Bill Gallo: 1968 Sports Night

From the April 1969 CARTOONIST, the NCS in-house magazine, then edited by Jud Hurd: here is Chairman Bill Gallo with his 1968 Sports Night event. Rocky Graziano belts out a song! Ralph Houk, manager of the Yankees, is the guest of honor. Jake La Motta does a funny monologue (and ya better LAFF!). Meadowlark Lemon sings! Otto Soglow and Irwin Hasen in a comedy skit written by Bob Dunn. And, to top it all off, Gallo's "Basement Bertha" and Willard Mullins' "Bum" in the NCS version of the wedding of the year. Frank Springer created the awards. Jim Ruth took all of the photos.

Bill Gallo 1922-2011

Above: Burne Hogarth and Bill Gallo in Costello's Bar in the 1970s.

Bill Gallo died Tuesday, May 10th. The cause was complications arising from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. He was 88.

A sports cartoonists and columnist for The New York Daily News for seven decades, Bill Gallo began work as a copy boy after he graduated from high school in 1941.

From the AP obituary:

"He told the AP that as a child, he dreamed of becoming a star reporter like his father, Francisco, a byline writer and editor at La Prensa, New York's prestigious Spanish language newspaper.

"He also dreamed of becoming a cartoonist like Milton Caniff, who drew 'Terry and the Pirates,' his favorite comic strip. From age 5, the aspiring artist never left the house without a crayon and a bit of scratch paper."

He left the News to serve in WW2. He was a Marine, serving in Iwo Jima. Returning home, he enrolled in Columbia on the GI Bill and continued to work at the paper.

Bill was a fixture in NYC. And he was also one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet.

In 2005 I helped Bill organize a group of cartoonists to create a mural on the wall of The Overlook Restaurant (formerly Costello's) in New York City. The mural (it's the one above Mssrs. Hogarth and Gallo) would serve as a counterpart to the famous wall decorated by cartoonists a generation earlier. Our efforts brought together a number of legendary artists and received significant media coverage.

I learned very quickly that Bill is a WYSIWYG kinda guy - a real What You See Is What You Get person. No pretense. No baloney. I like these kinda guys. I didn't know it at the time, but he chatted with some of his NCS friends (most of whom, like him, were past Presidents) and asked them to consider me for the National Board.

And that was Bill. A kind, talented fellow who was doing what he loved.

"'People tend to make a lot about age, but I don't think of myself as an old guy,' Gallo once told the AP. 'My philosophy on age is: don't bother me, I'm busy.'"

25th Annual Reuben Awards Dinner, Grand Ballroom, The Plaza, New York City, April 21, 1970


25th Annual Reuben Awards Dinner, Grand Ballroom, The Plaza, New York City, April 21, 1970



Above: one of Bill Gallo's popular "Sports Nights" in 1976.


The NCS Org Chart for 1976 as drawn "by hand" by Mac Miller and Sam Norkin.



From a series of drawings by Al Scaduto spoofing the past NCS Presidents.


Related Links:
Associate Press obituary
Daily News: Bil Gallo's Greatest Moments slideshow
Mike Lupica

Reel-O-Rama

Here's an ad for Reel-O-Rama, which promises

"Breath taking, beautiful models, that you can almost REACH in and hold in your arms, brought to you by the medium of color, 3 dimensional photography.

"Seven pairs of different poses in each reel at an amazing cost of a $1.50 per reel."

And for only $9, you can get all of the reels (Kitty, Carol, Mary, Su-Ann, Renee and Juanita) and a Viewmaster viewer!




It's the only advertisement in this digest titled WHAM! There is no cover date, except for the "Oct." on the cover and no indicia. The cover is by George Wolfe, will all color cartoons by many cartoonists including Al Ross, Al Kaufman, Wenzel, Art Gates, KAZ Jack Markow and others.

The Return of the Oriole

My yard: May 10, 2011:



Hey! Up there, in that tree!



Wow! The Baltimore Oriole! He's back!



I've had that orange piece out there waiting for him for over a week. Good to see this beautiful sign of summer arrive!

By the way, he spooked the woodpecker away. And that woodpecker don't spook easy!

Related: Seven Birds a Week

Don Martins' THE NUTHEADS Comic Strip

When Don Martin left MAD Magazine, he went on to do a number of things: he freelanced for CRACKED Magazine, he began his DON MARTIN MAGAZINE and he had a new syndicated comic strip called THE NUTHEADS.

From Cartoonist PROfiles #88, December 1990, here is Jud Hurd interviewing Don and wife Norma.

