THE FORMATIVE YEARS, PT IV

Aaaaaaaand I’m back.  Picking up with more childhood reminiscences of media and life in the 1970s, today’s edition of The Formative Years concerns the so-called frivolous stuff that mattered most to me in my earliest years: toys, superheroes, and cartoons.

“THE DETAILS OF MY LIFE ARE QUITE INCONSEQUENTIAL…”

My early childhood was old-fashioned and sheltered even by 1970s standards. Born into the same vanilla-white porch community that fostered my father (a life-long resident) and mother (a teen transplant), I rarely met anyone whose overall complexion deviated much from my own. Large Sunday dinners with extended family were a regular occurrence. I didn’t attend any manner of pre-school, structured or otherwise. So, with all my older siblings in school by mid-’74, I luxuriated for three years as the only “need machine” at home during the day to be tended to.  The balance of those salad days were a mix of quality time with Mom – wearing out favored books (Green Eggs and Ham; A Fish Out of Water), errand walks downtown, berry picking (family dogs in tow), trips to the park, mid-day naps – and abundant, glorious “me” time.

In the cozy, semi-confined toy cubby at the top the basement steps I was a scientist: twiddling knobs on a massive control panel (letter blocks on a shelf); observing my progress on the monitor (Lite Brite); and inventing secret formulas (spent perfume sample flasks).  Profuse periods were allocated to activities that allowed for play and passive audio-visual data overload via TV. As a result, the worst of my damage was usually confined to the living room.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST SUPERHEROES

Of all the toys in the house arsenal, my favorites were the Mego “World’s Greatest Superheroes” I inherited (co-opted) from my older brother. 

Compared to the detailed, ‘roided out rendering of modern action figures, Megos were very basic, youngster-friendly representations. I didn’t care that Captain America and company didn’t look exactly like they did in comics or on TV… Fully posable, vibrantly colored, and clad in removable cloth costumes with vinyl/plastic accessories, they inspired epic adventure! I examined every detail of each figure down to the manufacturer stamp, swapped costumes, and fantasized about new additions while browsing through Christmas catalogs.  Always game to make me laugh, my brother vocalized punching sounds and simulated fights by violently shaking the dolls back and forth. …Not great for their elastic binding, but very entertaining.  Between the two of us, Mom became very adept at repair (wink).

A NEW HOPE

Fast forward 30 years to a chance discovery at a small local toy show… Toy shows usually yield very little in the way of genuine excitement, but not this time. Right away, I realized that the venue had played host to the comic shows my brother and I frequented in the mid-’80s. Very cool.

…And then I discovered Figures Toy Company‘s (mostly) faithful and affordable licensed repros of DC characters from the “World’s Greatest” line while trolling the shops with the family on “free comic book day.” Oh, my. They weren’t perfectly perfect replicas, but, man, were they close. For months, I perused the Figures website; pining and contemplating the wisdom (idiocy) of collecting action figures after age 40. Two Christmases ago, I finally caved and laid out for Batman, Robin, Shazam(!), and a long-coveted Superman! A replacement “Cap” would be nice as well, repro or vintage, but it’s just too much money. The whims of my nerdy inner man-child are mitigated by my native practicality (cheapness).

SEND IN THE CAPES

Beyond toys, my fondness for superheroes was buoyed by the fact that, even though 1970 marked the start of the “Bronze Age” of comics, the decade was a gilded age for colorfully clad adventurers on TV. Storming the airwaves in cartoons (Mighty Mouse; Underdog; Fantastic Four) and live-action programs (Adventures of Superman; Wonder Woman; Amazing Spider-Man), old and new. Super Grover and Spidey Super Stories featured on Sesame Street and Electric Company, respectively.  Superman: The Movie broke the genre onto the big screen in 1978.

WORLD’S GREATEST SUPERHERO CARTOONS

During the 1970s, superhero cartoons were a dime a dozen and I watched them all. Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends was a Saturday Morning institution, but didn’t make me a lifetime devotee to DC comics. No, apart from Batman (who I will discuss later), my loyalties have always lied with Stan Lee’s classic creations; the bias cemented by the Marvel Super Heroes and Spider-Man cartoons from the 1960s.

