In Crowd of the month: The Chipmunks (1965)

The Chipmunks have come a long way since their creation by Ross Bagdasarian (a.k.a. Dave Seville) in 1958.

Nah, I can't say I was too excited about
Jason Lee's 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' movie, although from the tiny bit I saw, it's sort of nice to see that the franchise still has a place with kids today.









The modern CG look to Alvin and his posse is a bit of a change from the 1960's animated cartoon look that I grew up with - - which in itself was markedly different than the depiction they'd had on their earliest records, or than the hand puppets that would be seen with Dave Seville on TV in those same early days.

It's the old look and spirit present on this 1965 LP cover ▼ that I miss, though.

I loved 'The Alvin Show' cartoon on TV, and I miss it.

Where's the spiffy DVD release for THAT show, huh?!?
That's what this aging nerd wants to know...

I needs me some
Clyde Crashcup!!

From the LP
'Chipmunks à Go-Go'
(Liberty Records, 1965),
listen to:

The Chipmunks - The "In" Crowd
(click for audio)



See also:
- Follow link to a nice healthy stack of video clips from 'The Alvin Show' at YouTube

- A history of The Chipmunks, written by Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. at his Chipmunks.Com
(requires Flash Player)

- Click here for this entry and all of the previously posted 'Bagdasarian-centric' items on this blog

- Click here for this entry and all the previous 'In Crowd of the month' posts together on one page.

Allan Melvin (1923 - 2008)

The versatile voice is silent, the immediately recognizable face is gone - - but of course his work will be with us for a long time to come.

I just heard about the passing of voice/character actor Allan Melvin.
It occurred a couple of weeks back; he was 84.

For a long time Melvin was one of those great working actors who seemed to show up everywhere - - well, providing that 'everywhere' means on TV.

The sound of his voice in old Hanna-Barbera cartoons was varied but distinctive.
'Magilla Gorilla' was one of his few 'starring' voice roles - - more often than not his versatility made him perfect to cover any number of one-off incidental characters.

Flipping around the TV dial, he'd show up in regular 'second banana' or supporting roles, but it was always amusing to see him do return appearances on sitcoms as different characters.

He could be on Andy Griffith's show as an FBI man one week, be back a different week as a criminal, appear on The Dick Van Dyke show as an old army buddy, and then be hawking 'Liquid Plumr' in the TV ads you saw during the same shows in syndicated reruns.

- See Allan Melvin's credits at IMDb

Following a stretch in the US Navy during WWII, Allan Melvin worked in sound effects at NBC radio, had a nightclub act, and was a winning entrant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program.

His acting debut on Broadway was in the original stage production of 'Stalag 17', which began its run in 1951.

It was this appearance that won him his
co-starring role as Sgt. Bilko's crony, Cpl. Henshaw on 'The Phil Silvers Show' in 1955.

(Corporal Barbella, Bilko's other right-hand man, played by Harvey Lembeck, was also 'drafted' from the Broadway cast of 'Stalag 17'.)

Melvin remained busy on TV for many years after that (though he only had one film appearance in his entire career).

Many guest appearances on various shows in the 1960's and '70's followed, as well as the regular and semi-regular gigs...
Sgt. Carter's rival, Sgt. Hacker on 'Gomer Pyle'...

Sam the butcher on 'The Brady Bunch'...

Archie's drinking buddy Barney Hefner on both 'All In The Family' and it's wretched '80's
spin-off, 'Archie Bunker's Place'...

... and concurrent with much of the
on-camera appearances was his voice-over work, most notably with Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters.
(Melvin was the announcer's voice on
'The Banana Splits' show, as well as the voice of Drooper!)

By the mid-1980's he was doing voice work exclusively, and had retired from show business altogether by the mid-1990's.













See also:
- Allan Melvin's obituary from
The Los Angeles Times.

- A rememberance posted at Mark Evanier's News From Me. (scroll down the page)






Below: From YouTube, a Bilko Show TV clip featuring Cpl. Henshaw displaying his talent for voice impressions. ⬇



I dug through some old kiddie records and found some cuts from an oddly repackaged box set of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters telling children's stories.

