Another pioneer of the earliest days of comics has died. It's legendary artist Bob Oksner and the cause of death, earlier this evening, was pneumonia. Born October 14, 1916 in Paterson, New Jersey, he originally embarked on a legal career at New York University. It was while he was editing the campus humor magazine that he met many cartoonists and began flexing his muscles in that area. Before long, he'd changed majors and enrolled also at the Art Students League. He received an M.A. at Columbia University, then taught art and history in high school until he broke into comics. His earliest work was in either 1939 or 1940 for Funnies, Inc., which was an art service that supplied comic book material to a number of publishers, including Timely (now Marvel) Comics. Timely liked to hire artists away from Funnies, Inc. and by '42, Oksner was working directly for the publisher on strips including The Destroyer and Marvel Boy, while also occasionally drawing for other houses. In 1945, he began drawing a syndicated newspaper strip, Miss Cairo Jones, that lasted until 1947.
Sheldon Mayer, an editor at DC, had been a fan of Miss Cairo Jones and he invited Oksner to work for DC...an association that kept Bob occupied for the rest of his career. He started on The Black Canary and other strips featuring pretty ladies and soon segued to humor features, especially ones based on licensed properties. Oksner drew The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis until that team split up, whereupon his assignment became The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. He also drew Sgt. Bilko, Doberman, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Pat Boone, The Adventures of Bob Hope and non-licensed humor titles like Leave it to Binky, Miss Beverly Hills, A Date With Judy and Stanley and His Monster. One of his more memorable stints was as artist/co-creator of the short-lived The Angel and the Ape in the late sixties. He received the National Cartoonists Society Award in its Comic Book Division for 1960 and 1961 won the Shazam Award in 1970 for Best Pencil Artist (Humor Division).
When DC didn't have humor work for him, he did romance tales for Girl's Love Stories and other such comics. Later, when they weren't publishing either, Oksner worked on Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Lois Lane and other adventure-type strips, especially those featuring heroines. He did a long tour of duty as Curt Swan's inker on Superman and drew a number of Superman stories on his own and illustrated many classic covers.
Over the years, Oksner occasionally returned to syndicated comic strips. From 1952 to 1955, he drew a strip based on the I Love Lucy TV show and from 1967 to '68, there was Soozie, a very well-drawn strip about a very well-built young lady. His longest run in syndication began in '69 when he began collaborating with his long-time friend, Irwin Hasen, on the scripts for Hasen's strip, Dondi. Oksner did the plots and Hasen wrote the dialogue. This lasted until 1986 when the strip ended.
That was a year or two after Oksner had retired completely from drawing...and I don't mean just from drawing for DC. He gave away his drawing table and art supplies, and when fans contacted him to inquire about commissions, his reply was, "Sorry...I don't have anything to draw on." A few years later, he weakened enough to do a few sketches but when I interviewed him at the 2002 Comic-Con International, he said he was quite content to have put drawing behind him. (The above photo of him was taken at that convention. Thanks to Jackie Estrada for supplying it.)
That convention was the only opportunity I ever had to meet Mr. Oksner and spend time with him, even though we'd both worked briefly on a mid-seventies comic book adapation of the TV show, Welcome Back, Kotter. He was a charming gentleman who was amazed and delighted to discover he had so many fans. It seemed like every thirty seconds for all four days, someone was coming up to him to say how much they'd always admired his art. Especially the way he drew the ladies.
An issue of Alter Ego devoted to Oksner's work is just about to go to press.
Let's catch up with what folks are writing to me. This one's from Starmaxx and it's in response to that post I put up about replacing human cashiers at parking lots with machines...
I can tell you that these machines came into vogue at the parking lots that service the Washington, D.C. metro-rail (similar to the subway) in the last few years after management found out that the "manned" parking lot attendants were stealing lots of money. Apparently, it went into the millions and had gone on for years. Why an audit never caught this still remains a mystery, but that just goes to show you how the D.C. local government is run!
I had a horrible experience when I attended the 2006 baseball opening day for the Washington Nationals and decided to take mass transit. Went into the metro parking lot, but could not find any parking spaces after looking for 30 minutes. Tried to get out, but you needed the "fare card" to use in the automated machine — but you could only buy the card inside the Metro complex (which meant you had to find a parking space and take a 5 minute walk). What a quandary. Finally, a friendly attendent showed me an empty space. What lunacy — but I now always have a spare card in my glove compartment.
I can understand wanting to eliminate theft but it seems to me it would be quite easy and cheap to have a TV camera monitoring the exit cashiers and counting how many people exited and paid. I don't understand how it's cost efficient to have machines collecting parking fees, especially when you need to have human beings around to jump in when the machines fail or when "the system" doesn't work for some customer. My old pal Pat O'Neill, who does not live in Southern California, writes...
