Rich Conaty

Pam’s Pictorama: A bit of a disclaimer on this post, as it is a radical departure from my usual posts. The recent loss of our friend Rich Conaty has me thinking and seems to require that I get a few thoughts down. For those of you who did not know Rich, he was an extraordinarily talented disc jockey who had a radio show for decades devoted to music of the 20’s and 30’s. Rich launched his career at the Fordham, NY college radio station, WFUV, in the 1970’s when he was still in high school. I caught up with him more than a decade later when I was in my senior year at college. I was commuting into NYC on weekends for a day-long life drawing class at the Art Student’s League and spending Sunday nights alone in an apartment my father used during most of the week here in Manhattan.

I just never was much of a fan of the music of my own day (the 1980’s for the most part) and while I had experimented with listening to jazz and while it held some charm, it ultimately disappointed me. Slowly as I started to discover Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday it dawned on me that what I liked was music, mostly but not only vocal, from the 1920’s and 30’s. I bought some tapes (yep, 1986 and this was before cd’s) and started to get the lay of the land. Radio shows might touch on this music, but nothing seemed to focus on it. Somehow I stumbled onto Rich’s show one Sunday night in Manhattan and I listened weekly. That was great while I was in New York, but in those pre-internet days there was no way to pick it up from New London, Connecticut. Therefore, once my class in Manhattan ended, I was left high and dry.

Post graduation I ended up back in New York, cooking professionally. The hours I kept curtailed any late night radio listening, but I did manage to tune in occasionally. My cooking career ended with a bad fall and injury early on, and I found myself working at the Metropolitan Museum with regular hours. I rediscovered Rich’s show on a road trip with my then boyfriend, Kevin Hein. We were coming home from South Jersey late one Sunday night – must have been visiting his parents. I was hooked for good at that point and became a devoted weekly listener. In fact, I would tape them each week and play them throughout the rest of the week. Kevin liked the show too, and we could usually schedule ourselves to be home on Sunday night.

Another disclaimer – unlike Kim, I am not someone who can address and debate the finer points of this music and my brain has always been a bit of a sieve for these kinds of facts, so I cannot do Rich justice on this point despite listening dutifully all those years. (It’s a good thing I managed to marry someone who verges on being a savant for remembering dates and things associated with music and recordings.) I did begin to figure out what I liked and names like Smith Belew and Annette Henshaw, Connie Boswell became familiar. The fact was though, I pretty much liked it all, even Arthur Tracy grew on me over time – well, sort of. In looking back on it, especially in that first decade, I associated Rich and the Big Broadcast with the life I made for myself in New York. Like so many kids from the suburbs who move here, there are touchstones for how we found our way to who we wanted to be – and Rich’s show and the world of that music was that for me.

Over the almost three decades of listening, Rich was sharing bits of his personal life over his show until all us listeners felt like we knew him. Show anniversaries, AA, meeting and then eventually marrying his girlfriend Mary. As for me, after more than seven years together Kevin and I called it quits. I dated a few people, some who shared my musical interest – or at least had interests that intersected. I don’t think Kim knows this, but it was a passing comment about the Boswell sisters he made at a party once that really got me thinking about him. His comics were steeped in period musical references too – it piqued my interest indeed.

I guess Kim was thinking about me as well, but evidently he was surprised to find Fats Waller playing when he walked into my apartment for our first date – a random tape of one of Rich’s shows – Fats with Ted Lewis, Crazy About My Baby, Kim reminds me now. Kim focused on it right away and wanted to know more about the show – he became a devoted follower of the show and my boyfriend that night. A little more than a month later he and I made our only ever New Year’s Eve foray out to the New Yorker Hotel where Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks were performing, an event Rich had mentioned on his show. He and Mary were there, but we didn’t know them. I had heard the Nighthawks live once or twice before – at a film, an outside concert downtown, but it was the first time Kim and I heard them together. I was recovering from a horrible flu that night and we didn’t stay too long though and were amazed to get a taxi in that locale, not so far from Times Square.

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A music infused drawing that Kim did for me, Pams-Pictorama.com

Life burbled along. Kim and I moved in together. Sunday nights were pretty sacred and always reserved for the Big Broadcast. Rich left WFUV for a brief foray into commercial radio and we followed the best we could. It was a square peg in a round hole however, with playlists and other limitations, and eventually he found his way back to WFUV, to our great relief. He had his first bout with cancer, but seemed to recover quickly. His marriage ultimately ended over time; we eventually got hitched ourselves in 2000. Sadly, later Rich’s former wife Mary died years later.

On occasion we would go hear the Nighthawks at a restaurant in Chelsea, once or twice alone, but more often when someone with an interest in music was visiting from out of town. And somewhere in the years that followed Rich recognized Kim’s name and called it out as a thank you for being a supporter of the show. This lead to that over time and Rich invited us to join him to hear Vince and the Nighthawks at their then current gig at a place in the basement of a Times Square building that appeared to have once been a speakeasy, Sophia’s. Hard to find, but worth the effort.

