New York, NY (October 3, 2011) A Never-Ending Battle, the first episode of a new film from the creative team responsible for the award-winning PBS documentaries Broadway: The American Musical and Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, will be screened in front of an audience for the first time at the New York Comic Con, the East Coast’s largest and most exciting pop culture convention.
Featuring rare footage along with new interviews with legends such as Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer, segments of the first episode – “A Never-Ending Battle: 1938-1954” – will be previewed on Friday, October 14, 2011 at 4PM in Room 1B01 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center at 655 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. An on-stage interview and Q&A with filmmakers and cultural historians Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon will take place immediately following the screening.
“We’re really excited to preview our film to fans at New York Comic Con,” said Emmy Award winning filmmaker Michael Kantor. “Because so many incredible talents have given us interviews, I think of this screening as kind of like attending six all-star panel sessions at once. We are also very eager to get fan reactions and feedback.”
“As a comics fan from back in the days of Second Sundays at the McAlpin Hotel, it was a privilege for me to sit down and hear so many legendary creators spin new tales I had never heard before,” added Maslon, the film’s co-writer, as well as an associate professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “This documentary series will mark the first time that we’re able to tell the grand epic of the American comic book heroes on a scale that they deserve.”
The event is open to all registered attendees of the New York Comic Con, space permitting, and has been made possible by special arrangement with Ghost Light Films, Inc., Reed POP and Bonfire Agency, LLC.
[[[Glee]]] is an amazing phenomenon, arriving seemingly out of nowhere and immediately capturing the interest of tweens, teens, and adults. Fox had a juggernaut on its hands and rode the wave with tremendous success during its first season.
The second season, though, proved less thrilling, largely due to co-creator/co-producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk demonstrating an inability to plan character arcs far enough in advance for things to feel organic. The sophomore slump hit this show and like many other fads, appeared ready to burn out quickly. The third season has proven stronger at the start although the ratings have yet to match last year. Similarly, their live tour didn’t fare as well and the 3-d concert movie fizzled in August. (more…)
[[[Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land]]] edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages
It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Crown Heights, surrounded on all sides by three generations of family, including grandparents and great-grandparents born in the old country, the entire world seemed Jewish. Even when my family moved (briefly) to West Virginia (population 5,000, only seven of which were Jews), then back to Brooklyn, to Canarsie and East Flatbush, the feeling of Jewishness never went away. The neighborhoods were now a mix of Irish, Italian, and Jewish, even a sprinkling of Afro-Americans, but when the family gathered, Yiddish was still spoken among the adults when the topic wasn’t fit for kinder, children. As a result, derkinder learned to understand, if not speak, just enough of the mamaloshen (the mother tongue) to get the gist of what we weren’t supposed to hear.
Popular entertainment was Jewish, too. The producers and writers behind many of the sitcoms were Jews and even if the characters weren’t Jewish (with the exception of The Goldbergs), the comedic sensibilities sure were. Ditto for the variety shows, where in addition to everything else, many of the hosts were Jewish as well. Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis (although not Dean Martin), Sid Caesar. Allan Sherman sold millions of comedy albums in the early-1960s with song parodies that were flavored by schmaltz (chicken fat). Today, when he’s remembered, he’s remembered for his (mostly) WASPy “Hello Mudder, Hello Faddah.” Song-writing in the mid-20th century was so Jewish that according to ASCAP’s list of the top twenty-five most popular Christmas songs, twelve were written by Jews.
Even the Italians were Jewish in Hollywood. In The Detective, a 1968 mystery starring Frank Sinatra, Jack Klugman co-stars as one of Frank’s police colleagues who has a brief exchange with his wife in the sing-song cadence of Yiddish about whether or not he wants her to make him a “nice glass tea.” My great-grandmother drank hot tea out of a glass (never a mug), sweetening it with a cube of sugar between her teeth as she sipped.
