josh pincus is crying

In 1980, a little band from Akron, Ohio called The Waitresses released the catchy novelty song “I Know What Boys Like” to relatively no recognition. The song was re-released in 1982 as the first single from the Waitresses’ debut Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful. This time, the song reached number 62 on Billboard Magazine’s Top 100.

In 1982, a new sitcom called Square Pegs took over the time slot once occupied by perennial TV favorite M*A*S*H. The show focused on two friends and their awkward adventures in 80s high school. (One of the friends was played by a young Sarah Jessica Parker.) The show had a new wave vibe to it and The Waitresses were recruited to perform the theme song. They even appeared in the premiere episode. The song “Square Pegs” appeared on The Waitresses’ EP I Could Rule the World If I Could only Get the Parts and was a minor hit. But it was the holiday song “Christmas Wrappings” that earned The Waitresses a place in new wave and holiday history. The yuletide pseudo-rap epic, clocking in at a little over five minutes and anchored by Patty Donahue’s deadpan vocals, has appeared on numerous Christmas compilations and has become a year-end radio staple.

During the recording of The Waitresses’ second full album, Patty Donahue left the band and was briefly replaced by Holly Beth Vincent, former leader of new wave contemporaries Holly and The Italians. Patty eventually returned to the band, but they broke up for good upon the departure of two other members. Post-breakup, Patty laid low. She made a small contribution to Alice Cooper’s Zipper Catches Skin album. She ultimately landed a job in the Artists and Repertoire division of MCA Records, focusing her attention on artist development and scouting talent.

A heavy smoker, Patty died of lung cancer in 1996 at the age of 40.

It’s hard to believe that an entire generation missed out on the humor of Paul Lynde.

Paul Lynde started his career as a stand-up comic, even recording a comedy album. He moved to Broadway, where he appeared in his most famous role as Harry McAfee, the concerned but overprotective father of Kim in Bye Bye Birdie. This led to a variety of guest shots on some of the 60s most popular sitcoms, such as The Munsters and I Dream of Jeannie. He reprised his stage role, along with fellow cast member Dick Van Dyke, in the film version of Bye Bye Birdie. Paul’s role was trimmed considerably from the stage version in order to highlight young rising star Ann-Margaret. Paul said “They should have retitled it ‘Hello, Ann-Margret!’ They cut several of my and the other actors’ best scenes and shot new ones for her so she could do her teenage-sex-bombshell act.”

Paul was cast as the reoccurring character Uncle Arthur in Bewitched. He also did a handful of cartoon voice-overs. Unfortunately, his drinking and partying interfered with his career and he became unreliable and fell out of favor with producers and directors. In 1965, Jim Davidson, Paul’s young partying companion, fell to his death from Paul’s eighth floor hotel room. The subsequent scandal almost ruined Paul’s career, but he managed to bounce back.

When Bewitched was canceled, Paul turned to game shows. He took the coveted “center square” on The Hollywood Squares. Paul was a huge success, giving slyly prepared answers to seemingly innocent questions. His best-remembered quips were thinly-veiled allusions to his homosexuality. When host Peter Marshall asked “You’re the world’s most popular fruit. What are you?”, Paul replied, “Humble.” Another time, Paul was asked “Why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?” to which he answered “Because chiffon wrinkles.” His answers were famous, often skirting the censors with double entendres.

With his regained popularity, Paul was given his own eponymous sitcom. The show was a cheap rip-off of All in the Family, casting Paul as the frustrated uptight dad dealing with his family of liberals. No one believed the preposterous premise and the show was canceled after one season. He next appeared in the salvaged sitcom Temperatures Rising for the remainder of its brief network run.  Paul also starred in the infamous Paul Lynde Halloween Special in 1976. The special featured such diverse 70s guests as Roz “Pinky Tuscadero” Kelly, Margaret “Wicked Witch of the West” Hamilton, Florence “Mrs. Brady” Henderson and the first prime-time network appearance of KISS. All through the series and the special, Paul’s alcohol intake increased, eventually getting him fired from The Hollywood Squares. Paul was the alleged inspiration for a gag which made its way into the movie Groundhog Day. After a drunken high-speed chase through the San Fernando Valley, Paul crashed his car into a mailbox. When the cops approached the wreck with their guns drawn, Paul lowered his window and ordered a cheeseburger with no onions and a large Sprite.

