Happy Birthday, Bud Collyer

Yesterday would have been Clayton "Bud" Collyer's 100th birthday.

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Collyer was the first actor to give voice to Superman. He played the Man of Steel on radio through most of the 1940s, using a pleasant tenor voice for Clark Kent, then shifting to a base for Superman. His spot-on characterization was one of the strengths of a classic old-time radio show.

He also gave voice to Superman in the classic Fleischer studio cartoon made in the 1940s. (He returned in the 1960s to play Superman in the not-so-classic Filmation cartoons.)

For your viewing pleasure, here's one of the best of the Fleischer cartoons:

The Mechanical Monsters

Poverty Row Theater

Back in the 1930s & 1940s, studios like Monogram and Republic Pictures were the “Poverty Row” of the movie business. They were strictly low-budget operations, churning out inexpensive films at a rapid pace—movies that often ran only an hour or so and could be conveniently packaged as half of a double feature.

A lot of the Poverty Row films are still a lot of fun to watch today. Without well-known stars or elaborate sets, these films depended on telling a story as quickly and as entertainingly as possible. Often, this resulted in fast-moving but well-constructed plots with likable characters.

I recently Netflixed a disc titled “The Poverty Row Collection,” which contains three Monogram efforts from the 1940s. So far, I’ve watched only one of the three, but it’s a great example of a skillfully made B-movie.

Kitty O’Day, Detective (1944) stars Jean Parker as a switchboard operator whose boss is murdered. When circumstances place her boyfriend under suspicion, she (along with her reluctant beau) begins her own investigation.

The film is played mainly for laughs—in fact, it drops into pure slapstick a few times. Kitty O’Day has a very forceful (and talkative) personality, endlessly annoying the police detectives as she drags her boyfriend along on tasks that often involve breaking and entering someone else’s hotel room or office. Jean Parker has enough comedic flair to make the material work, while Tim Ryan is very good as the long-suffering detective who constantly stumbles across her as he also works on the case.

The mystery itself is pretty basic, but the clues and the identity of the real killer all make reasonable sense at the end. It’s not a classic, but it wasn’t trying to be. The movie, in fact, makes no pretension about being any smarter than it is. It simply tries (and succeeds) in giving us 59 minutes worth of humor wrapped around a pretty good mystery. That’s certainly good enough for me.

A nifty classic movie poster

I don't know which artist created this poster, but whoever it was certainly had solid composition and design skills. I don't think it's possible to look at the poster and then not want to see the movie.

Mr. Moto's Gamble was the odd-man-out entry in the Mr. Moto series. Originally meant to be a Charlie Chan movie (Charlie Chan at the Ringside), it was quickly re-written for the Mr. Moto character when the actor playing Chan died. Hence, it's more of a straight murder mystery than the other Moto films--with less overt gun- or knife-play and without any elements of international espionage.

It's still a lot of fun, though. It represents our last chance to see Keye Luke as Chan's enthusiastic Number One son, the other supporting characters are interesting, Peter Lorre is typically excellent as Moto, and the overall plot is a good one.

Today's post, though, is mostly just to show off an excellent example of the art of movie poster design. I'm not sure that modern poster design--though often quite good--has the same amount of personality to it as those from the 1930s & 1940s do. The poster for Mr. Moto's Gamble, aside from accomplishing its given task of making you want to see the movie, is just plain fun to look at.

Everybody loves Kung Fu Fighting

The Bruce Lee-inspired Martial Arts craze of the 1970s spilled over into comics as well as other aspects of pop culture. A lot of the characters created to feed this genre were good ones and Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, was one of the best.

Shang-Chi combined the martial arts with a comic book-pulp fiction atmsophere by making him the son of Fu Manchu, the master criminal created by Sax Rohmer in a series of early 20th Century adventure novels. Shang had turned against his father and regularly foiled Fu’s schemes of world domination. Well-choreographed martial arts battles were combined with killer robots, death rays, genetically mutated monsters and full-scale battles between cadres of heavily armed troops. It all worked to create a unique ambiance--with a different feel to it than other martial arts-inspired works of popular fiction.