Jewishness, if not Judaism, was everywhere. Hollywood is still a Jewish town, but the entertainment it now produces is far less so. Even the language of the Jews, Yiddish, has become somewhat catholic in appeal; every schmuck on the street thinks he’s a big macher because he knows a bissel Yiddish. And as the Jews have long known, there’s really nothing like Yiddish to make a point. As Neal Gabler (author of the excellent An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood) says in his introduction to Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land, “Yiddish is the most onomatopoeic language ever created. Everything sounds exactly the way it should: macher for a self-appointed big shot, shlmiel for the fellow who spills the soup and shlmazel for the hapless one (as in “poor shmuck”), shnorrer for a freeloader, nudnick for a pest. The expressiveness is bound into the language, and so is a kind of ruthless honesty….Yiddish has dozens of words for imbecile, a tribute to Jewish lucklessness…. There is no decorousness in Yiddish, nor much romance. It is raw, egalitarian, vernacular.”
Yiddish is an “amalgamated language, borrowing freely from German and Polish and Hebrew with its own unique constructions and confabulations,” and the people who speak it are the Yiddishkeit, or the Yiddish culture…although as Gabler points out, what the word encompasses is “so large, expansive, and woolly a concept that culture may be too narrow to do it full justice. ‘Jewish sensibility’ comes closer,” but, in the end, “You can’t define Yiddishkeit neatly in words and pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.” (more…)
Yes, it’s short… it’s still in previews. You’ll see the full thing in the fall, but you won’t see it on Broadway– only on Sesame Street as it starts its 42nd season. I can’t wait!
Disney has done such a spectacular job with their upgraded high definition releases of their classics through the years so each announcement is most welcome. Personally, I question the value of a 3-D home video release but it’s nice they have the option for those interested. Here’s the official release:
BURBANK, Calif. (May 26, 2011) — Simba, Mufasa, Nala, Timon and Pumbaa are back and better than ever this fall when Disney’s The Lion King roars into theaters and homes in breathtaking 3D. A special two-week theatrical extravaganza kicks off Sept. 16, 2011, showcasing the Oscar®- and Golden Globe®-winning film on the big screen in Disney Digital 3D™ for the first time ever, and its highly anticipated home entertainment debut kicks off October 4, celebrating the Diamond Edition release of the epic movie “The Lion King” in high-definition Blu-ray™ and Blu-ray 3D“The Lion King is the best-selling home entertainment release of all time—and this is The Lion King like never before,” said Bob Chapek, president of distribution, The Walt Disney Studios. “The all-new 3D format immerses viewers in the epic settings and puts them face-to-face with these beloved characters. We’re showcasing one of the all-time favorite Disney movies in theaters and making it available in Blu-ray hi-def and in Blu-ray 3D—it’s the must-see, must-own title for everyone.”
Nearly a decade since The Lion King last appeared on the big screen, the upcoming theatrical release invites new generations into the “Circle of Life.” The two-week, 3D-only presentation is a planned wide domestic release—the biggest since the film’s 1994 debut—and the film’s first-ever 3D release.
* New in Old Time Radio: The Jimmy Durante Show, Volume 2 * New in Pulp Fiction: The Spider Volume 19, The Shadow Volume 48, and Doc Savage Volume 47 * The Best Deals are in the Radio Archives Treasure Chest * Also New in Old Time Radio: The Adventures of Archie Andrews * Coming Soon: Pulp Audiobooks from RadioArchives.com
New in Old Time Radio: The Jimmy Durante Show, Volume 2 The first half of the 20th century was a great time for entertainment, with amazingly talented performers dominating the Broadway stage, vaudeville, and nightclubs. But, in the annals of show business, few entertainers achieved the lengthy and enduring career claimed by Jimmy Durante.
