawings suck.’
“I was constantly in meetings with Ross and he would just say
what was on his mind. As Ross was passing my desk, he saw me
doing one of the early storyboards on the Chipmunks. I think Ross
The oddball world of scott shaw!
Storyboard for the pilot episode of The Alvin Show (1961).
Art by Bob Kurtz. © Ross Bagdasarian.
had just come from a character design presentation by Herb and
he’d gotten really mad at what he was shown, so Ross looked at
my drawings and of course, I’m the kid of the group, and Ross
says, ‘Why can’t they look like this?’ There were about six people
around including Ross’ brother-in-law, who was a producer in Ross’
company. There were a lot of people standing over me, which was
uncomfortable.
“Herb said, ‘Okay, draw Alvin.’ With all them leaning over me,
I started to draw. Needless to say, no artist likes to have people
hover over them while they draw. I quickly drew Alvin and his
brothers Simon and Theodore and David Seville. They whipped
each drawing out of my hands as I finished them.
“Ross said, ‘That’s it! That’s what I want!’”
On August 10, 1960, it was announced a deal with the
Bagdasarian Film Corporation that had been signed to produce The
Alvin Show for $43,000 per episode. The staff grew quickly, espe-
cially because the studio had also been subcontracted to animate a
few Calvin and the Colonel episodes for prime-time ABC.
THIS… IS… THE… ALVIN SHOW
The Alvin Show premiered on CBS at 7:30 PM (6:30 PM Central)
on Wednesday, October 4, 1961. Each episode—26 in all—was
composed of two seven-minute segments, the first about the
adventures of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, and the second one
about inventors Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo; two 3½-minute
musical segments starring the Chipmunks; plus a few interstitial
sequences and Jell-O commercials, also with the Chipmunks.
Thanks to Ross, the show was unique in every way.
David Seville is an unattached songwriter who lives in a
suburban neighborhood with three 2½-feet-tall talking and
singing chipmunks that behave like eight-year-old boys. Alvin is the
original “Bart Simpson,” a lovable sociopath who enjoys messing
with authority figures and other adult “squares.” His lanky brother
RETROFAN March 2024 29
 The oddball world of scott shaw!
David Seville whispers into Alvin’s ear in this
promotional photo published in Radio Times
magazine, circa 1961. © Ross Bagdasarian.
Simon is an intelligent nerd who’d rather read than
play ball, and chubby Theodore giggles a lot and likes
to adopt strays. Easily irritated David attempts to
raise the Chipmunks, but it’s obvious that Alvin’s the
one in control, since he and his brothers have become
celebrities, complete with female fans of all ages.
But this oddball family is normal when compared
to the eccentric people (and animals) around them,
including “the private nose,” detective Sam Valiant;
Stanley, the anxious eagle that’s afraid to fly; and Mrs.
Frumpington, whose primary initiative is to wipe rock
’n’ roll off the face of the Earth.
Then there’s self-absorbed inventor Clyde Crashcup,
who was based on a silly character that Ross and his
cousin William Saroyan had created during their youth,
a guy who blindingly “invented” things that already
existed. Leo Salkin designed him to resemble his former
boss, Stephen Bosustow; he also designed Clyde’s
whispering sidekick Leonardo. Other than crashing
the opening sequence, Crashcup and company didn’t
intersect with the Sevilles.
So, what makes The Alvin Show so unique and
noteworthy, anyway?
The cartoon’s aspect of being “inside entertainment”
was refreshingly unusual. And there was a minimum
of physical violence, long before the networks were
controlling that. The humor was modern, often with a
psychological bent. The stories themselves were inter-
esting, taking a new approach to a standard situation
or a standard approach to a new situation. The art
direction was sophisticated and appealing, with simple
and appealing character designs with a contemporary
vibe and backgrounds with smart details. The kids were
30 RETROFAN March 2024
FAST FACTS
Promotional drawings © Ross Bagdasarian.
Courtesy of AnimationResources.org.
THE ALVIN SHOW
f No. of seasons: One
f No. of episodes: 26
f Original run: October 4, 1961–March 28, 1962
f Created by: Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.
f Produced by: Herbert Klynn (Executive Producer), Jules Engel
(Producer), Leo Salkin (Associate Producer)
f Theme song: “The Alvin Show Theme” by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.,
with Neil Hefti and Carl Stalling
f Network: CBS (original run)
PRIMARY VOICE PERFORMER CAST
f Ross Bagdasarian: Alvin, Theodore, Simon, David Seville, Leon-
ardo, Sam Valiant, Stanley the Eagle, Buffalo Bill, Gondoliero,
Hawaiian Bird, Henrietta, and other additional voices
f Shepard Menken: Clyde Crashcup, Angry Egyptian Man, Crowd
Member
f June Foray: Mrs. Frumpington, Daisy Belle, Leonardo’s Mother,
Little Girl, Alvin’s Girlfriend, Angel Alvin, Bentley Van Rolls the
Third, Billy Brown, Buffalo Gal, and other additional voices
f Johnny Mann: Simon’s Singing Voice, Herbie, Jim the Taxi Driver,
Man on the Street, Mr. Chairman, and other additional voices
f Don Messick: Chuck Wagon, Cousin Lester, Mailman, Mrs.
Northside, Sam Merlin, Sam Sweetheart, and other additional
voices
f Lee Patrick: Mrs. Frumpington (singing)
f Leo Salkin: Leo the producer
f Tedd Keep: Ted the sound engineer
f Also featuring Joe Besser, Bill Lee, Larry Storch, Paul Frees,
Mort Marshall
SPIN-OFFS AND REMAKES:
f A Chipmunk Christmas (NBC animated telefilm originally aired
December 14, 1981; a Bagdasarian Productions/Chuck Jones Enter-
prises co-production, it was the first program to feature the voices
of Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. as Dave Seville, Alvin, and Simon, and
Janice Karman as Theodore)
f Alvin and the Chipmunks (Five-season animated television cartoon
co-produced by Bagdasarian Productions and Ruby-Spears Pro-
ductions, and DIC; ran from 1983–1987)
 The oddball world of scott shaw!

often in control and the theme encouraged the young viewers to

aspire to that. The Clyde Crashcup sequences were so unique and
smart/silly, many of the audience preferred it to the Chipmunks.
But first and foremost, The Alvin Show was hipper, cleverer, and
more subversive than any other cartoon series during this wave of
prime-time cartoon series…
…And that’s entirely due to Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.
“I worked very closely with Ross Bagdasarian,” reflected Bob
Kurtz. “I was constantly working with him, because I was one of
the young writers and he liked working with me. We would talk a
lot. Ross was a strong, opinionated person, but really a pleasure
to work with. Ross always had his own viewpoint of what he
wanted. Ross was completely involved. In all the story meetings we
presented directly to Ross. That’s who signed off on the show and
he was there all the time. He was a force. He had a lot of energy. He
controlled the tracks. When they recorded, we were never around.
They recorded off the premises, so the recording aspects I know
nothing about other than what Ross would tell me. Voice talents
June Foray and Shep Menken would often come into the studio and
talk with us.”
A local newspaper, The Valley Times, sent a reporter to Format
Films in 1961 during the production of The Alvin Show. The journalist,
Allen Rich, was impressed, writing: “Producing an animated cartoon
is a very painstaking and costly proposition. Competent artists and
animators are paid between $250 and $300 a week. Completion of
an Alvin takes more than four months from story department to
camera. The budget is somewhere between $65,000 and $70,000
for each episode. The length of time in production is quite surprising
when you consider that regulation one-hour filmed TV dramas are
turned out, so far as the actual production at the studio is concerned,
in five or six days. [Herb] Klynn’s Format Studios have moved three
times in the past several years, each time to a larger plant. He now
employs 160 animators, artists, and others, and most of them are
working on Alvin, the studio’s No. 1 project.”
From a production standpoint, the series was cleverly planned
to use The Alvin Show’s budget in the most efficient way possible.
Most of the crew had worked at UPA, a studio that often resorted
to fusing creativity with frugality, so they knew what to do. For
example, the robes that the Chipmunks wear cover their legs, More Alvin Show
creating fewer lines for animators to draw to show motion. Leon- merchandise courtesy of
ardo always whispers, so his lips don’t need to synch with the track. generous Alvin fan Scott
And overall, the clever sense of cool design was easier to achieve Foltz. © Ross Bagdasarian.
than sophisticated animation. The song sequences were particular
money-savers. Half of the songs were in public domain and most of
the others were owned by Ross Bagdasarian. With lyrics to follow,
very little scripting was needed. And since the segments were
music-based, visuals could often be re-used with repeated lyrics
and lip-synching was often unnecessary.

CHIPMUNK FEVER
According to Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., “By 1959, the Chipmunks had
become a cottage industry. Even the front page of The Wall Street
Journal heralded the squeaky-voiced trio.”
There were Alvin and the Chipmunks harmonicas, lunchboxes
with Thermos bottles, plush dolls, Christmas cards, charm brace-
lets, slide puzzles, bubble gum, cufflinks, transfer tattoos, hand
puppets, Halloween costumes, marionettes, chalk, balloons, card
games, View-Master slides, tray jigsaw puzzles, cigarette lighters,
coloring books, board games, activity books, key chains, kiddie

RETROFAN March 2024 31

 The oddball world of scott shaw!
books, inflatable dolls, Christmas stockings, Kenner Give-A-Show
Projector strips, sheet music, buttons, Soaky bubble bath figures,
plastic banks, and so much more. Dell Comics published a number
of funnybook series starring the gang from The Alvin Show: Alvin
(28 issues, 1962–1973), Alvin and His Pals in Merry Christmas with
Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo (one issue, 1963), Alvin for President
(one issue, 1964), and Clyde Crashcup (five issues, 1963). Much later,
Harvey Comics published five issues of Alvin and the Chipmunks
from 1992–1994. There were even “singing greeting cards,” 45 RPM
records with the Chipmunks warbling “Happy Birthday,” “Get Better
Soon,” or “Be My Valentine” tunes. Custom car maven George Barris
even designed a motorized vehicle called “Alvin’s Acorn” (and yes, it
looked like a huge acorn on wheels).
In February 1962, Ross wrote, recorded, and released a song
to exploit a new dance craze, “The Alvin Twist,” which charted at
a respectable No. 40, a serious attempt at mainstream pop radio
success, provided by L.A.’s top studio session musicians.
Ross Bagdasarian owned Bagdasarian Film Corporation as well
as Chipmunk Enterprises, which sponsored Chipmunk-related
CHIPMUNKS LIBERTY RECORDS
LPs BY ROSS BAGDASARIAN
Let’s All Sing with the Chipmunks (1959)
Sing Again with the Chipmunks (1960)
Around the World with the Chipmunks (1960)
The Alvin Show (1961)
The Chipmunk Songbook (1962)
Christmas with the Chipmunks (1962)
Christmas with the Chipmunks vol. 2 (1963)
The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits (1964)
The Chipmunks Sing with Children (1965)
Chipmunks A-Go-Go (1965)
The Chipmunks See Doctor Dolittle (1968)
The Chipmunks Go to the Movies (1969)
32 RETROFAN March 2024
sales. By 1963, some 15 different companies were using or planned
to use The Alvin Show’s characters. Billboard magazine estimated the
total income from the Chipmunks’ record sales (including overseas
sales) and record club sales to be around $20 million (around $171
million today, adjusted for inflation).
In 1963, Ross Bagdasarian finally returned to pouring the wine
when he bought 230 acres of land near his old home in Fresno,
California, and named it Chipmunk Ranch. He also purchased
Sierra Wine Corp., a winery that supplied product, among others, to
E & J Gallo Winery.
ONE-SEASON WONDER
The Alvin Show lasted only one prime-time season of 26 episodes.
So, why only one season?
Blame the time slot.
CBS was hoping that the series would attract older, more
sophisticated children and younger, less snobby adults. But The
Alvin Show wound up against Wagon Train on NBC and The New
Steve Allen Show on ABC. By November 8, 1961, barely a month after
the show’s October 4th premiere,
Variety inferred that The Alvin Show
might be in trouble. Then there
were rumors that the cartoon series
might be switched to a cheaper
Sunday 6:30 PM time slot. Two days
later, in the Hollywood Reporter,
there was even talk of a meeting
between Klynn and Bagdasarian
about a Clyde Crashcup spin-off.
(LEFT) More Scott Shaw!
commission art featuring the
main cast of The Alvin Show.
© Ross Bagdasarian. Art © Scott Shaw!
© Ross Bagdasarian.

But on April 17, 1962, it was finally announced
that CBS would move reruns of The Alvin Show to
Saturday mornings in the fall. Unfortunately, Herb
Klynn shut down Format Films in 1962, only to
return in 1966 as Format Productions, which was
behind CBS’ animated version of The Lone Ranger.
[Editor’s note: Hi-yo, Silver! See RetroFan #20 for
Andy Mangels’ history of Lone Ranger cartoons.]
Continuing to record and promote more Chipmunk
material, Ross also assembled two more solo LP
albums: The Mixed-Up World of Bagdasarian (Liberty
Records, 1966) and A Summer’s Day Delight (Monarch
Music Corp., 1970).
In the mid-to-late Sixties, the individual
segments of The Alvin Show were culled together and sold as a
syndication package under the title Alvin and the Chipmunks. The
original episodes of The Alvin Show began airing under the title
of Alvin and the Chipmunks on NBC Saturday mornings in 1979 for
a short period. To coincide with the new series on NBC in 1983,
Viacom Enterprises distributed reruns of The Alvin Show to syndi-
cated markets (mostly independent and future Fox stations; the
rerun package was also carried nationally over WGN and WTBS
at various times beginning in September 1983). Some stations
continued to run the show at various times as late as 1993. Prior
to its superstation runs, The Alvin Show was picked up in a few
markets such as Detroit, New York, Cleveland, and in interna-
tional markets such as in Australia and Brazil, among others. The
Alvin Show made its way to Europe in the United Kingdom when
the BBC began broadcasting the program as well. Nickelodeon
picked up U.S. broadcast rights to The Alvin Show on March 7, 1994,
after the last of a few independent stations pulled the show. The
prints from the syndicated reruns were digitized and the Nick-
elodeon logo was added to several spots in the opening theme.
The show aired as part of Nickelodeon’s morning line-up for most
of the next year. During this time, as well as for sometime after,
the full episodes stopped airing and the individual Alvin and the
Chipmunks and Clyde Crashcup cartoons and musical segments
were inserted into episodes of Weinerville. In 1996, Nickelodeon
stopped showing The Alvin Show segments altogether, and no
television station has since aired them.
THE LEGACY OF BAGDASARIAN’S CHIPMUNKS
A lifetime smoker, Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. was found dead of a heart
attack at his home in Beverly Hills on January 16, 1972, only 11 days
before his 53rd birthday. He was cremated and inurned at the
Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.
The oddball world of scott shaw!
(FAR LEFT) JELL-O was a
sponsor of The Alvin Show and
featured the Chipmunks in
their commercials. (LEFT) Alvin
and the Chipmunks Sing-Alongs
VHS tape, with Scott Shaw!’s
artwork on the cover. (BELOW)
Valentine Chipmunks. © Ross
Bagdasarian.
For many years, the only home video presence of The Alvin
Show was two VHS tapes from Disney’s Buena Vista Home Video,
Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing-Alongs: Ragtime Cowboy Joe (1993)
and Working on the Railroad (1994), each compiling 11 of the series’
52 song sequences, with an added “sing-along” gimmick. (I was
pleased to draw the line-art for the packaging of both.) In 2009,
Paramount Home Entertainment released a DVD of the first
episode of The Alvin Show. In 2014, “The Brave Chipmunks” musical
sequence was released as a bonus feature on The Chipmunk Adven-
ture Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. In 2015, three complete episodes
of The Alvin Show (#01, #04, and #10) were released together on
Blu-ray and DVD.
We’re still waiting for the rest.
Bagdasarian willed the Chipmunks franchise to his wife and
three children. Ross Jr. said in an interview that he “worshipped”
his father and felt a need to continue his work. He resumed the
franchise with his partner Janice Karman in the late Seventies, after
finishing law school, and became the complete owner when he
bought the rights from his siblings in the mid-Nineties.
Twenty years after The Alvin Show’s original run, the Chipmunks
returned to animation in a prime-time special, A Chipmunk
Christmas, airing on NBC in 1981. More animated specials followed
through the Eighties and into the Nineties. An onslaught of
contemporary Chipmunk music renewed their popularity, as did
new animated stories, starting with Ruby-Spears Productions’ Alvin
and the Chipmunks in 1983. The most recent is Bagdasarian Produc-
tions/OuiDo! Productions’ Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks, running on
Nickelodeon from 2015 through 2023. And to tell a bigger story, the
Bagdasarians first brought Alvin and company to the big screen
with the 1987 animated theatrical feature The Chipmunk Adventure.
The Bagdasarians took full advantage of home video
entertainment with a variety of longer and more dramatic
RETROFAN March 2024 33
 The oddball world of scott shaw!
’THE ALVIN SHOW’ EPISODE GUIDE
Episode 1 (original airdate: October 4, 1961)
“Stanley the Eagle”
“Oh Gondaliera”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Baseball”
“I Wish I Could Speak French”
Episode 2 (original airdate: October 11, 1961)
“Sam Valiant, Private Nose”
“August Dear”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Bathtub”
“Alvin’s Orchestria”
Episode 3 (original airdate: October 18, 1961)
“Squares”
“Swanee River”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Wife”
“The Magic Mountain”
Episode 4 (original airdate: October 25, 1961)
“Ostrich”
“The Brave Chipmunks”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Baby”
“Yankee Doodle Dandy”
Episode 5 (original airdate: November 1, 1961)
“Good Neighbor”
“The Little Dog”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Electricity”
“Old MacDonald (Cha-Cha-Cha)”
Episode 6 (original airdate: November 8, 1961)
“Fancy”
“Japanese Banana”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Music”
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”
Episode 7 (original airdate: November 15, 1961)
“Alvin’s Alter-Ego”
“The Pidgin English Hula”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the West”
“Chipmunk Fun”
Episode 8 (original airdate: November 22, 1961)
“Sam Valiant: Real Estate”
“Working on the Railroad”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Stove”
“Stuck in Arabia”
Episode 9 (original airdate: November 29, 1961)
“Camping Trip””
“Good Morning Song”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Jokes”
“I Wish I Had a Horse”
(ABOVE) Three screen caps from The Alvin Show: (LEFT) Alvin directs the show’s
opening sequence. (CENTER) David trys to get some work done. (RIGHT) Clyde
Crashcup and loyal, whispering Leonardo. © Ross Bagdasarian.
34 RETROFAN March 2024
Episode 10 (original airdate: December 6, 1961) Episode 19 (original airdate: February 7, 1962)
“Overworked Alvin” “Eagle in Love”
“Witch Doctor” “Sing a Goofy Song”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Flight” “Clyde Crashcup Invents Do It Yourself”
“The Chipmunk Song” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”
Episode 11 (original airdate: December 13, 1961) Episode 20 (original airdate: February 14, 1962)
“Dude Ranch” “Theodore’s Dog”
“Home on the Range” “Clementine”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents First Aid” “Clyde Crashcup Invents the Shoe”
“Alvin for President” “Maria from Madrid”
Episode 12 (original airdate: December 20, 1961) Episode 21 (original airdate: February 21, 1962)
“Jungle Rhythm” “Haunted House”
“Lily of Laguna” “Whistle While You Work”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Egypt” “Clyde Crashcup Invents Glass”
“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” “My Wild Irish Rose”
Episode 13 (original airdate: December 27, 1961) Episode 22 (original airdate: February 28, 1962)
“Bentley Van Rolls” “Alvin’s Studio”
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Self-Preservation” “This Is Your Life, Clyde Crashcup!”
“Comin’ Through the Rye” “The Band Played On”
Episode 14 (original airdate: January 3, 1962) Episode 23 (original airdate: March 7, 1962)
“Good Manners” “The Whistler”
“Bicycle Built for Two” “The Alvin Twist”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents Physical Fitness” “Clyde Crashcup Invents the Boat”
“Ragtime Cowboy” “The Man on the Flying Trapeze”
Episode 15 (original airdate: January 10, 1962) Episode 24 (original airdate: March 14, 1962)
“Little League” “Sir Alvin”
“Buffalo Gals” “Git Along Little Doggies”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Chair” “Clyde Crashcup Invents Crashcupland”
“While Strolling in the Park One Day” “Down in the Valley”
Episode 16 (original airdate: January 17, 1962) Episode 25 (original airdate: March 21, 1962)
“Hillbilly Son” “Disc Jockey”
“Spain” “Funiculi, Funicula”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Bed” “Clyde Crashcup Invents Birthdays”
“Pop Goes the Weasel” “Polly Wolly Doodle”
Episode 17 (original airdate: January 24, 1962) Episode 26 (original airdate: March 28, 1962)
“Alvin’s Cruise” “Eagle Music”
“Alvin’s Harmonica” “On Top of Old Smoky”
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Telephone” “Clyde Crashcup Invents Self-Defense”
“If You Love Me (Alouette) “America the Beautiful”
Episode 18 (original airdate: January 31, 1962)
“Lovesick Dave”
“Coming ʼRound the Mountain” Each episode also featured three
“Clyde Crashcup Invents the Time Machine” one-minute interstitials, usually with
“Three Blind-Folded Mice” Alvin doing something intentionally
outrageous such as taking his bull to the
china shop, or Alvin dressed as a magi-
cian about to destroy a tower of crystal
glass and operating a wrecking ball.
 The oddball world of scott shaw!