Of course, it wasn’t long before Shang-Chi crossed paths with other denizens of the Marvel Universe. In Giant-Size Spider Man #2, from about 1974, he met Spider Man.

This fast-paced story, written by comic book great Len Wein, begins with Fu Manchu tricking each hero into believing the other was planning on sabotaging a power station. This led to a really nifty running battle between the two throughout the otherwise deserted station. They soon figure out they’ve been tricked, of course, and team up to stop Fu from erecting a mind control devise atop the Empire State Building.

To a large degree, this story is very predictable. It follows the traditional comic book plot device of having two heroes fight each other before teaming up, followed by the equally traditional stopping-the-villain-in-the-nick-of-time bit. But the story works fine anyways. Traditional plot devices, in the hands of a good writer, can be a strength rather than a weakness and Len Wein tells the story well, endowing it with its fair share of excitement and suspense. He also understood both Shang-Chi’s and Spider Man’s personalities, keeping the pair nicely in character throughout the book.

All this is helped by Ross Andru’s art. Andru was one of the regularSpider Man artists during that time and he always did a bang-up job. This book in particular shows how well he could illustrate a fight scene, moving the action along in an exciting and logical manner. The scene in which Shang and Spidey both take a dive off the top of the Empire State Building in order to beat Fu Manchu to the bottom is particularly well staged.

No one can claim that this particular comic was earth-shaking or genre-changing in its influence. But it does a very good job of doing what a superhero comics is supposed to do. It gave us a fun adventure story, well-told both in terms of writing and art.

The Land That Time Forgot

There were many brilliant storytellers whose work was published in the pulp magazines during the first half of the 20th Century---Dashiel Hammett, Robert E. Howard, Ray Bradbury, Walter Gibson, Lester Dent and many more. One of the most successful, both commercially and in terms of telling enthralling stories, was Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Burroughs is, of course, best known for creating Tarzan. He also gave us tales about Mars, Venus and the underground world of Pellucidar. In his stories, courageous heroes commonly rescue beautiful women from certain death, battle evil men and an assortment of wild animals, alien monsters and prehistoric creatures.

If I had to name a favorite Burroughs story, though, it would be The Land That Time Forgot trilogy, first published in three successive issues of Blue Book magazine in 1918.

This breathless tale introduces us to the lost continent of Caspak, located in remote waters near Antartica. The hero of the first book, Bowen Tyler, stumbles across it accidentally while commanding a German U-boat that he and some British sailors had captured. Low on fuel, Tyler takes the sub through a subterranean passage to enter Caspak, which is surrounded by steep cliffs and otherwise inaccessible.

Once in Caspak, Tyler and his mixed crew of British and Germans (and, of course, a beautiful woman with whom Tyler falls in love) are forced to work together as they run up against a plethora of dinosaurs and other hungry prehistoric creatures, as well as tribes of ill-tempered cavemen.

The action races on non-stop as additional characters are introduced. A friend of Tyler's--Tom Billings--attempts to fly over the cliffs into Caspak via airplane, but crashes after a dogfight with a pterydactyl. In the meantime, Bradley (one of the British sailors who entered Caspak with Tyler) is seperated from the rest of the group and captured by the Wieroo, a race of winged men who live in a city built from skulls.

It's all great fun, with battles, kidnappings and escapes coming one after another. Burroughs does an excellent job of gradually introducing the bizarre biological rules that govern Caspak's life forms, building up a self-consistent world that easily allows us to suspend disbelief. The Land That Time Forgot is pure escapism, representing the work of a master storyteller at the top of his game.

BEST SWORD FIGHTS EVER

In real life, Basil Rathbone was an expert fencer. So were two of his fellow actors—Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power. I remember once reading somewhere that Rathbone was, in real life, the best fencer of the three.

Ironic if true, because whenever Rathbone faced off against Flynn or Power in a movie, he was playing the villain and was obligated to lose. But he could take comfort in the knowledge that he had participated in three of the best choreographed, most entertaining sword fights in movie history.