Nicknamed “Schnozzola” for his oversized nose, Jimmy Durante first came to prominence as a teenager, playing New York’s restaurant and nightclub circuit as Ragtime Jimmy. Bitten by the show-biz bug, he dropped out of school in the eighth grade and soon teamed up with fellow entertainers Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson to form a musical comedy trio that wowed nightclub audiences with its boisterous unpredictability, Durante’s aggressive interaction with the musicians, and his penchant for destroying pianos in mock frustration. Clayton, Jackson, and Durante quickly gained a reputation as one of the most hilarious acts in town – and, by the mid-1920s, the team was being featured in vaudeville, culminating in a lengthy run at New York’s Palace Theater. In 1929, Broadway called them for a featured spot in “Show Girl” and, by the time Cole Porter’s “The New Yorkers” opened in 1930, Durante was a star.
Jimmy continued his Broadway success in a string of popular shows and revues throughout the 1930s, but it was his role in “Jumbo” that brought him the most acclaim, playing the brash owner of a circus in an extravaganza that brought all of the delights of the Big Top to New York’s massive Hippodrome Theater. But he didn’t limit himself solely to the Great White Way; thanks to appearances in a series of films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and a guest star spot on Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann Hour, by 1933, Durante had taken over for Eddie Cantor as the host of radio’s “Chase and Sanborn Hour”. On the air, Durante’s broad delivery, overwhelming personality, and penchant for mangling his words only increased his popularity with laugh-hungry Depression-era audiences and his next radio series – “Jumbo”, based partially on the Broadway show – kept him a welcome visitor in American homes.
For a time, aside from an occasional radio guest appearance, Durante devoted himself solely to the stage and nightclubs. But, in 1943, Hollywood beckoned once again with the offer of comedic roles in a series of motion pictures. For this opportunity, Durante relocated to Hollywood, where he was also signed to headline a CBS series titled “The Camel Caravan”. The new series found the Schnozz co-starred with a fresh voiced young comedian named Garry Moore in what initially seemed to be an odd and highly unlikely pairing. As so often happens, however, the mismatched duo instantly clicked as a team, ratings went through the roof, and Durante’s patented brand of language mangling and outraged interaction with the orchestra introduced him to radio audiences all over again. Durante and Moore enjoyed four successful seasons together until Moore decided to pursue a solo career at the end of the 1946/47 season.
With Moore’s departure, in the fall of 1947, Jimmy Durante signed a contract to host a new series on NBC for the Rexall Drug Company, costarring vocalist Peggy Lee and character actor Victor Moore. Loud, boisterous, and wildly entertaining, “The Jimmy Durante Show” proved just as popular as its predecessor – so much so, in fact, that the following season found Durante back on CBS and back with Camel Cigarettes for another two years before the Schnozz finally moved full-time to television in the early 1950s.
The ten shows in this second compact disc collection, priced at just $14.98, showcase Jimmy Durante at his bigger-than-life best, complete with the fractured English, gravel voiced musical numbers, and warmhearted buffoonery that made him a show business legend. As an added bonus, this set includes two shows broadcast while Jimmy was in the hospital recovering from surgery – and it’s a mark of his reputation among show people that the personalities filling in for him include the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan, as well as the World’s Greatest Entertainer, Al Jolson. Taken directly from original master recordings and fully restored for sparkling audio fidelity, this second volume of “The Jimmy Durante Show” offers an additional selection of shows that are just as fresh, alive, and vibrant as they were when they were first aired over sixty years ago. If you love a good belly laugh, you’ll want to stop by RadioArchives.com and pick up your copy right away.