animated exploits for the Chipmunks. In 1996, the Chipmunk
characters were licensed to Universal Studios. This led to a VHS
edition of The Chipmunk Adventure (the last video featuring the
MCA/Universal Home Video logo) and a series of direct-to-video
animated features, including Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet
Frankenstein (1989) and Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman
(1990). However, in 2000, Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. sued Universal for
breach-of-contract, citing that Universal failed to properly use the
Chipmunk characters, supposedly leading to a loss of royalties for
the Bagdasarians.
Eventually, computers concocted the Chipmunks, with CGI-
created chipmunks appearing in several films starting with Alvin
and the Chipmunks (2007). Once the Chipmunks became stars on
the big screen, the only place left to conquer was the world of video
games, starting in 2007, with games based on Chipmunks movies
and new adventures.
The major visual difference in this new era of the Chipmunks
was the introduction of the female Chipettes—Brittany, Jeanette,
and Eleanor—created by Janice Karman and initially designed
by Corny Cole. The Chipettes first appeared in the cartoon series
Alvin and the Chipmunks in 1983. Their character designs were later
revamped by Sandra Berez for The Chipmunk Adventure and the later
seasons of the show.
The other major difference was subtler and more disappointing.
TV cartoons had changed, and not for the better. With the excep-
tion of Jay Ward’s George of the Jungle (ABC, 1967), there hadn’t been
any truly funny animated TV cartoons since The Alvin Show. By the
Eighties, almost all of children’s entertainment was depressingly
bland and invariably reliant on a moral [and often, on promoting
a licensed property—ed.]. Humor, not so much. And the new
iteration of the Chipmunks really leaned into what was selling.
As of this writing, an astounding 42 Chipmunks albums have
been created after the death of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., including
soundtracks from Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Among them:
The Very Best of the Chipmunks (1976), Chipmunk Punk (1980), Urban
Chipmunk (1981), The Chipmunks’ 20 All Time Golden Greats (1982), The
Chipmunk Adventure (1987), The Chipmunks and the Chipettes: Born
To Rock (1988), A Very Merry Chipmunk (1994), Club Chipmunk: The
Dance Mixes (1996), Alvin and the Chipmunks: Original Motion Picture
Soundtrack (2007), and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip:
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2015)
As noted earlier, The Alvin Show hasn’t been available to the
public since it ran on Nickelodeon in 1996. Four (out of 26) episodes
have been released on physical recordings. The amount of Chip-
munk product that’s built up since Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. passed is
staggering, although its quality isn’t nearly as impressive.

Comic book fun: Alvin and the Chipmunks (and David) enjoy (except David) off-screen
antics in the Dell Alvin comics which ran from 1962 to 1973. Alvin and his Pals in Merry
Christmas with Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo was published in 1963 and reissued in 1966.
Dell’s Clyde Crashcup series run five issues from 1963–1964. © Ross Bagdasarian.

RETROFAN March 2024 35

 The oddball world of scott shaw!

(LEFT) Alvin and the Chipmunks, released in 2007, was the boys’ first
live-action film adventure. It starred CGI chipmunks and an actual
Jason Lee. (BELOW) New Alvin (LEFT) meets old Alvin (RIGHT) in
a 1987 episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks, “Back to Dave’s Future.”
© Ross Bagdasarian.

Two final factoids: 1) Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. was best friends

with fellow Armenian actor Mike Conners, the popular star of the
CBS series Mannix (1967–1975). Ross appeared (without credit) on
an episode of the detective show, as did his daughter Carol, five
different times in all. 2) During the production of The Chipmunk
Adventure, Bagdasarian Productions’ offices were located in the
same two-story building in North Hollywood as a small animation
company, Cornell-Abood, as well as Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon studio,
which at the time was in production of Mighty Mouse: The New
Adventures (1987–1988). If you’ve ever wondered where Mighty
Mouse’s “Elvy and the Tree Weasels” came from, well... now you
know!

Children or chipmunks? A more human version of the
beloved characters was seen in Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks
series (2015), featuring the Chipettes. (FROM LEFT TO
RIGHT) Simon, Theodore, Alvin, Brittany, Eleanor, and
Jeanette. © Ross Bagdasarian.
So, why are Ross Jr. and Janice sitting on the cartoon that led
to their incredible success? Do they consider The Alvin Show to be
embarrassing? That makes no sense; animation fans have been
pleading for the opportunity to own the entire series for decades.
However, considering that most people who grew up with The Alvin
Show still consider it to be one of the funniest TV cartoons of all
time, are Ross Jr. and Janice worried that if the original iteration of
“their” characters were available to the public, by comparison, the
current product might be considered mediocre at best? (In their
most-recent CG series, Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks, the Chipmunks
resemble human children with triangular noses, not anthropo-
morphic rodents!) Or maybe it’s merely another case of music
ownership. Let’s all hope that someday Ross Sr.’s grandchildren
Vanessa and Michael will release the original ’munks to the wild.
Even Mrs. Frumpington would approve!
Thanks to Mark Arnold for his valuable book, AAAAALLLVIIINNN!
The Story of Ross Bagdasarian Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films
and The Alvin Show (Bear Manor, 2019).
For 50 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 Flint-
stones, 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.

36 RETROFAN March 2024

RETROFAD

BY MIC HAE
L E U RY

Alvin wasn’t physical

alone. The education teacher
cartoon character’s started using bamboo
“Me, I want a hula hoop” rings to encourage move-
entreaties peppered “The ment among her students,
Chipmunk Song” (a.k.a. more than pelvises began
“Christmas, Don’t Be rotating.
Late”), to the listener’s Tim Walsh, author of
amusement and David The Playmakers: Amazing
Seville’s annoyance. Origins of Timeless Toys
But you really can’t (2004, Keys Publishing),
blame the bucktoothed writes that an observant
li’l fella for his obsession. Australian department
When manufacturer store, Coles, began
Wham-O released its first hula hoop—officially branded Hula selling bamboo hoops but couldn’t keep them in stock due to
Hoop®, herewith Hula Hoop, minus the registration mark—in the mushrooming demand. Coles tapped Alex Tolmer, founder of the
summer of 1958, 25 million units were sold in just the first four legendary manufacturing company Toltoys, to begin mass produc-
months. That’s a whole lotta (hip) shakin’ goin’ on! tion of hoops. Tolmer, says Walsh, found the durable
For a contemporary toy, the plastic Polyethylene to be the perfect hoop material
Hula Hoop was actually an updated and rushed these “exercise hoops” into production,
historical relic. Hoops forged of vines, selling 400,000 units in Australia that year.
grasses, bamboo, and other vegeta- Here’s where the Hula Hoop story began to spin
tion had for centuries been employed faster.
across the globe in ceremonial dances. An American named Joan Alexander, while on
Metal and wooden hoops from barrels, holiday visiting family in Australia, caught wind
wagon wheels, and other sources had of this new fancy and shipped one of the exercise
been used for everything from rolling rings from the Land from Down Under to her home.
knickknacks for children to medical Once back in the States she showed the hoop to
aids and muscle-toning devices for the folks at Wham-O. Wham-O, as most RetroFans
adults. know, is the toy company that introduced a range of
It was a recreational fad of 1957 that perennial playthings, most famously the Frisbee®
ultimately whirled into the public eye (which we tossed at you
what we now call the Hula Hoop. That year, the European press in RetroFan #13), but also
took note of a budding trend among Norwegian and Australian the Slip ’n Slide, Super-Ball,
girls who were swinging cane rings around their bodies in what Hacky Sack, and Silly
was dubbed “rock ring” or “wiggle rock” mania. Once an Australian String. Co-founders
Richard Knerr and Arthur
“Spud” Melin launched the
(TOP) Wham-O Hula Hoop promotional graphics from company in 1948, originally
the product’s 1958 debut year, with its company mascot, operating out of Knerr’s
the witch doctor “Whambo.” Hula Hoop® is TM & © Intersport Corp., DBA garage before growing into
Wham-O (herewith Wham-O). (CENTER AND BOTTOM) Record a Carson, California–based
players spun along with Hula Hoops as a variety of business that’s still going
performers released hoop-inspired songs in 1958. strong today.

RETROFAN March 2024 37

 RetroFad

(LEFT) Autographed original

art to Johnny Hart’s B.C.
comic strip of October 28,
1958. © Creators Syndicate. Courtesy of
Heritage.

The appeal of the hoop for

consumers of all ages was undeniable.
As reported on GroovyHistory.com,
Americans at the time nursed a
growing fascination with island culture.
U.S. soldiers’ journeys across the globe
opened eyes wide to the hypnotic hip
gyrations of grass-skirted beauties
that told stories through their body
movements. Hula dancing had been
creeping into cinema for decades, from (ABOVE) Hula Hoops
silent star Clara Bow’s 1927 movie Hula made great visual gags
to cartoon characters Betty Boop and for comic book covers,
Minnie Mouse. To top it off, Hawaii was although Little Lotta #22’s
poised to become the 50th U.S. State (June 1959) cover couldn’t
(which it would on August 21, 1959). An exercise ring that makes you look Yet it was television, at avoid the stereotypical fat
like a hula dancer when you use it? pondered the folks at Wham-O. What the time still a burgeoning jokes that accompanied its
else could this thing be called but a Hula Hoop? medium, that rapidly rolled star’s adventures. © Classic
Back in Melbourne, Australia, Toltoys’ David Tolmer, Alex the Hula Hoop into the Media, LLC. (LEFT) A colorized
Tolmer’s son, partnered with Wham-O’s Knerr and Melin to bring public consciousness. In Three Stooges film short
the newly christened Hula Hoop to the United States. Wham-O addition to TV commercials still was captioned with
modified the product, fashioning 42-inch Marlex plastic hoops in for the Hula Hoop, a “Hula Hoop” joke when
vibrant colors. Wham-O’s Arthur Melin, Fleer released a 1959 Stooges
In the summer of 1958, Wham-O’s Hula Hoop hit the market… sometimes with his wife trading card set. © 1959 Norman
but at first sales were sluggish. Knerr and Melin realized they’d Suzy, began appearing on Maurer Productions, Inc. Courtesy of
have to do some leg-shaking of their own to introduce their Hula TV talk and variety shows Heritage.
Hoop to the masses—and thus began an impressive and aggres- including the popular
sive multimedia promotional campaign targeting consumers of Dinah Shore Show, hyping
all ages. Public “how to” presentations were made, with baton and displaying the product. By the time Melin signed in as “Spud
twirlers and other athletic types demonstrating everything from Melin” (“I only answer to Spud,” he said) as a guest with a mystery
simple Hula Hoop movements to complicated but fascinating job on the quiz show What’s My Line?’s September 14, 1958 episode,
maneuvers. Complimentary Hula Hoops were given to children his secret vocation (shared with the audience as “inventor and
at playgrounds. Radio stations in cities and towns across the manufacturer of Hula Hoops”) was a crowd-pleasing revelation.
country sponsored Hula Hoop contests where masses of people The U.S. of A. was gripped in a Hula Hoop revolution! And for a
would Hula Hoop together, and compete. People not only swirled mere $1.98 a hoop, who could resist?
Hula Hoops around their hips, but also around their necks, arms, Not Alvin (who not only got that Hula Hoop he wanted but was
knees, legs, and even foreheads. later immortalized by Wayout Toys as a dancing Alvin Hula Hoop
With the product’s appeal to children largely implied, print ads doll). Not bandleader Duke Ellington, famously photographed in
in newspapers and magazines adroitly targeted adults—specifi- 1958 grooving while hooping. Not “America’s oldest teenager” Dick
cally women, as an early ad depicted an hourglass-waisted house- Clark, whose American Bandstand TV dance show featured a hot
wife shimmying a Hula Hoop around her perfect figure. It touted Hula Hoop number.
that the Hula Hoop’s “amazing action defies gravity” and claimed it Pop vocalist Teresa Brewer had a hit with “The Hula Hoop
“rotates perpetually with body-english” (Was “Body-English” a high Song”—and so did sultry jazz singer Georgia Gibbs, who performed
school class back in the Fifties?). Hula Hoops could “spin forever” a different tune also titled “The Hula Hoop Song” on The Ed Sullivan
around “your waist, neck, [and] knees,” in “competitive games, Show on September 6, 1958. Yet another “The Hula Hoop Song” was
acrobatic tricks, water sports, exercises, and [weight] reducing.” released by Italian songster Teddy Reno… although on the record

38 RETROFAN March 2024


racks it was further differentiated by its “Tempo Di Hula Hoop”
title, in the artist’s native tongue. On Sunday, September 14, 1958’s
The Steve Allen Show, funnyman Allen introduced his new record,
“Hula Hoop,” which he performed backed up by a chorus and
orchestra. If your music tastes skewed more toward The Lawrence
Welk Show than American Bandstand, you could hop to the “Hula
Hoop Polka” by Herb Wojnarowski and His Orchestra. Wind-up
toys like the Hoopsie doll and mechanical Hula Hoop Monkey
appeared on toy shelves. Personalities on television and in film
were seen wiggling with Hula Hoops. Frankenstein, the Wolf Man,
and Dracula Hula Hooped on the cover of Monster Parade magazine,
while playful Little Audrey and freckle-faced Archie Andrews were
among the characters Hula Hooping on comic book covers. In the
October 28, 1958 edition of cartoonist Johnny Hart’s comic strip B.C.,
a stone-age Hula Hooper motivates caveman B.C. to prophesize,
“This could change the course of history!”
Hart was right. And so was Wham-O with its anticipation of
the impact of island culture, which included the Fall 1959 premiere
of the sexy TV drama Hawaiian Eye (island fascination would
continue in the next decade with Gilligan’s Island and Hawaii Five-0,
(LEFT) Inserting ball bearings into Hula Hoops produced a “Shoop Shoop”
sound that gave Wham-O’s product a second lease on life in the mid-Sixties.
© Wham-O. (RIGHT) Do you know what they call The Hudsucker Proxy in Italy?
Mister Hula Hoop! Joel and Ethan Coen’s mythical take on the Hula Hoop’s
creation was released in 1994. © Warner Bros. Poster courtesy of Heritage.
among other shows). Over the Hula Hoop’s
first two years of production, Wham-O
marketed 100 million of these things. Not
all of the hoops sold during this furor were
official Hula Hoops made by Wham-O.
Manufacturers clamoring for a fast buck
released Hula Hoop knock-offs, which
Wham-O couldn’t combat since it did not originally own the patent
on the product (which they did finally obtain in 1963). However,
Wham-O did trademark the “Hula Hoop” name in 1958. The Hula
Hoop’s popularity spread to other countries, with Canada, the
United Kingdom, and Japan particularly caught up in the frenzy.
With such a meteoric rise, the Hula Hoop’s success could only
spiral out of control. After peak production periods of 50,000 hoops
per day, Wham-O was inundated with Hula Hoops and stopped
production in the early Sixties.
Wham-O shrewdly reintroduced the Hula Hoop in 1965, moving
its previous stagnant stock by inserting ball bearings into the
RetroFad
hoops’ hollow plastic tubing. When twirled, the Hula Hoops now
made a telltale sound dubbed “Shoop Shoop” by Wham-O. The
Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop spiked sales again, and Wham-O began
co-marketing the item with its Frisbee, pushing them as a leisure-
time duo perfect for teenagers’ beach frolicking. A prototypical
infomercial was produced where boy and girl actors demonstrated
how to Hula Hoop, including some mesmerizing stunts such as
“The Stork” (standing on one leg) and the “Hokey Pokey”–ish
“Stepping In” and “Stepping Out,” where one leg is moved in or out
of the other leg’s swirling hoop. That mid-Sixties’ blip of popularity
was short-lived, and before long Hula Hoop hysteria waned.
But the Hula Hoop itself didn’t. Chipmunks and crooners were
no longer pining for one, but the Hula Hoop became a perennial
product, earning a well-deserved 1999 induction into the Toy
Industry Hall of Fame. Its permanence as a pop-culture commodity
inspired the 1994 film comedy The Hudsucker Proxy from film
auteurs the Coen Brothers, where Tim Robbins played a mail-room
worker who created the Hula Hoop in a fictionalized version of
the product’s origin; in some European markets the movie was
released with the title Mister Hula Hoop.
Over the years, Wham-O has introduced
Hula Hoop variations including Glow in the
Dark and LED-lit hoops. The company has,
according to brand-development agency Becker
Associates, sold over 300 million Hula Hoops.
As with the Hula Hoop fad of the late
Fifties, the modern Hula Hoop consumer isn’t
always a child. “Hooping,” as it is now called,
has become a cultish pastime among adults,
with some “hoopers” dancing with rings of
fire or with multiple hoops. “Smart hoops”
with programmable computers are available
with special-effects options. Hula Hoops also
remain in use as exercise aids. A workout called
Hulazumba got its start in 2017. And according
to GoodRX.com, “Using a weighted [H]ula [H]oop
may help you burn calories, strengthen your
core, and improve your fitness.”
Despite the Hula Hoop’s significance in
U.S. pop culture, the fad’s connection to Australia, its country of
origin, remains. From November 19 through 23, 2019, an Australian
woman named Jenny Doan set a world record for a 100-hour Hula
Hooping marathon, a feat that makes our heads spin!
Special thanks to sources Wikipedia, Tim Walsh, GroovyHistory.com,
Becker Associates LLC Madehow.com, PopBopRocktilUDrop.com,
Wonderopolis.org, and GoodRX.com.
RetroFan editor-in-chief MICHAEL EURY is too much a klutz to
engender anything other than a laugh while Hula Hooping.
RETROFAN March 2024 39
The Best in POP Culture!
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ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other all-star writers and artists who produced the team-up tales
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SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM

Girder and Panel

Building Sets
BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA

In the Plaything category of Stuff I Really, Really Liked As A Kid,
building toys (also known as construction or engineering toys) were
the Best (BEST!). I was especially drawn to stuff you could do on your
own (Me Time was important when you’re a bookish kid with six
siblings). Building toys really fit the bill, and I played with plenty. And
LEGO bricks (invented in 1949)… well, who hasn’t encountered them?
They kept me busy into adulthood and parenthood. [We’ve got a
LEGO history coming up in the next issue of RetroFan, #32—and
LEGOmanics are also invited to check out TwoMorrows’ Brick Journal
mag!—ed.] While structures could be made with any number of
construction toys, there was only one during the RetroYears that
attempted to replicate the actual construction process itself and
create something that actually looked like a modern structure:
Girder and Panel building sets.
Girder and Panel building sets came out of Kenner Products
(best known as just Kenner). Kenner was a toy company founded
in 1946 by three brothers: Albert, Phillip, and Joseph Steiner.
Albert was the president of the company, with Kenner being the
name of the Cincinnati, Detail of art from an early
Ohio, street on which their Girder and Panel Building
offices were located. The Set planning book. Collection of
first big hit for the young the author.
toy company was 1949’s
Captain Space Bub-L-
Rocket. Captain Space is seen on the package blowing into the
tip of the Bub-L-Rocket, creating “galaxies of bubbles—without
refueling!” Captain Space brags on the back of the package that
he himself designed the bubble gun “as a precision toy.”
But you can’t rest on any laurels in the toy business, and new
concepts are constantly needed. For the company’s 1957 Spring line,
Kenner was introducing the Jungle Blow-Gun set, Squirt Beanies,
and something called the Squirt Write. Fortunately, Kenner had
something even more exciting in the pipeline. Company president
Albert Steiner had a lucky epiphany while observing an office
tower slowly rising up in the city. He felt that the skeletal girder
construction process, finished off with exterior glass and steel,

RETROFAN March 2024 41

 scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

The Steiner brothers,

founders of Kenner
Products Co. (LEFT TO
RIGHT) Albert, Joseph,
and Philip. Albert was
the company president.
(ABOVE) James “Jeep”
had possibilities as a toy. The general concept was handed over to to “examine a body orifice or any O. Kuhn, Vice President
the then-head of Kenner’s Research & Development department, other body site otherwise not of Kenner’s Research
James “Jeep” O. Kuhn, to flesh out. visually accessible.” (In case you & Development
Kuhn was highly regarded and is often credited as the sit on something you shouldn’t, I Department.
inventor—though other Kenner people were involved—of the guess.)
Easy-Bake Oven (in 1963), which was a hit with girls and some boys So…
(who doesn’t like cake and cookies made to order?). When he was Kenner’s Girder and Panel Building Sets debuted in 1957 with
eight years old, Bobby Flay (now a well-known chef) opted for an three offerings, each one with more pieces than the last. No. 1
Easy-Bake Oven over the G.I. Joe action figure his father wanted to (Junior set) was $2.50—$26.88 in 2023 dollars. No. 2 (Standard
get him. And since I like easily baked goods, I say, “Good on him.” set) was $4.00—$43.51 in 2023 dollars, and No. 3 (the DeLuxe)
I mainly used my G.I. Joe’s face as a base for sculpting monster was $6.00—a whopping $65.27 as I write this. Each allowed the
“make-up” with modeling clay. construction of modern-looking structures. They were purely build-
“Jeep” (the nickname is a mystery to me) Kuhn had a number of ing-making building toys unlike, say, LEGOs, which could make all
patents. One was for doll eyes that could follow a child
around a room (creepy). Another was for an “optical
personal inspection instrument” which was intended

(ABOVE) Advertisement announcing the first

three Girder and Panel sets as seen in this
page detail from the American Toy Promotion
section of the June 6, 1957 issue of Hardware
Age. (RIGHT) Box face to the Girder and Panel
Building Set #1 (1957). TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Box
from the collection of the author.

