Frank Jacobs' "Hooray for Wally Wood!" Remix

                                   Lyrics © Frank Jacobs. Art © EC Publications.

Johnny Mercer and Richard A. Whiting teamed in 1937 to compose "Hooray for Hollywood," sung by Johnnie "Scat" Davis (1910-1983) in Busby Berkeley's Hollywood Hotel (1938). The song became a familiar standard, receiving an ASCAP award in 1987 in the "Most Performed Feature Film Standards on TV" category.

Over four decades ago, Mad writer Frank Jacobs wrote the satirical song "Hooray for Wally Wood!" not long after Bill Gaines took the Mad artists and staff on a vacation trip to the Virgin Islands. To thank the publisher for the trip, two shows were created by Mad's writers (Jacobs, Nick Meglin, Stan Hart, Larry Siegel) and staged in Gaines' Manhattan apartment. "Hooray for Wally Wood!" was sung by Jacobs at the first of these two shows.

Meglin recalled, "Afterwards, any time Wally came in with a job, Bill would sing the first line." Grant Geissman transcribed Jacobs' lyrics from the original early 1960s tape recordings. The lyrics were published for the first time in Against the Grain (2003) when designer Greg Sadowski dropped them into the final panel of "The Mad 'Comic' Opera" by Jacobs and Wood from Mad 56 (July 1960).