Potrzebie
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
I was so much Elder (1921-2008) then; I'm younger than that now. #2
Kickstarter: Chicken Fat
Kickstarter: Chicken Fat
Labels: elder, gaines, hajdu, kurtzman, trump
¶ 8:07 AM 0 comments
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wood Chips 20: Hansel and Gretel
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There were only two issues of Harvey Kurtzman's Trump, and Wood had only three contributions, short satires on Candid Camera, Elvis Presley and Disney. Hansel and Gretel is from the first issue (January, 1957), scripted by cartoonist Ed Fisher. The trapper Troldheim is a caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy, with the Troldheim name suggesting he is a menacing troll lying in wait to ensnare anyone.
There were only two issues of Harvey Kurtzman's Trump, and Wood had only three contributions, short satires on Candid Camera, Elvis Presley and Disney. Hansel and Gretel is from the first issue (January, 1957), scripted by cartoonist Ed Fisher. The trapper Troldheim is a caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy, with the Troldheim name suggesting he is a menacing troll lying in wait to ensnare anyone.
Labels: disney, ed fisher, gretel, hansel, kurtzman, trump, wood, wood chips
¶ 8:37 AM 1 comments
Saturday, February 14, 2009
A Valentine for Gypsy Lou
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Click for huge enlargement of orange/yellow-clad Gypsy Lou Webb in the French Quarter during the early 1960s with her artwork on wall at St. Peter and Royal Street. She was not identified in this c. 1960-61 postcard published by New Orleans' Post Card Specialties. Instead, the caption reads: "Street scene typical in the Vieux Carre, French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. The iron lace balconies of the buildings on left are famous for their intricate design, in an area where wrought and cast iron work is the commonplace."
Behind one of the balconies, at 618 Rue Ursulines, was Loujon Press where Gypsy Lou and Jon Webb published such writers as Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac and Colin Wilson. Go to Edwin Hunter's Chicken Fat to see a photo of Gypsy Lou that Hunter took in January 1965. As he explains, she also sold Harvey Kurtzman's Trump alongside the poetry publications.
Review of the Jeff Weddle book and the Wayne Ewing documentary by Flickhead. University of Alabama lecture on literary magazines by Jeff Weddle (December 4, 2007). Also listen to Weddle reading his own poetry.
Click for huge enlargement of orange/yellow-clad Gypsy Lou Webb in the French Quarter during the early 1960s with her artwork on wall at St. Peter and Royal Street. She was not identified in this c. 1960-61 postcard published by New Orleans' Post Card Specialties. Instead, the caption reads: "Street scene typical in the Vieux Carre, French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. The iron lace balconies of the buildings on left are famous for their intricate design, in an area where wrought and cast iron work is the commonplace."
Behind one of the balconies, at 618 Rue Ursulines, was Loujon Press where Gypsy Lou and Jon Webb published such writers as Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac and Colin Wilson. Go to Edwin Hunter's Chicken Fat to see a photo of Gypsy Lou that Hunter took in January 1965. As he explains, she also sold Harvey Kurtzman's Trump alongside the poetry publications.
Review of the Jeff Weddle book and the Wayne Ewing documentary by Flickhead. University of Alabama lecture on literary magazines by Jeff Weddle (December 4, 2007). Also listen to Weddle reading his own poetry.
Labels: ewing, flickhead, french quarter, gypsy lou, kerouac, kurtzman, loujon, muffuletta, new orleans, the outsider, trump, university of mississippi press, weddle
¶ 2:46 PM 2 comments
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Funny Face
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At the EC offices during the early 1950s, Bill Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman look over a completed story.
One influence on Harvey Kurtzman was the Yiddish entertainer Aaron Lebedeff (1873-1960), who was born in Gomel, Belarus, and immigrated to America via Shanghai in 1920. A star of the Yiddish theater and a comedic lyricist, he was still performing in the 1950s. In Mad #4 (April-May 1953), the name of the character Lamont Shadowskeedeeboomboom in Kurtzman's parody of The Shadow is directly inspired by a Lebedeff riff. Control-click on title above to hear a fragment of Lebedeff singing "A Yiddish Leidele."
The article below in which Harvey Kurtzman explains the origin of Alfred E. Neuman was syndicated to newspapers February 6, 1975. He mentions Bernard Shir-Cliff who later became a contributor to Mad and Help! He did his own humor anthology, The Wild Reader (1956), before moving on as an agent and the editor of Warner Books. For more extensive research into the "What, Me Worry?" kid, see Maria Reidelbach's Completely Mad (Little, Brown, 1991).
Another of Kurtzman's inventions was the hand with six fingers. He drew this in an ersatz engraving style which added to the illusion. It must have been effective, because he was disappointed that no Mad readers commented on the extra finger.