42 RETROFAN March 2024


kinds of things as long as they had square corners (in
those days). These sets were successful enough that
more were soon added.
The next three were Bridge and Turnpike sets (1958),
which added roadways into the mix. The two motorized
versions of these sets (1960) were Kenner’s bestsellers
in the Girder and Panel line-up.
Moving from office buildings
and roads to something more Thomas Eakins’
class child with toys of the day including two types of
educational, Kenner offered
up two Hydro-Dynamic sets wood blocks, alphabet squares,
Courtesy Wikimedia.
(1961) designed to encourage
young engineers to understand
fluid dynamics. Not many
toys could make that claim.
This was followed by three
Build-A-Home sets (1962) in
response to the post-war home
construction boom. The largest
of these (set #16) created a
multi-home subdivision for all
the little urban-sprawl enthusi-
asts in toyland. Accessories for Build-A-Home included
doghouses and television antennas.
Moving from the then-present to a short jump (one
hoped) to the then soon-to-be future, Kenner produced
two Skyrail sets (1963). The Skyrail was like the famed
Disneyland monorail system first introduced in 1959
but without trestles for support. In my memory these
sets were a bit difficult to get put together right, but I
was observing a neighbor’s set-up in (limited) action
and it may have been an operator problem. I wasn’t
allowed to touch the controls. So, who knows?
Between 1964 and 1965, Kenner made some parts
changes and upgrades, now calling the Girder and
Panel sets “Modern-As-Tomorrow” and ones with road-
ways “Freeway USA.” The last major Girder and Panel
change made by Kenner before a temporary cool-down
of the line was the motorized Gird-
scott saavedra’s secret sanctum
A Brief Origin of Building Toys
Children, during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, when
they weren’t toiling in the fields and factories or selling newspapers
on dirty street corners, played outside. Most did not have toys as
we know them; some playthings were literally stuff picked up off
the ground (sticks, twigs,
etc.) or whatever a clever
“Baby at Play” (1876) shows an upper
friend or relative could put
together. It was the chil-
and architectural pieces.
dren of the well-to-do that
had professionally made
toys. As manufactured
toys became cheaper and
more plentiful following
the Civil War, they became
available to more and more
children. In an effort to
give toys a greater purpose
than just, you know, being
fun, attempts were made to
have playthings stimulate
the mind. This is where building toys really shined.
Building blocks were alluded to in print as early as 1594. Practical
Education (1789) called blocks “rational toys” because they could teach
children about gravity and physics. It was written by Richard Lovell
Edgeworth, a politician and inventor, and his daughter Maria (one
of 22 children), an author of romantic novels and children’s litera-
ture. My maternal grandparents only had “acceptable toys” (nothing
related to popular culture) on hand including a big pile of wooden
building blocks, likely my first construction toy. These blocks were
old when I was young and had a gorgeous patina of age before I
knew what patina meant (I would have guessed “dirty”). For a group
of young, antic children, wooden blocks were stack-and-whack toys
(build it up, knock it down) and that’s mainly what we did with them.
There was so much learning about gravity and physics. Probably too
much.
Plastics became a popular toy material after World War II. But
before and after the war, construction sets were also made of
wood, stone, paper, cardboard, masonite, steel, and rubber.
There were distinctly engineering creations like wooden Tin-
ker Toys, created in 1914 by a stonemason, and the metal Gilbert
Erector Sets, invented by a former magician in 1913. These sets
could create outlines of buildings but nothing that looked like
an everyday live or work-in structure (though there was briefly
an Erector Skyscraper set in 1935 with cardboard facade
pieces). Lincoln Logs were the 1918 invention of Frank Lloyd
Wright’s son John, also an architect. While children could
build more or less actual structures like Abraham Lincoln’s
family home, it used building techniques that were firmly
rooted in the past, unlike Girder and Panel sets which
were definitely of their moment.
Lincoln Logs, a classic building toy, featured
construction methods used by “our forefathers” as
indicated by the box (circa 1920). © Basic Fun! Inc. All Rights
Reserved. Courtesy of Worthpoint.
RETROFAN March 2024 43
 scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

erMatic Building Sets (1965), which added the ability to

make amusement park rides like a Ferris wheel and new
parts to allow for a greater range of engineering play with
less focus on modern structures.
Kenner had a pretty solid run as a toymaker. Most
RetroFans likely recall the aforementioned Easy-Bake
Oven, the Spirograph (1966), Stretch Armstrong (1976), and
if you haven’t heard of the Death Star-sized popularity
of the original Star Wars action figures (1978), then you
probably live in a galaxy far, far away (just not the one with
Darth Vader in it). All of these toys have been available to
one degree or another decades beyond their introduction,
the Girder and Panel Building Set included. But it was a bit
of a rocky road.
In 1967, General Mills (yeah, the breakfast cereal (TOP) Examples of the possibilities when combining multiple
company) bought Kenner. Rainbow Crafts, home of Girder and Panel Building Sets from planning book included
Play-Doh, was a division of General Mills, having been with each box. Collection of the author. (ABOVE) Girder and Panel
purchased in 1965. Rainbow Crafts was folded into Build-A-Home & Subdivision Set. TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Courtesy of
Worthpoint.
Kenner, which in 1985 was merged into the Parker
Brothers division (bought by General Mills in 1968)

44 RETROFAN March 2024

 scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

becoming Kenner Parker Toys, Inc. Two years later, Kenner Parker
was bought by Tonka (yeah, the giant metal toy trucks company).
Hasbro (of G I. Joe fame) bought Tonka, Parker Brothers, and
Kenner in 1991. Parker Brothers, as a company, ended in 1998.
Tonka vehicles are still being made in metal (METAL!). However,
they are not made by Hasbro but licensed from them by Basic
Fun! Inc. Sadly, Kenner became defunct in 2000.
Happily, that wasn’t the end of Girder and Panel sets. During
the General Mills period, Girder and Panel sets reappeared in 1974
under various configurations and names. One set, Little Learners
Girder and Panels featuring World Famous Buildings with—a
proportionally too big yellow exterior—Working Elevator, was the
largest of the lot at 1,226 pieces. For comparison the first Girder and
Panel set had 104 pieces. The World Famous Building was Chicago’s
Sears Tower (now named the Willis Tower, but locals don’t call it
that and neither do I). Having been to the Sears Tower, I can state
with complete confidence that there is not (NOT!) a giant yellow
elevator running down the side of the building. The completed set
was the line’s tallest coming in at a respectable five feet tall.
Fun Fact: Back in the early Eighties I was having drinks (you
know, adult stuff) on a business trip with two friends I knew from
high school at the Sears Tower when a very (VERY!) elegant woman
came up to one friend and said that he was the most beautiful man
she’d ever seen. And that was the first time I ever had to call for my
own taxi to get back to our shared hotel room to sleep on a cot. I
also saw Jim Belushi making a movie and a dead body. Chicago!
All right, back to toys…
Girder and Panel sets ended their Kenner-branded run in 1979 as
KENSTRUCT Building Sets.
A full page of Girder and Panel fun
from the 1965 Sears Wishbook. TM
& © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Courtesy of christmas.
musetechnical.com.

(LEFT) Promotion for the Girder-Matic motorized building set

(1965). (RIGHT) Girder and Panel Hydro-Dynamic Building Set (1961).
TM & © Bridge Street Toys, LLC. Catalog page courtesy of christmas.musetechnical.com. Girder-Matic page
courtesy of Worthpoint. Hydro-Dynamic box courtesy sciencehistory.org.

RETROFAN March 2024 45

 scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

Other Building-Making Construction Toys

AMERICAN PLASTIC BRICKS
American Plastic Bricks were a product of
the Halsam Products Company. Originally,
the company made wooden dominoes and
“Safety” Blocks (wooden alphabet blocks with
rounded corners). In the Thirties, at the re-
quest of Montgomery Ward (then a major re-
tailer), Haslam manufactured a squared-off
version of Lincoln Logs called American Logs
(which ended up selling better in places that
still held President Lincoln in low regard).
Halsam created American Blocks, an inter-
locking brick-building toy in 1939. Originally,
it was made of wood like nearly everything
else they produced. After the war, a plastic
version was created by their new Elgo Plastics
division. The edges of the red building pieces
were designed to look like laid bricks. It was
clearly a toy made for creating buildings. Notably, unlike
some other construction toys, American Plastic Bricks were
advertised to both boys and girls.
Haslam was bought out by Playskool in 1962. Eventually,
Milton Bradley took over Playskool in 1984 and closed down
the Playskool factory where American Plastic Bricks had
once been made.
MINIBRIX
While Halsam’s Elgo Amer-
ican Plastic Bricks predated
LEGO, it was the British
building toy Minibrix that
preceded them both, having
been created in 1935. Mini-
brix, made of rubber rather
than plastic, was the product of the Premo Rubber Compa-
ny, a maker of rubber shoe heels. Minibrix’s focus was on
structures and was produced into the Seventies.
AMERICAN SKYLINE
American Skyline was anoth-
er Halsam plastic creation.
The focus of this construction
toy was skyscrapers and oth-
er city structures. American
Skyline ran from the late
Fifties to the Sixties, ending
after the Playskool purchase of
Haslam.
BLOCK CITY
Block City was the product of
the Tri-State Molding Company
and similar to American Plastic
Bricks. Block City was marketed
not only as a toy for the whole family but as a tool to help
mom and dad plan their new home. Block City ran from 1955
into the Eighties (possibly). Meanwhile, Tri-State Molding
Company has plastic containers in the collection at MoMA.
SUPER CITY
The Super City
building system
(1967) had a wide
variety of accesso-
ry pieces and sets.
There were Build-
ing Extenders,
garage doors, bal-
conies, revolving
doors, a magazine
rack display diorama, a helicopter, and more. The Super City
Roadway Accessory set had “Action Highway Track” for use
with Ideal’s Motorific line of battery-powered slot cars (bat-
teries and cars sold separately), trees, and model people. The
Super City Landscape Set had trees, traffic signs, a mailbox,
and a fire hydrant.
Ultimately, the Super City constructions were more at-
tractive, more modern-looking, and sturdier (in my memo-
ry) than their Girder and Panel counterparts. But in the end,
the consumers spoke and what they wanted was girders and
panels. The main complaint about Super City was that it was
too complicated, too difficult for little fingers to use (not to
mention the inclusion of some very small parts). As Kenner
boasted of their early Girder and Panel Building Sets: “Sim-
ple—Only 3 Basic Parts.”
Super City began disappearing from shelves in 1968.
BUILDING BLASTERS
And in a complete reversal of intention, Kenner put out
“building toys” called Building Blasters in 1989. The various
sets—Fuel Depot, Condemned Warehouse, Suspense Bridge
(get it?), and Oil Rig—were similar in design to Girder and
Panel sets. Basically they were building toys in the stack-
and-whack mode. Some box art may have promised balls of
fire, but the reality was the sound of plastic pieces hitting
the ground. Instead of gravity and physics, kids were getting
a lesson in “buyer beware.” Boom.
American Plastic
Bricks, Minibrix,
and Block City
are from the
collection of the
author. American
Skyline and
Building Blasters
courtesy of
Worthpoint.org.

46 RETROFAN March 2024

 scott saavedra’s secret sanctum

(FROM TOP TO BOTTOM) 1975 Little Learners World

Famous Buildings set—this is the smaller of the two sets—
made impressively tall buildings. Canada’s Irwin Toys
produced some sets for the U.S. market, including the
City Scape model. Bridge Street Toys brought back Girder
and Panel sets like the Hydrodynamic model and new sets
like the Boston Manor. TM & © Bridge Street Toys. LLC. Box art courtesy of
Worthpoint. Hydrodynamic package and Boston Manor are promotional images.

But wait, there’s more! Apparently, the “Girder and Panel”

trademark became abandoned. Asking the U.S. Trademark office
if it could take over said trademark as its own, was Irwin Toys, a
Canadian company. Due to trade laws of the time, Irwin Toys made
its money by importing and distributing popular American toys in
the Great White North. It took over the Girder and Panel line in 1992
and created new versions not previously seen in the U.S. In fact, the
new versions were barely seen in the U.S. at all. However, as trade
laws changed and U.S. toy companies could now produce toys in
Canada rather than go through a middleman, Irwin Toys ran into
financial problems, liquidating in the early 2000s. And yet, we’re
still not done with the Girder and Panel sets!
Bridge Street Toys was specifically created by chemical process
engineer Paul Flack to bring back Girder and Panel to inspire his
young son and other kids the way he was inspired by the toy. Bridge
Street’s sets updated colors, created new configurations, and
brought back older models like the Hydrodynamic sets (this time
without the hyphen). Sets were assembled in the family garage.
The first Bridge Street Girder and Panel product came out in 2005
and the last in 2010. Bridge Street’s Facebook page appears to have
last been active in 2013.
Paul Flack wasn’t the only kid inspired by Girder and Panel.
Noted architect Charles Renfro declared in a New York Times 2019
interview with writer Emily Spivack that he was very influenced by
the Girder and Panel Building Sets. He keeps an unadorned tall,
single tower construct in a window of his New York townhouse
to celebrate the toy’s impact on him. Renfro, who first knew he
wanted to be an architect when he was eight, realized as he began
studying architecture that the Girder and Panel sets “were instru-
mental in teaching me the principles of modernism and making me
the architect I am today.”
Building toys have not gone out of fashion, which is nice. Of
course, vintage Girder and Panel sets from different eras can be
found online, friendly to a variety of budgets. I even bought one
in anticipation of writing this article. The simplicity of the toy was
great for kids but doesn’t really hold my interest anymore. I will say
this: Girder and Panel sets could make buildings taller and faster
than most any other construction toy, the only limit being the
willingness to put in the effort and—no getting around it—having
enough pieces.
But that’s always how it is with building toys.

SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a Retro Explorer oper-

ating 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/

RETROFAN March 2024 47

 RETRO TRAVEL

Camp Crystal Lake

Tours and the
‘Friday the 13th’
Trail in New Jersey
BY KELLIE B. GORMLY

It’s a warm, starry August night under the towering trees deep in (ABOVE) Detail from the poster of the 1983 horror classic,
the northwestern New Jersey woods, where Denise Kneller, I, and Friday the 13th. Its shooting location is the subject of this
a few dozen Eighties horror buffs have settled into our camp chairs issue’s Retro Travel section. Don’t go into the woods!
for an outdoor big-screen movie. (BELOW) Camp Crystal Lake doesn’t allow photos to be
This is no ordinary summertime fun-in-the-park night, though. published of its facility to preserve its eerie appeal, so until
We are watching the original 1980 slasher classic Friday the 13th, you’re able to visit in person you may do so vicariously
right at the fictional Camp Crystal Lake where most of the movie through these chilling Friday the 13th lobby cards.
was filmed. Indeed, just behind where we sit is the site of the (OPPOSITE PAGE) A sharp-looking prop from the movie.
opening scene where camp counselors are singing and playing © Paramount Pictures. Courtesy of Heritage.
guitars; it’s a dining pavilion. If you walk a little farther, you
can climb the steps of a storage shed to the loft where Mrs.
Voorhees—until the end, the mysterious and unseen serial
killer—offed her first two victims, the counselors who
slipped away from the singing for a little hanky-panky. And
we just spent a few hours touring the Boy Scout–owned
site called Camp NoBeBoSco in real life, and explored
several cabins featured in the movie, and the iconic
mini-lake and shore where the final shockers happen. The
cabins at the nearly century-old camp in the Kittatinny
Mountain region are filled with props, like weapons and a
rubber snake, that recreate movie scenes.
Now, watching the movie outside at Camp Crystal Lake,
the less rational side of me is almost expecting to hear
the Friday the 13th lurking-killer calling card—“Ki Ki Ki, Ma
Ma Ma,” pronounced something like “Ch Ch Ch, Ha Ha
Ha”—waft from the trees.
“Oooh, this is SO cool!” I keep whispering to Kneller, like the her daughter for a repeat of the movie-night tour. It is a heavenly,
giddy 13-year-old girl I was who discovered scary movies for the geek-out, bucket-list item for any fan of classic horror, and
first time in 1980-something. especially the original Friday the 13th film. And many people, myself
We just met moments ago. But at Camp Crystal Lake events— included, make the trip to Camp Crystal Lake and the surrounding
run by Crystal Lake Tours, a company made of Camp NoBeBoSco sites on the Friday the 13th trail in Warren County, New Jersey, an
alumni who conduct the spring, summer, and fall tours—you annual ritual.
quickly meet new people who share your same cult passion for “You know what? It was just fantastic,” says Denise, 50, a
Eighties horror. preschool teacher from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “We enjoyed it
I went for the first time in September of 2021: a three-hour so much. I just can’t tell you how much we raved about it when we
daytime tour. I came back in August of 2022 for a nighttime tour got back.
plus the on-site movie screening. As I write this, I am preparing “I think it was much more than what I expected,” says Denise,
for my third trip, where I will meet Denise, her two sisters, and who got her first tour ticket as a birthday gift in 2022. “It wasn’t just

