Going Down

Now that this year's, {2012}'s 'Tubtanic' bath plug has likely gone under, I should feel less chagrined adding my weak little cough here over the drowning passengers' frozen heads. But, you may note, I've at least waited beyond the centenary date.

And 'Titanic-opoly' is no doubt doing well this summer. (You buy better staterooms).
 

Besides, I 'found' these nifty blueprint shots that blend oh-so-well with previous Bugs's hammock-rocker designs. How nice that
hundreds could die just so I could match color swatches!

Overpolite soul that I am, I will leave it to the real descendants as to whether that bath plug was really hurtful or not. But, there have been tackier commercial grabs, such as selling actual items '$alvaged' from a Sad Wreck that, other than for some 'solution's' sake, should have been left alone altogether.

And when will people ever realize that, especially in America and the 'humorous' West, there will always, for every major and minor news incident, be some wag who will think of something funny and asininely apt, some pun or other, readily reducible to a bumper sticker or T-shirt?

The March 20th, {'012} Wisconsin 'microquake' comes to mind. Reportedly, there was the funny followup 'tee' slogan, "I SURVIVED THE 1.5". 

I also recall years ago whenever Johnny Carson would risk an Abe Lincoln Ford's Theatre punchline and the audience would pause as a group, mildly aghast, not a one of them alive at the time of the Incident. "Too soon?", Johnny would dazedly ask.


And, lest old and new Allyn Joslyn fans {see previous posts} think I was asleep at the Cap'n's wheel, Allyn also played 'Earl Meeker', (as in slick as 'earl', or he thinks he's 'entitled' over others, but 'meeker' than most and unable to 'take it'), I do so know, in the 1953 "Titanic". A frantic passenger begging for a lifeboat and then, to that end,

reducing himself to the legendary ploy (based in truth) of hiding in shadow under a woman's scarf. He is shamed by Thelma Ritter (and who wouldn't be?), who spots his spats as she leans into him: "I see ya made it Mistah Mee-kuh."

There is a certain trick of memory, particularly with films or photographs seen some lengthy amount of time previous to 'truthfully' recalling them which I may expand on in another post.

For now, I was struck by how little shown is the actual reaction to 'Meeker''s little faux pas. Barely anyone in the boat can be seen reacting. Ritter's mockery is supposed to be enough to turn us off to the wretched act. But, unless I'm mixing my Leviathan disasters and there is more commotion in some similar scene in the '40s version, the effect isn't as big as I remembered it.

I believe when I was a young kid watching, or even later, we just took it more to heart, as it was intended. The stimulation of revulsion is plain, and in one's imagination one fills in a flock of appalled faces that, in fact, are not shown at all. Something to recall whenever told whom we are to "Hate".

White Star Line party mask ~ circa 1912

Without dancing much further on the ghosts of Our Sunken Brethren, I'd like to 'bring up one more trinket' from the pseudocultural shallows. The time travel standby of winding up on the decks of You-know-what just before the icy You-know-when.

The handiest example: ABC's "The Time Tunnel". Along with millions of unseen others, my sister and I used to watch every Friday night when our parents were out shopping for groceries. The newness of the limited 'hit' then, and our being alone together in the dark gave it an extra tremor it really doesn't have. Beyond the gimmicks of what historic twist to use, like Mr. Peabody and Sherman, in its case it's ironically very 'dated' now, and even soon after it's first reappearance in reruns.

 

The situations are all fairly commonplace. I'm not an encyclopedia of its episodes. One in particular, "Rendezvous With Yesterday", was naturally the pilot. The >gasp< at the hero's first sight of a "Titanic" life ring has been a touchpoint in other such shows.

Like Lincoln, ("Him again?"); JFK (almost always with the ridiculous, disgusting and mentally lazy 'Oswald did it' bit to unburden the writers and show creators from even more confusing digression); and less often, perhaps General Custer, the Disaster Bound cruise ship (include the Hindenberg) is a perennial, deemed most worthy of 'a little Help from on high' via any handy, wandering Time jumper.

Sometimes the ship's name is changed (clever boots) to the 'Lusitania' or the 'Andrea Doria', but we know what they really mean.

By now, the life preserver, it's circularity a pointed smirk, a TV-kitschy call to the Bowels of the Unholy Sea, begs a bit of crass tinkering, in my mind, just to be sure the Errant Travellers know what they're really up against.