I don’t remember seeing them past age 5 or 6, but the rotating Heroes segments were a bulk indoctrination; showcasing a different Marvel luminary (Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Sub-Mariner) each day of the week. Infamously hampered by disjointed storytelling and astonishingly crude “animation,” these cartoons were a rock-bottom low even for the “limited” movement. …But what would such shortcomings matter to a young me? The vivid artwork – copped directly from pages illustrated by comic greats Jack “King” Kirby, Bill Everett, Gene Colon, etc. – was cool and exciting! The jaunty jingles for each hero were distinct and irresistible! It was literally impossible not to sing along.

Spider-Man was a more traditional, if still crudely drawn, cartoon that variably adhered to the spirit of the parent Lee-Ditko–Romita era books; mixing faithful impressions of key characters and arch-nemeses with baffling bastardizations of others. Between the spasticatchyjazzy music and shameless, repetitive recycling of action sequences, the show helped make Spidey an all-time favorite. Even now, the act of watching the MCU “wall crawler” sling from skyscraper to skyscraper as I’d seen the character do decades earlier provokes nostalgic (but manly) tears of joy and unconscious, sympathetic action movements (“thwip, thwip”).  Excelsior!

HULK SMASH PUNY PRIME TIME TV!!!

With only one TV in the house, opportunities to watch Marvel heroes when they hit prime-time in the late ‘70s were dependent upon 3 conditions: a lack of options elsewhere on the dial; Mom’s feelings toward the actors involved; and the probability of Dad – a vocal adversary of everything fantasy/fiction – falling asleep prior to show time.  Thanks, no doubt, to the presence of nice guy veteran actor Bill Bixby, only The Incredible Hulk slipped through with semi-regularity.

As is quite common when adapting literary works for screen, fiction or non, many retcons were enacted to bring Hulk to TV. Sometimes changes are made to compress a story that is too expansive to be told in the time available. Here, however, the retcons had more to do with reasonable budgetary constraints and pointless spite than anything else…

Exhibit A: Hulk’s mythic strength was downgraded to hoisting objects that star Lou Ferrigno could’ve believably managed without performance enhancing gamma radiation. FX are expensive, I get it. They had to tone down the most fantastical elements of the character. Besides, with the technology available at the time, they couldn’t have presented a comic-accurate version if they wanted to. Forgivable. Next…

Exhibit B: The origin story was changed to attribute Hulk’s transformations to a lab mishap in lieu of a bomb test. Last I checked, the cold war was still on in 1977, but ok. Simulated gamma explosions and staged desert military battles would have been extremely pricey as well. Forgivable. Next…

Exhibit C: More sci-fi tinged human drama than sensational superhero epic, the comic lore was eschewed in favor of stories that followed the Fugitive/Kung-Fu blueprint: David Banner, on the run from authorities, drifted from town to town and became embroiled in the personal lives of people suffering the whims of disposable villains.  …Obviously, the show went off formula a tad when the hero (cue Bixby’s glass-eyed “Oh face”) erupted through his shirt and shoes and transfigured into a paint slathered, shaggy wigged champion body builder; flexed, growled, and tossed some common goons around; flexed and growled some more then promptly ran away. Again, most comic stories had Hulk squaring off against similarly overpowered and impossible to depict villains. I give this a pass as well. Next…

Exhibit D: They changed the name of Hulk’s alter-ego from “Bruce” to “David.” What..? Why? Why? It’s such a petty detail in the grand scheme of things, so why should this bother me…? Because it’s so damned stupid. Did CBS execs think the name sounded too Australian for U.S. audiences?  Ugggh. FAIL! Whatever.

BAM! BAP! BOFF! KRUNCH! KAPOW!!!

Amazingly, as much as Marvel heroes captivated me, nothing matched the sheer mania stirred by the campy ’60s live-action Batman TV show.

Faithfully tuned-in every day at that “same bat time” to that “same bat channel,” I loudly vocalized the theme song while bouncing off walls, couches, and floors; dove into the hallway wardrobe, scouring for any items that could pass for Batman’s boots, cape, and cowl; and fought off imaginary hordes of villainous henchman (“POW!”). I loved the swirling horn motifs and swinging surf guitar riffs; cartoonish overacting and goofy dialogue (“You…filthy criminals”); the saturated colors and dramatic camera attitudes; silly plot conveniences; …Julie Newmar in a painted-on cat suit (yes, even then).  I was all in.