I've posted a couple of tracks from that 1970's collection below, both of them featuring Allan Melvin performing nearly all of the vocal parts.

The original albums had appeared in the 1960's, with familiar characters telling slightly warped or updated versions of fairy tales and such. This '70's collection seems to have remixed and retooled some of those recordings in an occasionally awkward (or cheap) manner.

An interesting note is the role of Yogi Bear being played on the record by *Melvin*, rather than by the customary Daws Butler.

Was Daws not available that day? Some contractual thing? Who knows.
It's interesting how close Melvin comes in his mimicry, all in the midst of rattling off other characters.

Likewise, it sounds to me like the briefly heard voice of Ogee on the Magilla cut may perhaps be voiced by Janet Waldo ('Judy Jetson') rather than Jean Vander Pyl ('Wilma Flintstone'), as heard in the cartoons.

I can't quite identify the slightly disturbing rendition of Boo-Boo Bear heard here, but they get an 'A' for the effort of catching the qualities if not the sound.

It also sounds like whoever was assembling the stock underscore music cues and sound effects was either having a bit of fun or late for lunch. (I won't comment on Yogi's mention of a 'one-eyed giant'.)

From the LP set
'Fred Flintstone Presents All-Time Favorite Children's Stories and Songs'
(196?, reissued by Columbia Special Products, 1977),
Listen to Allan Melvin performing:


Magilla Gorilla tells the story of Alice In Wonderland

(click for audio)




Yogi Bear tells the story of Jack and the Beanstalk

(click for audio)







(It looks like soundfiles of the original '60's versions of both the Magilla and Yogi tracks may be available at the Children's Records & More blog, which is where I found the cover scans.)

A final Comic-Con '07 epilogue: Examining the haul! - - plus a flickr cover gallery link

(click on images to ENLARGE)

I arrived back home from San Diego last Monday, all the Con swag I shipped to myself arrived here this past Thursday evening.

I've been having fun opening stuff up, organizing, sorting, updating want lists, and - - oh yeah, leafing through a neato stack of old funny books.

I think the last time I went on any sort of a significant comics safari was back in 2004, the last time I was at Comic-Con. So I was ready for the hunt, and the hunt was good.

It would have been swell to find some issues of 'Sugar & Spike' that I'm missing, and I'm still shocked I couldn't find ANY issues of 'Rex, The Wonder Dog' ANYWHERE, needed or not needed. But yes, still a good hunt...

My official want list is almost exclusively old DC comics stuff, which I've been collecting most of my life.

I did time as a Marvel zombie in my teens, and that somehow led me to undergrounds and independents and small press and everything else.

I found some surprisingly good deals with the San Diego comics vendors - -

- - Some choice gems, some great bargain bin finds.

Going beyond filling holes in the want list, I also found myself delving in to more oddball 1960's stuff from publishers like Dell, Gold Key, Harvey, the recently-referenced Mighty Comics, and others.

What fun!

Here's just a few highlights,
and as promised,
*** I've put together a cover gallery of some of my scores from this trip to share with you, over at flickr. (click link) ***

Hope you enjoy!

At the Con, during a brief hello visit with 'Yikes!' artist Steven Weissman, we talked just for a moment about those old Mighty Comics, how their ham-fisted mimicry of the Marvel Comics style of the sixties fell short of the mark, but revealed so much more about American culture of that era.

Steven described to me one of his very favorite panels from one of those stories, that he thought might be The Shield or The Mighty Crusaders.
As luck would have it, I found a nice handful of some of those and other Mighty titles later that same day, and there was the sequence in question!
It's the final panel in this scanned excerpt (below, from Mighty Comics #41, 1966).

As we join this story in progress, in his civilian identity as Bill Higgins, The Shield is leaving an employment agency, upset and frustrated over his inability to hold a job. Seems once again, super-heroics have interfered with bringing in a steady paycheck...



























































































































Gear! Scoobie - Doo! They just don't quite write 'em like that anymore. Maybe they should.

As to the rest of the story - - During filming in Hollywood, The Shield and Black Hood fall under the influence of a 'hate ray' hidden in the movie camera by a scheming gangster's crony. While fighting to the death, they accidentally smash the camera, break free of the ray's control and foil the plot against them.