One night in January 1982, Paul missed a dinner date with a group of friends. The concerned group rushed to his Beverly Hills home. Paul was found dead, possibly for several days. He was naked and surrounded by amyl-nitrite poppers, an inhalant used to enhance sex. The unofficial story was that Paul suffered a heart attack while having sex with someone who just walked out when the seizure happened, without calling for help. The official story only mentioned the heart attack.

In 1958, when nine-year old Connie Mierzwiak was belting out Brenda Lee songs, she actually had designs on kicking rock and roll’s ass. A little girl with a giant voice, she was signed to a recording contract and released her first album in 1971 under the name Ruby Jones. She performed regularly in her native Toledo, Ohio and the vicinity. Shortly after her debut album’s release, Black Oak Arkansas’ Jim Mangrum spotted Ruby and her band at a club in Evansville, Indiana. Black Oak Arkansas, a ground-breaking band in the blossoming Southern Rock genre, needed something to set them apart from other similar up-and-coming acts — and Ruby was that something. Mangrum asked her to join his band. Even though she was from Toledo, she adopted the stage persona of the sassy, sexy, backwoods hillbilly and changed her name to Ruby Starr.

Ruby toured with Black Oak Arkansas for several years. They scored a Top 30 hit with a cover of LaVern Baker’s “Jim Dandy (to the Rescue)”, with Ruby screeching the familiar “Go Jim Dandy! Go Jim Dandy!” in the chorus. She became a fixture in 70s rock magazines like Creem and Circus, posing for cheesecake pictures and reinforcing her “Southern spitfire” character. In 1974, she left BOA and formed the band Grey Ghost. Ruby toured nationally with Grey Ghost, flooring audiences with her powerful voice when she opened shows for Black Sabbath, The Edgar Winter Band and old friends Black Oak Arkansas.

Ruby toured relentlessly from the late 70s until the early 90s, when she kissed the road “goodbye” and moved to Las Vegas. She played the Riviera and the Stardust hotels and numerous clubs in Vegas, until she was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. She, then, moved back to Toledo to be with her family. Ruby passed away in 1995 at the age of 44.

HERE is Ruby performing “Jim Dandy (to the Rescue)” with Black Oak Arkansas live at California Jam in 1974.

This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “perspective”.

Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-surrealistic painter and an early influence on Salvador Dalí. His works from the early twentieth century were jumbled assemblages of shapes and arches and empty buildings and mannequins in skewed perspective and random placement. As his career progressed, he adopted a classic style, reminiscent of old masters like Raphael. He also spoke out as an opponent of the modern art movement. Even later in his career, he began painting in a Baroque style, heavily influenced by Peter Paul Rubens. Curiously, during this time, de Chirico began creating back-dated self-forgeries of his earlier work for the sole purpose of profit. He denounced his early originals as fakes.

He remained prolific until his death in 1978 at age 90.

In spite of how it was presented in his paintings, Giorgio de Chirico actually had a great sense of perspective. He was just fucking with us.

On this date, February 21, in 1958, Gerald Holtom was commissioned to design a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ upcoming march in London against nuclear war. The march was scheduled for Easter 1958, a little over a month away.

Holtom, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, combined the semaphore sign for “N” for “nuclear”, showing the arms pointing downwards in opposing 45 degree angles to the body and the semaphore sign for “D” for “disarmament” showing the right arm pointing straight up and the left arm pointing straight down. He placed the simple line combination in a circle representing the earth. The result was the peace sign.

Holtom passed away in 1985, but he believed that, since this was a symbol of peace, anyone in the world could use and display it absolutely free of charge.

Forever.