CARTOONS AND KID COPING STRATEGIES

Like any other kid, I loved cartoons and developed strategies for ensuring maximal viewing very early on.  As a toddler, for example, I pushed my crib away from the wall to my folks’ bed to climb down and get downstairs in time for for the start of Saturday morning cartoons.

“What’s the big deal…?,” you might ask.  “…Why not sleep-in and stream ‘whatever’ when you got up?”  It was the savage ‘70s. “On Demand” didn’t exist.  Before the VHS revolution of the early 1980s, everything had to be watched according to a set schedule or be missed.  If that wasn’t barbaric enough, because we had no remote, my siblings and I had to physically go to the large wooden floor console TV and manually turn chunky dials to change channels.  Between my rudimentary reading skills and seasonal shifts in programming schemes, tracking choice ‘toons was a challenge but I managed (“CLICK CLICK CLICK  CLICK CLICK CLICK”).

SATURDAY MORNING’S ALRIGHT FOR FIGHTING
(OVER THE TV)

Only about eight channels were functionally accessible back then, but I was nonetheless exposed to a near total history of popular animation; from repackaged and haphazardly edited golden age “shorts” to the haphazardly produced product of the day – which happened to rest squarely at the apex of animation’s “dark age.”

Why “dark age?”  Well, frankly, whatever nostalgic memories Gen-X has attached to the Saturday morning tradition’s heyday, the quality of the shows was almost uniformly dreadful.  After the old Hollywood System fell in the late 1940s-‘50s, the surviving studios slashed budgets and weakened – or outright dumped – their in-house animation divisions.  The animated theatrical short faded in balance with the rising demand for original Television content.  The innovation, whimsy, and excellence of the old reality obliterating (and yes, extremely violent) early creations was abandoned in favor of fast, cheap, and comparatively stale “limited animation.”  

Reconsidering shows from the 1950’s-’60s, it seems like some studios were at least trying to leaven the diminished animation standards with hip (Bullwinkle) and thoughtful (Charlie Brown specials) social commentary.  The Flintstones was an analogue for modern class warfare and technology. Scooby Doo was so loaded with veiled psychedelic tropes (3 “straight” kids meandering the country in a VW van with an unkempt, munchies obsessed hippie and a talking dog) that if TV’s were outfitted with “Smell-O-Vision,” parents everywhere would’ve had to open windows to vent the stank of cheap pot & patchouli whenever the van doors popped open. 

By the time I arrived on the scene, however, the medium had devolved into a guileless wasteland of homogeneous efforts.  I watched, of course – they were cartoons, after all.  The lens through which we evaluate our world changes a lot in the time between 4 and 49 (ideally).  Back then, using Fat Albert as an example, earworm theme songs, passingly colorful characters, and clunky catch phrases (“Hey Hey HEYYYYYYY”) were hook enough.  With Laugh-A-Lympics, Hanna-Barbera turned out their deep drawer of properties past (Snagglepuss) and present (Grape Ape) to lure kids in with an “all-star” lineup of catch phrases (“I’m smarter than the average bear!”).  Still, my tastes weren’t indiscriminate. When familiar characters from back in the day were resurrected (Tom & Jerry; Popeye), I saw the “ALL NEW” takes as pallid and unwatchable in comparison to the originals and steered away.

M.I.C.K.E.Y.M.O.U.S.E. M.I.A.

Strangely absent from Saturday mornings in the ’70s was the Walt Disney Company.

Struggling financially, like so many holdovers from the earlier era, the “House of Mouse” had turned almost exclusively to producing feature-length films (Escape to Witch Mountain; Rescuers; Pete’s Dragon).  Stray reruns of black & white era shows like Mickey Mouse Club aired from time to time, but it seems that Disney opted to lean on licensed merchandise (picture books, story records, etc.) and theatrical re-releases (Alice In Wonderland; Fantasia) as the principle means of maintaining legacy properties.  Their only regularly active TV presence – NBC Sunday night’s Wonderful World of Disney – focused on live-action event films (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), only rotating in animated classics like Snow White, Dumbo, or Pinocchio on odd occasions.  I seldom recall seeing their classic cartoon shorts and wonder how the industry could’ve changed for the better if Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy had figured prominently in the Saturday morning equation.