Happy Wandering. And I close with the blueprint of the Ship's 'Sacred' Plumbing 'lest we forget' the base humanity of it all, and that the real pirates of good taste, as well as the original contributing culprits, are, as always, the big-time profiteers. SOS.  --Text completed May, 2012

Bugs Bunny, Inventor

Despite the 1953 copyright, they were still selling this kiddy book as
'new' in stores as late as the middle of '64 when I believe I had mine
at my grandma's house the summer before I started first grade.

I'm not interested in turning this particular blog into a scroll of nothing but publication pages and excerpts, tho' those are great, and I might love to start one one day. Here, instead, are my favorite parts of the book: the cover; inside cover blueprint 'gimmick' (it's the same front and back); and the best interior painting, in my opinion, (lots of objects to make it real). The obvious unique selling points, tho' I really can't remember if I picked the book out or if it was given to me.

The story is light stuff as per usual. The plans, as you can well read,
depict a 'hammock rocker' which Bugs soon applies to Elmer's own,
shredding it to bits and flinging his old nemesis into a tree.

The painting is from the opening when Porky Pig checks out what Bugs is doing in his shop.

Sylvester (minus any overstimulating tweety bird marking him as
dangerous), the very rarely filmed Petunia Pig, and the printbound
Cicero (yet another in the cavalcade of comfortably spawned-out-of-view 'nephews') also runabout thruout and look concerned for Golden Reason.


The clever boots behind it all, unlike with the comic stories of the day,
got to sign this outing. Perhaps the only place I knew his name from.
As buried under a bushel by a corporation as Carl Barks, et alii, he's
as personally unknown to me as any of you. Do a search on him and
you'll know as much about him as I don't.

Ralph Heimdahl self-generated the Bugs Bunny syndicated strip ( I
could only see it rarely in out of town newspapers) for over two
decades, and besides this and likely the four other storybooks
that turn up online, probably branched off often into the comic book
stories. I must have a few examples already.

He gave me and a lot of others lots of pleasure. His take on Bugs and
his peers, tho' of course dictated by mainstream ideas of what a child
audience can bear, (or it's parents), as an almost family of friends instead
of the thrillingly violent, lunatic adversaries we'd been eagerly shaped
to expect by TV's cinematic reruns is still a welcome part of my life
any time I run into his work again.

He had a fine line style I may not unerringly recognize, (for some lack
of comparative exposure), but it's worth some rooting around for
its forty carrots and guessing if its Heimdahl gold or not.

As to the difference in the comics and so on from the cartoons---
it's like the difference in running and relaxing. You don't want to lose
the ability to do either. So, find something by him, kick back into
your cozy rabbit hole, and pretend you're in a world where the disasters
aren't always so huge or fatal. I'll be in the next hutch over.

Must Leave Giant Eggs

And another not-so-belated Easter greeting from our would be friends
at Harvey Marineland, Reedville, Oregon.

I'm finally at the point I was intending a year ago, in these posts. Oh, how
long it takes a one track mind to lay his track!

Yes, an Allyn Joslyn Board Game

I know. Allyn Joslyn movies. Allyn Joslyn TV show. Allyn Joslyn comics.
Believe me, I haven't got it any worse for him than over any other odd
character actor. It just worked out this way.

So, not to flog a dead horse...the Allyn Joslyn board game! I think I
saw it on the search find immediately preceding the comics (last post).
But, I've less to say on this, like to arrange flow of pic and color, and
I am moving on to other things, honest.

And I think I'm right in calling it an Allyn Joslyn board game. The others
in the painting don't seem to be representatives of the show until you
find the overdue blowup revealing it to be 'the boys'---McKeever and
Tubby, it would seem.

I also think I'd seen this game before in one of the several toy books I used to buy. Taking it for some sort of airport game. (Whatever that would be. Customs inspector chasing saboteur? Sounds like today's imaginary insanities).

It's not as good a likeness of 'Col. Blackwell' as in the comic. It appears you're supposed to hide your pegs (all you pirates out there) from your opponent, behind the little plastic barriers. I could live in one.

It does remind me of what used to pass for a mod airport. Mighta
been some bit of fun. No doubt there was a lot of peeking going on.


Is this game the father of 'Battleship'? Will we ever truly know? Or care?

I think it was inspired by the creator spotting kids hiding behind a mailbox
from their latest victim of avoidance. That or a vaulting horse in the old
gymski where he exercised before walking up Madison Avenue to 'work'.

The movement lines on the box lid are, typically of hypesters, much more
'all over the place', in some diagrammatic map of 'mad fun' than really is
on the board itself. But, you didn't really expect to get what was shown,
did you?

Hey, I wonder if Mr. J. owned one? I think he did. Career souvenir.