The first time was 1935, in one of the best swashbucklers ever filmed: Captain Blood. Errol Flynn plays the title role of Peter Blood, a physician-turned-slave-turned-pirate. Rathbone is a secondary villain of sorts—the ruthless French pirate Lavasseur, with who Blood makes an unwise alliance.

The alliance comes to an end when the two buccaneers rather understandably duel each other over possession of Olivia de Havilland. The fight, taking place on the beach of a deserted island, is one of the highlights of this excellent film.

Flynn and Rathbone crossed swords three years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Flynn, of course, is perfect as Robin. (Along with Peter Blood, it was one of the two roles he was born to play.) Rathbone, this time, is the primary villain—Sir Guy of Gisborne.

This energetic and beautifully photographed version of the Robin Hood legend ends with a battle for control of a castle (and, incidentally, of England). Robin and Sir Guy end up separated from the battle, going at it with broadswords up and down the stairs leading to the dungeon (where the endlessly put-upon Olivia de Havilland was being held prisoner). The fighting style, employing modern fencing techniques, may have been anarchistic, but the fairy-tale ambiance of the film did not require realism and—as in Captain Blood—the duel is one of the most memorable scenes in a movie already stuffed full of classic moments.

My favorite Rathbone sword fight comes in The Mark of Zorro, made in 1940. Tyrone Power, playing the titular hero, is his opponent this time around. Rathbone is the cruel Captain Pasquele, who works for the despotic governor.

Interestingly, Power is in the role of Zorro’s wimpy “secret identity,” Don Diego, when the fight takes place. The moments leading up to the sword duel are fantastic, with Power and Rathbone trading perfectly written dialogue before going at it. (Such as Rathbone spitting out “Quiet, you popinjay! I’ve no reason for letting you live, either!” Power’s reply was in a voice tinged with quiet boredom: “What a pleasant coincidence. I feel exactly the same way about you.”) The fight, set in the governor’s office, makes use of both the skills of the actors and the geography of the set to give us a flawless and exhilarating action sequence.

So there you have it. Poor Basil Rathbone gets killed as a Frenchman, then as an Englishman, then as a Spaniard. He might have been able to take either Flynn or Power in real life, but the requirements of storytelling sent a blade through his villainous heart whenever the cameras were rolling.

Godzilla in the Marvel Comics Universe

As with DC's The War That Time Forgot series or Dell/Gold Key's Turok, Son of Stone, some ideas work simply because they are unashamedly geeky. This was certainly the case in the 1970s, when Marvel Comics got the rights to do a comic book featuring Toho Studio's star monster Godzilla.

Rather than do something with a seperate continuity, it was decided to simply drop the big green guy down into the middle of the Marvel Universe. Writer Doug Moench and artist Herb Trimpe seemed to have thought the implications of this through pretty thoroughly, then began to have fun with it.

So when Godzilla shows up in Alaska and starts whip-snapping the Alaskan pipeline around, it seemed only natural that a SHIELD helicarrier would be dispatched to deal with him. Poor Dum Dum Dugan is in charge of the operation and spends the next two years in a constant state of frustration as he tries to find some way of dealing with the mutant lizard. This by itself was cool. Dum Dum had been a supporting character for years, both in Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos and in the SHIELD stories that ran in Strange Tales. As a high ranking and experienced SHIELD agent, it made good solid comic book sense for him to be in charge of the anti-Godzilla forces.

The connection to the Marvel Universe continues through each issue. When Godzilla attacks San Francisco, the Champions help drive him off. A little bit into the seiries, Dum Dum suddenly slaps his forehead with a "why didn't I think of this before" and orders that someone get in touch with super-scientist Hank Pym as soon as possible. Soon after, Godzilla's getting squirted with several tons of Pym's shrink gas.

But even a pint-sized Godzilla is trouble. Getting loose in the sewers of New York, he has an epic fight with a rat. He begins to slowly grow again and is maybe 20 feet tall when he throws down with Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four in the Museum of Natural History. Smothered unconscious by Mr. Fantastic (who encases the monster in his pliable body), he's then tossed through Doctor Doom's time machine, on the assumption that he'll be happier back in a prehistoric age.