At the finale, The Black Hood insists that their film wages should be donated to charity, as it would be wrong to commercialize their careers. The Shield reluctantly agrees, thinking to himself - - "Gosh! I feel Noble! I'll try to remember this unselfish glow next time I'm hungry!"

Among my fun 'n' trashy Gold Key finds was 'Hanna-Barbera Hi-Adventure Heroes' #2 (with a stupendously boring cover). It features some of the various hero teams from TV's 'Banana Splits Adventure Hour', including ‘The Arabian Knights'.

Even if they were anglicized messed-up caricatures, there was a time when we had middle-eastern heroes in this country...

I always liked the minor sorcerer Fariik's magic words, and especially the tone that voice actor John Stephenson would use saying them.

(Stephenson was also the voice of Fred Flintstone's boss, Mr. Slate, and of Dr. Benton Quest in some of the early episodes of 'Jonny Quest'.)

I'll still on occasion proudly utter 'Rozan Kobar!' to myself upon achieving some magical feat, like say, parallel parking...

...of course it helps to be a complete nerd.

In this one comic book story, it's also Fariik who manages to pull the tail of Zazuum, the little sidekick donkey, thus triggering his required berserker episode as he brays repeatedly and "explodes into a whirlwind of fighting fury!"

Another favorite obligatory piece of business comes from the shape-changer Bez, and it still makes me question the similarity of his schtick to the alien teen sidekicks on The Super Friends show...

Specifically: Where did The Wonder Twins really get their powers?
Was Bez truly an ‘Arabian’ Knight? - - Or was he also from the planet Exxor?
Was he hiding pointed ears up under that turban??
Did Zan and Jayna know their father??
Unknown to the twins, was Bez perhaps cursed to be trapped in the form of their space monkey, Gleek?



Important questions, all.





One more comics story I must share, because you need to see it too - -

- - It's 'The Earth Went Haywire', from Harvey Comics' 'Alarming Adventures' #3, February 1963. (below)

Not the cover story, but another that reads like a low-rent Twilight Zone.

"The Moon will be full tonight, and almost upon us tomorrow!"

(click on images to ENLARGE)



























































































































































































































*** Once again, please head over to flickr for a cover gallery of some old comics I found at Comic-Con '07. (click link) ***

Fifth Column - I Love You, But... (1995)

Going back to 1995, this was a fun track from the band Fifth Column, out of Toronto.

It was one half of a 7" split single shared with Trailer Queen.

Session line-up:

Caroline Azar, vocals

G.B. Jones, guitar

Michelle Breslin, guitar & back-up vocals

Beverly Breckenridge, bass & back-up vocals

Jo-Jo Rock Wasson, drums













The song is a cover of an old favorite; it was used in 1963's 'Ann-Margrock Presents' episode of 'The Flintstones', as sung by guest star Ann-Margret.





Listen to: Fifth Column - I Love You, But... (Dark Beloved Cloud Records, 1995)

(click for audio)

78s fRom HeLL: It's Lots Of Fun To Share / OKMNX - Two from Mel Blanc

The sound of Mel Blanc's voice helped propel us through the 20th century.

In addition to cartoons and radio, Mel's voice could also be heard on numerous novelty records and kiddie records, most of them released on the Capitol label from the late 1940's and into the 1950's.

Listen to:
Mel Blanc -
It's Lots Of Fun To Share (Capitol Records, circa 1954)

Listen to:
Mel Blanc -
OKMNX (Capitol Records, 1951)

(click for audio)

PS: Watch out for 'OKMNX'! It's a ditty that's way more infectious than it has any right to be.
You've been warned...

See also: 'The Mel Blanc Show' at Internet Archive.
You can listen to any of several *dozen* half-hour episodes of Blanc's 1946 - 1947 CBS radio sitcom, spawned by his popularity on The Jack Benny show. (Looks like the complete series is there!)

Sterling Holloway meets Disney's The Grasshopper and The Ants - The World Owes Me A Living, 1962

This is one of the first records I ever owned. The copyright date on the 45's sleeve says 1962, which makes sense.