48 RETROFAN March 2024

walking around and looking at some empty buildings. They had
all the re-enactment stuff there. If you were a big fan, you knew
exactly what they were talking about.”
On the Crystal Lake Tour, you will get a map of the surrounding
area with marked spots of other filming sites, located in nearby
Hope and Blairstown. Don’t skip this part: It is absolutely half the
fun of the whole retro experience, and the vicinity will feel eerily
familiar in many spots. Friday the 13th fans are easy to identify when
they are exploring, says Lisa Iulo, owner of Hope Junction Antiques.
She and her husband, Charles, bought the space 18 years ago, and
at the time, she didn’t know that it appeared early in the film as
the general store and eatery where the doomed Annie asked for
directions to Camp Crystal Lake. Coffee drinkers looked at Annie
like she was crazy; that cursed camp is known as “Camp Blood!”
“Little by little, I would find out from other people about Friday
the 13th,” says Lisa. She is not a horror fan, but she thinks her busi-
ness’ place in pop-culture history is exciting. “I didn’t really think
too much of it. But then, as years passed and they started to make a
bigger deal of it, I just started getting people coming in.”
Lisa lives right across the street from her antique store, and
she smiles when she looks out the window and sees fans, often
dressed in black, browsing. She sometimes opens the store, even
if it would otherwise be closed, just for them. Ever since the
Crystal Lake Tour events started in 2011, tourism has boomed;
Lisa gets customers from as far away as Australia. She sells rocks
hand-painted with slasher Jason’s face, along with Camp Blood/
Camp Crystal Lake signs.
Some old-timers in the region have memories of the filming of
Friday the 13th in 1979. Nancy Smith of Columbia, New Jersey, about 20
at the time, was working as a waitress at a
truck stop along Route 46. Future superstar
Kevin Bacon—who plays the doomed Jack
Burrell, who gets killed early in the movie
with an arrow in the throat—came in to
eat breakfast with several Friday the 13th
castmates one day. Kevin wrote his name
on a napkin, handed it to Nancy, and boldly
said: “You’d better hold on to this. I’m going
to be famous someday.”
“I threw it away,” she recalls with a
chuckle. “I was a girl working for tips.”
Kevin’s prediction turned out to be
true. As for Nancy, she is not a horror fan
and didn’t see the appeal of the movie or
the significance of the actor at the time.
But a few years later, when she saw the
famous Kevin Bacon in Footloose? Nancy started telling her story
about the Friday the 13th alumnus who became a household name.
Even though Jack, his alter ego, didn’t last long.
KELLIE B. GORMLY is an award-winning,
veteran journalist who writes for top publi-
cations including The Washington Post,
Smithsonian, History.com, and Woman’s
World. Kellie is a total retro geek and loves all
things vintage pop culture, so she especially
loves doing stories like this one, and meeting
other fans during her adventures.
AUTHOR’S RECOMMENDATIONS
for RETRO TRAVELERS
CRYSTAL LAKE TOURS
The heart of the Friday the 13th
trail in Warren County, New Jer-
sey, is the tour of Camp Crystal Lake,
otherwise known as Camp NoBeBoSco
for Boy Scouts.
Crystal Lake Tours offers several types of tours,
including shorter and longer ones, and daytime and
nighttime adventures.
Tours usually are offered only in May, late August,
September, and October, outside of the children’s camping
season. Tours fill up fast, so follow the website and sign up
for ticket alerts.
crystallaketours.com.
‘FRIDAY THE 13TH’ TRAIL
The other sites are within a 15-mile radius of the camp, in
and around the townships of Hope and Blairstown. I highly
recommend staying at The Inn at Millrace Pond, a charming
Hope inn that is unrelated to the movie but goes back to
1769. www.innatmillracepond.com
And be sure to check out these other Friday the 13th spots:
f Remember the scene at the beginning of the movie where
the truck driver drops off a hitchhiking Annie at a cem-
etery—a location we now know is an ominous “Easter
egg” about death to come? That is the Moravian Cemetery,
located on High Street in Hope. You can park across the
street and see the iron gate—a spot that looks exactly the
same as it did 40 years ago.
f Annie met Enos the truck driver at a general store, which
is now Hope Junction Antiques on High Street. This is
also the spot where Annie encounters Crazy Ralph, who
creeps out the incoming camp workers with ominous but
true “You’re all doomed!” warnings. You can stand out-
side the real estate office next door and see where Crazy
Ralph rode off on his bike.
f In Blairstown, eating a meal at the Blairstown Diner on
Route 94 is a must. The eatery is very proud of its film
history as the site where Camp Blood owner Steve Christy
spent the evening of that horrific Friday the 13th in June
1980, before he returned to camp and met a grisly fate at
the hands of Mrs. Voorhees. Both the outside and inside
of the Blairstown Diner look familiar, and the casual fare
is tasty. A giant map on the wall is marked up with the
home cities of faraway visitors. www.blairstowndiner.com
f After your diner meal, you can walk over to the Blair-
stown historic core and follow Annie’s footsteps along
Carhart Street, where the First National Bank building
and the adjoining tunnel she walks through look just like
the movie set. That bridge Annie walks over is just a few
steps away from the building.
For more information about this region of New Jersey and
some of these sites, visit explorewarren.org.
RETROFAN March 2024 49
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WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON

GUNN
FOR
HIRE

BY WILL MURRAY the producer had a problem.
He couldn’t find an actor who
might embody his concept of an
I don’t know what NBC executives were expecting when they urbane investigator.
launched Peter Gunn in the fall of 1958. That was the TV season As the man who ultimately
in which 37 Westerns aired. Peter Gunn was clearly swimming accepted the role recalled it,
Peter Gunn star Craig
Stevens. (BELOW) Peter
Gunn creator Blake
Edwards, in 1966. Edwards
photo: G. K. Austin/Wikimedia. Peter
Gunn © Spartan Productions.

upstream. Yet the show managed to break out of the stampede
of cowboy protagonists and not only survive, but is today remem-
bered as an innovative television program.
Blake Edwards was the creator. He had written a 1949–1953
radio show called Richard Diamond, Private Detective that was so
successful it crossed over into TV for four seasons. Future Fugitive
star David Janssen played the role that Dick Powell had made
famous on radio.
Such success in two media prompted Edwards to think he
could reimagine the cliché private eye for a new series, not a radio
retread. He called him Peter Gunn.
HAVE GUNN, WILL SLEUTH
According to Edwards, Gunn was “a
present-day soldier of fortune who has
found himself a gimmick that pays him a
very comfortable living. The gimmick was
trouble. People who had major trouble will
pay handsomely to get rid of it, and Peter
Gunn was a man who will not only accept
the pay but do something about it. He
knows every element of the city, from cops
to crooks. He also, of course, has his soft
side and will occasionally take on a charity
job for free.”
Gunn was an update of Have Gun, Will
Travel’s Paladin, to which it was compared
when the show was announced. However,
Edwards phoned him, saying,
“Look, for six months I’ve been
planning a TV series. We talked about it, remember? Well, I’ve
searched high and low. I’ve tested stars, and I’ve tested unknowns.
Nothing. This morning, as my wife was walking out the dressing
room, she suddenly said, ‘What about Craig Stevens?’”
Stevens knew Blake socially. His wife, Alexis Smith, had worked
on Edwards’ comedy, This Happy Feeling.
“Craig, I didn’t think of you at the time,” pressed Edwards. “I
didn’t parallel you with what I had in mind, but all along you were
really my model. Will you do it?”
Stevens was reluctant, but Edwards
pushed him.
“No trench coat, no sloppy hat,” Edwards
said. “You are not to be a rough type of guy.
You should be more of a Madison Avenue
type; calm, correct, impeccable, but able
to handle a tough situation when it comes
up. I don’t want this to be just another
whodunit.”
Stevens recounted, “Both Alexis and
I really admired this guy, so we waited
anxiously for the script to arrive. When it
finally came, there was a note attached,
‘Hope you dig this thing. Blake.’”
Stevens wired back: “Dig it the most.
Peter Gunn.”

RETROFAN March 2024 51

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

“He knew exactly what he wanted,” Stevens recalled. “When

I saw the first script, I was crazy about the show. It was fresh and
had good dialogue, with a situation constructed around a basic
theme. After all, how novel can you get with a story about a private
investigator? But Blake has given it a gloss and color and character.
“He didn’t want a detective in rumpled clothes, or a trench
coat,” added Stevens. “He wanted a conservative, crewcut type
in custom-tailored clothes. The first question he asked me was
whether I’d have my hair cut for the pilot film. Not that my hair was
so long—it was just an average leading men haircut.”
Blake spent $75,000 making the pilot. It was optioned on first
showing.
“It must have been a terrific pilot,” joked Stevens. “The client
even wanted us to keep the same heavy, but we couldn’t do that or
we’d have the same story each week.”

GUNN MOVES IN FOR ‘THE KILL’

This was Universal’s first foray into TV.
“Edwards has had a reputation as one of the best young
directors in Hollywood,” Stevens recounted. “He wanted to do
something in television, but not just another show. When he told
people what he wanted to do, they told him he was crazy. Live
music, or at least originally scored music, on a half–hour show? The
kind of camera work you expect in a major movie production? They
laughed at him.”
Originally, the show was going to be called Gunn for Hire. But
there were rights issues with the 1942 Alan Ladd film, This Gun for
Hire. So it became Peter Gunn.
No matter what it was called, Peter Gunn was bound to be a hit.
Those rival Western TV heroes had their six-shooters aimed at each
other. All Gunn had to do was stick to the city side of the action and
let the Nielsen ratings sort it all out.
The first episode was called “The Kill.” It opened with a police
prowl car pulling over the limousine of a vice lord who had been
riding high since the Twenties.
Without apparent reason, the cops shoot the man and his driver
dead, then drive off.
We meet Peter Gunn at Big Al Fusary’s funeral, where his
successor, played by Gavin MacLeod, questions Gunn as to what
he’s doing there, departing with a veiled threat. So does police
Lieutenant Charles Jacoby, who apparently has known Peter Gunn
for some time and has a brittle relationship with him.
Matters heat up when Gunn goes to River Street in the unnamed
city in which he operates, and takes what will become his habitual
table at a waterfront nightclub called Mother’s. As played by Hope
Emerson, club owner “Mother” is a crusty old dame who confides in
Peter that the new crime boss is after a piece of her action. She asks
Peter to go talk to him.
During the scene, Lola Albright as Edie Hart steps onto the stage
and belts out her first of many signature torch songs. Before Gunn
leaves on his errand, they have an intimate conversation out back,
and it’s clear that the singer is hopelessly infatuated with the hand-
some Gunn, an emotion which Craig Stevens’ character returns.
Visiting the new gang lord in the middle of a racquetball game, Not only was Peter Gunn a stylish updating of
Gunn gets told no for an answer. This friendly overture leads to star Richard Boone’s TV Western Have Gun, Will
three sticks of dynamite being planted under the floorboards of Travel, but both series spawned comic books
Mother’s. Boom! from Dell—with photo covers that are prized
Fortunately, it’s after hours, and while Mother is in the hospital, by collectors. Have Gun, Will Travel © Warner Bros. Peter Gunn ©
her life hanging in the balance, Peter Gunn forces one of the gang Spartan Productions.

52 RETROFAN March 2024

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

meant to be deconstructionist in its way. But we never see Gavin

MacLeod again, the police having picked him up on conspiracy to
commit murder charges.
Well, in a half-hour show, you have to expect a certain amount
of compression of narrative. It seems to me that Peter Gunn should
have closed the case, even if it wasn’t officially one of his cases.

WHO IS PETER GUNN?

There’s a certain ambiguity to the character. What is he? A private
investigator? An ex-cop? A soldier of fortune in mufti? “The Kill”
leaves those points without clarification. And that adds to the
elegant mystique of Peter Gunn.
Even Craig Stevens wasn’t certain. “I wish you hadn’t asked that,”
he remarked. “We’ve finished about 24 episodes so far and I’m not
quite sure.”
Eventually, he figured it out. “I play a gun for hire,” Stevens later
said. “I am a troubleshooter and make my living (as Gunn, of course)
solving problems other people can’t solve. The role isn’t exactly a
private eye type of character. Sometimes Gunn gets paid for his
services, and sometimes he works solely to see the justice is done.
So he’s not a Thin Man, a Mike Hammer, or a [Have Gun, Will Travel’s]
Paladin.”
If he’s a P.I,. this first outing leaves much to be desired. The
major clue in the case—the murder of the tailor who made the
fake police uniforms—was brought to Gunn’s attention by Jacoby.
The show might as well have been called Lt. Jacoby—guest-starring
some guy named Gunn.
Gunn does significantly better in his next caper, “Streetcar
Jones.” In the episode’s opener, musician Marty Swift falls off his
piano stool when the curtain opens on his performance at a rival

(ABOVE) Actor Craig Stevens thought his career had

bottomed out with 1957’s The Deadly Mantis, but before long
(RIGHT) Peter Gunn would put him in the winner’s circle—
and in advertising that traded on his TV popularity. The
Deadly Mantis © Universal Pictures. Movie poster courtesy of Heritage.

lord’s henchmen back to Mother’s at gunpoint and threatens to kill

him if Mother doesn’t make it through the night.
This has a strong psychological effect. He gives up his boss.
I’m not sure what Peter Gunn expected to happen when he
forced the guy to phone his boss at gunpoint and demand $50,000
to be delivered immediately to Mother’s or he will turn state’s
evidence. But the phony police car shows up, and the two fake cops
from the teaser step out and gun him down in the street.
Where is Peter Gunn in all this? Having been hung up by him on
the phone, Edie decided to find out what was going on. When Edie
barges in through Mother’s’ back door, Gunn is distracted enough
for the cowering crook to hit him over the head with a bottle. Out
he goes.
Fortunately for almost all concerned, Edie had also called
Jacoby, and the lieutenant and his uniformed officers cut off their
escape, riddling the fake cops with lead.
It’s not the most impressive resolution for a tough private
eye—or whatever Peter Gunn is supposed to be. Maybe it was

RETROFAN March 2024 53

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

nightclub, the Big Eye. There’s a

knife in Marty’s back. He’s dead.
A rival musician named (LEFT) Peter Gunn stars Lola Albright and
Streetcar Jones is jailed on Craig Stevens, in a 1960 photograph. © Spartan
suspicion of the murder, having Productions.
threatened Swift, who is
disliked in the local music scene
due to his habit of lifting other
people’s tunes.
Much of the action takes
place at the Big Eye. Inevitably,
Gunn gets beaten up by a
couple of thugs when he gets
too warm. Without doing much
actual detecting, he manages
to figure out who the real killer
is, and ends up being escorted
out of the Big Eye by the two
bruisers who had pummeled
him earlier in the story.
It looks like Peter Gunn is in
for worse than a beating. But
Lieutenant Jacoby springs up from a corner
table, revolver in fist, and follows them out. (RIGHT) Fans would soon
Jacoby deals rough justice to the bad be swooning as Lola was
guys and the true murderer is arrested in crooning each week on Peter
the club. It’s a neater climax, but once again, Gunn. © TV Guide. (BELOW) Lola
the hero has to be rescued. Maybe that was Wants You, Ms. Albright’s
the point. Maybe this was Blake Edwards’ 1957 album. Courtesy of Heritage.
way of pulling the rug out from all the all
the old hard-boiled private eye clichés.
Gunn was suave, debonair, California
cool, worldly, hip, and at home in all strata of society in
that era of beatnik coffee houses. He seemed to know
everybody, high and low.
“It started with his environment,” explained
Edwards. “My whole intention was to populate the
night world of Peter Gunn with strange, unusual
characters.”
These ranged from a midget pool hustler played
by Billy Barty in the recurring role of Babby to any
number of oddballs and ex-cons, most attached to
what passed for the counterculture in those pre-hippie
days. Many investigations wove through the nightclub
scene. Gunn had only to take on a case and he’d know
who to talk to in order to develop a lead. This helped
since he had only 22 minutes to solve a matter.
Edwards partially modeled Gunn after Raymond
Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, saying, “Chandler was one
of my heroes. There’s a lot of Marlowe in Gunn.”
The character’s central affectations were Edwards’
own. Edwards smoked Lucky Strikes, so did his hero.
“Gunn and I hung out in jazz clubs,” the producer
added. “I’d given up booze before the first episode was
shot, and I thought that should be reflected in Gunn.
After all, I made him in my own image.”
Stevens gave all credit to his producer for estab-
lishing the Gunn persona. “You see, it was Edwards
who remade me to play Gunn the way he thought I

54 RETROFAN March 2024

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

should. He told me to get the short haircut I have. He insisted upon “Hank Mancini writes all the music, and it’s an integral part
on the neat, expensive suits I wear. Matter of fact, everything that of every scene,” explained Lola Albright. “The music adds to the
goes into making Gunn what he is was Edwards’ idea. He gave me a excitement of the stories.”
personality. I did the acting.” “Blake Edwards has set up an extraordinary combination of
It was left to Stevens to work up a backstory. “Gunn came from moods in Peter Gunn,” praised Mancini. “When you stop to analyze
a family of better than average it, you can’t find the boundaries
means,” he related. “His father where the music stops and the
was a professional of some show takes over.”
kind. In high school, Gunn Edwards worked closely with
distinguished himself without Mancini, according to Craig
seeming to crack a book, and Stevens. “In his delineation of
as the only basketball forward the characters in each episode,
who could play 60 minutes he tells exactly the style of their
without getting his hair mussed. clothes and their haircuts. He
Then he went to an Ivy League details the kind of furniture he
university—Harvard—where wants on the set and works out
he breezed through a liberal arts
course, switching from the boxing to the
chess team when he ran out of sparring
partners and managed to be late for
commencement.”
The contrast between Gunn and the
different social groups he encountered
meant that his tailored suits mattered.
“The clothes are a detail,” allowed
Stevens, “but a fairly important one.
Peter Gunn is not the usual private eye.
He’s an educated man, who might be
taken for a lawyer or a young executive.
We’re trying to create a distinctive
visual impression of him—a silhouette
that’s tall, trim, modern, and yet roomy
enough to cover a gun and a hip holster.
“We had a top tailor working on it (CENTER) Autographed publicity
for several months,” he revealed. “You photo of “Peter Gunn Theme”
might call the result a cross between composer Henry Mancini. Courtesy of
Wall Street and Madison Avenue. It Heritage. (SURROUNDING) The jazzy
makes Peter Gunn stand out from his score from the show inspired several
surroundings when he enters a Skid Row dive albums.
or mixes with rough characters. On the other
hand, he looks perfectly at home at a concert,
or a garden party.” with composer Hank Mancini the type of
music he needs to express all the moods
THE MUSIC OF ‘PETER GUNN’ he has written—from ‘beat generation’
Music was an equally huge part of Peter Gunn’s jazz joint stuff to ‘smoky-smooth’
appeal, thanks to composer Henry Mancini, background scores for love scenes.”
who recalled that when first offered the job, When an album of Mancini’s
mistakenly assumed he was going to score a Peter Gunn music was released, it
Western! sold millions. Emmys and Grammys
Instead, Mancini became the man who followed.
introduced jazz into episodic television. “The jazz audience is not a vast one,”
“The Peter Gunn theme actually derives more acknowledged Mancini. “It’s specific and
from rock ’n’ roll than jazz,” he admitted. “I use special. We’ve reached it—and beyond
guitar and piano in unison, playing what is known in music as an it. We’re onto a larger audience by associating jazz with
ostinato, which means obstinate. It was sustained throughout the story and characters.”
piece, giving it a sinister effect, with some frightened saxophone Not until Miami Vice [see RetroFan #29—ed.] would such
sounds, and some shouting brass.” a melding of narrative and music be again attempted. “It’s
Beyond the pulsating theme, no one had ever fused live jazz a struggle to stay fresh and original every week,” admitted
with television storylines before. Mancini, “but as long as the show can go, I can go.”