New in Pulp Fiction: The Spider Volume 19, The Shadow Volume 48, and Doc Savage Volume 47
At RadioArchives.com, we love the thrills, chills, and excitement that only a great pulp fiction story can provide. That’s why we’re excited to announce that three brand new reprints featuring the top heroes from the 1930s and 1940s are now available from RadioArchives.com:
Pulp fiction’s legendary Master of Men returns in “The Spider Volume 19”, featuring two classic novels written by Norvell Page under the pseudonym of Grant Stockbridge. First, in “Slaves of the Dragon”, white slavery is stripping America of its wives, sisters and sweethearts. Richard Wentworth, valiant champion of human rights, knows that an Oriental master criminal is captaining the slavery syndicate and has guessed the unspeakable purpose behind these wholesale abductions. Can the Spider outwit his most formidable foe and save America’s doomed womanhood? Then, in “The Spider and his Hobo Army”, murder and destruction has stupefied the nation. The zero hour has come and the vast and insidious Order of the Double Cross is ready to blast America from the face of the earth. Can The Spider crush the minions of the Double Cross, with only a handful of ragged hobos to aid him? This beautifully reformatted double-novel version of these two pulp classics, priced at just $14.95, features the original cover art and interior illustrations that accompany each story.
Next, in “The Shadow Volume 48”, the Dark Avenger continues the celebration of his 80th anniversary in an extra-length issue that pairs his explosive second adventure with a gripping novel of international intrigue. In “The Eyes of The Shadow”, the Knight of Darkness assumes the identity of Lamont Cranston to investigate a series of baffling serial murders in a groundbreaking novel that introduced the Shadow’s famous alter ego and his enigmatic agent, Burbank. Then, can The Shadow stop “The Money Master” before his financial machinations destroy the global economy? This instant collectors’ item, priced at just $14.95, showcases the classic cover paintings by George Rozen and John A. Coughlin, the original interior illustrations by George H. Wert and Paul Orban, two never-before-published articles by the Shadow’s creator Walter B. Gibson, and historical commentary by Will Murray.
Finally, in “Doc Savage Volume 47”, pulp fiction’s legendary Man of Bronze returns in three action-packed thrillers by Lester Dent, writing as Kenneth Robeson. First, when a man claiming to have found the secret of eternal life is murdered, Doc Savage journeys to Mexico searching for an answer in the remote “Weird Valley”. Then, only the Man of Bronze can provide a beautiful con artist with an antidote for murder in “Let’s Kill Ames”. Finally, a lost city of Incas battles over the strange power of “The Green Master”. This classic pulp reprint, priced at just $14.95, features the original color pulp covers by George Rozen, Modest Stein, and Walter Swenson, plus Paul Orban’s classic interior illustrations and historical commentary by Will Murray.
If you’ve been collecting these beautifully reformatted issues as they are released, you’ll want to place your order for these new books right away. And if you’ve never read a pulp novel – well, you’re in for a real treat! Be sure to stop by RadioArchives.com today and check out our pulp fiction section, where you’ll find more of the exciting and engrossing tales of Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, the Whisperer, and The Avenger.
The Best Deals are in the Radio Archives Treasure Chest If you’re a regular visitor to our website at RadioArchives.com, we don’t have to tell you about our Treasure Chest Bonus Deals. They’re right there on our home page, with new ones posted all the time, and they give you the chance to add something very special to each and every one of your orders with us.
But if you’ve never heard about our Treasure Chest, well, it’s high time that you did! You see, when you submit an order for $35.00 or more at RadioArchives.com, you get the chance to add a Treasure Chest Bonus Deal to your order. On the weekends following their release, you’ll find our newest compact disc collection there – and it will be priced at just 99 Cents! During the week, you’ll find other great deals, including pulp fiction reprints, books, DVD sets, and other CD collections containing hours of great sounding radio entertainment. But no matter what day you happen to stop by, you’ll find a great deal waiting for you on the home page of RadioArchives.com.
This week, for example, you’ll want to circle the dates on your calendar to remember to take advantage of these great deals:
* Today through Monday May 23rd, you can get our newest CD set – “The Jimmy Durante Show, Volume 2”, a $14.98 value – for Just 99 Cents when you submit an order of $35.00 or more.
