Let’s roll, Kato! Spring 2019 No. 4 $8.95 The Green Hornet in Hollywood Thunderbirds Are GO! Creature Creator RAY HARRYHAUSEN SAM J. JONES Brings The Spirit to Life Saturday Morning’s 8 4 5 TM 3 0 0 8 5 Beam Aboard the Star Trek Set Tour! 6 2 Martin Pasko • Andy Mangels • Scott Saavedra • and the Oddball World of Scott Shaw! 8 1 Shazam! TM & © DC Comics, a division of Warner Bros. Green Hornet © The Green Hornet, Inc. Thunderbirds © ITV Studios. The Spirit © Will Eisner Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The crazy cool culture we grew up with Columns and Special Departments Features 3 2 CONTENTS Martin Pasko’s Retrotorial Issue #4 | Spring 2019 Pesky Perspective The Green Hornet in 11 3 Hollywood RetroFad 49 King Tut 12 Retro Interview 29 Jan and Dean’s Dean Torrence Retro Collectibles Shazam! Seventies 15 Merchandise Andy Mangels’ Retro Saturday Mornings 36 Shazam! Too Much TV Quiz 15 38 65 Retro Interview Retro Travel 41 The Spirit’s Sam Jones Star Trek Set Tour – Ticonderoga, New York 41 Retro Television 71 Thunderbirds Are Still Go! Super Collector The Road to Harveyana, by 49 Jonathan Sternfeld Ernest Farino’s Retro Fantasmagoria 78 Ray Harryhausen: The Man RetroFanmail Behind the Monsters 38 80 59 59 ReJECTED The Oddball World of RetroFan fantasy cover by Scott Shaw! Scott Saavedra Pacific Ocean Park RetroFan™ #4, Spring 2019. Published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: [email protected]. Four-issue subscriptions: $41 Economy US, $65 International, $16 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Shazam!, the original Captain Marvel, and Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics. The Green Hornet © The Green Hornet, Inc. Thunderbirds © ITV Studios. The Spirit © Will Eisner Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2019 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. ISSN 2576-7224 MARTIN PASKO’S PESKY PERSPECTIVE Hornet, Where is Thy Sting? (From Trendle to Treacle: Part I) by Martin Pasko “He’s baaaaaaaaack...” And, man, is his face red! My last column, about the early superhero the Phantom, was entitled “The Ghost Who Stumbles.” In retrospect, that title was both ironic and prophetic, as I’ve been a mere “ghost” in these pages for two issues, having stumbled off into a world of circumstances beyond my control. I’ll leave it at that, because my esteemed editor has already accounted for my temporary absence in better language than I myself could craft. Suffice to give a huge and grateful shout-out to the wonderful writers who filled in: Dan Johnson, Mark Vogel, and editor Michael Eury himself. So if you’ve missed RetroFan #2 or 3, check out the back- number order page elsewhere in this issue, or go to www.twomorrows. com. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a lot of fun—and certainly not just from this column, either, LOL. My previous pesky screed was an (I hope entertainingly snarky) analysis of the Phantom that tracked the character’s development from its debut through recent efforts to reboot it. The evidence begged the conclusion that the first Spandex-ed superhero is an unsalvageable product of its time; a character whose appeal to contemporary audiences is limited by its lack of relevance to the modern world. In this issue, I’ll be returning to that theme, having found that a similar problem besets my current subject, the Green Hornet franchise. But first... I don’t want this column to be just a collation of data you can just as easily Google for yourselves. Why would you need me for that? I’d much rather make these columns ever more personal, and in the course Hang on, Green Hornet! It’s Kato we’re really of that, I hope to sneak in some thought-provoking critical analysis. watching. Van Williams and Bruce Lee as produc- I’ve gone on record that I’m suspicious of nostalgia because I er William Dozier’s other dynamic duo in a 1966 think indulging in it impairs objectivity and helpful analysis. But this photo. The Green Hornet and Kato TM & © The Green Hornet, Inc. magazine is called RetroFan, after all. So, rather than try to swim totally Photo by Roger Davidson. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions. against the tide, I’ll personalize this column by connecting my subjects, RetroFan Spring 2019 3 ANDY MANGELS' RETRO SATURDAY MORNING by Andy Mangels Welcome back to Andy Mangels’ Retro highways and byways of the land on a Saturday Morning. Since 1989, I have never-ending mission: to right wrongs, been writing columns for magazines to develop understanding, and to seek in the U.S. and foreign countries, all justice for all. In time of dire need, young examining the intersection of comic Billy has been granted the power by the books and Hollywood, whether immortals to summon awesome forces animation or live-action. Andy Mangels at the utterance of a single word: Shazam! Backstage, Andy Mangels’ Reel Marvel, A word which transforms him in a flash Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes, Andy into the mightiest of mortals… Captain Mangels Behind the Camera… nearly three Marvel!” decades of reporting on animation and Viewers were riveted to the opening live-action—in addition to writing many visual of Billy Batson—played by Michael books and producing around 40 DVD Gray—shouting “Shazam!” before lightning sets—and I’m still enthusiastic. In this new struck him and he magically transformed RetroFan column, I will examine shows that into the red-suited Captain Marvel—played thrilled us from yesteryear, exciting our by the strong-jawed Jackson Bostwick. imaginations and capturing our memories. The show would become a hit on Saturday Grab some milk and cereal, sit cross-legged mornings, inspiring a spin-off series, changes leaning against the couch, and dig in to Retro to the comic books that had inspired it, and Saturday Morning! mentoring young viewers with moral lessons. But behind the scenes, ominous thunder In the mid-Seventies, live-action superheroes rumbled… on television were almost non-existent. Now, let’s take a drive down the highways Common reruns of the Fifties The Adventures and byways of memory to the days when of Superman or late Sixties Batman series were Shazam! flew high! the only choices for kids and comic-book fans outside the realm of animation. But on The Old Wizard Beckons September 7, 1974, all of that changed, when In the pulpy newsprint pages of comics, lightning struck… superheroes were still in their toddler days in Over an image of swirling clouds, the 1939; Superman had only first appeared in April announcer—ironically, the voice of an uncredited 1938, followed by Batman, Blue Beetle, Human Batman star Adam West—stoically intoned, Torch, and the Sub-Mariner. During the summer “Chosen from among all others by the immortal of that year, Fawcett Comics staff writer Bill Parker elders—Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, was tasked with creating superheroes for the Mercury—Billy Batson and his mentor travel the popular company, and he devised six characters TM & © DC Comics.TM RetroFan Spring 2019 15 RETRO TELEVISION Thunderbirds Are Still Go! by Bill Spangler Back in the late Sixites, there was fab, and there was F.A.B. the mouth movements to be synchronized with pre-recorded “Fab” was short for fabulous, a common piece of dialogue. counterculture slang. F.A.B. was slang, too, but it was used by a The Andersons produced Supermarionation series both before very different group: the cast of Thunderbirds, an unusual science- and after Thunderbirds. Some of them—most notably Supercar, fiction TV show that is still attracting fans more than 50 years after Fireball XL-5, and Stingray—received exposure here in America. its debut. However, Thunderbirds was probably the most popular of the Thunderbirds, a creation of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (who shows; many consider it the best. It inspired toys, movies, and a were, at the time, married), originated in Great Britain. One of the things that made it unusual was that it was produced with a combination of elaborate sets and sophisticated marionettes, a Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s enduring Super- process the Andersons dubbed “Supermarionation.” marionation sci-fi classic Thunderbirds made its According to a behind-the-scenes featurette made at the time, television debut in 1965, followed in 1966 by this the average Supermarionation puppet was roughly one-third life- theatrical movie, Thunderbirds Are Go. © ITV Studios size. The head of each puppet contained switches that enabled Limited. Movie poster courtesy of Heritage Auctions. RetroFan Spring 2019 41 ERNEST FARINO’S RETRO FANTASMAGORIA Ray Harryhausen The Man Behind the Monsters by Ernest Farino Most RetroFan readers know the name Ray Harryhausen (1920– The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, an Allosaurus attacking the cave people 2013)—the cinema magician and stop-motion animator who in One Million Years B.C., and the charge of seven sword-wielding gave us such unforgettable fantasy films as The Beast from 20,000 skeletons in Ray’s own personal favorite and arguably his magnum Fathoms, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island, First Men “in” the opus, Jason and the Argonauts. Moon, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and the original 1981 Clash of the It is significant—and highly unusual, in the history of Titans. Ray’s fantastic imagery is at once seared into the viewer’s movies—that in the same way we can identify “a Hitchcock film” brain—the Cyclops thundering out of the cave at the beginning of or a “Sergio Leone Western,” we refer to any of these movies RetroFan Spring 2019 49.