RETROFAN March 2024 55

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
Another musical element was chanteuse Edie Hart. Many
episodes would start, stop, or end with her singing a sultry jazz
standard.
For the part of Edie, Edwards remembered, “We toyed at first
with the idea of getting a name singer. But we soon realized it
would be impractical to have a name singer cast in what is primarily
a straight dramatic role. It wouldn’t be fair, either, to the singer or
the audience. Once that idea was discarded, my first thought was
Lola Albright. Lola had been going along well but not terribly well,
if you know what I mean. But I’d always felt she had a potential that
had never really been tapped. She’s sort of two beats off center in
the way she talks and sings, and that’s what we were looking for.”
(TOP) Hope Emerson, as Mother, with Stevens. (ABOVE)
Herschel Bernardi as Lt. Jacoby. (RIGHT) Billy Barty as
Babby, with Stevens. © Spartan Productions.
56 RETROFAN March 2024
Albright claimed that Blake Edwards had her in mind from the
outset. “But he had no idea I could sing. I had just recorded my first
album.”
Henry Mancini later reminisced, “She was perfect casting for
that role because she had an off-the-cuff kind of jazz delivery that
was very hard to find.”
CAST CHEMISTRY
Edie was another departure from TV formula.
“In many TV adventure series,” observed Albright, “the male lead
has a different girl Friday every week—maybe several. We wanted
something different and offbeat. A regular girlfriend is a change of
pace in a private-eye show. Edie Hart is around to give dimension to
the character of Peter Gunn.”
Craig Stevens clarified, “We didn’t plan on a running girl. Lola
Albright appeared in the pilot as Edie. We were going to bring her
back for two or three shows, then kill her. But Lola was so great the
client insisted we keep her. Now, no matter how many girls appear
in the script, we always go back to Edie.”
For television at that time, their love scenes were pretty steamy.
“Blake keeps a sharp eye on them to make certain there is
nothing offensive in them,” Stevens noted. “They’re written with
terseness, tenderness, a sprinkling of humor here and there and
played in low key.”
“We use sex as a come-on,” Edwards allowed. “You promise a
little, and don’t deliver a lot.”
“We try to make it clear that our characters are having a love
affair,” Albright added, “and, at the same time, keep the network
censors from getting ulcers.”
“But we’ll never make the mistake of letting her catch him,”
Edwards insisted. “Never.”
“The fans wouldn’t stand for us even being engaged,” Stevens
pointed out. “So that’s the way the script goes.”
“I liked the idea of developing a character like Edie Hart over
a period of months,” Albright revealed. “It seemed a lot more
rewarding than doing a characterization just once in a live show,

then forgetting about it. I tried to imagine what this girl would be
like. She’s a girl who likes men and understands them. She was
probably married once before, but it didn’t last. She knows how to
make men do what she wants, without actually pressing them….”
Herschel Bernardi as Lieutenant Jacoby also wasn’t cast as a
regular. But the chemistry between he and Gunn all but mandated
rethinking.
“Lieutenant Jacoby is hard working, witty, and sardonic,”
Bernardi observed. “He is fond of Peter Gunn, but the real rub is
that he’s only making $126 a week for his work while Pete is picking
up $5000 or $6000 per case for his. When you’re playing the part,
Minerva Urecal replaced Hope Emerson as Mother for the
second season. © Spartan Productions.
that’s the thing you must keep thinking about, that’s how you
achieve that suggestion of friction between them.”
Bernardi played Jacoby as Gunn’s world-weary opposite number.
“The whole idea is to have me look tired, and poor—but never
defeated.”
His character turned out to be as innovative as Albright’s. Real-
life police applauded his refreshingly cliché-free portrayal.
“I really don’t know anything much about police work,” Bernardi
admitted. “But the nice part was that it showed that we’ve done
what we set out to do—we’ve humanized the policeman in a
private-eye show.
“I was the worst cop in the world,” he quipped, “always
getting the gun caught in the holster. I guess I broke half a dozen
wristwatches putting the handcuffs on fellow actors. But the series
had great style. Peter Gunn owed 32 suits. Jacoby was a two-suit
detective.”
Actually, Craig Stevens maintained a personal wardrobe of some
40 suits—each one in duplicate so if one was damaged in a fight,
he could switch to its fresh counterpart for a love scene.
On Friday, February 13, 1959, Herschel Bernardi broke his leg in a
traffic accident. After missing five episodes, the character of Jacoby
ends up hospitalized, too, thanks to a gangster’s bullet in “Bullet
for a Badge.” Two episodes later, Edie lands in the same ward, the
victim of a vengeful Gunn enemy—which proved convenient for
filming.
Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
In the second season opener, “Protection,” Mother’s is again
vandalized and needs to be renovated. In the role of Mother,
Minerva Urecal replaced Hope Emerson, who had accepted an offer
to do another TV series, dying soon after.
“They’re both the same type of gal,” the former Tugboat Annie
claimed, “only Mother wears fancier clothes. They can both take
care of themselves in their tough waterfront environments.”
[Editor’s note: Salty-tongued lady sailor Tugboat Annie originated
in Saturday Morning Post stories before being adapted to movies in
the Thirties. In 1956–1957, future Peter Gunn actress Minerva Urecal
played the sailor in the short-lived Canadian television series, The
Adventures of Tugboat Annie.]
In the next episode, “Crisscross,” Mother’s jazz club becomes
upscale, with a waterside terrace on the other side of a sliding glass
wall.
Now 40, Stevens had grown comfortable in the role. “This
season, as Gunn, I’ve had more situations and entirely different
scenes than I’ve ever had in straight TV acting or even in movies. I’m
fascinated with the role.
FAST FACTS
Peter Gunn © Spartan Productions.
PETER GUNN
f No. of seasons: Three
f No. of episodes: 114
f Original run: September 22, 1958–September 18, 1961
f Created by: Blake Edwards
f Primary cast: Craig Stevens, Lola Albright, Herschel
Bernardi, Hope Emerson, Minerva Urecal
f Theme song: “Peter Gunn Theme” by Henry Mancini
f Network: NBC (1958–1960), ABC (1960–1961)
SPIN-OFFS AND REMAKES:
f Gunn… Number One! (a.k.a. Gunn) (Blake Edwards–
directed theatrical film released June 28, 1967, starring
Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn, Laura Devon as Edie, Ed
Asner as Jacoby, and Helen Traubel as Mother)
f Peter Gunn (Blake Edwards–directed television pilot
film aired April 23, 1989, starring Peter Strauss as Peter
Gunn, Barbara Williams as Edie, Peter Jurasik as Jaco-
by, and Pearl Bailey as Mother)
RETROFAN March 2024 57
 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

Drawing Gunn Time! (LEFT) “Peter Goon,”

scripted by Paul Laikin and drawn by Jack
Davis, spoofed the show in Cracked #12
(Jan. 1959). Here’s page 1 of the original
art. (ABOVE) A Season Three Peter Gunn
illo by artist Rupert Thompson. (BELOW)
Stevens, Albright, and Bernardi, by Screen
Facts magazine cartoonist Al Kilgore, in a
Peter Gunn promo. All, courtesy of Heritage. Peter Gunn
© Spartan Productions.

want.’ I pleaded to be allowed

to play heavies. But always the
“I’ve learned more in the few months that second lead. I used to call them
I’ve been working on Peter Gunn than I have ‘Willards.’ I never got the girl.”
in years,” continued Stevens. “The role is not Stevens contemplated
one-dimensional as one might think. The scripts quitting showbiz.
give me a great scope and cover a wide variety “I guess it’s pretty well
of acting chores. Most of the writing is done by known that I was considered
Blake Edwards, who directs every other show in just another ‘B’ movie guy until
the series.” Blake Edwards persuaded me
“For a man who was a writer,” countered to cut my hair and play Peter
director Lamont Johnson, “his choice of scripts Gunn,” he explained. “Something
was pretty mediocre. He expected that the in my vanity rebelled, but to be
wonderful people that he had—Herschel perfectly honest about it, I never
Bernardi, Craig Stevens, and sort of kookie direc- should have had my hair long the
tors—would make something out of it. I would way it was. I used to have those
complain. ‘Blake, this last act is stupid! What are grand waves that I imagined
you doing?’ He says, ‘You’re the director. You fix actors were supposed to show
it.’ He put you on your honor. And also on your off to the girls. The proof that it
imagination.” was wrong is that nothing ever
The remarkable thing about Peter Gunn was that it revived the happened to me professionally until I cut it.”
fortunes of its principal cast. Herschel Bernardi was a type that producers called “depend-
Stevens’ film career had just hit bottom when he starred in able,” and owned what he called a “utility face.”
1957’s The Deadly Mantis. “But thanks to Blake Edwards,” he said, “I have made a major
“I was in movies for 20 years,” he lamented, “and they’d throw breakthrough in casting. Blake is an original thinker, and he was
a script on my lawn and say, ‘Just learn your lines. That’s all we the first to let me play a cop. Up till then no one would have me as a

58 RETROFAN March 2024

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon

member of the law. I didn’t have the face. I was just right for parts
for 50-year-old men, but I couldn’t go any lower. Now I’m a cop, and
I play my own age. You know what actors hear nowadays when they
apply for a cop part on a TV show? Producers say, ‘We need a kind of
Lt. Jacoby type.’ I’m in fashion.”
Lola Albright was just another starlet in a surging sea of talent.
“I just wanted to be an actress,” she admitted freely. “I played bit
parts in the movies for several years before I got a good role in [the
1948 film] Champion, but even after complementary reviews in that,
and more than 200 TV appearances, my career didn’t seem to be
going anywhere. My whole career had been sort of ordinary. Peter
Gunn changed all that.”

GUNNED DOWN
Early in 1960, Peter Gunn seemed to be riding high. Rank imitations
like Johnny Staccato popped up. There was talk of filming episodes in
Europe, and a Peter Gunn feature was in development.
“They’ve imitated us so much on TV that we’ve just got to move
our boy to the larger screen,” Stevens revealed, adding cryptically,
“I may actually be Gunn in the movie—or maybe I’ll be some other
character. But whoever I play will have the qualities people like
about Gunn.”
Inexplicably, ratings began sliding.
“I didn’t expect us to stay at the very top, and I’m glad we’ve
settled down as just a successful show,” observed Stevens. “After
all, there’s only one direction you can take if you camp near the
summit like a sitting duck.”
NBC cancelled the show. But ABC picked it up.
The first episode of Season Three was the Hitchcockian “The
Passenger.” Several episodes
were set in Central and South
America for a change of place—
and pace.
Minerva Urecal left the show, (TOP) Edwards and Stevens weren’t
unhappy with her diminished yet done with the TV gumshoe
part. Mother’s is replaced by a when they brought back the
supper club called Edie’s and the character in the 1967 theatrical
maître d’ cuisine is named Leslie, release Gunn… Number One! Poster
played by James Lanphier. The courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) Peter Strauss,
episode that introduces them in an ABC publicity photo for the
was called “The Maître D’.” Due in 1989 Peter Gunn telemovie. © Spartan
part to its jazz background, Black Productions.
performers appeared more often
on Peter Gunn than most shows
of that era. Stevens later claimed that he and Edwards
Everyone seemed content, cancelled the series by mutual agreement when
although Herschel Bernardi Edwards got busy with film projects, fearing the
expressed an interest in series would suffer in inferior hands.
depicting Jacoby’s home life. In a classy and unusual move, they saved one
“I think it would add some first-run episode, “Murder on the Line,” for the final
interest to the show if I acquired a wife and some kids, and if Gunn week when the show went off the air.
came over and dragged me away from drying dishes, or mowing That seemed to close the book on Peter Gunn. After Blake
the lawn to work on the case,” he suggested. Edwards’ film career took off, he dusted off his idea of a Gunn
Imitators and parallel shows mushroomed. 77 Sunset Strip, feature in 1967.
Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6—all Warner Bros. productions—ran “I always felt that it had all the ingredients for a movie, and so
an hour. Poor Peter Gunn was stuck at 30 minutes, so he never got to did Blake,” Stevens noted. “It just was a question of timing—when
stretch his wings or investigate more complex plots. all concerned could get together.”
That, perhaps, more than anything, explains why Peter Gunn, Unfortunately, all other key roles were recast. Ed Asner became
although a ratings success, lasted only three seasons. Lt. Charles Jacoby. Pearl Bailey was the new Mother.

RETROFAN March 2024 59

 Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
“It’s a fascinating thing to find the character of Gunn again,”
reflected Stevens. “There are some modifications of the TV
personality, but he is essentially the same. His apartment is a little
more plush than it was, but he still hangs out at Mother’s, the gin
mill, with the pretty girl singer. But instead of Lola Albright, the girl
will be Laura Devon in the movie version.”
When a mobster who once saved his life is murdered, Peter
Gunn investigates with a vengeance, working his way through the
Sixties counterculture.
“This is not a takeoff on the character,” Stevens promised. “I
didn’t just want to use my image, which is what producers wanted
of me in the past. This is Peter Gunn, and expanded. The movie
gives us a wider range. It is still the same. Low key, but in color.
We’ve got our cameraman from the series, Joe Lathrop.”
Henry Mancini also returned. But found it a challenge. “I can’t go
back and do the same score that I did for the TV series in 1959–60.
That has become almost a caricature nowadays. So, except for the
theme music and the song called ‘Dreamsviille,’ I’ve been forced to
concoct a brand-new score.”
“The six years that had passed since the TV Peter Gunn went off
the air had seen swelling changes, not only in jazz, but in all phases
of the pop music spectrum,” Edwards acknowledged.
Mancini had an uncredited role as a piano player.
Regrettably, Gunn… Number One!, as it was optimistically
announced, flopped.
But that was not the end of Peter Gunn. In 1977, radio-turned-TV
scriptwriter E. Jack Newman was asked to pen a 90-minute TV
movie with Craig Stevens returning to the role. Regrettably, Blake
Edwards’ film commitments interfered.
60 RETROFAN March 2024
Another revival was floated in 1984 with Robert Wagner taking
the part of Gunn. When the project finally went to camera in 1989,
Peter Strauss had replaced him. Peter Jurasik was Jacoby, while
Blake Edwards’ daughter, Jennifer, became the new Edie, again
back at Mother’s. Edwards both wrote and directed this project.
Despite promising reviews and ratings, ABC inexplicably declined
to move ahead with the planned TV series. The project marked the
end of the long career of Peter Gunn.
“It didn’t work,” Edwards later admitted. “The guy who played
Peter Gunn just wasn’t Peter Gunn.”
Since that time, several attempts to relaunch Peter Gunn were
undertaken. None have jelled. Yet, despite its ultimate failure to
thrive, Peter Gunn is better remembered than most of its imitators.
I imagine someone will one day revive Gunn, but without Craig
Stevens, I wouldn’t bet on success. Peter Gunn was a man of his
time and his brief era is long gone.
“A successful television series, like Peter Gunn, is all a matter of
timing and taste,” reflected Craig Stevens in 1973. “The Gunn series
had a perfect blend of intrigue, humor, and human drama that
so far has not been matched by the recent series along that line. I
doubt if Peter Gunn will ever return.”
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.
 ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING

Big
John,
Run, Little
Joe, John
© D’Angelo-
Bullock-Allen

Run’
Productions.

BY ANDY MANGELS
Productions.
© D’Angelo

Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Morning, your

constant guide to the shows that thrilled us from yesteryear,
exciting our imaginations and capturing our memories. Grab some
milk and cereal, sit cross-legged leaning against the couch, and dig
into Retro Saturday Morning! This issue, you get a double-dip into
William P. D’Angelo two live-action Saturday morning shows with some impressive
pedigrees… and I’m not talking just about the dog in Run, Joe, Run!
It’s our look a two NBC series from DBA Productions!

WHO WAS DOING BUSINESS AS DBA?

DBA was better known as D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, and
1974 was D’Angelo’s debut to provide content for Saturday morning
television… but not the trio’s debut at enticing kids to watch tele-
vision! Although the company started as D’Angelo Productions, it
eventually morphed into a trio of producers at DBA’s head: William
P. D’Angelo, Harvey Bullock, and Raymond S. Allen.
• William P. D’Angelo cut his teeth in the Sixties as a writer,
Harvey Bullock director, and producer for such series as No Time for Sergeants; Love,
American Style; and Room 222, though his biggest success was as an
associate producer for the mammoth hit series, Batman.
• Harvey Bullock is the name of one of the Gotham P.D.’s most
famous characters in the Batman comics, but it’s also the name
of a writer and series creator since 1954, who worked on The Real
McCoys, Rango, Gomer Pyle USMC, and many of the same shows that
Raymond Allen wrote for.
• Raymond S. Allen (born Morris Saffian) had been a writer in
Hollywood since 1956, toiling on scripts for The Many Loves of Dobie
Gillis, The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show, a 1964 Archie
TV film based on the comics, The Flintstones, Hogan’s Heroes, and
Love, American Style.
Raymond S. Allen As D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, the trio individually
or collectively produced six live-action Saturday morning shows

RETROFAN March 2024 61

 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

for NBC mornings: Run, Joe, Run (1974–1975), Westwind

(1975–1976), McDuff, The Talking Dog (1976), Big John, Little
John (1976), Monster Squad (1976) [see feature article
in RetroFan #29—ed.], and The Red Hand Gang (1977).
Although this output would seem to rival Filmation and
Krofft for live-action Saturday morning shows, none
of the DBA Productions shows were terribly popular,
and several didn’t even air all of their episodes prior to
cancellation.

LASSIE + RIN-TIN-TIN + THE FUGITIVE =

RUN, JOE, RUN
Dogs and Hollywood have had a long love affair. In
1905, the short British film Rescued by Rover starred a
collie that helped save a kidnapped baby; that film
had major impact on the tyro film industry, including
being the first film to pay its actors! Strongheart was a
German Shepherd that headlined six adventure films
from 1921–1927, becoming the first “canine film star.”
Pete, the ring-eyed American Staffordshire Terrier pup,
appeared in Buster Brown and Our Gang theatrical shorts
and films from 1927 through the World War II era.
Rin Tin Tin was a German Shepherd, rescued on the
French battlefields in World War I, and brought back
to America, where he became the silent film star of
27 movies, and the star of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
from 1954–1959. Lassie, a Rough Collie, starred in their
first Hollywood film, Lassie Come Home, in 1943, and 11
later sequels, plus a TV series from 1954–1973, and an
animated series from Filmation, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers,
in 1972. Benji, a mutt shelter dog that debuted in his
own film in 1974, had previously been seen in Petticoat
Junction, Green Acres, and Beverly Hillbillies.
Other famous dogs onscreen included Toto the
Cairn Terrier in The Wizard of Oz (1939); Old Yeller, a lab/
mastiff mix whose 1957 film made millions cry [RetroFan
will be interviewing Old Yeller co-star Beverly Washburn next year The role of Joe in Run, Joe, Run was played by German
in issue #38—ed.]; and the animated stars of The Lady and the Tramp Shepherd first-time animal actor Heinrich (D’Angelo).
(1955)… not to mention Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto (debuting in © D’Angelo Productions.
1930) and whatever the heck Goofy (debuting 1932) is supposed
to be. Many of these dog films and series were seen regularly on
syndicated TV stations on the weekends, the perfect time for kids network committees. I have a problem, I go in and talk to Teritoro.
to either cuddle up with their own dogs to watch, or beseech their You don’t know what it means to produce on a television show
parents for a puppy. where you talk with a real person instead of a committee of vice
Producer Bill D’Angelo told the Los Angeles Times in a July 1974 presidents.”
interview how his own dog show—Run, Joe, Run—came to be, Teritoro told the Associated Press in May 1974 that he had
saying, “Richard Landau brought this idea to me about four years “concern for what my own children watch,” and thus had ordered
ago when I was producing Love, American Style. Okay, it’s The Fugitive, more live shows. For Run, Joe, Run, he said, “We had a similar
it’s Run for Your Life. But they were Les Misérables. The part Whiting concept presented to us in animation. But we went with the
plays, the trainer, I think of as Ahab in Moby Dick. Joe is his white live-action show because the appeal is that of a real dog.”
whale. Not that he wants to kill him or lock him up. The dog just Veteran screenwriter Richard H. Landau created the series,
doesn’t understand… with the plot that a German Shepherd named Joe, training in
“We tried for years to sell this as a prime-time show but no the Army’s K-9 corps after serving in Vietnam, was accused of
network was interested,” D’Angelo continued. “Last winter, Joe Teri- attacking his master. Joe was scheduled to be euthanized, but
toro [vice-president of children’s programming] at NBC asked if I’d he escaped, and a $200 bounty was put on his head. Pursuing
do it as a kid show. I’d never done a kid show, but this was a chance him was his trainer, Sergeant Will Corey (Arch Whiting), who
to open my own shop: D’Angelo Productions. So here we are. I don’t knew that Joe was innocent, and was trying to find Joe before the
expect to stay in kid television, but it’s a fantastic place to work. No establishment did.

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 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

The plots for Run, Joe, Run, were strikingly similar to ABC’s
1963–1967 series The Fugitive, in which a man falsely accused travels
the country, helping people along the way [RetroFan will pursue The
Fugitive in issue #39!—ed.]. Joe was pursued by bounty hunters, but
still found time to help a railway station guard, help a youth get
back into school, join the fire department, become part of a dolphin
act, save an American Indian boy from a bear attack, solve a jewel
heist, aid a mute boy and a blind girl, and keep one step ahead of
bounty hunters!

THE DOG, THE MEN, AND THE MOUSE

Casting the lead dog was simple; Joe was played by D’Angelo’s own
16-month-old German Shepherd, Heinrich, who already had Holly-
wood in his blood; his mother was owned by William Self, head
of production at 20th Century Fox where D’Angelo had previously
worked. “It’s not nepotism,” D’Angelo told the Los Angeles Times.
“We interviewed lots of dogs before Heinrich got the job.” He also

related that the casting was causing strife

at home. “Heinrich belongs to my kids. The
other day at 3:30 a.m., my 7-year-old, Billy,
set his alarm and got up to see Heinrich
off to work and tell him: ‘We don’t feel
bad about your being away. Your career
comes first.” For stunts and heavy running,
Heinrich was doubled by a similar-looking
German Shepherd named Augustus von
Schumacker, or “Gus.”
Heinrich’s trainer was animal specialist
Karl Miller, who said in a June 1976
interview that, “With a dog this young, no
matter how smart he is, he’s just a kid, and
you have to be patient with him. I was sure
he had done well in his training, but the
scary part came when I took him on the
set the first week.” Joe had a problem not
being playful on set and greeting everyone,
but by week two, he had calmed down.
“It’s amazing how fast he caught on. In
another year he’ll be a real ‘old pro.’” Head
cameraman Alan Stevensvold added that,
“He’s such a beautiful animal, I have to
keep reminding myself he’s still a puppy so
I won’t pat him and distract him. He still
has a tendency to run to the last one who
patted him.”
Miller later revealed one of his secrets
of training Heinrich to TV Guide. “Audiences
expect a [S]hepherd’s ears to stand up all
the time. If you took enough time, you
could teach him to keep them up. Or you
could prop them up. The mouse is easier.”