MISTERHIPP Blog

I enjoyed Dan Hipp's blog MISTERHIPP -- especially the Tintin-style covers for popular movies like the one above.

1990: Bill Mauldin in Saudi Arabia

There's nothing new in this world -- there's only the history you don't know.

Here are a series of drawings that Bill Mauldin did in November 1990 when accompanying ABC reporter Sam Donaldson to Saudi Arabia.

These are reprinted from Cartoonst PROfiles #89, March 1991.

Drawing THE HONEYMOONERS

A selection of HONEYMOONERS illustrations by some great illustrators via Drew Friedman!

"In 1991, CBS VIDEO hired 20 illustrators (including myself) to create the VHS cover box art for the 'Classic 39' TV episodes of 'The Honeymooners,' starring Jackie Gleason, 'with the stars Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Randolph,' released on 20 cassettes, each containing two shows. The illustrations were art directed by the famed Lou Dorfsman, who years earlier had created the iconic CBS logo. They've since been relegated to the dust-bin of VHS history, so I wanted to revive them here. These are some of my favorites, starting with the legendary Al Hirschfeld's illustration depicting 'THE GOLFER.'"

200 Characters from Dick Tracy 1931-1977

Here's one of the most popular blog entries I ever did. It appeared June 23, 2009.

Last month, I mailed the original DICK TRACY commemorative book to the new TRACY artist, Joe Staton.



"Dick Tracy The Art of Chester Gould" was an exhibition at the Museum of Cartoon Art from October 4 through November 30, 1978. Coordinated by Bill Crouch, Jr., the exhibit at the Museum in Port Chester, NY encompassed not just the newspaper comic strip, but the popular phenomenon, the artistic style of the strip, controversial violence, and Chester Gould himself.


Above: 3 of the 200 DICK TRACY characters.

It's the gallery of 200 characters from DICK TRACY 1931-1977, put together by Matt Masterson in the back of the exhibition catalog, that's a standout. Here is his introduction, followed by the scans of his amazing compilation:

"I completed this compilation of 200 DICK TRACY characters [in] October 1977 as a tribute to Chester Gould when he reached his 46th anniversary of drawing the strip. The original paste-up hangs in Chet's conference room at home and he tells me he refers to it quite often. His first reaction to it was that he had no idea he had created that many!

"To make this paste-up of 200 characters, I went through every strip in my TRACY collection from Oct. 1931 thru Oct. 1977, approximately 17,000 daily and Sunday strips, and picked out the one panel I thought best represented that character. A reduced stat was then made of each one, and then mounted on a large piece of gray matte board along with each character's name and year each appeared. It was a labor of love.

"Some of Chet's early characters from the 30's are easily recognized as popular movie stars of that era; James Cagney (Jimmy White), Claudette Colbert (Jean Penfield), Marlene Dietrich (Marro), Wallace Beery (Stud Bronzen). In the late 90's, some characters names were invented by spelling words backwards, such as Nuremoh, Kroywen, Natnus, Wolley, and Prof. Emirc.

"In the 1940's, characters were to spill from Gould's prolific imagination an an unparalleled rate. Characters such as the Mole, B-B Eyes, Pruneface, Flattop, Brow, Shaky, Gravel Gertie, B.O. Plenty, Vitamin Flintheart and Mumbles were to be household names and are remembered vividly by all who read DICK TRACY in those years. If a poll were taken, Flattop would probably garner the most votes as the most famous villain. At a time when most villains expired from the strip in 12 weeks, Flattop ran TRACY ragged for 5 months.

"... When I asked Chet Gould where he got the names for some of his characters, he told me he used to ride the train from his home in Woodstock, Illinois to his studio in Chicago and sketch various people he observed on the train. He would exaggerate upon certain features or characteristics. The name would follow, with he one exception being Flattop, whose name came from the popular aircraft carrier of World War II. Imagine an hour train ride with the likes of Itchy, Flyface or B.O. Plenty!

"In 1975, Max Allan Collins, current writer of the DICK TRACY strip, was to become the inspiration for the villain, Bulky, and in 1977, I popped up as Leyden Aigg. In answer to the question, 'Has Chet Gould ever put himself in the strip?' Yes! He IS DICK TRACY."

Happy Birthday, Stan Goldberg!

Happy 79th birthday Stan Goldberg -- or "Stan G." as he used to be credited at Marvel.

Stan has been in the comic book business for over 50 years. To say he has done everything might be an understatement. He is also a terrific fellow, someone you could chat with for hours. I am honored to call him a friend.