'Thanks, We're All Yn...'

Before you sit down...

another few words 'around about' amiable

In looking for photos for the previous post, I happened onto 'net pics
of comic books from a '62-'63 TV show 'our friend' was in that I never
before knew existed, (and I have seen many by-now-obscure ones).

The first issue's cover jumped out instantly as by far the best of the three.
All likely publicity stills made for the show well before the comics occurred
to anyone.

I was bestirred enough to actually buy 'n' try that # from a deep sale at
Mile High Comics. (The cover scan and panel crops are mine, from that copy).

I don't know what I was expecting. Probably nothing. Just curious to see how
Allyn's likeness would fare, having tackled a few actors myself, either putting
them in actual comic stories, or grabbing someone for later by drawing directly
from the TV. It's a lot harder to capture the right (or any) 'soul' than you might think.

Usually it's the person's eyes that wind up dull ballpoint lumps and there's almost no hope of representing the unique, nuanced life in them without a still photo. Especially if theirs is a varied personality best seen in action.


Too young to be a fan of the show itself, and a smidge before my earliest
'buying' phase, I find it's not the sort of comic I would have bought as a kid.
Waayyyy too many humans, in wayyy too many uniforms, doing wayy too
much of 'the same' throughout. Give me an overwrought 'aminal' any day.

As usual then, for this and other companies, the artist is not credited. But, I'm
reminded first of Ric Estrada, who could crank out such serviceable pages by
the truckload, (whereas lazy, amateurish me would be tearing my soul's hair
out after only one page of lookalike miltary ciphers).

Whoever it is, they did an okay enough job on Joslyn's likeness. It's no worse than other TV tie-ins. Bear in mind such comic projects were seldom supplied with an abundance of morgue material from half-interested Hollywood p.r. departments. Often the artists had to cough up entire views of a person via one or two stills. And without even being fans of the shows or films involved.

Hmm. Crop two, Col. Blackwell 'fatigued' is not unlike my attempts at Robert Hutton. But, then those pencil mustaches can add a sameness to just about any dark haired white guy back then. As ubiquitous as frisky caterpillars--- (ub, the mustaches, not the white guys).


Happenstance and apropos of absolutely nothing but the thread of my previous post, Allyn Joslyn's character in the show is first named 'Harvey'.

It's hardly 'the same' as the real person of course. Such celebrity or media related representations are almost never as satisfying as whatever source the real live
actors are appearing in. And this comic is nothing to get thrilled over either.

The plot, probably supplied from a moot episode script, 'merely' involves the boy cadets of Westfield Military Academy in un-competition for team points 'cooking', 'acting', and in mock battle, that they don't really want, lest team leader friends Tubby and McKeever have to unfairly be declared victor over the other and expose their fake cadet 'Miller', whom they pose as, taking up the slack. (Hunh?). And I only spot read it.

Anyway, there's truly barely a scrap of kitschy irony to be had from the thing. It's all too mainstream for me, despite the baroque plot.


Evidently, also, the sort of television comedy ranking 'down there' in the lower
middle someplace, in sloppycat conception, with 'It's About Time', 'Mr. Terrific'
'The Chicago Teddy Bears' and 'Rango'. You know, whatever genre has been
a hit someplace gets the 'treatment'. The list of what they think America will
swallow is seemingly endless.

None of which is to put down the efforts of the actors and so on, anyone
who tried to make the thing work. It couldn't have been the worst show on
then, or certainly since. It must have had it's moments.

I don't recall the kid from anything, tho' I've since seen a blog comment that hipped me to his slightly more recognizable buddy, 'Tubby': Keith Taylor, 'Harry' on several post-'Larry Mondello' episodes of Leave It To Beaver; a couple of Lost in Spaces wearing a fringed leather jacket if memory serves; the 'Miri' episode of Star Trek; and so forth. He was the sort of a kid we all knew on the playground or the lunch line.

More notably, perhaps, as I recently viewed within the last year or two, Keith was 'Din-Din' (Oh, yeah, I get it, he was a bit chunky. Or, then again, maybe just a bit noisy at home?), in "The Young Animals" (1968), a school gang fracas before its time, convincingly panicked while strapped to the hood of a fast moving car.


Yet another unexpected aside, and proof (do we need it?), on cover #2, that Joslyn and Jackie 'Fester' Coogan had worked together before Addams Family.

From the two poses here, as the harried Colonel's beleaguered second banana, 'Sgt. Barnes'. (The black and white photo is not in issue #1; there are none inside as Dell sometimes did. And the character does not appear in the issue either).