* On Tuesday May 24th, the Man of Bronze and his Fabulous Five are featured in “Doc Savage Volume 16”,
featuring two exciting adventures from pulp fiction’s Golden Age. First, in “The Secret in the Sky”, Doc journeys to Oklahoma to investigate the murder of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. Then, in “The Giggling Ghosts,” a toxic outbreak of uncontrollable hilarity is causing New Jersey residents to literally laugh themselves to death. This beautifully reformatted double-novel reprint, chock full of special features, is normally priced at $12.95 – but you can enjoy these two exciting adventures for Just 99 Cents when you submit an order of $35.00 or more.
* On Wednesday May 25th, you’ll laugh along with one of radio’s most hilarious and innovative comedy teams in “Matinee with Bob and Ray, Volume 1”, an hilarious ten-CD set featuring 20 rare broadcasts from Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding’s earliest days at radio station WHDH in Boston, Massachusetts. This ten-hour collection of improvisational entertainment, transferred from the original one-of-kind transcriptions and fully restored for impressive audio fidelity, normally sells for $29.98 – but it can be yours for Just 99 Cents when you submit an order of $35.00 or more.
*
In the 1930s, nobody combined high style, romantic comedy, and drama better than Carole Lombard. A talented comedic actress with the face of an angel, Lombard illuminated the silver screen with her sparkling wit and dazzling beauty. Now you have the chance to enjoy six of her most hilarious and heartwarming films in “Carole Lombard – The Glamour Collection”, featuring such top name costars as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, William Powell, John Barrymore, and Ralph Bellamy. This set, offering two double-sided DVDs, normally sells for $26.98 – but on Thursday, May 26th, it can be yours for Just $3.99 when you place an order of $35.00 or more.
We’re sorry but, at these low prices, multiple orders cannot be combined into single shipments. Each separate order must be placed on the days on which the specials are offered and no early or late orders will be accepted.
Make it a habit to visit RadioArchives.com often and see what’s waiting for you in the Treasure Chest. It’s great way to stretch your entertainment budget and add to your personal library of radio, pulp, and movie favorites.
New in Old Time Radio: The Adventures of Archie Andrews When we look back at American family life in the late 1930s, many of us view it not through the eyes of reality but, instead, thru the rose colored glasses of popular culture. If you were young yourself at that time, you have a more realistic memory of those years – but, if you’re a baby boomer and beyond, you’re more likely to imagine a typical American home, circa 1940, as being in Carvel where a teenager named Andy Hardy lives: clean, pleasant, prosperous, and where every challenge, crisis, or misadventure is resolved in time for a happy ending – complete with the occasional musical number.
It’s not surprising that we have this rosy vision of the past; after all, every entertainment medium did its best to create and sustain this image. Hollywood gave us a seemingly endless series of Andy Hardy movies, the Broadway stage gave us “What a Life!” which introduced the perpetually teenaged Henry Aldrich, and radio quickly turned Henry and his friend Homer into comedy characters that would endure for over a decade. As the 1940s progressed, the trend continued: perky teenager Corliss Archer came to radio in 1943, as did “A Date with Judy” – both sit-coms featuring a typical teenage girl dealing with her boyfriends, her often baffled parents, and the overwhelming dramas of high school social life. But it wasn’t the stage, screen, or radio that would bring us our most enduring and innocent image of teenaged life; it was, instead, the comics.
In December of 1941, just two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Pep Comics introduced a new character that continues to entertain readers to this very day – and his name is Archie Andrews. From the beginning, Archie was the epitome of the American teenager of the 1940s: dressed in a polka dot bow tie with a letterman’s sweater that proclaimed his loyalty to Riverdale High, he drove a souped-up jalopy, hung out with the perpetually lazy Jughead Jones, and spent most of his time in a lovesick haze. Aside from occasional crushes on movie goddesses, Archie divided his affection between two teenaged beauties: Betty Cooper, a bright and down-to-earth blonde, and Veronica Lodge, a wealthy brunette who loved to toy with Archie’s affections. Hitting just the right mix of familiarity, slapstick comedy, and small-town warmth, Archie and his pals were an instant hit with teen readers – and, in less than a year, the characters had made their way from comic books to a daily newspaper comic strip and to radio.