In celebration, let's peek at the cover story to CHILI #21, February 1973. I had not heard of CHILI until I saw one at my comic book store, Jetpack Comics. It was in one of three long boxes of 1970s comics they received last week.




Chili is, sadly, defined by her hatred. She's "Millie's Red-Headed Rival!" as the cover notes. Millie being, of course, MILLIE THE MODEL -- another Stan G. creation at Marvel. Here's Chili in "She's Out of This World!"








Below is a mod Chili mini-poster:

The ABCs of Cult Movies

"O" is for OFFICE SPACE.

The filmicability with Dean Treadway blog cites the blogosphere's latest meme craze: " to contribute the ABC's of any given category." Dean contributes his ABCs of cult movies with some good choices (LOCAL HERO,RIVER'S EDGE) and questionable ones (GWTW, 1941). Some fun reading and it sure makes you want to do your own list, huh?

Video: NEWS SKETCHES BY MAX FLEISCHER

Here's a mid-1940s short from the Fleischer studio titled NEWS SKETCHES BY MAX FLEISCHER, with the subtitle, "Drawn from the Wires of the Associated Press."

Video: HARDWARE WARS

Today is something called the "unofficial" Star Wars Day or "May the Force (the "4th") Be with You" Day.

Lucasfilm cites that the anniversary of the film's release is actually 3 weeks away.




But the actual release date anniversary is already taken up with the official "Towel Day," in commemoration of Douglas Adams and THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. I guess Mssrs. Adams and Lucas deemed that they would not share.

Regardless, it was 34 years ago this May 25th that the original STAR WARS movie was released. This was way back before it was called CHAPTER IV: A NEW HOPE.

The first time I saw it in a theatre was in an East Side Cleveland, Ohio suburb. I was there with my friend David Pogue. We were both young. I remember we had to call and get transportation to and from the mall where it was playing, so this was definitely early teen years. Good ol' David Pogue! I wonder whatever happened to that guy?

Anyway, the movie was fine. It was a lot of fun. I remember liking the jokes ("I forgot how much I HATE space travel!?) and being a bit confused by all that action -- the Y fighters, TIE fighters, X Wings, bla bla -- at the end of the movie. But, hey, this was 1977. Fast cuts and lotsa action on scale with the then-new MTV was fresh and maybe hard to follow for some kid raised on slower fare. I would have never thought that the movie was, like THE JAZZ SINGER, a watershed moment.

Since I'm waxing a little nostalgic, here is the unofficial "grandaddy of STAR WARS parodies" titled HARDWARE WARS. Ernie Fosselius's 1978 short parody is a lot of fun, and boasts veteran voice actor Pall Frees as the narrator. It's also extremely low budget, which is part of its charm.





"You can't destroy Basketball! Basketball's a peaceful planet"

Video: Bill Gallo

Long time Daily News cartoonist Bill Gallo talks about his life, why America will work ("I think it'll go on forever ... with some large bumps on the road."), Joe DiMaggio (".. not an interesting guy.") Muhammad Ali, and Frank Sinatra in this lovely portrait of a true gentleman. It's produced by Lindsay Meeks and Nathaniel Vinton.

Video: Jeff Stahler

"INK." is an 8 minute documentary about how editorial cartoonist/newspaper panel cartoonist/comic strip cartoonist Jeff Stahler works. It's directed and edited by Amanda H. Cook, with music by Nickel Creek.

INK. from Amanda H. Cook on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Stacy Curtis!

Mike Lynch Sick Day

I plan to feel better very soon. Blogging will re-commence when head clears ....

The Garden As of May 1, 2011

Subtitle: move along, nothing to see here (yet).



Except the pines, little green on the trees yet.

A week ago, there were a couple of inches of snow over all this.


The front yard perennial garden. They are growing FAST. The hummingbirds came back April 29th!



The raised beds. You can see how rutted the driveway is (lower left). Gotta take care of that.

Red tree buds against the blue, blue sky.

SCTV December 19,1980: "Sneak Previews" Spoof

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert (Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas) review the new STAR WARS sequel ("Empires are a Girl's Best Friend") and a the new movie based on the HENRY comic strip. Rick Moranis plays the title role.



Look out for cameos by some famous 1960s & 70s spaceships from BUCK ROGERS and STAR TREK!

Video: THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS (or "T3") was a BBC programme hosted by David Frost. Here's a rare chance to see an entire episode from one of its 2 series between 1962 and 63.

If you have heard of it, then you probably know that many, many British humorists were involved in the writing and performing of this seminal show, including: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Bill Oddie, Dennis Potter and Kenneth Tynan.