The Monday Artday current challenge is “caricature”.
I’ll be honest, I went the easy route and drew two famous people who are pretty easy to caricature (because they are almost caricatures themselves), George Burns and Jack Benny.

Despite the on-stage jabs at each other, George Burns and Jack Benny were the best of friends. George Burns hosted several episodes of Jack Benny’s radio show in 1943 when Jack was sick with pneumonia.

Jack and George had a running gag in their friendship. George had no problem getting Jack to laugh, but George was always stone-faced in Jack’s attempts to do the same. One evening, at a party they were both attending, Jack pulled out a match to light a cigarette. George announced to all, “Jack Benny will now perform the famous match trick!” A bewildered Jack had no idea what Goerge was talking about, so he proceeded to strike the match to flame. George observed, “Oh, a new ending!” and Jack collapsed in laughter.

In 1974, Jack Benny was cast in the film version of the Neil Simon play, The Sunshine Boys. Just prior to filming, Jack was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was too ill to continue his plans for the movie. He suggested his best friend George Burns take over for him, eventhough George had not appeared in a film since 1939. George went on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1975 for the role.

Jack Benny passed away in December 1974. George was heartbroken. He tried to deliver one of the eulogies at Jack’s funeral, saying, “Jack was someone special to all of you but he was so special to me…I cannot imagine my life without Jack Benny and I will miss him so very much.” But, George broke down in tears and had to be helped to his seat. Afterwards, George immersed himself in his work, appearing in ten films before his own death in 1996.

He never got over the death of his best friend.

Remember Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees at the movies? Thank K. Gordon Murray.

Murray, an entrepreneur as early as his teen years, set up a makeshift bingo game in one of his funeral director father’s cemetery tents. He took his game on the road with a carnival, eventually becoming the traveling show’s manager. In the late 1930s, Murray was using his circus connections to aid a casting director in hiring little people to act as Munchkins in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Shortly afterward, Murray and his wife settled in Hollywood, where famed director Cecil B. DeMille hired him to help promote his circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth.

The Murrays moved to Miami, where they launched K. Gordon Murray Productions. Murray imported low-budget Spanish-language Mexican-produced films, re-dubbed them and distributed them to theaters throughout the United States. They were to be shown, according to an agreement, exclusively on Saturday afternoons for a limited engagement. The films were unusually-interpreted live-action versions of traditional fairy tales. They were poorly acted with even poorer production. But, since the target audiences were children gorged on popcorn, candy and soda, the quality of the film was not a priority. Entertainment value was most important. And, to kids, these films were entertaining. Murray added some of his own scenes and characters, specifically, Stinky the Skunk and Ferocious Wolf. Murray had local costume shops create Stinky the Skunk outfits for appearances at theaters. He presented over 60 films in almost fifteen years, single-handedly creating the “Weekend Kiddie Matinee”. Films like Little Red Riding Hood and The Monsters and Puss ‘n Boots played regularly. His most popular film, the holiday head-scratcher Santa Claus, was the only film, besides Disney’s Snow White, to be released profitably in theaters every few years for three decades.

Murray expanded his film endeavors to include horror and adult exploitation films, still keeping the same formula of importing and dubbing foreign productions.

In the late 1970s, Murray ran into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. which seized his library of films and took them out of circulation. In 1979, as Murray was preparing his case against the IRS, he suffered a fatal heart attack at age 57.

Barbara La Marr had a whirlwind, but brief, career. She began performing at an early age. She married at seventeen, the first of her five marriages. She became a screenwriter and then an actress appearing in over thirty films in six years. Barbara was given the nickname “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”. She appeared on Broadway and filmed several dance short subjects with partners as diverse as Rudolph Valentino and Clifton Webb.

As her film career flourished in the early 1920s, she embraced the wild Hollywood lifestyle, boasting that she slept no more than two hours a night. She also developed an addiction to heroin. Barbara died of tuberculosis in 1926 at the age of 29.

In the 1930s, studio head Louis B. Mayer renamed up-and-coming actress Hedwig Kiesler “Hedy Lamarr” in honor of Barbara, one of his favorite actresses.