In its first incarnation, “The Adventures of Archie Andrews” was a daily fifteen-minute radio series, aired over the Blue Network. Ratings were respectable and, after a brief move to a half-hour weekly slot, the five-a-week format returned on Mutual in 1944. But the series really hit its stride in June of 1945, when a largely new cast was introduced and it premiered over NBC in a Saturday morning slot that it would happily occupy for eight years. For the majority of the Saturday morning run, Archie was played by Bob Hastings, a talented young actor who had already made his reputation playing juveniles on dramatic programs. Woman-hating food-loving Jughead was played by Harlan Stone, perky Betty was played by Rosemary Rice, and the honey-voiced Veronica was played by Gloria Mann. If you were looking for subtlety or teenaged angst, you were never going to find it on “The Adventures of Archie Andrews”; in typical sit-com fashion, the plots usually revolved around some simple misunderstanding that quickly turned into bedlam. Aimed straight at a pre-teen audience, the programs were designed to be nothing more than loud, goofy, and fun – and, from the reactions of the studio audience that attended each live broadcast, the show was clearly adored by its listeners.
Priced at just $20.98, “The Adventures of Archie Andrews” offers fourteen original NBC broadcasts, taken from the original network master recordings and fully restored for sparkling audio fidelity. If you’ve enjoyed the other comedy collections released by RadioArchives.com – and especially if Archie and his pals were a big part of your youth – this is a collection you simply won’t want to miss. Coming Soon: Pulp Audiobooks from Radio Archives
You’ve thrilled to their exciting adventures in print! Now enjoy your favorite pulp stories in a whole new way in a brand new series of audiobooks, coming soon from RadioArchives.com!
For decades, the novels of Doc Savage, The Spider, and other classic heroes have occupied a special place in the hearts of readers everywhere. Now, by special arrangement with the authors, owners, and publishers of these thrill-packed adventures, Radio Archives.com will soon be offering full length unabridged audiobook adaptations of these timeless tales.
The first series of audiobooks, scheduled for release in the late Spring of 2011, will be the Doc Savage novels written by renowned writer Will Murray – starting with his classic adventure story, “Python Isle”. Future series will include the exploits of The Spider, the Master of Men, and Secret Agent “X”, as well as other well-known crimefighters from pulp fiction’s Golden Age. These new audio productions will feature the talents of some of the top voice actors in the country and will be produced and directed by Roger Rittner, who created the “Adventures of Doc Savage” full-cast radio series, now available from RadioArchives.com.
Be watching for updates on our website and also special features in our weekly newsletters as we begin the “Countdown to Adventure” with pulp audiobooks, coming to you soon from RadioArchives.com!
Those of us who enjoy the ancient and nearly-dead form of the newspaper comic strip know that the first successful regularly published strip was Bud Fisher’s Mutt & Jeff. It was enormously popular, running from 1907 through 1982, and reprints remain available each day online through various newspapers and through the gocomics.com service. Yes, it’s dated and the best stuff – the original strips that were actually done by Fisher – are quite good, if you are in for that sort of thing. I most certainly am.
Mutt & Jeff went on to Broadway, to silent pictures, to animation, and to a strong and ongoing presence in comic books starting in 1919 with a series of reprints from Cupples and Leon. When the contemporary comic book started in the mid-30s, Mutt & Jeff were right there from day one, in the first issue of the first regularly published comic book, Famous Funnies. The duo and their entourage continued in comic books published by Dell, DC and Harvey until 1965; the overwhelming majority coming from DC Comics in All-American Comics and in their eponymous title, which ran for 103 issues.