That Face on Mad
by Harvey Kurtzman
There’s a question that nags wherever I go. Again and again I am asked, Where did Alfred Neuman come from? For those of you who didn’t hear a bell ring at the mention of Alfred N., he is the face you see on the covers of Mad magazine. And for those of you who ring, let me put the eternal question to rest, once and for all.
The face first came to my attention when I was doing the comic book Mad for publisher William Gaines in the middle fifties -- I think it was 1954. We were working with Ballantine paperback books on the first of a series of Mad reprint collections.
Since I was Mad’s chief cook and bottle washer at the time, there wasn’t a moment of my waking life that wasn’t devoted to the search for more and more Mad material. In this condition, and while passing the time of day in the office of an editor, Bernard Shir-Cliff, I noticed on the Ballantine Book bulletin board a postcard with this face. The card had some ad message--I don’t recall what. And the face itself was printed alongside in a space, maybe an inch by an inch and a half. The face was not unfamiliar. I associated it with the funny picture postcards in Times Square penny arcades and tourist traps, this one with the caption “What, Me Worry?” under the bumpkin portrait -- part leering wiseacre, part happy-go-lucky kid.
But what interested me about this Ballantine version was that of all the reproductions I remembered, this one looked like the authentic, original-source portrait -- the real goods. While everything I’d seen before was cartoon, this seemed to be a photograph of the actual face! So I pocketed the card and rushed back to the workshop where I inserted the “What, Me Worry?” face on and in subsequent issues of Mad magazine. I was very fond of plastering Mad with inanities -- items like Potrzebie, Melvin Cowznofski, Alfred E. Neuman. The readers apparently liked them.
Potrzebie was a word clipped at random from a Polish language newspaper. Melvin was borrowed from the old Ernie Kovacs Show, as Alfred E. was borrowed from Hollywood by way of the old, old Henry Morgan show.
Alfred Newman (the late) was in reality a movie-music man whose credits were legion on the silver screen. Morgan would use the name for various innocuous characters that passed through his show, and I did in Mad, after Morgan’s fashion. And even though the face was, and ever would be, to me, a What, Me Worry? Kid, our fan mail insisted on calling him Melvin Cowznofski and Alfred E. Neuman.
As a matter of fact, in the ensuing fan enthusiasm over the face, we ourselves became curious as to his genealogy, and in our letters page we asked the readers for whatever source information they might have.
The answers were astonishing. The face dated back to the 19th century. It was supposed to have been used for selling patent medicine, shoes and soft drinks. The kid was depicted as a salesman, a cowboy, a doughboy, and was rendered in dozens of slight to grossly altered variations. But the answer I have always liked to believe was that the face came from an old high school biology text -- an example of a person who lacked iodine. Whatever the truth might be, Mad adopted the face as its mascot, and we used it like a trademark on all our covers.
With the success of Mad, disputations arose. Readers laid copyright claim to the face, and eventually the issue went to court -- not to just any court, but to the Supreme Court of the land. In this lofty council, Mad won, once and for all, the right to use the face. The What, Me Worry? kid was permanently baptized Alfred Neuman by Albert Feldstein, the editor who came after me.
So that’s the story, once and for all. Don’t ask me any more.
This is the title page of the Mad Style Guide which I edited for Mad in 1994. Notice Alfred at top and Bill Gaines in the upper right corner. In the lower left the border art is signed, "Kurtzman and Elder." The scan crops off the foot at upper right which has the word "Introduction" and was die-cut to go outside the trim edge of the paper.
Circulated for use by potential licensees, the book's three-ring binder format displays numerous images created for use on T-shirts and other products. Along with Mad words and catchphrases, it contains color guides, model sheets, logos and icons, plus new artwork by Sergio Aragones, Tom Bunk, Dave Manak, Angelo Torres and George Woodbridge. Some past covers of Mad were recycled by Torres who drew new versions of those covers as black-and-white line art for the Mad Style Guide.
.At the EC offices during the early 1950s, Bill Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman look over a completed story.
One influence on Harvey Kurtzman was the Yiddish entertainer Aaron Lebedeff (1873-1960), who was born in Gomel, Belarus, and immigrated to America via Shanghai in 1920. A star of the Yiddish theater and a comedic lyricist, he was still performing in the 1950s. In Mad #4 (April-May 1953), the name of the character Lamont Shadowskeedeeboomboom in Kurtzman's parody of The Shadow is directly inspired by a Lebedeff riff. Control-click on title above to hear a fragment of Lebedeff singing "A Yiddish Leidele."
The article below in which Harvey Kurtzman explains the origin of Alfred E. Neuman was syndicated to newspapers February 6, 1975. He mentions Bernard Shir-Cliff who later became a contributor to Mad and Help! He did his own humor anthology, The Wild Reader (1956), before moving on as an agent and the editor of Warner Books. For more extensive research into the "What, Me Worry?" kid, see Maria Reidelbach's Completely Mad (Little, Brown, 1991).Another of Kurtzman's inventions was the hand with six fingers. He drew this in an ersatz engraving style which added to the illusion. It must have been effective, because he was disappointed that no Mad readers commented on the extra finger.