(ABOVE) Title card to Run, Joe, Run.

(LEFT) Arch Whiting as Sgt. William
Corey and his co-star Heinrich as
Joe. © D’Angelo Productions.

RETROFAN March 2024 63

 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning
The second season of Run, Joe, Run featured a new human
co-star, Chad States as Josh McCoy. © D’Angelo Productions.
The mouse he was referring to as a gray and yellow mouse Miller
kept in a cage, which he would jiggle to perk Heinrich’s ears up.
Why were they down? Because Shepherds are friendly, and instinc-
tively let their ears flop back when petted… something the co-stars
often needed to do in the scenes.
Cast in the lead role of Sgt. William Corey was six-foot-one actor
Arch Whiting (real name: Harold Joseph Archambault), whose
main role to that point had been as radio engineer Sparks on Irwin
Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but who had also worked
as a producer on The Ed Sullivan Show and cinematographer on
feature films. Whiting’s name was brought up to the series’ casting
director, who said, “Whiting would be great as Corey, but I think
he just left for the Cannes Film Festival and you start shooting on
Monday!” In those olden days before cell phones, a quick call to
Whiting’s home caught him as he was about to walk out the door
to leave; intrigued by the series offer, he unpacked his bags and
signed aboard!
Whiting was interviewed by talk show host Bobbie Wygant
about the series in 1974. Discussing Miller’s training, Whiting
said, “I don’t give him any commands myself. They’re all given
off-camera by Karl, and the dog responds beautifully.” He also
revealed that his personal dog, Ragmop, was a “poolie” (a poodle/
collie cross) that he had found in the street and adopted. Whiting
64 RETROFAN March 2024
gave Wygant a more precise history of the series than the show
itself gave, saying, “Joe is an attack-trained war dog… He and I
spent three years together in Vietnam and we came back to the
United States for debriefing. And there was an incident where
the trust between the two of us was broken. The love is still there,
but the trust has been broken. And I’m just trying to get the trust
back. And I keep chasing him. We have confrontations… and he
turns and runs because he just doesn’t trust me anymore.”
A co-star in one episode was 11-year-old actress Michele Riskas,
whom Joe rescued in a forest because she was blind and lost.
“Working with Joe was great,” she told the press, “but they made
me work with a snake and it was… ugh! It was awful. The snake was
frozen and it never moved. But… ooh… I hated it.”
Production on Run, Joe, Run began in the Los Angeles area in
early June. One episode was shot on the Agoura ranch owned by
Governor Ronald Reagan. The cast and crew had to be extra careful
because the area they shot in was dense with poison oak. As for the
scripts, child psychologist Barbara Mills reviewed each one prior
to shooting. Production of the 13-episode first season wrapped in
August, with more than enough time to complete it prior to debut.
Run, Joe, Run, debuted on NBC on September 7, 1974, alongside
two other debut shows: the Krofft live-action series Land of the
Lost [see RetroFan #24—ed.] and the Hanna-Barbera animated
series Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. In its early time slot, the dog
series was up against two animated sitcom spin-offs: ABC’s The
New Adventures of Gilligan and CBS’s Partridge Family 2200 A.D. For
promotional purposes, on October 13th, “Joe” was the canine Grand
Marshal of the 7th Annual Hollywood Dog Parade. Sometime in
1975, Heinrich was also named “German Shepherd Dog-of-the-Year”
by the German Shepherd Dog Club.
Popular enough to score a second season, Run, Joe, Run was
overhauled for the new set of 13 episodes. As the opening narration
FAST FACTS
RUN, JOE, RUN
f No. of seasons: Two
f No. of episodes: 26
f Original run: September 7, 1974–September 25, 1976
f Created by: Richard H. Landau
f Studio: D’Angelo Productions
f Network: NBC
PRIMARY CAST
f Paul Frees: Narrator
f Arch Whiting: Sgt. William Corey (Season One)
f Chad States: Josh McCoy (Season Two)
(TOP) Ad detail from TV Guide for NBC’s 1974
Saturday line-up. © D’Angelo Productions.
 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

Chad and Joe have a heart

to heart while having a light
meal in a diner. Note the
illustrations on the upper
right of the diner wall of a
coyote and a roadrunner (an
inside joke, perhaps?).
© D’Angelo Productions.

shared, “Before he can prove Joe’s innocence, Sergeant Corey is

ordered back to active duty. Then, Joe meets Josh McCoy, a new Lloyd Schwartz
and permanent friend who doesn’t know about Joe’s past. Together
they work their way across the country, finding new friends and
adventures wherever they go.” Actor Chad States was cast as Josh
McCoy, and although he didn’t appear much past the opening
credits, Arch Whiting was given a co-starring credit. States has
few Hollywood credits, and appears to have disappeared from the
industry after 1978.
Run, Joe, Run’s second season debuted on September 6, 1975,
and ended on September 25, 1976 (although some markets still
showed it until at least December, including NBC stations in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota). The series did also air
in Australia and Great Britain. It has never been rerun, and may Sherwood Schwartz
never have even been syndicated, probably due to only having 26
episodes.
create the new series, and he conceived of a storyline in which a
TWO ACTORS—ONE ROLE 40-year-old schoolteacher on vacation in Florida accidentally takes
While D’Angelo Productions produced the first two Saturday shows a sip from the fabled Fountain of Youth. The effect it has on him
solo—Run, Joe, Run, and Westwind—the third series was produced is to cause him to occasionally and unexpectedly transform into
by the newly formed D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions. It the 12-year-old version of himself within seconds! This is tough as
was Big John, Little John, another live-action series, this time with not only does he have a wife, he has a 14-year-old son who loves to
a bit of a magical twist. DBA hired writer/producer Sherwood tease his new younger father.
Schwartz—the creative force and Emmy-winner behind The Cast in the lead role of Big John Martin was Herb Edelman,
Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island—and his son, Lloyd Schwartz, to a 42-year-old Broadway actor who had come to Hollywood and

RETROFAN March 2024 65

 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning
worked almost continuously in film and television. Balding and
plain-looking, Edelman was hardly anybody’s idea of a leading
man, but that made him perfect for the harried man who was at
the core of the Saturday morning show. And at six-foot-five, he
certainly fit the “Big” part of his sobriquet! “I’m really excited about
it,” Edelman said of Big John, Little John in an August 1976 interview.
“There’ll be some impromptu comedy and a great many serious
stories for youngsters.”
Little John Martin was cast with 12-year-old Robbie Rist, a blond-
haired moppet that seemed to be everywhere on television thanks
to commercial work. With his bowl haircut and round glasses, Rist
was the spitting image of popular folk/country singer John Denver.
Rist was most famous for his role as the ill-fated Cousin Oliver on
The Brady Bunch; introduced in the final six episodes as a way to
bring in a new young cast member, Oliver was despised by Brady
fans and had the unlucky job of reciting the last lines ever of the
popular sitcom. The Brady Bunch series’ creators “used me for Big
John, Little John, so I don’t think they had a problem with my skills,”
Rist would later joke on the Classic Conversations podcast.
“It was a weird show, totally,” Rist said in a 2015 interview with
Paul K. Bisson for Cyborgs: A Bionic Podcast. “I think it’s a whole thing
about puberty. That’s the whole underlying theme… is how much
of a pain in the ass puberty is. I mean, The Exorcist is about puberty,
too. So, The Exorcist, Big John, Little John, yeah. [laughs] I’ve talked to
Lloyd Schwartz. I think that in a Freaky Friday kind of way, Big John,
Little John would make a great movie now. Now you just make Herb
Robbie Rist as Little John Martin. © D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen
Productions (DBA).
66 RETROFAN March 2024
Edelman a workaholic who sneaks away from his family to make a
cell phone call that he’s not supposed to, gets lost, drinks from the
Fountain of Youth… Boom! It writes itself.”
The third main member of the cast, and the one who got to react
to the changing ages of her husband the most, was Joyce Bulifant,
cast as wife Marjorie Martin. She had been a recurring character on
the 1966 Dr. Kildare series, then appeared often as Marie Slaughter
on The Mary Tyler Moore show, from 1971–1977. Mike Darnell played
the son, Ricky Martin, and he was the only other person on the
show who knew the truth about what was going on with his
father. Bulifant had worked for the DBA producers before on Love,
American Style, while Rist had previously appeared in an episode of
Run, Joe, Run.
Not only had Bulifant worked with the producers, but she almost
worked with the Schwartzes on something bigger: she was their
pick for mom Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch! Having signed a
seven-year contract for the series, while she was trying on ward-
robe choices for Carol, the Schwartzes had to break the news to
her that the network was forcing them to use Florence Henderson
instead. “Sherwood said, ‘The next thing I do, you’re gonna be in,’”
Bulifant told on the Classic Conversations podcast. “And I was. It was
a show called Big John, Little John. It was a Saturday morning show
with Herb Edelman. But man, I was in it. He kept his word!”
That wasn’t the only connection the show had for Bulifant. Big
John, Little John’s final episode was written by Jerry Zucker, David
Zucker, and James S. Abrahams, the brilliant writers/directors/
Herb Edelman as Big John Martin.
© DBA.
 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

producers behind some of the Seventies and Eighties comedy (LEFT) Joyce Bulifant as Marjorie Martin, wife of Big John
films. In 1980, they cast Bulifant as Mrs. Davis in the legendary film and, one presumes, Little John as well. (RIGHT) Olive
Airplane! Mrs. Davis is the mother of the tragically ill daughter Lisa, Dunbar was the principal at the school where Big John was
who has an unfortunate run-in with a singing stewardess and a a teacher. (BELOW) Big John’s son Ricky, played by Mike
guitar. Darnell, teases his dad in his Little John form. © DBA.
The transformation of Big John to Little John and back again
was nowhere near as exciting as that of Billy Batson to Captain
Marvel. A close-up of Edelman’s face, in front of a grayish wall,
dissolved into a second shot of him with a younger hairpiece on,
then two more shots of younger, unnamed actors, before the shot
changed to Robbie Rist, blinking rapidly in front of the same gray
wall. It was a laughable effect, and was nowhere near as charming
as seeing Rist wander around in the suit and hat of his older self,
six sizes too big for him. Although it was only in the transformation
scenes, Edelman’s hairpiece was used regularly in the series; Rist’s
strawberry blond hair was died darker to better match Edelman’s.
On the show, Little John is explained to the students Big
John teaches, and to his primary, as a visiting nephew; comedy
generally followed though when Little John would appear, as his
clothes never fit, and the disappearance of Big John would have
to be explained somehow, usually in wildly improbable ways. The
series succeeded though in allowing Little John to understand the
problems and feelings of Seventies youth.
In a website interview with Joe Oesterle, Rist spoke about his
co-stars: “Herb Edelman was an amazing character actor, but he
probably wouldn’t get work in TV today. He’s not scrubbed-looking
enough. Barney Miller was a great show. Great comedic actors—but
the cast of Barney Miller could not get work on a TV show today.

RETROFAN March 2024 67

 andy mangels’ retro saturday morning

Come on. David Schwimmer played the ‘ethnic guy’ on Friends. Is

he that ethnic? Television is homogenizing everything about our
culture.” FAST FACTS
Big John, Little John debuted on September 11, 1976, along with
other new NBC shows Muggsy, The Kids from CAPER, and two other
new D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, McDuff, The Talking
Dog and Monster Squad. Big John, Little John was up against CBS’s
animated mystery show Clue Club and ABC’s The Krofft Supershow.
Critics were kind, however; a Washington Post review said, “NBC’s
Big John, Little John is funnier than most of the situation comedies
that make it to prime time… [Rist] is hilarious flopping around
in oversized suits and hats… The program isn’t only cute; it has a
solid basis in the generation gap. Big John learns about children’s
attitudes from being Little John.”
Unfortunately, Big John, Little John, came in third in ratings. By
December, Sonny Fox had been installed as NBC’s new vice presi-
dent of children’s programming, replacing Joe Teritoro. Fox told the
press, “I think next year we’ll all be more heavily into the animation BIG JOHN, LITTLE JOHN
form again.” Liking Big John, Little John, he moved a cartoon series in f No. of seasons: One
front of it, hoping it would help, but the show seemed fated to lose. f No. of episodes: 13
Even a double-appearance by both Edelman and Rist on Jerry Lewis’ f Original run: September 11, 1976–September 10, 1977
Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon in September 1977 didn’t f Created by: Sherwood Schwartz
help. f Studio: D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions, Redwood
Although Big John, Little John was cancelled for the Fall 1977 Productions
season, airing last on September 10th—it remained on the air in
PRIMARY CAST
f Herb Edelman: Big John Martin
f Robbie Rist: Little John Martin
f Joyce Bulifant: Marjorie Martin
f Mike Darnell: Ricky Martin
f Olive Dunbar: Principal Bertha Bottomly
f Kristoff St. John: Homer
f Cari Anne Warde: Valerie
f Stephen H. Cassidy: Stanley

(TOP) Ad detail from TV Guide for NBC’s

1976 Saturday line-up. © DBA.

(LEFT) Little John and Marjorie share an awkward

moment. (BELOW) Big John is a science teacher who
begins to understand his students better by seeing them
through Little John’s eyes. © DBA.

68 RETROFAN March 2024


some markets—including Florida and Alabama—through early
November. It never made it to syndication, but was offered in the
British market and Guam.
THE LEGACY OF THE SHOWS
Sadly, almost the entire Saturday morning output of D’Angelo-
Bullock-Allen Productions is impossible to find in America, and for
some shows, anywhere in the world.
Most of the principal cast and crew of Run, Joe, Run have passed
away. Heinrich himself passed in 1978 from degenerative myelop-
athy (which had been brought on by a fall while filming the feature
The Courage of Kavik the Wolf Dog). The concept of the show—itself
borrowed from The Fugitive and Les Misérables—would be seen
again in the CBS comic-based series The Incredible Hulk.
Some Run, Joe, Run merchandise was released. Kenner released
a companion toy to their own Duke dog line with a dog action figure
for Run, Joe, Run, “The Super Action Dog with Canyon Slide!” View-
Master released a set of stereo film reels, adapting the first season
episode, “Little Big Bear Hunter.” Whitman publishing released the
Run, Joe, Run Coloring Book. The oddest bit of licensing was the Run,
Joe, Run Ben Cooper costume, which consisted of a vacuuformed
plastic dog mask and a flame-retardant bodysuit which had the
title, dog, and yelling soldier on the top, and olive-drab pants on the
bottom.
Run, Joe, Run is not available on DVD or home media anywhere
in the world, nor any streaming sites. Although many episodes
used to be on YouTube, they have all been taken down except for
one: “Sunken Treasure” is on actor Robbie Rist’s personal YouTube
channel.
As for Big John, Little John, three members of the principal cast
are still alive: Bulifant is retired and in her late eighties; Rist has
worked as an actor, musician, and producer for years, including
in 2013’s Sharknado, for which he also co-wrote and produced the
music. But he’s best known for his voiceover work, including as the
voice of Leonardo in the 1984–1986 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
films; and older brother Mike Darnell was the king of reality TV at
Fox for 19 years, and was the president of unscripted and alterna-
tive television at Warner Bros. until retiring in July 2023.
andy mangels’ retro saturday morning
A sampling of the limited merchandice based on Big
John, Little John and Run, Joe, Run. © D’Angelo Productions and
D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen Productions.
Fans looking to watch Big John, Little John have a few options—
the pilot is on YouTube and the Internet Archives, but more impor-
tantly, the UK’s Fabulous Films released Big John, Little John: The
Complete Series as a two-disc set in October 2009, with a rerelease in
October 2012. The discs are readily available on Amazon and some
online retailers, although they are in PAL format and may not play
on some DVD machines.
Of the six live-action Saturday morning shows of D’Angelo-
Bullock-Allen Productions, we’ve now covered three of them:
Monster Squad (in RetroFan #29), and Run, Joe, Run and Big John,
Little John here. If there’s enough interest, in the future, I may
cover Westwind, McDuff, The Talking Dog, and The Red Hand Gang.
Let the editor and I know if you’d like that!
We’ll see you in the next issue of RetroFan as we take a much-
requested look at the cool history of Thundarr the Barbarian!
Unless otherwise credited, artwork and photos are courtesy the collection
of Andy Mangels.
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 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,
released by Abdo Books in 2021. He is currently working on a series
of graphic novels for the online game Planet Xolo, three Kickstarter
graphic novels, and a book about the stage productions of Stephen
King, as well as Bookazine projects (available at any grocery store
checkout) on Ant-Man, Iron Man, The Little Mermaid, Chadwick
Boseman, and Aquaman. 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 March 2024 69
 RETRO SCI-FI

urn n
i et dn
B R
i me
T
nn Revisiting Time After Time with
Writer-Director Nicholas Meyer
and Actors
Malcolm McDowell and David Warner

BY ANTHONY TAYLOR

“A brilliant scientist. A criminal genius. A delightful romance. And a my novel in which Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, was the
daring chase across time — the most exciting, mysterious, and chal- number one bestseller in the United States (much to everybody’s
lenging dimension of all!” surprise, including mine).
“Karl contacted me and said that he was writing a novel,” Meyer
The tagline for Nicholas Meyer’s fantastic film Time After Time continues, “which in his words was ‘loosely inspired’ by The Seven-
barely hints at the humor, action, pathos, romance, and drama Per-Cent Solution. He said, ‘I have 65 pages and an outline, could you
within. The author of the bestselling Sherlock Homes pastiche, read it and tell me what you think?’ In those days I had time to do
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer had aspired to direct motion that sort of thing, so I read his 65 pages and I gave him notes and
pictures since he was a boy after seeing Michael told him what I thought, omitting my headline
Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days. The young thought, which was that the idea—which I never
auteur indeed directed a nearly shot-for-shot would have had in a trillion years, by the way—
remake of the movie on Super 8mm film over was much more a cinematic, a visual idea, than
a five-year period, with the help of family and it was a literary one. The idea being two guys
friends. A meeting with a future collaborator in Victorian outfits running around a modern
while at the University of Iowa led to the genesis world, which I just thought was irresistible.
of the beloved 1979 film about H. G. Wells and “I told him all the ‘book things’ that he might
Jack the Ripper at odds in then-modern day San want to think about, and then I went on about
Francisco. whatever my business was at the time, except
Meyer recalls, “I was an undergraduate at that I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. As
the University of Iowa in the department of I say, I would have never thought of it myself,
theater and film, and I kind of wandered into the but I couldn’t stop thinking about it now that
writers’ workshop via the playwriting program. I’d heard it. Sometimes it takes me a while to
Karl Alexander was, I think, in the graduate figure things out. Maybe three months later
student part of it, and he had a play produced I woke up at four o’clock in the morning and
there that I saw. I didn’t know him at the time thought, ‘You’re an idiot! Why don’t you simply
as Karl Alexander, I knew him as Karl Tunberg, option his book, write your own screenplay, and
which was his actual name. He was named for Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven- try to get it made?’”
his uncle, who was a big mucky-muck in the Per-Cent Solution published Meyer’s realization of the appeal of two
Writers’ Guild [of America] in Hollywood. He had in 1974 by E. P. Dutton. Unless men from another time experiencing a society
otherwise noted, all images accompanying
written the screenplay for Old Yeller, and received this article are courtesy of Anthony Taylor.
that they lived outside of presented endless
the final screen credit for Ben-Hur, for which he opportunities for humor, drama, and social
was not the final author… but he got around, Mr. commentary, and informed the collaboration
Tunberg. One of his requests to his nephew was that he change his between the two writers. As they developed the story, Meyer
name, so that there would be no chance for being confused for his contributed ideas that Alexander incorporated into the novel
uncle in whose honor he had been named. So I knew Karl glanc- and vice-versa. At the end of the process, Meyer knew that the
ingly from the theater department at the University of Iowa, and screenplay was his opportunity to jumpstart his directing career,
I hadn’t heard from him in quite a while. I left Iowa in 1968, and I and only made it available for sale to the studios on the basis that
heard from him sometime in 1974 when The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, he would direct the film. His gamble paid off.

70 RETROFAN March 2024

 (LEFT) The
iconic poster to
Time After Time.
(RIGHT) David
Warner as Jack
the Ripper in
modern day
San Francisco.
© Warner Bros. Poster
courtesy of Heritage.