So it was with amusement and some surprise that I greeted today’s reprint (above) on gocomics.com. You see, I’m also a Smothers Brothers fan. The still-performing team is enormously talented, politically erudite, and very, very funny. What amused me is that today’s Mutt & Jeff gag was lifted, lock, stock but no music, from a classic Smothers Brothers routine. It’s so classic that I have even played it on my Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind show on getthepointradio.com.
The routine was the very first track of the Smothers Brothers’ very first album, released way back in 1962. It was written by Tommy’s friend, the brilliant Pat Paulsen. Later that decade, Pat became a featured performer on the SmoBro hit variety show, and he ran for president (in the sense that Pogo and Alfred E. Neuman ran for president) in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1988 and 1992. The song was called “Chocolate” and was part of their stand-up act for over fifty years.
Well, it you’re going to steal, you should steal from the best.
From Author Tommy Hancock and Pro Se Productions…A Free Preview of his upcoming debut novel-
Cover by Jay Piscopo, Logos by Sean Ali
And trust us, folks…this is literally in so many ways….only the beginning…..
Note-This story was originally submitted as an installment of syndicated columnist/writer Ramsey Long’s column, “The Long of It” for the first week of April, 1955.Of the over 500 papers that ran Long’s column, only one, The Missalou Missourian, Missalou, Missouri, ran it.
Ramsey Long vanished the first week of April, 1955.
The offices of the Missalou Missourian burnt to the ground the day after this column ran.All six staff members and two other individuals died in the blaze.The former site of the newspaper office remains a vacant dirt lot today.
THE FIRST YESTERDAY by Ramsey Long
It was a Tuesday. Two days before All Hallow’s Eve. People would say years and years afterward that no one saw it coming, that there were no warning signs, no tolling bells. Even those who should have known back then have been quoted as saying they were blindsided, no idea that a locomotive the entire world traveled on was threatening to derail at any time.
I never believed that, not for a moment.
I was there, in New York City, on that Tuesday. Had been for most of my life. People knew it was a different day, everyone from the newshawk on the street corner to the Chairman of the Board in any high rise in the skyline. They all knew it was a different sort of day, yet they all said they never saw it coming.
I still don’t know if they meant the Stock Market Crash that day in 1929 or the first time the world knew men could fly without metallic wings.
It was clear as chaos in Germany that the Crash was coming by October 29th, 1929, at least to anyone who knew how to read a ticker tape or a reporter hounding flustered businessmen for even the hint of a story. I was the latter, I hated the noise of that damned ticker tape machine too much to be the former. I didn’t much care for the nasal chatter of brokers or the frantic yelps of would-be tycoons on Wall Street, either. That’s why I was over on Broadway that Tuesday afternoon, thinking about how I was going to turn my escape from confused chaos into printable copy. Maybe ask the common man on the street what he thought about the economy of our country lying in its deathbed in New York City. I looked around me, not too many people out on the street that time of day, but there were a few likely candidates, men and women who looked like they could string words together into reasonable sentences. That was all I needed, I could weave loose threads into one doozy of a rug, I was sure. I was going to have to have something turned in by the evening edition, even if I had to strangle the streets to get it.
Then it happened. My story, up above me, on the tenth floor of the Flatiron Building on the ledge facing Broadway. The lead-in to my headline stepped out on the sill, his tie loosened from around his neck, his pudgy body trembling like a leaf lost in a cyclone. One of the first casualties of the Crash, one of those despondent businessmen that jumped to his death when he realized his life just went belly up with his company. Not nearly as many men died that Tuesday as American myth later said, just a handful dashed their hopes and their bodies on the streets below their lofty offices. And one member of that melancholy band tested the air above Broadway, sticking his foot out like he was at the shore testing how cold the water was. He didn’t jerk it back. Just right for a suicide dive.I hated it, but there was my story.