This leads to first a fight against Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur, then a team-up with them against some evil cave men. Godzilla's radioactive nature causes the time machine to eventually sling-shot him, now full-sized again, back to modern Time Sqaure. Some problems just won't go away. At least not until the book is cancelled, which happens after SHIELD and the Avengers manage to lure Godzilla out into the Atlantic Ocean.

This series is a lot of fun for any Godzilla/comic fan, combining the big guy with the comic book world in ways that make comic book sense and maintains Marvel continuity. Trimpe's art is good and holds up well in the recently published "Essential Godzilla" despite the loss of color. The series ran 24 issues and there were only a couple of minor missteps during its brief run. A two-part story in which Godzilla essentially helps round up some cattle rustlers was very weak. More annoying was a completely unnecessary supporting character: a kid (the nephew of a Japanese scientist whose brought in by SHIELD as a Godzilla expert) who keeps whining undendlingly to everyone about how Godzilla isn't evil and shouldn't be hurt. The little snot is a walking advertisement for the need to spank children.

But despite these flaws, the series remains entertaining throughout its entire run. It's well worth taking the time to read.

RADIO BY THE BOOK available for pre-order

My next book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It's scheduled for release on November 30. Everyone please make sure that civilization does NOT collapse (thus interfering with distribution of my book) prior to that date.

Here's the link to Amazon:

Radio by the Book: Adaptations of Literature and Fiction on the Airwaves

Desert warfare, commando raids and books for children

Western Publishing came into existance in 1910 and had a long and fun history before it was bought out, picked apart and absorbed into the bigger publishing houses over the course of the 1980s & 1990s. Western produced comic books (mostly based on characters licensed from movies, cartoons and television) that were distributed first by Dell Comics and later by Gold Key Comics. Western's subsidiary Whitman Publishing produced the wonderful Little Big Books.

When I was a kid, I owned the Fantastic Four Little Big Book (with great art by Jack Kirby throughout) and one featuring Major Matt Mason, an astronaut action figure that was popular at the time. But it was another pair of Whitman books, hard covers based on television shows airing at the time, that really caught my fancy.

Both books were based on World War II-themed shows. Both managed to totally enthrall my 8-year-old mind. I read them over and over until they just fell apart.

One was based on The Rat Patrol, a silly but exciting TV show about commandos battling the Nazis in North Africa. Sgt. Sam Troy and his three men rode around in a pair of jeeps, each with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the back. When those jeeps came jumping over sand dunes in the opening credits, it looked awesome.




The book, written by I.G. Edmunds, is titled The Iron Monster Raid. It starts with the Rat Patrol returning from a tough mission. They've only one jeep left and almost no ammo for their few remaining weapons. They stumble into the middle of a tank battle and lose their last jeep. They also get a glimpse of the German's newest weapon--the massive Tiger tank.

Soon after, the Patrol is assigned to escort a couple of officers behind German lines, intending to link up with a secret agent and get some microfilm showing the weak spots on the Tiger tank.


When I acquired this book as an adult, I was curious to how well it would hold up. Looking at re-runs of the TV show as a grown-up, I found it was still visually fun, but marred by poor plot construction and historically inaccurate equipment. (Details that I would have been less aware of as a child.)

The book, though, was still a lot of fun. I'm sure nostalgia was a factor in this, but it turns out that the overall plot was solid, with a fair degree of historical accuracy in its portrayal of weapons and geography.

Of particular note is a couple of the action sequences. One takes place near the beginning, when the Rat Patrol is trying to get home on foot after losing their last jeep. They stumble across a German command post and get temporarily seperated from one another. This leads to a very tense sequence in which they sneak into the command post to steal a vehicle.

Later in the novel, they have sneaked about a German train to get to the occupied city of Tunis. Events force them to try to take over the train while its stopped in a narrow canyon. At the same time, the train is attacked by American fighter planes, forcing our heroes to dodge friendly machine gun bullets while they shoot it out with the Germans. It was an exciting, well-described set piece.