With the movie green-lighted by Warner Bros., to be produced

by Orion Pictures, Meyer turned his attention to pre-production
duties and casting. He had several people in mind for the leads. His
first task was to find the perfect Herbert Wells.
“My original idea was for an actor named Derek Jacobi,” Meyer
recalls. “I had seen and loved him in I, Claudius, which I thought
was one of the most amazing things ever to air on television. But
of course, nobody at Warner Bros. had ever watched
anything on public television, so they’d never seen I,
Claudius, so Derek Jacobi didn’t count.
“I don’t know where the idea for Malcolm
[McDowell as H. G. Wells] came from, but I do
know that when I suggested him they said, ‘But
he always plays the bad guy.’ So I said, ‘Yes… and
now he’ll play the good guy. And don’t we call
that acting?’ I actually knew Malcolm in another
context besides A Clockwork Orange. When I started (ABOVE) Time After Time,
out in the business in the very early Seventies, the novel by Karl Alexander,
I was in the publicity department of published by Delacorte Press,
Paramount Pictures in New York. preceded the film. (LEFT) Screen
We were publicizing a movie that capture of Malcolm McDowell as
Paramount was releasing called H. G. Wells. © Warner Bros.
If, starring Malcolm. That was his
American film debut, so I saw

RETROFAN March 2024 71

 retro sci-fi

him as someone slightly less horrific than the guy in A Clockwork

Orange, which may have emboldened me. We met for tea at a tea
shop on Madison Avenue sometime in the Seventies and we got
along quite well.”
At the time he was offered the part, Malcolm McDowell was
in the midst of making a very different kind of film in Italy. He
got the call on the set of Caligula, the notorious hybrid historical
drama/porn film produced and co-directed by Penthouse Magazine
publisher Bob Guccione.
“I was sitting in Rome when I got the script for Time After Time
wearing just a diaper,” McDowell laughs. “I was about to go out
and do the business with a bride AND the groom. And thank God
I read Time After Time and I realized I wasn’t a porno actor… I was a
real actor! And I had something to look forward to! When this film
came out, I was in one of the top ten best movies of the year, Time
After Time, and the worst! The other was Caligula. I think that’s quite
a record! And I’m very proud of it.”
Meyer had hoped to cast Edward Fox as Dr. John Leslie
Stevenson, a.k.a. Jack the Ripper, but he was unavailable. The
director turned his attention to David Warner, recent co-star of
The Omen. Warner Bros. had someone else in mind. Someone very
different.
“I loved David Warner from the first time I saw him, which I
believe was as Mr. Blifil in Tom Jones,” recalls Meyer. “I also saw him
in a film called Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, directed by

(ABOVE) Film newcomer

Mary Steenburgen and
McDowell. (LEFT) H. G.
Wells introduces his friends
to his latest creation, a time
machine. David Warner as
Dr. John Leslie Stevenson
(Jack the Ripper) takes a
keen interest. (BELOW) A
design sketch for Wells’ time
machine. © Warner Bros.

72 RETROFAN March 2024

 retro sci-fi

Karel Reisz, a rather delightful, crazy movie. And so that’s what

I thought about for the part, and Warner Bros. was very keen on Preliminary promotional design by C. Winston
Mick Jagger. I thought I could believe Mick Jagger as Jack the Ripper, Taylor, illustrator of many film posters including The
but I’m not sure I could believe him as a Harley Street surgeon, his Beastmaster and iconic Earthquake poster. © Warner Bros.
character in the movie, so I said no. Warners said, ‘So you won’t Courtesy of Heritage.
even meet with him?,’ and that’s when I realized sort of how you
have to play this game; that in order to say no, I would have to meet
with him, so I did. He was in the midst of a tour, he was exhausted,
I was awkward, but I think we had a beer in his hotel room and then
I left and said I still wanted David for the part.” The two leads were
old friends and mutual admirers.
McDowell elaborates. “I was thrilled when David was cast
as Jack the Ripper because—and I’m going to embarrass him
now—I’ve always been a tremendous admirer of his work, I
think he’s one of our great actors in England. And I think he’s not
an obvious actor; he hides his craft brilliantly well and he never
appears to be acting. Now that, of course, is the mark of a really
great actor, and for the ones who don’t truly know, they like to
see people chewing scenery. I was a walk-on in his Hamlet [Royal
Shakespeare Company, 1965, directed by Peter Hall], and David was
a huge star.”
McDowell continues, “David was a kid himself and he was
thrust into the limelight playing this new kind of way of doing
Shakespeare. [I]t was the post-Beatles era and he was all tied into
that by the press, of course. You know, he had throngs of young
girls waiting outside the stage door. And because he and I were
sort of friends, even though I was sort of a lowly fellow, David was
always very nice to me and always had that sort of twinkle in his eye
and so I used to follow him out of the stage doors and inquire which
of these young girls—they weren’t that young—would like to have do research, that’s a very American sort of ‘method’ thing, but…
a drink with David after the show, ’And by the way, darling, who is well, Daniel Day Lewis, he lived with a musket… and what did he do
your friend?’ So thank you for that, David!” McDowell laughs. when he played in My Left Foot??”
When asked if the actors researched their parts for the movie, McDowell was surprised by what he heard on the BBC record-
the two come to an instant consensus. ings. “They sent a recording of Wells from a radio interview in 1928.
“Not a jot! There’s no point,” Warner says. “You’ve got the I put the record on in great anticipation, thinking that this character
script there and it tells you what to do. I’m not very good at doing I’m about to play is going to reveal itself! And from the crackling of
research, and maybe that shows in some of the stuff I’ve done, but this interview on a 78 [RPM] recording came this southeast London,
it’s mostly a useless exercise.” high-pitched whine. [effecting Wells’ vocal style] ‘So Haitch Gee Wells,
McDowell agrees. “I called the BBC archives,” he reveals, “and ’e talked like that!’ And I thought, ‘How the f*** am I gonna do
asked if they had any recordings of H. G. Wells. Normally I don’t that?!’ So I decided to play him with just my normal English accent.”
When asked if he had ever seen the George Pal movie
The Time Machine (1960), McDowell’s eyes light up.
“A fabulous movie, which I just caught about a year ago,”
he replies. “So I didn’t see it before we shot Time After Time.
Thing is, you don’t want to be seeing stuff beforehand,
because you’re not going to be copying. You’re going to come
obviously with a fresh look at something. As David said, we’re
very instinctive, both of us actors. We have that in common.
We work on our instinct and what we are given in the script.
What the characters had for breakfast; we don’t give a crap!
It doesn’t help us in the scene—we’re looking at what’s
happening in the scene, where it’s going, what the moment
is. The moment may not be a line of dialog, by the way, it
could be between the dialog, between the lines.”

Director Nicholas Meyer on location in San

Francisco for Time After Time. © Warner Bros.

RETROFAN March 2024 73

 retro sci-fi
Newly arrived in his “future,” the
time-traveler discovers a museum
exhibit in his honor. Similarly,
the movie Time After Time earned
audience respect after its initial
release. © Warner Bros.
For H. G. Wells’ love interest Amy Robbins, one actress blew
everyone else who auditioned out of the water: Mary Steenburgen.
She also blew co-star McDowell out of the water, so to speak.
Malcolm recalls, “Time After Time means different things to me,
of course. Because I did the movie, I got two children from that
because I married Mary Steenburgen, who was brilliant in the
movie and beautiful. Listen, I think it’s very evident from the movie
how my relationship with Mary was continuing nicely. But we had
a really nice time shooting it.” McDowell and Steenburgen divorced
in 1990.
Once everything was in place, shooting began. Reflecting on his
experience as a first-time director, Meyer recalls approaching the
job humbly.
“It was a complete learning experience for me, trying to figure
this out, so when I interviewed people to shoot the movie, to edit
the movie, to do the props or anything else, I always had the same
speech; ‘I know nothing. You’ll have to teach me. You’ll have to not
mind teaching me. And then you’ll have to not go crazy if I still want
to try it my way at the end of it.’ And anybody who could withstand
the catechism, I said, ‘Fine—we’ll make you a member.’ And I was
very lucky because not only did I surround myself with capable
people, starting with the actors—everybody—but they were all
out to help me. My more egregious mistakes didn’t wind up in the
movie, and the ones that didn’t work, I could cut them, and so forth
and so on. I came out of the theater. I had tried to be an actor, I
wasn’t a good actor. I’d been a theater director. I had directed a play
a week on the radio, so I was good with actors. I was a good writer…
but while I was playing with a Smith/Corona portable electric
74 RETROFAN March 2024
[typewriter], Steven Spielberg was playing with a camera, and the
difference is obvious. Steven Spielberg is a real filmmaker—maybe
the realest—and I was just fumbling my way hoping that the thing
would stay in focus and that I was pointing the camera at the
people who were talking. That was about the best that I could do.
Learning the value of words versus pictures is very important. The
movie would certainly be a lot better, or a lot more professional,
let’s say, if it had been directed by somebody with more camera
savvy than I had.”
David Warner and Malcolm McDowell shared nothing but praise
for Nicholas Meyer. “We did have great fun. I think it was Nick’s first
film as a director, and he did a great job,” recalls Malcolm.
According to David, “I remember on the very first day of
shooting, Nick said to the crew and us, ‘Look, guys, I’ve never
made a movie before, this is my first directorial effort. So if there’s
anything you can help me with or want to advise me to do, please
do so.’ Which I thought was a great way of relaxing everybody and
saying that if he makes a mistake, he doesn’t mind someone telling
him. There are some first-time directors who think they know it all
and sometimes make great mistakes. At least Nick did that, say,
‘Please give me ideas,’ which I admired him for.”
Principal photography took place around the city of San Fran-
cisco, California, which became nearly a character in its own right
due to the use of distinctive locations. This is not an altogether
unknown phenomenon, as the city has had a similar effect on other
films such as Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Bullitt, and even So I Married An
Axe Murderer. “I put all things in San Francisco that I loved into the
script,” says Meyer.

“We had this great chase sequence,” recalls McDowell, “and we
shot for a whole night outside the rotunda at the fine arts building,
the Palace of Fine Arts. So we were running around all over the
place. I was running all over the place after Mary as I remember,
but that’s a different story. I’ve always loved San Francisco since. If
we made a few more Time After Times, we’d have sparkling careers,”
laughs Malcolm.
David agreed. “Yes, well, it was all downhill after that. No, seri-
ously! You can make a film like Time After Time, of which I am really,
really proud to have been in and also working with Malcolm, and
Nick Meyer and Mary and everyone, and I think it is rather a special
movie. But at the time, it didn’t really take off, did it? I mean, it’s a cult
movie now, but at the time it didn’t really hit…”
The film was the darling of the critics for sure, but it failed to
set the box office on fire. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote,
retro sci-fi
Time After Time is a movie of many
moods: (TOP) Wells’ attempts to
understand contemporary life are
comical. (CENTER) Jack the Ripper
threatening Steenburgen’s character
Amy Robbins is in the thriller mode.
(BOTTOM) And, of course, there is the
romance between Wells and Robbins
in the film (and the behind-the-scenes
romance between Steenburgen and
McDowell). © Warner Bros.
“A movie that’s as sweet as it is clever,
and never so clever that it forgets to be
entertaining. There’s a lot to be said for an
adult’s movie with the shimmer of a child’s
new toy.” Daily Variety said, “A delightful,
entertaining trifle of a film that shows
both the possibilities and limitations of
taking liberties with literature and history.
Nicholas Meyer has deftly juxtaposed
Victorian England and contemporary
America in a clever story, irresistible due to
the competence of its cast.”
So why didn’t the film connect as tightly
with paying moviegoers? McDowell has a
theory.
“I asked to see the studio questionnaires
that they put out for their marketing,
because I thought that they marketed the
film very badly because they made it a sort
of chase movie about Jack the Ripper being
chased, which I thought was a misrepresen-
tation of the film,” McDowell says. “So when
I read these things that the studio prepared
for the public to fill in, they said things like,
‘Have you ever heard of H. G. Wells?’ ‘NO.’
‘Have you ever heard of Jack the Ripper?’
‘YES.’ Right. So this is a Jack the Ripper
movie. Now, this is insane, because of
course, Jack the Ripper is a very important
element, but the whole film is not a chase
movie, and it’s not a gory movie in any way, so Jack the Ripper fans
would go see the movie and be disappointed. It’s a love story, and
that’s how they should have sold the movie, and because they
didn’t do that it fell flat on its face. And it was really sad, because
I saw it with a couple of audiences at the time, the theaters were
jam-packed and the audiences absolutely loved that movie. When
it didn’t take off, I was absolutely amazed that they’d screwed it up,
but you know they do it all the time, so… what else is new?”
Meyer disagrees.
“Here’s what I saw happen. Before the first preview it was well
understood by everyone including me that Warner Bros. hated
the movie. My editor, Donn Cambern, had been on a plane with
another Warner Bros. editor and in conversation he was asked what
he was working on and he said Time After Time. The other fellow
said, ‘Oh! That’s the one they hate.’ They hated it so much that they
RETROFAN March 2024 75
 retro sci-fi

couldn’t be bothered to go out of town for a preview, as was usually home viewing, repeated several times a day for months, and a
the custom back then. So the preview was in Woodland Hills, which strong viewership made the pay channel executives take notice.
is a suburb of Los Angeles. By this time, having fought off all their The film began to be put into late-night time slots, where it
efforts to change the movie, to change the soundtrack, to get rid of continued to do well. Then the home-video revolution began in
the Warner Bros. shield [logo] and the Max Steiner fanfare to begin earnest. The film was released on videocassette and became a
the movie, at this point I thought I was going to my execution. steady rental for many early video stores, prompting them to buy
I thought, ‘One movie and your career is kaput!’ To everybody’s more copies so it would be available on shelves when customers
astonishment, that preview went through the roof. When the WB asked for it. This in turn prompted Warner Home Video to produce
shield and Max Steiner music started, people began cheering. And more copies, keeping the title in print for years. The film became a
by the way, that shield has been on all their movies ever since. At well-loved favorite, spawning a fan base of giant proportions.
the end of the screening, the studio executive who had a sheaf full Nicholas Meyer can’t pinpoint the moment he began to
of notes that he had been brandishing in front of my face before the understand the groundswell of support for his wayward movie, but
movie started—I looked over he understands the appeal.
at him and he was tearing the “I think that what I like about
notes up and throwing them the movies of mine that I do
into the air like confetti. in fact like, is that they’re sort
“The next preview was of… built to last. And whether
at the Toronto Film Festival, you’re talking about [Meyer’s
and not one of the executives Star Trek II:] The Wrath of Khan,
had a ticket to go to Toronto,” or The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,
Meyer continues. “But the or, God help us, The Day
same fellow told me, ‘Don’t After, these are sturdy things
worry; we’ve seen what’s real.’ as opposed to disposable
In Toronto the film was an things. I think that every
even bigger success; it was a one of them, for better or
bigger audience, it was not an worse, was deeply felt and
‘industry’ audience, people not just checking a bunch of
just went nuts. Time After Time demographic boxes. I feel
scored higher than any movie so lucky that Time After Time
Warner Bros. had released in found its audience and that
the previous three years. So people are continuously and
now they came down with a continually rediscovering that
case of overconfidence. They movie and are showing it to
were so sure this was going friends. But I don’t know how
to be a giant hit that they it happened, and I don’t know
were just going to plaster it when it happened.”
everywhere. This despite the Nicholas Meyer today. Why has the film achieved
fact that Mary [Steenburgen] Photo by Leslie Fram. first cult, then classic status?
had only been in one picture, It appeals to viewers on so
no one really knew David many levels. Thematically,
Warner, and Malcolm… you know, these were not people who could it covers the struggle between optimism versus cynicism in the
carry a picture at this point in their careers. And this was a movie face of the most devastating disappointment that Wells could
that needed time to build, it needed to go slow and gather word imagine; what he believed would be a utopia has in fact turned
of mouth, which was then very important. And it didn’t get that. out to be a gritty, ugly place. In Stevenson’s hotel, Warner turns on
It was just out there suddenly and the audience had no time to the television to scenes of real-life violence and says to Herbert, “I
discover it before it left theaters.” belong here completely. Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today… I’m
When asked if Malcolm McDowell’s theory might be partially an amateur.” To his credit, Herbert’s faith in humanity wavers but
correct, Meyer hesitates. never collapses. His response to the utter heartbreak of finding the
“I don’t know. The fact of the matter is that Time After Time is future to be everything he abhors in society is summed up in two
five movies in one. It’s a romance, it’s a thriller, it’s a comedy, it’s a lines from the typewriter of Nicholas Meyer.
science-fiction film, and it is a rather mordant social commentary. “The first man to raise a fist is the man who’s run out of ideas,”
And all these five facets are organically entwined in its premise. I and “Every age is the same, it’s only love that makes any of them
don’t think that they marketed it wrong; I think they distributed it bearable.”
wrong.” And do these themes still resonate with the writer?
Whatever the reason, the studio considered the film a flop and “It’s my belief that artists are not the best judges of their own
moved on to the next thing on their slate. But then something work. Somebody once said to Dame Margot Fontaine after the
unexpected happened. The little movie that didn’t became the ballet, ‘Oh, I so enjoyed that! Tell me, what were you doing up
little movie that could. Time After Time was licensed to HBO for there?’ And she had the presence of mind to say, ‘Well, I’m very

76 RETROFAN March 2024


sorry, I explained what I was doing while I was doing it and
if you didn’t understand me, then I failed.’ I don’t think I’m
venturing a very controversial opinion when I note that the
weight of human history sustains my belief that things aren’t
getting better, they seem to be getting worse; all we have is
more buttons to push. I think every age is pretty much the
same and I guess, speaking personally, I think we’ve always
wound up making a fist when we’ve run out of ideas. And
as far as I’m concerned, it seems that love is the only thing
that has any chance of making these horrible circumstances
any better, though maybe money helps—if you have a lot of
money. But I think most people don’t have a lot of money, so…
is love second best? I don’t know,” posits Meyer.
retro sci-fi
(LEFT) Actor Malcolm
McDowell, (CENTER)
this article’s author
Anthony Taylor, and
actor David Warner, “I think artists lose all proprietary
from a Dragon Con authority over their creations when
panel. (RIGHT) Did they’re complete,” he continues. “We
you know that in 2017 put messages in bottles, we throw
ABC-TV aired a short- them out into the world, and we
lived weekly series hope someone will find the bottle
based upon Time After and decode what’s inside. But what
Time? © Warner Bros. we actually have put inside gets put
there, at least a large amount, on the
basis of intuition… a kind of gut-like
thing, you write in a state of flow. Then you look up and it’s hours
later and you’re like, ‘Gee… where did that come from?’ Tracing
back through all the other influences is almost an impossibility.
Things that may have affected you, both as a person and as an
artist, may be unrecognized and ingested without a conscious
awareness and then regurgitated in a similar fashion. So I’m either
an optimist functioning in a pessimistic framework, or a pessimist
functioning in an optimistic framework. I think it’s more or less the
same thing. I think that the work of art I am most strongly aware
of identifying with is George Bizet’s opera, Carmen. Carmen is this
strange combination of irresistible exuberance—from the opening
note, everything is crazy-wonderful—but it has a heart of totally
fatalistic darkness, which is equally inescapable.”
David Warner, who passed away on July 24, 2022, has the final
word.
“The film is a love story. The whole reason Jack the Ripper is
there is to consolidate these two people [Herbert and Amy] getting
together. It was mis-sold as Malcolm said, and it’s a wonderful love
story.”
ANTHONY TAYLOR is a writer, film critic, and the author of The Art
of George Wilson (2024) from Hermes Press. His reviews and articles
have appeared in magazines such as Screem, Fangoria, RetroFan,
Famous Monsters of Filmland, SFX, Video WatcH*Dog, and many
more. His retro film on HD media column Apes on Film can be found
at ATLRetro.com and NerdalertNews.net. His on-stage interview
with Malcolm McDowell and David Warner at Atlanta’s Dragon Con,
from which their quotes originated, can be viewed on YouTube.
RETROFAN March 2024 77