A fencepost of a cop screamed from across the street. A woman struggled to hold on to her son’s arm, the boy scratching and fighting to watch the guy jump. The kid didn’t have to wait long. The man pulled his foot back slowly, hesitated, and for an instant, stood perfectly still. Then he pitched forward, a tubby scarecrow falling from its post, a shocking move even though we were all expecting it. I gasped as I ran for where he’d hit, knowing there’d be nothing I could do. But I ran anyway, my head down, racing the cop now in the middle of the street. All of that in a matter of three seconds.
The fourth second changed the world forever.
“What is that?”
I glanced up as I moved. The man plummeted at me, not like a rock freefalling from a cliffside, but gradually, at least in my eyes. I could almost see the pock marks left by youth on his face he fell so slowly. Then, just out of sight, tickling at the corner of my vision, I saw a blur. To the right of the jumper, now passing the fourth floor windows. It moved quickly over him. Not moved. Flew.
“It’s a man!”
Art by Peter Cooper
It was. A man chasing the falling executive toward the ground. Darting down the side of the triangle shaped FlatIron building behind him, his right arm extended, his left arm out slightly from his side, to steady him maybe, like a rudder. I stopped, the cop nearly bowling over me until he saw what everyone on the street, everyone at every window on Broadway was looking at. A blur of black and white. And he was flying, swooping under the would be suicide, catching him gently in a cradle of muscular arms just feet from the sidewalk.
“He’s no man! He’s a hero!”
The once desperate-to-die executive clung to his airborne savior as a baby latches to a mother’s chest, afraid he might get dropped. The man in black denim britches and a white shirt, no buttons, sleeves hemmed at the elbows, the collar up tight around his neck, flew up a few feet, shifting from a horizontal to a standing position, then lighted on the ground not five hundred feet from me. He dropped his left arm, then his right, but still his cargo held on, tears bubbling out and down his pudgy red cheeks. Smiling meekly, the man shrugged his broad shoulders once, shaking his passenger off his chest. People poured into the street, cabbies leaving their hacks abandoned, children deserting their mothers. Everyone wanting to touch the man who could fly.
None of them asked where he came from. None of them demanded to know how he flew. None of them noticed the mask he wore, a domino mask like the ones that come with masquerade costumes. They just wanted to be near him, brush his arm, stand in his shadow.
I didn’t ask any of those things, either. And the mask, it was just an interesting, quirky side note for me. I studied him, all 6’4″ of him. His brown hair glistened with sweat, his blue eyes wide at the attention he was getting. He just stood there, quietly letting those lucky few on Broadway stake their place in history. They were all among the first to see a real…well…person with powers. Not just any stiff with strange powers and good looks, but the first one. They all witnessed the dawn of a new age, the birth of Hero.
He was at his purest that first day. Before the red body suit and the cape, even before the silver H he’d wear as a belt buckle. To everyone on the street, to the entire country that would hear about him on the radio that night, he was just a guy like the rest of us. Some joe that got lucky and decided to share his luck by helping other unfortunates stuck in this crazy world. The value of paper money plummeting didn’t concern him, a falling man did. He didn’t worry about the hand basket the world was riding to Hell in, he was going to try to keep it out of there. He was just a good man in a mask.
At least that was what we all saw then.
I started to move closer to him, the crowd still gathering steam around me, but I decided I’d seen enough, words from him would come in a follow up piece. The throng of people pawing at him was a story in itself, so I stepped back to watch. Amused. Intrigued. A few minutes later, he turned his head, his eyes crossing mine, and he smiled. Then we both learned something. He’d just started a trip that would carry him places no one ever dreamed. And my by-line would haunt him every step of the way.
New York, NY (October 3, 2011) A Never-Ending Battle, the first episode of a new film from the creative team responsible for the award-winning PBS documentaries Broadway: The American Musical and Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, will be screened in front of an audience for the first time at the New York Comic Con, the East Coast’s largest and most exciting pop culture convention.
* On 