The other Whitman novel was based on a short-lived TV show called Garrison's Gorillas. I don't think I ever saw an episode of this. Using the same concept as the movie The Dirty Dozen, it featured an OSS officer named Garrison who uses a group of reformed criminals on behind-the-lines missions, employing their unique skills to fight the Nazis.

The Whitman version of the show, titled The Fear Formula and written by Jack Pearl, had a science fiction element to it: the Germans have gotten hold of a formula that can be placed in drinking water supplies. Once you drink the tainted water, you become helpless with fear and panic.

Once again, when I returned to this book as an adult, I discovered yet another well-constructed plot. The Gorillas are assigned to rescue the Czech scientist who created the Fear Formula from a German prison camp. There are a couple of fun plot twists and the action sequences are exciting.

Whitman did quite a few of the TV books during the 1960s. Occasionally, I run across one in a used book store and snap it up. So far, I've read The Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from UNCLE, and Combat. Surprisingly, Combat, easily the highest quality TV show of all of these, was the dullest of the Whitman books. The others, though, were all pretty good. None qualify as great literature, but nearly all managed to spin an entertaining yarn.

They aren't real--but by golly, they should be: Part 5: Nick & Nora Charles and Ralph & Sue Dibny

NICK AND NORA CHARLES:

They’re in love with each other—they’re rich—they’re witty—and (perhaps most importantly) they’re prone to practically trip over corpses pretty much everywhere they go. What else can two people ask for out of a relationship?

Nick Charles was a successful private investigator until he married the beautiful heiress Nora. He left the detective business after that, devoting his time to (as he once tells Nora) “taking care of all that money I married you for.”

But Nick can’t get away from the sleuth racket. We first meet him in Dashiell Hammett’s 1933 novel The Thin Man, in which he reluctantly becomes involved in a murder investigation.

Hammett never wrote anything else involving Nick and Nora, but the couple took on a life of their own when William Powell and Myrna Loy played them in a series of wonderful movies made during the 1930s and 1940s. Again and again, the pair would trade casual barbs and witticisms as Nora insisted that Nick look into the latest murder case they’ve once again stumbled across. Good storytelling meshes perfectly with sharp humor tbroughout all these films.

The couple took their wonderful relationship to radio as well during the 1940s, with actress Claudia Morgan pretty much channeling Myrna Loy in her portrayal of Nora. I’ve no idea what Claudia Morgan looked like, but she sure as heck sounded beautiful.

But Nick and Nora aren’t the only husband-and-wife detective team on the block. In fact, in 1960, in The Flash #112, DC comics gave us a really nifty variation on the same theme.

RALPH & SUE DIBNY

By drinking an elixir made from an exotic fruit, Ralph Dibny discovered he had gained the ability to stretch his body and assumed fantastic shapes. He makes a fortune as a circus performer, marries a wealthy and beautiful heiress, then retires to travel the world with his new wife.

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Naturally, they stumble across a crime at nearly ever town or city they visit. Ralph (also known as the Elongated Man) loves a good mystery more than anything other than his wife Sue. And Sue understands this—though she might get a little annoyed with him when he stands her up in order to stake out some jewel thieves, it is always clear that the two love each other dearly.

Elongated Man stories ran regularly through much of 1960s as a back up in Detective Comics. Ralph used sharp deductive skills, but also made good use of his stretching powers to gather clues. With art usually supplied by Carmine Infantino, images of Ralph stretching an ear down a chimney to eavesdrop on the bad guys—or stretching his neck up several hundred feet to search a wide area with a single glance—or suddenly stretching out his elbows or earlobes to knock a gun out of a villain’s hands—were delightful silly without ever spoiling the mystery aspect of the stories.

It was all these elements taken together—Ralph and Sue’s happy marriage, good mystery plots and the images of Ralph using his powers—that made the original Elongated Man stories so much fun. Sadly, in modern comics, the idea of a happy marriage seems to have become a bizarre anathema to writers and editors. Ralph and Sue have both been killed off.

But, like Nick and Nora Charles, a good husband-and-wife detective team can never truly die. Not as long as we can return to their novels, comics and movies whenever we wish to do so. Nick and Nora and Ralph and Sue—they’re not real, but by golly they oughta be.