Happy Easter!


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Hi folks, that old b/w photo at the top is of Tex Avery and me in 1969. This was taken at his office at the old Cascade Pictures studio on Seward St and Romaine. Seward is where an animation museum should be located, what an historic spot!  Walter Lantz, Walt Disney, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Bob Clampett , Tex Avery and Gabor Csupo all made pictures on this street. I used to visit Tex at Cascade every once in awhile hoping to pick up free-lance work, but he never used me. I was a pretty gawky stringy kid in those days, but Tex put up with me. I think he could tell that I was a really devoted fan. Sometimes Tex let me hang around the studio until the early evening watching him shoot a Pillsbury doughboy commercial. Tex actually manipulated the puppet frame by frame! He could do almost anything in animation. Tex was developing a pilot for Playboy at the time I met him, animating gag cartoons from the magazine in short film vignettes. They were very limited animation, and unfortunately, didn’t really plus the humor in the original magazine cartoons they were based on by very much. Tex had already done most of the Raid and Bugs Bunny Kool-Aid spots that were so popular by that time, so now he was just trying things to bring in business to Cascade. I think that’s a picture of Ronald Reagan on Tex’s office wall at the extreme right hand side of the photo. I remember Irv Spector visiting Tex one day at Cascade. Tex seemed to have a lot of respect for this Easterner and gave him a big welcome. I don’t know if Irv was anymore successful than I was at picking up work from Tex, however.

This post’s comics are MARVELOUS MIKE from 5-1-56 to 5-5-56. I am missing April 29th, the Saturday episode, and May 6th, another Saturday. This is a new storyline introducing a pesty dog, “Goliath”. Unfortunately, the Post-Dispatch assigned a color to Goliath that renders him almost invisible in most of the strips, but bear with me. If anyone can supply missing Mikes, please write me at : molasses@earthlink.net. I also have finished reprinting the Jim Tyer Felix story: “You Auto Be In Pictures” from Felix #3. Jim’s style has been a bit subdued up until now, but he really busts loose in Felix #4, coming soon. Hope the bunny brings you all some nice healthy DARK chocolate, full of antioxidents, for Easter. Gotta Hop-a-long now, Cassidy!

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