Unlikely to ever be on tape or dvd, (I have not checked), it's all a sort of a side alley dead end in the Labyrinth of Nostalgia for me. Though some who saw the show may feel otherwise. It all depends on where you were, who you were or weren't with, and so on as to what marshals a nostalgic trip for you. God bless yas.

And, 'At ease. And hang up if my wife answers'.

'Harrrrr-veeeeey'

I removed Jimmy Stewart from this shot. I rather like the seated body,
tho. I really just wanted an undistracted view of the bunny mummer---
completely unrelated to the film "Harvey" itself. They're so disturbing
in their own right.

I'm not a big fan of overpraised Jimmy's 'aw shucks', idling motor
delivery. Especially coming from his younger self. But, I suppose he
was an okay hoomin bean, and I can usually take him or leave him.
He's pretty effective in the latter parts of "Rear Window". In "Vertigo",
tho, he's pretty much just a sad sack creep---he shoulda just married
Barbara Bel Geddes and been done with it. (At least she already loved
him, even throo his 'neurosis'. But, oh, those horn rims always make
for such a Hollywood 'ugly duckling', we are constantly retold).

The put-upon and timeworn 'Mattie Appleyard' in Davis Grubb's 'Fool's
Parade' arguably stands alone at one with Stewart's wulla-wulla-wullas,
tho' we also have the strange distraction of a fake glass eye ('Tige')
to account for.

I think 'George Bailey' should've just jumped, if only to avoid hearing
his treacly kid at the end. Anyone ever notice that ''Independence Day''
ends the 'same' as "It's a Wonderful Life"? YEE-UKH!


The best part of "Harvey" (1950) are the scenes with Jesse White &
'Myrtle Mae' (Victoria Horne).

But then I inevitably identify with the marginal within the marginal.
I'll choose my own favorite misfits, thank you.

And the old broad, Josephine Hull, (another player from 'Arsenic'),
is okay fun. Tho' all the faux hysteria is trying. It's not a hilarious
film, to me.

Even Stewart is said to've opined that he should have played his own
character, Elwood, more darkly. (Or how about not at all?). You 'can't'
get much darker than "Donnie Darko's" 'Frank'. Here's a little beaut of
a matchup shot [evidently created by I-can't-tell-which-guy for a catalog
page shown at http://www.behance.net/gallery/BFI-Mission-statement-
spreads/115739 (I cropped the text block) and used here, in the
Internet tradition, w/out permission].

I'm also not a fan of those hyper-talkative (with overlapping dialogue)
critics' pets like "Front Page" and "Bringing Up Baby". I find them
highly, highly aggravating. And no more 'realistic'. My own mind is wound
up enough already without purposely adding to its discomfort. I don't care
if the leads in such ever get together romantically. I hope they all fall
out a window.


"Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944) was forever ruined by Cary Grant's
ridiculously overplayed manic behavior. It eclipses all the other
characters, who would otherwise be great on their own if they weren't
noisily interrupted by Grant's 'Mortimer' every five seconds.

Allyn Joslyn would've been perfect for it. He actually did perform it
on stage prior to the film, and deserved the part, barring the usual
Hollywood pandering to so called sex appeal.

(Joslyn may be better remembered now as 'Sam Hilliard' the truant
officer on "The Addams Family" TV show, one of a handful of characters
garnering a repeat appearance in another episode.

He also can be enjoyed as one of the errant angels in "The Horn Blows
at Midnight" (1945), paired, coincidentally enough with John Alexander,
'Teddy' in the 'Arsenic' film. {Perhaps they were together in the play?}).

[Another aside: there was a TV version of 'Arsenic' in 1969, which I
watched as a boy. Possibly broadcast only once, with Bob Crane as the
'sane' brother and Fred Gwynne in the 'monstrous' Raymond Massey part].

Anyhoo, I also removed the dancers in this 'Harvey' publicity
shot, arm 'n' arm with the same mummer, (the suit at least).
The gals all purty enuff of course, (one an actress I'll save
for another post), but, again, I'm for the rabbit here. Note
his rather unfortuitous, 'carrotty' crease. You won't see that
on the 'real' "Harvey". I think. Tho I haven't checked. I'm
really not into bunny batch.

If you don't like my crude, 'The Commissar Vanishes' style
tinkering, there are still the original versions someplace
online, if you can find them, the Pookas willing, so you can
decide which shots are the most off putting.

Rabbit Ears Already Included

(Very Belated Easter) Bunnies of Some Intrigue