Gail Russell got an “introducing” credit in the 1944 supernatural thriller “The Uninvited” with Ray Milland, although she had made two earlier films. “The Univited”, one of the first Hollywood movies to present a ghost story in a serious manner (as opposed to comedies), made Gail an overnight star. She starred in a host of films opposite some of Hollywood’s biggest stars like Alan Ladd and John Wayne. Gail was rumored to be carrying on a secret affair with Wayne that allegedly led to his divorce. Wayne maintained that his relationship with Gail was nothing more than platonic.

Gail suffered from terrible stage fright and began drinking on the set of “The Univited”  to ease her nerves before appearing in front of the camera. As her career progressed, so did her alcohol consumption. She married actor Guy Madison, but that union ended in divorce due to her alcoholism. She was unable to get acting roles for five years, until her friend John Wayne cast her in the western “Seven Men from Now” with Randolph Scott in 1956.

In 1955, Gail left the scene of the crime after rear-ending another vehicle while intoxicated. In 1957, while driving under the influence of alcohol, Gail drove her convertible into the front of Jan’s Coffee Shop on Beverly Boulevard in Hollywood. When her hearing was scheduled, she failed to appear. Officers were sent to her home and found her drunk and unconscious. The hearing was held in the hospital where she was bedridden with severe effects from alcoholism. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous but it did no good.

In August 1961, she was found dead in her Brentwood, California apartment, a victim of liver damage and malnutrition. She was 35.

Elvia Allman had a long and productive career and, most likely, you never heard of her.

Elvia made her debut on Bob Hope’s radio show in the late 1930s, portraying the man-crazy character Cobina, a parody of Cobina Wright, a society debutante of the time. Wright sued over the portrayal. The case was settled out of court and she was awarded a reoccuring role on Hope’s show. Also on radio, Elvia was featured as Tootsie Sagwell, Gracie Allen’s best friend on The Burns and Allen Show and as Cora Dithers, the domineering wife of Dagwood Bumstead’s boss on the Blondie program.

Elvia voiced “Miss Cud”, the cow teacher in the 1935 Warner Brothers cartoon “I Haven’t Got A Hat” , featuring one of the earliest appearances of Technicolor at Warners, due to Walt Disney’s exclusive contact with the process. “I Haven’t Got A Hat” was also the debut of lovable stutterer Porky Pig. This performance obviously led to Elvia providing the voice for Disney’s Clarabelle Cow in 28 cartoons. Elvia soon lent her voice to the titular character in 1937’s Tex Avery animated short “Little Red Walking Hood”, in which she did a very convincing Katherine Hepburn imitation.

Elvia made her feature film debut in an uncredited role in Road to Singapore, the first of seven “road pictures” starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. She had unbilled guest apperances in multiple situation comedies like I Married Joan, December Bride, Love That Bob, and The Abbott and Costello Show, throughout the 1950s. Her most famous guest role was that of Lucy and Ethel’s stern assembly line supervisor at the candy factory, uttering the line “Speed it up a little”, on a classic episode of I Love Lucy.

In the 1960s, Elvia’s career was at a record pace with 14 appearances as busybody Selma Plout on Petticoat Junction and 13 appeareances as Elverna Bradshaw, essentially the same character, on The Beverly Hillbillies. These were just some of her 58 roles in various sitcoms, like The Munsters, Bewitched, The Addams Family and Hazel. She also had uncredited roles in two feature films, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Nutty Professor.

The 1970s saw Elvia’s career slow down considerably, with a stint as Oscar mother in one episode of The Odd Couple. Her roles revived briefly in the 80s with two guest shots on Murder She Wrote. In 1990, her career came full circle when she was asked to voice Clarabelle Cow in Disney’s animated take on The Prince and The Pauper. Clarabelle had not made a cartoon appearance in over 50 years.

Elvia died from pneumonia in 1992 at the age of 87, leaving behind a 55-year career of which to be proud.