Just received my latest issue, super-excited!!!!
Thanks, guys!!!
MIKE WALKER
Any RetroFan reader
who goes nuts with
joy BEFORE reading
the issue is okay
in our book, Mike!
Thanks for sending
this photo. Hope you
continued to smile
ear-to-ear as you read the issue.
I just bought RetroFan #27 from a Barnes and
Noble yesterday, and I love it. I thought the
Bob Keeshan interview was really enjoyable,
and I loved reading about how it came to be.
My parents used to watch Captain Kangaroo on
Channel 2 CBS in the Seventies. I didn’t even
know about the teen monster films, and I think I
should check them out.
I’ll probably get a subscription in the future!
JAYDEN MONTGOMERY
Like your parents, I watched Captain Kangaroo
when I was a kid. The Captain was our
generation’s Mister Rogers, Big Bird, Barney,
Teletubbies, whatever!
So glad you discovered our magazine. Hope
you do indeed subscribe. Thanks for writing!
Robin TM & © DC Comics
I enjoyed your martial arts movies article
[in issue #27’s “RetroFad” column]. That’s a
refreshing topic that rarely gets covered. I also
appreciate that you didn’t tie Quentin Tarantino
into it, something that almost every writer feels
they have to do when summarizing any Sixties
or Seventies film movement. It’s aggravating
when writers imply that something isn’t great
on its own merits until a famous contemporary
director tells us he appreciates it. Keep up the
good work.
CHRIS ROBINSON
Thanks, Chris! The difference between
RetroFan’s coverage of “vintage” topics and
what you find in mainstream media is, much
of our audience grew up with this stuff and
don’t need to be convinced of its merit. Even
something as seemingly trivial as a Funny Face
drink mix packet or a memory of a Stuckey’s
lunch during a family vacation is hallowed
ground for us.
78 RETROFAN March 2024
In the latest issue of RetroFan [#27]… Wha--?!
Page 79 was the first page I opened TO! Total
shock! I’m honored that my summer 1966 photo
has been immortalized for posterity! You’ve
never seen such a skinny, hopeless superhero
than myself! Ha-ha!
That photo resonates with us fans. That’s the
Retro and Fan part of this. I love it!
RICHARD KOLKMAN
Readers, Richard is referring to his childhood
photo he submitted, of him in his 1966 Ideal
Toys Batman plastic cowl and cape, which
appeared on page 79 of issue #27’s RetroFan-
mail column. Richard, you’re right—it’s the
special blend of “Retro” and “Fan” that not only
makes this magazine special, it also binds us.
Holy Nostalgia, Batman!
RetroFan #27 was another interesting issue.
Just adding a sidenote to your Martial
Arts article. The Boy Wonder, Burt Ward, was
featured on the cover of Black Belt magazine,
which I have attached.
Thanks for producing this magazine and
Back Issue.
Have a good day.
MICHAEL SCOTT THIEL
Michael, it’d be
tough for me NOT
to have a good day
now that you’ve
shared this cool
magazine cover
with us! TV’s
Batman’s third
and final season
had recently
ended when this
edition of Black
Belt magazine was released with the series’
co-star, Burt Ward, as its cover feature. Thanks
for submitting this scan.
RetroFan #27: Check out that cover! With that
many goodies to look forward to, I knew this
would be a great issue before I even peeked
inside.
The highlight for me was the Bob Keeshan
interview. I’ll invoke the Old Man’s Mantra and
say that they just don’t make them like him any
more. I grew up with the Captain and Mr. Green
Jeans; their gentle demeanors proved that you
don’t have to have flashing colors and screaming
characters to get a kid’s attention. While I
inexplicably found Dancing Bear to be a bit
disturbing, I always laughed at those ping-pong
ball gags. And to this day I remember (and use)
the Captain’s “Magic Words”: please and thank
you!
I really enjoyed Will Murray’s look at The
Rockford Files, one of those under-appreciated
TV shows. I remember buying a cassette of
assorted music only because the Rockford Files
theme song was on it.
I lived through the days when everyone
thought they were the next Bruce Lee, so I
liked “Kung Fu Conquers the World.” It was one
of those fads that you really had to be in the
zeitgeist of the day to get it. It brought to mind
a high school incident where a guy was picking
a fight with another guy. He said, “Meet me at
lunch behind the school, and for your sake, you’d
better know a hell of a lot of karate.” Everyone
knew this guy was kind of a blowhard, but this
claim was especially laughable since he was
five-foot-three and weighed 310 pounds. The
other guy laughed it off and gave him a pass on
the fight, which no doubt convinced the portly
fellow that his bluff worked and everyone in
school now regarded him as a Lightning-Fast
Fists-of-Fury Death Machine.
Finally, Scott Saavedra’s retrospective on
dangerous toys… Holy cow, how did the read-
ership of RetroFan ever survive their childhood?
I still have a set of Lawn Darts (inherited from
my in-laws). One gentle toss landed on a Frisbee
and cleanly poked a quarter-inch hole through
it. Chemical sets, sharp objects, hot metal
surfaces… But, hey, as long as the kids were
having fun…
RF is always a pleasure! Keep up the good
work!
MICHAL JACOT
Thanks, Michal! Ye ed is looking forward to
your return as a writer to our pages. Your piece
in issue #28 on TV Guide Fall Previews editions
was a ton of fun.
I’ve greatly enjoyed Andy Mangels’ articles
about the Super Friends in RetroFan.
How did [Super Friends producers]
Hanna-Barbara Productions get the rights to
Captain Marvel/Shazam! for the live-action
Legends of the Superheroes specials but not have
the rights to include him in the Super Friends TV
series?
CHRISTOPHER KRIEG
Good question, Chris! “Retro Saturday
Morning” writer Andy Mangels replies:
Rights issues are a tricky thing, and NPP [National
Periodical Publications, DC’s official name at the
time]/DC’s rights were the Wild West in those days.
 Filmation Studios had the live-action Captain
Marvel rights for Shazam! in 1973 when Hanna-
Barbera started Super Friends. It probably wouldn’t
have even occurred to H-B to license the animated
rights then because they had Superman.
By the time of development of Challenge of
the SuperFriends in early 1978, Shazam! was still
under Filmation’s control, which is why the originally
planned villains like Sivana were not included. By
mid-1978, NPP/DC was able to license the live-action
Captain Marvel rights away for the Legends of the
Superheroes show for a brief time to Hanna-
Re RetroFan #27: Lots of topics I
hadn’t thought of in a very long
time.
“Danger in Happy Toyland” was
great; all sorts of potential tragedies
in ill-considered gift items for a
kid. Even if it had warnings and
directions, who reads those as a
six-year-old? Blowguns and radioac-
tive isotopes were new to me.
I do, however, recall being
burned a time or two with the

Barbera, but by late 1979/early 1980, Filmation had
gotten those rights back for the Shazam! animated
series.
The brief usage may have been a swap deal, as
both Filmation and Hanna-Barbera shared animated
Shazam! and Dr. Sivana TM & © DC Comics.
© Mattel.
Creepy Crawlers set. Or the one you
missed, a year after, Creeple Peeple.
My favorite of the lawsuit-pro-
voking toys, easily, was the Wham-O Super-Ball. My favorite, however, was the look at Jack
Kirby’s comedy comics. Plenty to choose from.

It took on a new allure when the principal got

rights for Batman and Robin
during 1977, and Filmation
even planned to bring
back Adam West and Burt
Ward for live intros and
perhaps more, but as we
know, H-B beat them to the
punch in 1979 with the Legends specials. Batman
and Robin were a case of “joint custody” that may
have allowed them to also share Captain Marvel for
the one project.
If you’re interested, I covered Legends of
the Superheroes in
RetroFan’s companion
magazine, Back Issue
#25; the animated
Captain Marvel in Alter
Ego #30 (also from
TwoMorrows); and the
live-action Shazam! series in RetroFan #4! And
there’s a lot more about Filmation’s business in my
book, Creating the Filmation Generation, written
with Lou Scheimer. They’re all available digitally or in
print on the TwoMorrows website!
Thanks, Andy!
Inset into Andy’s reply above are screencaps
of Legends of the Superheroes’ Captain Marvel,
as played by Garrett Craig, the third live-action
“Shazam!” actor of the Seventies; and Howard
Morris, beloved by so many as The Andy Griffith
Show’s rock-throwing rebel Ernest T. Bass, as
Cap’s cackling menace, Dr. Sivana.
(Garrett Craig and Howard Morris are not
to be confused with the decade’s other Garrett
who played a superhero: Garrett Morris, who
played Ant-Man in a hilarious Saturday Night
Live superhero spoof on an episode originally
aired March 17, 1979, hosted by Superman:
The Movie’s Lois Lane, Margot Kidder. That
SNL episode also gave us one of the show’s,
and Dan Aykroyd’s, funniest characters ever:
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. Useless trivia,
perhaps? Not here in RetroFanLand!)
on the P.A. system and warned our school about
the peril they posed. That, to me, immediately
made them coolest toy in second grade!
Don’t think I ever saw the Super Friends
episodes covered this time. Still, I very much
enjoyed the abundance of Alex Toth art.
Wonderful work.
I cracked up at two aspects. First, “ABC’s
Standards & Practices censorial department
was nervous about Challenge because it would
contain actual conflict between the heroes and
villains.” Imagine that! Secondly, “...S&P wrote
that ‘destroying the world’ was an imitable act,
which was bad for young viewers who might
want to copy it.” Did these folks suffer a freak
head injury with a Super-Ball?
Likewise, never saw The Rockford Files. But I
was so impressed with the previously unseen
Gray Morrow group shot of the Seventies detec-
tives! Terrific! So many were captured perfectly!
Didn’t realize he was that fine of a caricaturist.
Jack Lord on a surfboard was my favorite!
I sort of recognized Stuart Margolin, even
with a beard, as the same actor who appeared in
snippets, between segments, on Love, American
Style.
I was too young at the time to be a Teenage
Monster. I was only in my terrible twos. I did
catch the Werewolf and Frankenstein ones
rerun on TV as a pre-teen. By then, I was more
thrilled to see Gary Conway, Whit Bissell, and
Guy Williams, whom I recognized from Irwin
Allen’s TV shows.
Do enjoy the bizarre notion of monsters
being more sympathetic or identifiable if they’re
younger and more local. Trading castles and
crypts for campus connections.
Some of the other entries in the genre didn’t
teen-age well: Teenage Caveman, with Man from
U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn, and Teenagers from
Outer Space. Cracked up at the promotion line:
“Hoodlums From Another World on a Ray Gun
Rampage!” How can someone say no to that?
You neglected to list how many Oscars those
won.
His three-pager from the Fantastic Four Annual
#5 was represented, as was his work in Not Brand
Echh (NBE). As it was, essentially, self-parody, it
was even funnier.
What I don’t understand, to this day, is why
Marvel significantly tampered with his inks in
NBE #5–7 to where it no longer really looks like
Jack drew them. He did such a brilliant job in #1
and 3, it was such a tremendous letdown to see
the three later ones so heavily revised.
Too bad Earl the Rich Rabbit and Lockjaw the
Alligator were so short-lived. Would have been
nice to see them, as so unusual, to have been
explored and developed more. Then again, Jack
did have some fun with animals again, later,
with Kamandi. True, most were played straight
but Jack did add some comedy, on occasion,
when it fit the mood. The Watergate apes (#15)
and Captain Pypar, the Bulldog Britannic (#27),
for example. Fighting American was always fun.
Clever idea; bad timing.
The duo-shade page from Crazy, Man, Crazy
is one I don’t recall seeing prior. Very unusual,
and actually pretty impressive.
Loved the photo cover of Kirby as a crook.
So much, in fact, that I had to track one down 15
years ago. Too funny not to have it.
Finally, What If? #11, with the Bullpen
Fantastic Four. If not an outright return, this
was so in the ballpark that it’s very much
appreciated. It wasn’t an outright comedy but
playful nonetheless. A one-time surrogate FF
team mixing the established characters with the
beloved Bullpen figures. It’s not beyond criti-
cism, but it was great fun and Jack, thankfully,
doing one last story in that magical realm.
JOE FRANK
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 March 2024 79

 ReJECTED!

Not every great idea is successful, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the also-rans, the nearly-made-its, and the ReJECTED.
We’ve all made mistakes. And some of us wish we’d lived in a different time. One of the great "what would you do?" thought puzzles is...

BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA

What I’d Do With a

Time Machine
Bleep!
1979 Blorp!

A tip of the hat to thatsbelievable on Instagram. I totally swiped his groove. But that’s okay because they’re funny.

1. Pick up a few copies of Action Comics #1.

2. Stop my younger self from wearing an Angel Flight outfit.
3. Go and watch some real dinosaurs.
4. Stop my younger self from asking comic book legend Jack Kirby
why he draws square thumbs.
5. Pick up all (not some, not most) of the comic books.
6. Have a word with my younger self about Galactica 1980.
It's not worth the lost time.
80 RETROFAN March 2024
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RETROFAN #9
NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with
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Holy backstage pass! See rare, behind-the-
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Interviews with the SHAZAM! TV show’s
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RETROFAN #10
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RETROFAN #15
Sixties teen idol RICKY NELSON remem-
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Man from U.N.C.L.E., rural sitcom purge,
EVEL KNIEVEL toys, the Fabulous Furry
Freak Brothers, Saturday morning’s Super
7, The Muppet Show, behind-the-scenes
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RETROFAN #5
Interviews with MARK HAMILL & Greatest
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RETROFAN #11
HALLOWEEN ISSUE! Interviews with DARK
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NIGHT STALKER, ROD SERLING retrospec-
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Adventures of Superman, Superman’s pal
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RETROFAN #16
An exclusive interview with Logan’s Run
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novelist WILLIAM F. NOLAN and vehicle
customizer DEAN JEFFRIES. Plus: the
Marvel Super Heroes cartoons of 1966,
H. R. Pufnstuf, Leave It to Beaver’s SUE
“Miss Landers” RANDALL, WOLFMAN
JACK, drive-in theaters, My Weekly
Reader, DAVID MANDEL’s super collection
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RETROFAN #7
With a JACLYN SMITH interview, as we
reopen the Charlie’s Angels Casebook, and
visit the Guinness World Records’ largest
Charlie’s Angels collection. Plus: interview
with LARRY STORCH, The Lone Ranger
in Hollywood, The Dick Van Dyke Show,
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Oz, the ultra-rare Marvel World superhero
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RETROFAN #12
CHRIS MANN goes behind the scenes of
TV’s sexy sitcom THREE’S COMPANY—
and NANCY MORGAN RITTER, first wife
of JOHN RITTER, shares stories about the
TV funnyman. Plus: RICK GOLDSCHMIDT’s
making of RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED
REINDEER, RONNIE SCHELL interview,
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RETROFAN #17
Dark Shadows’ Angelique, LARA PARKER,
sinks her fangs into an exclusive interview.
Plus: Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party,
Aurora Monster model kits, a chat with
Aurora painter JAMES BAMA, George of
the Jungle, The Haunting, Jawsmania, Drak
Pack, TV dads’ jobs, and more fun, fab
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MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW,
and MICHAEL EURY.
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RETROFAN #8
NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with the
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Girl, Honey West, Max Headroom, Popeye
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Exclusive interviews with Lost in Space’s
MARK GODDARD and MARTA KRISTEN,
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O’s Frisbee, Twilight Zone and other TV
sci-fi anthologies, Who Created Archie
Andrews?, oddities from the San Diego
Zoo, lava lamps, and more with FARINO,
MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW,
and MICHAEL EURY!
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RETROFAN #18
Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep
you forever dreaming of Jeannie! Plus: The
Invaders, the BILLIE JEAN KING/BOBBY
RIGGS tennis battle of the sexes, HANNA-
BARBERA’s Saturday morning super-heroes
of the Sixties, THE MONSTER TIMES fan-
zine, and more fun, fab features! Featuring
ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL
MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT
SHAW!, and MICHAEL EURY.
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 RETROFAN #19
Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer
Films actress CAROLINE MUNRO! Plus:
WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS CAT
AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S
GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL
GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO
WRESTLER ERASERS, behind the scenes
of Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty,
Go-Go Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton
Museum, and more fun, fab features!
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
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RETROFAN #24
Interviews with Lost in Space’s ANGELA
CARTWRIGHT and BILL MUMY, and
Land of the Lost’s WESLEY EURE! Revisit
Leave It to Beaver with JERRY MATHERS,
TONY DOW, and KEN OSMOND! Plus:
UNDERDOG, Rankin-Bass’ stop-motion
classic THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY,
Christmas gifts you didn’t want, the
CABBAGE PATCH KIDS fad, and more!
Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
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RETROFAN #29
The story behind BOB CLAMPETT’s Beany
& Cecil, western queen DALE EVANS, an
interview with Mr. Ed’s ALAN YOUNG,
Miami Vice, The Sixties’ Wackiest Robots,
Muscle-Maker CHARLES ATLAS, Super
Powers Team—Galactic Guardians, and
more fun, fab features! Featuring columns
by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY,
SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and
MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
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RETROFAN #20
MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO
ARAGONÉS, is profiled! Plus: TV’s Route
66 and an interview with star GEORGE
MAHARIS, MOE HOWARD’s final years,
singer B. J. THOMAS in one of his final
interviews, LONE RANGER cartoons, G.I.
JOE, and more! Featuring columns by
ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT
SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK
VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
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RETROFAN #25
Meet Mission: Impossible’s LYNDA DAY
GEORGE in an exclusive interview!
Celebrate Rambo’s 50th birthday with
his creator, novelist DAVID MORRELL!
Plus: TV faves WKRP IN CINCINNATI and
SPACE: 1999, Fleisher’s and Filmation’s
SUPERMAN cartoons, commercial jingles,
JERRY LEWIS and BOB HOPE comic
books, and more fun, fab features! Edited
by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #30
The Brady Bunch’s FLORENCE
HENDERSON, the UNKNOWN COMIC
revealed, Hanna-Barbera’s Top Cat, a
Barbie history, RANKIN/BASS’ Frosty
the Snowman, Dell Comics’ Monster
Super-Heroes, Slushy Drinks, and more
fun, fab features! Featuring columns by
ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT
SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK
VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #21
Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect
Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO BOY, TARZAN
Saturday morning cartoons, the true
history of PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE
UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, the
MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO ’77, and
more fun, fab features! Featuring columns
by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY,
SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and
MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
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RETROFAN #26
The saga of Saturday morning’s Super
Friends, Part One! Plus: A history of MR.
T, TV’s AVENGERS (Steed and Mrs. Peel),
Daktari’s CHERYL MILLER, Mexican
movie monsters, John and Yoko’s nation
of Nutopia, ELIZABETH SHEPHERD (the
actress who almost played Emma Peel),
and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL
MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT
SHAW, MARK VOGER, & MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #32
Featuring a profile of The Partridge Family’s
heartthrob DAVID CASSIDY, THUNDARR
THE BARBARIAN, LEGO blocks, Who
Created Mighty Mouse?, BUCKAROO
BANZAI turns forty, Planet Patrol, Big Little
Books, Disco Fever, and more! Featuring
columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL
MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT
SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by
MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2024
RETROFAN #22
Surf’s up as SIXTIES BEACH MOVIES make
a RetroFan splash! Plus: He-Man and the
Masters of the Universe, ZORRO’s Saturday
morning cartoon, TV’s THE WILD, WILD
WEST, CARtoons and other drag-mags,
VALSPEAK, and more fun, fab features!
Like, totally! Featuring columns by ANDY
MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT
SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK
VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #27
Interview with Captain Kangaroo BOB
KEESHAN, The ROCKFORD FILES, teen
monster movies, the Kung Fu and BRUCE
LEE crazes, JACK KIRBY’s comedy comics,
DON DRYSDALE’s TV drop-ins, outrageous
toys, Challenge of the Super Friends, and
more fun, fab features! Featuring columns
by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY,
SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and
MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #33
Meet the Bionic Duo, LEE MAJORS and
LINDSAY WAGNER! Plus: Hot Wheels:
The Early Years, Fantastic Four car-
toons, Modesty Blaise, Hostess snacks,
TV Westerns, Movie Icons vs. the Axis
Powers, the San Diego Chicken, and more!
Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS,
WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA,
SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited
by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2024
RETROFAN #23
Meet the stars behind the Black Lagoon:
RICOU BROWNING, BEN CHAPMAN,
JULIE ADAMS, and LORI NELSON! Plus
SHADOW CHASERS, featuring show
creator KENNETH JOHNSON. Also: THE
BEATLES’ YELLOW SUBMARINE, FLASH
GORDON cartoons, TV’s cult classic
THE PRISONER and kid’s show ZOOM,
COLORFORMS, M&Ms, and more fun, fab
features! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
RETROFAN #28
The BRITISH INVASION of the Sixties,
interview with Bond Girl TRINA PARKS, The
Mighty Hercules, Horror Hostess MOONA
LISA, World’s Greatest Super Friends, TV
Guide Fall Previews, the Frito Bandito, a
Popeye Super Collector, and more fun,
fab features! Featuring columns by ANDY
MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT
SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK
VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.
(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95
(Digital Edition) $4.99
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