I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBEQUERQUE!

Yes, I watched numberless hours of unsatisfying filler, but, whatever ran against CBS’s Saturday Bugs Bunny-Roadrunner Show, the wascawy wabbit & fwends smoked them all.  Further, when given a choice between contemporary cartoons and the classics at any point in the week, I opted for the zany, frenetic, and wildly surreal iconic series from Hollywood’s golden age: Fleischer-Famous-Paramount’s Popeye and Casper the Friendly Ghost; Lantz-Universal’s Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy; MGM’s Tom & Jerry and Droopy; Disney; and, course, Schlesinger-WB’s Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes.  

What made golden age works so special?  For one, unlike modern cartoon makers, who saved money and aggravation by dumbing things down and pandering to overreaching parent groups, the old guard – Bob Clampett, Fred Quimby, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, etc. – had relative free-reign to innovate and self-entertain.  As a result, they built raucous, rule-free universes; canonizing countless absurd sight gags (impossibly long limos; body shaped holes in walls; passing between points “a” and “c” without visibly going through “b”; etc.) in the process.  Of course, creators weren’t totally free from censorship – the Hays Code effectively neutered the Fleischer Brothers’ Betty Boop in the 1930s; but, so long as things didn’t get too sexy and the violence was bloodless, they were generally permitted to bully, bludgeon, bisect, blow up, blow apart, maul, mash, mutilate, squeeze, smash, and scare characters skinless to their heart’s content.

The classics were also deceptively sophisticated and respected the intelligence of their audience. Where artless, glacially paced “Dark age” products narrowly targeted simple minds with lame dialogue, labored narratives, and primitive images, golden age masterworks aimed higher in order to entertain a much broader base. The makers of the old theatrical shorts, keenly aware that animation is a visual medium, first and foremost, cleverly conveyed story through a combination of dynamic musical arrangements, beautifully rendered art, relatable characterizations, barrages of lightning quick sight gags, and winking, “meta” references (“Ok, break it up, son.  Joke’s over, hear?”).  Golden age cartoons didn’t talk down or waste precious time with needless exposition. They challenged patrons to use simple powers of observation to connect the dots for themselves.  

What’s more, golden age shorts were great because of their pure escapism. Sure, many shorts made during World War II, like most forms of popular media of the time, served to promote American propaganda (“Any Bonds Today?”); and Disney traded extensively in, well, “Disneyfied” morality tales (Snow White; Bambi; Peter Pan); but, generally speaking, their purpose was pure entertainment. The pretense of story only existed to set up endless gags. The scenarios were just vehicles for exploring the many inventive and delightfully brutal ways Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Roadrunner could find to foil Elmer Fudd, Sylvester, and Wile E Coyote in the course of seven minutes; for demonstrating how much abuse Popeye could take before squeezing open a can of spinach; and providing Droopy with ample opportunities to break the “4th wall” with droll exclamations (“…I’m happy”).

YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID!

Ok. Personal bias aside, I understand the argument that these cartoons may be too profoundly violent to not be desensitizing, particularly for young viewers. …It’s also probably for the best that all non-Anglo European stereotypes depicted in the old cartoons have been tucked away from newer generations who can’t likely reconcile the context of their creation.  On these points, I leave the following meditations on the importance of any level of nurturing guardianship or guidance…

Employing a style that resided somewhere in the vast middle-ground between the smothering, overbearing modern helicopter parent and the indiscipline of feral dogs, my Mom and Dad managed to impart to me a sense of right, wrong, and empathy. They knew what my siblings and I were watching and made certain we understood fundamental truths of life, such as “If you fall off a cliff you will die,” “if you shoot someone in the face they will die,” and “any person run over by a pavement roller will surely die…”  It was cathartic as hell to watch cartoon avatars for life’s jerks get the tables turned on them with hilariously extreme prejudice time and time again, but the line between real life and fiction never looked thin or blurred. Anyway… Something to think about…

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BUGS BUNNY

Even as a young child, variances in certain characterizations were hard to miss. Using Bugs Bunny as an example, I’d always assumed that his evolution was linear and easily traced, but it wasn’t. His appearance differed a lot from cartoon to cartoon early on, but he was also kind of schitzo: a mean-spirited bully in some shorts; an endearing trickster in others. It was hard to track because there was no consistency moving between black and white and color shorts. Well… Apparently, four different creative groups were churning out monochrome and Technicolor Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons at Warner Brothers at the same time! The groups operated independently with different budget mandates and under the distinct visions of their respective editors. That’s just insane! No wonder the characters were so changeable.