Wait a minute here — you have to pay to park at a shopping mall in Los Angeles? The fact that you're spending money in the stores isn't sufficient revenue? Do any of the stores offer to validate?
If I drove to a mall and found out they wanted me to pay for the "privilege" of leaving my car in the lot while I went in and spent money, I'd quickly find some other place to spend my money!
Don't think that hasn't occurred to some of us. But yes, there are malls out here that don't validate...where you can go in and spend thousands of dollars but you still have to come up with a buck to get out. The Beverly Center and the Beverly Connection, which are across the street from one another, both do that...and I'm guessing they haven't suffered a noticeable loss of consumers or they wouldn't do that.
Both once had free parking if you were there two hours or less. The Beverly Center started charging a buck minimum a few years ago and now the Beverly Connection, which is just reopening after a major renovation, is going that way. It'll be interesting to see if they stick with it. The revamped mall is not yet fully open — some stores aren't finished — so they aren't expecting a lot of business yet. Once they get to the point where they do, they may find that parking fee keeping people away.
Also, the other day, I posted a link to a video and wondered if that was Glenn Yarbrough of the Limeliters singing. I got some interesting responses, like this one from Fred G. Vigeant...
Most definitely Glenn on the Raid commercial. While the song was made popular by the Kingston Trio as the "M.T.A.", the tune is from a song known as "The Wreck of the Old '97," which every folk group, including the Weavers and Leadbelly sang. It may be interesting to you as well, that the Limeliters were formed as a "song try out group" for the Kingston Trio. Lou Gottlieb, who was singing with the Gateway Singers at the time, wrote a couple of songs that were part of the K.T. repertoire. Somebody (it may have been Lou or possible Frank Werber, the Kingston's manager) got the idea that another group could be formed that could "try out" new songs in front of an audience to see they would work. Thus, the Limeliters were formed (named after the club in Aspen, I believe, where they started out) and soon had their own following and recording contract.
A couple of folks thought it wasn't Yarbrough but they were just guessing. Here's another expert opinion from Michael J. Hayde...
First of all, that's definitely Glenn Yarbrough. Nobody could duplicate that voice. Second, I suspect the banjo player is fellow Limeliter Alex Hassilev.
As to why Yarbrough (and possibly Hassilev) did the commercial probably has a lot to do with timing. The Kingston Trio's "M.T.A." was released in the spring of 1959, and peaked on the charts around July. Coincidentally, that's the month the Limeliters were formed. Yarbrough and Hassilev had been working as singles and occasionally as a duo at a club in Aspen called the Limelite. They were joined by Lou Gottlieb, who'd been working as an arranger for...The Kingston Trio. Originally, Gottlieb thought the three of them could record demos for the K.T., but it was clear that the potential for something greater was present.
In any event, that Raid commercial probably was one of many projects the group members took on before, during or after their first (not-so-successful) album on the Elektra label came out in 1960, but prior to their signing to RCA Victor, which put them into the big time. I should add that no folk group did more TV commercials than the Limeliters; it was they who introduced the "Things go better with Coke" jingle, and how I'd love to see that turn up on your website someday.
We aim to please. Here are the Limeliters — who I always liked a lot better than the Kingston Trio, by the way — performing that lovely jingle with Mr. Yarbrough in fine voice as the lead singer. And because no detail's too trivial for me to not point it out, I think the short delivery guy in this commercial is the fine character actor, Bill McCutcheon. Thanks to everyone for all the mail.
A man named Douglas Feith seems to have been designated as Official Scapegoat for all the bad intelligence work that got us into the war in Iraq over, at best, erroneous assumptions.
I do not mean to suggest Mr. Feith is blameless. Indeed, the fact that he's now making the rounds, denying he ever said all the things he said does not speak well for his integrity. But he may be drawing a disproportionate share of criticism that should rightly be dispersed over a wider pantheon of folks who screwed up royally.
In any case, he has achieved something amazing. How badly does a Bush administration official have to dissemble before Fox News calls him a liar?
Step right up. I have your Sunday Video Link right here, friends. It's another clip from The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, in this case from October 4, 1959. Dinah and Groucho Marx perform "Peasie Weasie," which was one of those weird old songs that only Groucho seemed to ever sing.
It dates back to a touring vaudeville act that he and his brothers began doing around 1910. They actually had two acts then. One was called "Fun in Hi Skule" and the other was "Mr. Green's Reception." As I understand it, they did "Fun in Hi Skule" for a while and then developed the second act, which was kind of a sequel with the same silly characters. In some theaters, they did one of the two acts and in some, they did both and "Peasie Weasie" was usually the finale in one act or both. Here's two minutes of Groucho and Dinah taking a crack at it. (Just ignore the video weirdness at the beginning. It's the clip, not your monitor.)
February 19, 2007