That Face on Mad
by Harvey Kurtzman
There’s a question that nags wherever I go. Again and again I am asked, Where did Alfred Neuman come from? For those of you who didn’t hear a bell ring at the mention of Alfred N., he is the face you see on the covers of Mad magazine. And for those of you who ring, let me put the eternal question to rest, once and for all.
The face first came to my attention when I was doing the comic book Mad for publisher William Gaines in the middle fifties -- I think it was 1954. We were working with Ballantine paperback books on the first of a series of Mad reprint collections.
Since I was Mad’s chief cook and bottle washer at the time, there wasn’t a moment of my waking life that wasn’t devoted to the search for more and more Mad material. In this condition, and while passing the time of day in the office of an editor, Bernard Shir-Cliff, I noticed on the Ballantine Book bulletin board a postcard with this face. The card had some ad message--I don’t recall what. And the face itself was printed alongside in a space, maybe an inch by an inch and a half. The face was not unfamiliar. I associated it with the funny picture postcards in Times Square penny arcades and tourist traps, this one with the caption “What, Me Worry?” under the bumpkin portrait -- part leering wiseacre, part happy-go-lucky kid.
But what interested me about this Ballantine version was that of all the reproductions I remembered, this one looked like the authentic, original-source portrait -- the real goods. While everything I’d seen before was cartoon, this seemed to be a photograph of the actual face! So I pocketed the card and rushed back to the workshop where I inserted the “What, Me Worry?” face on and in subsequent issues of Mad magazine. I was very fond of plastering Mad with inanities -- items like Potrzebie, Melvin Cowznofski, Alfred E. Neuman. The readers apparently liked them.
The word "Potrzebie" pasted into Mad #13.
Potrzebie was a word clipped at random from a Polish language newspaper. Melvin was borrowed from the old Ernie Kovacs Show, as Alfred E. was borrowed from Hollywood by way of the old, old Henry Morgan show.Alfred Newman (the late) was in reality a movie-music man whose credits were legion on the silver screen. Morgan would use the name for various innocuous characters that passed through his show, and I did in Mad, after Morgan’s fashion. And even though the face was, and ever would be, to me, a What, Me Worry? Kid, our fan mail insisted on calling him Melvin Cowznofski and Alfred E. Neuman.
As a matter of fact, in the ensuing fan enthusiasm over the face, we ourselves became curious as to his genealogy, and in our letters page we asked the readers for whatever source information they might have.The answers were astonishing. The face dated back to the 19th century. It was supposed to have been used for selling patent medicine, shoes and soft drinks. The kid was depicted as a salesman, a cowboy, a doughboy, and was rendered in dozens of slight to grossly altered variations. But the answer I have always liked to believe was that the face came from an old high school biology text -- an example of a person who lacked iodine. Whatever the truth might be, Mad adopted the face as its mascot, and we used it like a trademark on all our covers.
With the success of Mad, disputations arose. Readers laid copyright claim to the face, and eventually the issue went to court -- not to just any court, but to the Supreme Court of the land. In this lofty council, Mad won, once and for all, the right to use the face. The What, Me Worry? kid was permanently baptized Alfred Neuman by Albert Feldstein, the editor who came after me.
So that’s the story, once and for all. Don’t ask me any more.
--Harvey Kurtzman
This is the title page of the Mad Style Guide which I edited for Mad in 1994. Notice Alfred at top and Bill Gaines in the upper right corner. In the lower left the border art is signed, "Kurtzman and Elder." The scan crops off the foot at upper right which has the word "Introduction" and was die-cut to go outside the trim edge of the paper.
Circulated for use by potential licensees, the book's three-ring binder format displays numerous images created for use on T-shirts and other products. Along with Mad words and catchphrases, it contains color guides, model sheets, logos and icons, plus new artwork by Sergio Aragones, Tom Bunk, Dave Manak, Angelo Torres and George Woodbridge. Some past covers of Mad were recycled by Torres who drew new versions of those covers as black-and-white line art for the Mad Style Guide.
Labels: alfred newman, ballantine, gaines, help, henry morgan, kurtzman, lebedeff, mad, mad style guide, neuman, potrzebie, reidelbach, shir-cliff, the shadow, trump
¶ 8:31 AM 5 comments
Monday, January 28, 2008
Trump towers
Despite the header above, Harvey Kurtzman's Trump magazine is not to be confused with Donald Trump's new Trump magazine. Actually, Donald Trump published two previous magazines with his name in the title, Trump Style (1997) and Trump World (2004).