THE MAN OF A THOUSAND VOICES

To anyone born after 1990, a nickname like “Man of a Thousand Voices” may seem like hyperbole, but, take my word for it, Mel Blanc was inarguably the most important, prolific, and influential voice talent of all time.

Historically, Blanc is most fondly remembered for his work with Warner Brothers, where he provided the definitive voices for icons Bugs Bunny (“Ehh… What’s up doc?”), Daffy Duck (“Youuu’rrrre dithhpickable!”), Porky Pig , Sylvester, Tweety (“I taught I taw a putty tat!”), Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn (“Pay attention, son!”), and countless others for the near entirety of a six decade career.

A broader overview of his extensive output as a character/vocal effects man reveals a talent that bridged radio to television (The Jack Benny Program); rival production companies (WB; Lantz; MGM; Disney; Hanna Barbera); bawdy black and white 1940s instructional films for the U.S. military (Private Snafu) to vapid ‘70s Saturday morning kid schlock (Captain Caveman).  He was the original voice of Woody Woodpecker (“Guess who?”) and Barney Rubble (“Uhh huh huh huh”). He was in Duck Dodgers (“I claim this planet in the name of Mars! Isn’t that lovely?”) and Buck Rogers (“Biddy biddy biddy biddy”).  In 1944, after years of acrimony, his successful negotiations with Leon Schesinger changed the norms for how voice actors were treated in screen credits, improving the visibility of his peers and all who came after. 

ALL I KNOW OF HIGH CULTURE COMES FROM BUGS BUNNY CARTOONS

…And now a few closing words about WB’s MVC (most valuable composer), Carl Stalling.

In the early 1920s, young composer/orchestra leader Carl Stalling was recruited by a fledgeling Walt Disney to produce music for animated shorts he was developing.  Brief but fruitful, the partnership on the “Silly Symphonies” series heralded two revolutionary and natively complimentary advancements: “Mickey Mousing” and the “click track.” Where Stalling’s “Mickey Mousing” process served to align onscreen action with the music score, the metronomic “click track” (known then as a “tick system” or “tick track”) improved pacing, aiding musicians in the task of maintaining perfect tempo. In 1936, Stalling took his talent and innovations to rival Schlesinger-Warner Brothers, where he perfected his craft serving as musical director for a multitude of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts forward into the late ‘50s. 

Echoing sentiments shared by film critic Leonard Maltin in a video I watched yesterday on YouTube (…and you folks thought I didn’t know how to properly document sources…), I’ve long viewed Carl Stalling’s scores as stealth mini-clinics in music theory; imprinting centuries of knowledge onto unknowing viewers via osmosis. So integral were his contributions, it’s sometimes hard to tell from the outside whether the stories informed the scores or vice versa. With the full might of a massive in-house orchestra at his command, Stalling deftly leveraged Warner Brothers’ expansive music catalog; seamlessly weaving passages from existing compositions into epic original scores. He was a master of meter, adept arranger, and savvy solderer who brilliantly bonded quotes from classical works, jazz, opera, show tunes, etc. to his own material. His approach set the standard for music in animated shorts for decades.

Tangentially, it’s not hard to see how Stalling’s facility for fusion might have influenced the ascent of later music forms, directly or otherwise. ’80s Pop producers repurposed (corrupted) the click track to keep “undisciplined” (feel) players robotically on the beat (kill their soul). Surely, Symphonic-Progressive Rock acts from the ’60s – ’70s (Yes; Moody Blues; King Crimson) would have been exposed to golden age Looney Tunes in their youth… Did Stalling and the composers at MGM somehow influence the early Industrial bands (Cabaret Voltaire; Ministry; Skinny Puppy) through their inventive use of “stinger” sound effects?” Mmmmmmmmmm…could be.

…Have different angles to consider or comparable stories to tell?  Please…  Start a conversation in the comments section!