Adapted from Aesop's fable, the Disney studios first released 'The Grasshopper and The Ants' in 1934, as one of its Silly Symphonies.

It introduced 'The World Owes Me A Living', as sung in the cartoon by Pinto Colvig .

Colvig was also the voice of Goofy (and later, Bozo The Clown), and the song would become Goofy's unofficial theme song.
(It was also covered by Shirley Temple that same year)

I'm going to guess and say that the '34 cartoon was either re-issued around 1962, or more likely, it was shown on the Sunday night 'The Wonderful World of Disney' TV series.

Regardless, this little kiddie 45 version doesn't quite do justice to the cartoon or Aesop. In this version of the song, the grasshopper (voiced by a Pinto Colvig stand-in) eventually agrees that maybe the ants were right about a prosperous life requiring hard work, but it's not a convincing statement.

On the B-side however, the beloved Sterling Holloway (pictured below reading a *different* story) tells the story more in depth - - only not really. He tells about how carefree and fun-loving the grasshopper is, alludes to the notion that it might get him into trouble one day, but that's it.

No comeuppance, no moral - - heck, it's not even really a story, just a brief character sketch.

It's almost as if - just like the grasshopper - they didn't want to do the work, figured that it was just a kiddie record and everything would just work out okay. Works for me.

I guess I learned my lesson for today, how about you?

Listen to: The Grasshopper and The Ant - The World Owes Me A Living (click for audio)

Listen to: Sterling Holloway - The Story of Hop, The Grasshopper (click for audio)

Comic Characters' Favorite Music

If the music references seem a tad dated, it's because this page goes back to that bygone era, the mid-nineties.
It ran in a 1996 calendar released as an issue of 'Dirt', an industry magazine published by 'the alternative marketing staff' at Warner/Reprise Records. So I don't guess they'll be reprinting it...

...But you can check out some updates, revisions, and additions to this list along with plenty more fun stuff at artist Karl Heitmueller, Jr.'s comics portfolio page of his Tough Guy website. In color 'n' everything.

Puppetooning with George Pal, 1941

From Popular Mechanics Magazine, October 1941

(click on image to ENLARGE on a new page)In the 1950's, George Pal became known primarily for the splashy and colorful sci-fi movies he produced, such as 'War of The Worlds' and 'When Worlds Collide', among others.

But during the '30's and 40's he'd been one of the pioneers of stop-motion animation, creating his 'Puppetoon' shorts first in Europe and then the US.

For more info and images, please go visit The George Pal Puppetoon Site!

Clutch Cargo Comix

←page 1

In the early 1960's,
Clutch Cargo cartoons held all the promise that
Jonny Quest pretty much managed to deliver a few years later.

Kids that I knew either reviled it or reveled in it,
(I waffled) but it was too bizarre to ignore.

This comic strip ran originally in the February, 1961 issue of Jack & Jill magazine.

The artwork here by Clutch's creator, cartoonist/animator
Clark Haas may be closer to full-process animation than what we saw in the TV series.

- - AND you don't have the distraction of the
'Syncro-Vox' (a.k.a. the unsettling 'real-lips-on-cartoon-faces' gimmick)
to contend with...

So: Enjoy visiting with Clutch, Spinner, Paddlefoot, and Prof.'s Stargazer and Knockwurst on their gripping lunar adventure!

(click on images to ENLARGE pages in new windows)

←page 2 ←page 3

←page 4 ←page 5

←page 6








See also:
- More about cartoonist/animator Clark Haas at
The Lambiek Comiclopedia.

- Follow links to watch 'The Arctic Bird Giant', a 1959
Clutch Cargo animated adventure at Dailymotion - -
- (Part 1)
- (Part 2)


ADDENDUM, 6/20/08: In a similar 'Synchrovox' vein, here's a link to another 6-page Jack and Jill strip from April 1963. The great Alex Toth gives a similar treatment to the characters he designed for the 'Space Angel' show. (Via Socktopi)

ADDENDUM, 1/30/09: Cartoon Brew has posted scans of a nifty 1960 TV Guide article about the production of Clutch Cargo.
(follow link)