After Kurtzman left Mad in 1956, he edited two issues of the glossy slick Trump for Hugh Hefner in 1957. Then it collapsed in a cost-cutting move. Interviewed by John Benson in 1965, Kurtzman recalled that Hefner's "attitude was that we didn't have any budget. We'd spend whatever we had to make a magazine, which is as it should have been. I mean, he was very right, and it would have been nice if he could have backed it up, but his intentions were the best."
To see a spectacular Wally Wood page from Trump, click on March 2007 in the Archives on right. Richard Corliss described the magazine in his Kurtzman profile, "Hail, Harvey!":
In the Jack Davis drawing at top, recognizable figures include Dave Garroway, King Kong, Tarzan, Rin Tin Tin with Rusty (Lee Aaker), the Trump mascot, Wrong Way Corrigan and Alley Oop. Can anyone identify the three figures in the left foreground? This 1957 drawing is curiously prophetic, since Garroway is shown holding a gun to his own head. In 1961, Garroway went into a state of depression after his wife's suicide, and on July 21, 1982, he did shoot himself in the head just as drawn by Davis 25 years earlier.
Despite the header above, Harvey Kurtzman's Trump magazine is not to be confused with Donald Trump's new Trump magazine. Actually, Donald Trump published two previous magazines with his name in the title, Trump Style (1997) and Trump World (2004).After Kurtzman left Mad in 1956, he edited two issues of the glossy slick Trump for Hugh Hefner in 1957. Then it collapsed in a cost-cutting move. Interviewed by John Benson in 1965, Kurtzman recalled that Hefner's "attitude was that we didn't have any budget. We'd spend whatever we had to make a magazine, which is as it should have been. I mean, he was very right, and it would have been nice if he could have backed it up, but his intentions were the best."
To see a spectacular Wally Wood page from Trump, click on March 2007 in the Archives on right. Richard Corliss described the magazine in his Kurtzman profile, "Hail, Harvey!":
The cover of Trump proclaimed it "a new magazine which would like to say... mainly HELP!" And, in the Prospectus on page one: "This, then, shall be the purpose of Trump. Making money. You have the money, You give it to us." Hefner gave Kurtzman the money for Trump. Elder, Davis, Wood (briefly) and Al Jaffee gave Harvey their loyalty; they left the sure thing of Mad for the iffy proposition of Trump. Chester came along as managing editor, leaving the Mad house virtually untenanted... Trump sold for 50 cents, five times the cost of Mad two years before. It was lavish, offering in the first issue a panoramic watercolor foldout, painted by Elder and Russ Heath, of a Life-type Epic of Man, updated to the 20th century, and, in the second, a nine-page parody of Sports Illustrated whose cover image, "First head-on photo of a bullet taken without mirrors," shows the photographer, as reflected in the speeding bullet, screaming and dropping his camera. And it was good. Some pieces lodged in my funny-brain when I read in 1957 and have stayed there, for reference and refreshment. Elder's Beck (Breck) shampoo ad for three kinds of hair: Dry, Oily and No. The Ed Fisher cartoon showing a cowboy at an Indian reservation opening a rifle-shaped box marked farming tools and exclaiming, "Great Scott! Farming tools!"
Davis' anti-hunting hunting story.Foremost, the Arnold Roth piece called "Russians Inventions We Invented First": vodka, borscht, Russian roulette and veto — "a word commonly identified with Russian U.N. delegation, was the accidental creation of Harry Thimk, sign-painter from Bushes, Florida" who tried to paint a VOTE sign but misspelled it. (Note the creepy presentiment in the town and state: In the 2000 Presidential election, the Bushes insured that Florida votes were vetoed.)
Davis' anti-hunting hunting story.Foremost, the Arnold Roth piece called "Russians Inventions We Invented First": vodka, borscht, Russian roulette and veto — "a word commonly identified with Russian U.N. delegation, was the accidental creation of Harry Thimk, sign-painter from Bushes, Florida" who tried to paint a VOTE sign but misspelled it. (Note the creepy presentiment in the town and state: In the 2000 Presidential election, the Bushes insured that Florida votes were vetoed.)In the Jack Davis drawing at top, recognizable figures include Dave Garroway, King Kong, Tarzan, Rin Tin Tin with Rusty (Lee Aaker), the Trump mascot, Wrong Way Corrigan and Alley Oop. Can anyone identify the three figures in the left foreground? This 1957 drawing is curiously prophetic, since Garroway is shown holding a gun to his own head. In 1961, Garroway went into a state of depression after his wife's suicide, and on July 21, 1982, he did shoot himself in the head just as drawn by Davis 25 years earlier.
Labels: corliss, garroway, humbug, jack davis, kurtzman, roth, trump
¶ 4:34 AM 4 comments
Thursday, March 15, 2007