I was beyond excited to meet Rich – yep, a total fan girl after all this time. I wasn’t disappointed. Rich was just the sweetest, most generous guy on the face of the earth. Despite the late hour he drove out of his way to drop us off at home after the show. After that Kim and I joined him several times, most recently at a new venue for the Nighthawks, The Iguana. He loved the story of Kim hearing Fats the first time he visited me and would always ask Vince to play it on those subsequent visits to hear the Nighthawks with him. He remembered Kim’s birthday too after we had a musical evening as a birthday foray for him. One night at a large table we met Rich’s mom. I was seated next to her and she was already a bit vague, but I had a good time talking to her.

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Kim’s cover art for the Big Broadcast Vol. 10

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An ad and calling card Kim drew for Rich

Kim did a great ad for the Big Broadcast for Rich to use and we have used it on our Facebook page to remind people of and introduce them to the show on Sunday nights. My good friend Betsy was one unexpected convert. Kim also did the cover art for one of the Big Broadcast annual premium disks for giving to the show. I counseled Rich on fundraising for his program – it was always so important to him that the show be seen as carrying its weight at the cash starved not-for-profit station. (We would also talk about his cats and, although I am sure he made provision for them, I worry about them now. I’m sure they miss him so much!)

While we would communicate via Facebook and Twitter and see each other periodically, our paths intersecting on and off throughout the last ten or more years, we were not in touch enough that I can fully adjust to the idea that he is gone. A second round of cancer came on hard and fast and claimed him this time. However, in my mind he remains at home upstate working on the next Big Broadcast and our next date to hear the Nighthawks remains alluringly in the near future.

Rich and his ’53 Nash

Merry Christmas from Deitch Studio

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The 2016 Deitch Studio Pictorama card revealed!

Pam’s Pictorama Bonus Post: It’s that time of the year – that most wonderful season of all! Here is this year’s contribution to the holidays co-authored by Kim and I as usual. This year, for better or worse, Kim let me have my head and it is perhaps a tad more Butler than Deitch. 2016 was a tough year and being curled up in bed with the kitties, reading (me on my iPad and Kim with a volume which has its own meaning – to be revealed in his upcoming book) seemed like the only sane place to end the year!

Cookie and Blackie figure prominently in the spot they pretty much hold in real life at the foot of the bed. Blackie likes to curl up behind my knees, a bit higher than shown here. Cookie is usually at my feet – on her own pillow no less. This is a perch that came into fashion while I was recovering from foot surgery and had to sleep with my leg elevated all night. Cookie decided that the pillow should stay for her benefit. C&B keep us on a fairly regular schedule and Blackie is in charge of waking us up with his gentle cold wet nose kisses (quite) early in the morning. Kim is usually the first up and the feeder of them – they know I can sleep through almost anything and therefore am a bad bet. The other morning I woke in the middle of the night feeling stiff and strangely leaden and wondered what on earth was wrong – as I went to turn over I discovered that both the kits were sound asleep on top of me!

As I indicated above, Kim is reading a book that turns out to be a Deitch studio special and I am reading one of my Moving Picture Girls or Grace Harlowe series books on my iPad. (As chronicled in Grace Harlowe, the Automobile Girls and Moving Picture Girls Novels post of a few weeks ago.) Sorry the toys, which live at the foot and side of the bed, and the many piles of books, Kim’s side of the bed, didn’t make it into the picture, but they would complete the image of the Deitch-Butler clan at home in reality.

You can count on the fact that this is where we will ring in 2017 – cats, books and all, maybe a silent western playing on the tiny television which is also crammed into a room almost no bigger than our futon!

Merry Christmas and every best wish for a peaceful and happy New Year!

Close Quarters

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Pip Chair, not in my collection

Pam’s Pictorama Post: For those of you who have visited our home, or follow us via Facebook and otherwise online, it is not news that we live in one and a half room apartment in Manhattan. By Manhattan standards it is small, but not shockingly so, although perhaps a bit bizarre maybe if you don’t live here or in Tokyo. It is the fact that Kim also works (producing piles of art no less) in this space and that, as this blog has made clear, we remain veteran collectors, which makes our chock-a-block 600 square feet a bit unusual. While discussion and documentation of this might be of interest, I raise the issue today because there is an area of collecting that I have had to long recognize is difficult, if not entirely eliminated, for me and that is furniture. Of course we have furniture, arguably more than two people, two cats and the odd visitor actually, technically in fact require. Bookcases – lots of those, filled with both books and toys – and chairs. We have a fair number of chairs – three rockers which is a bit unusual in such a small space. (My parents collect them – we have a favorite, grand Windsor and two Shaker rockers. Yes, collecting is a genetic disease.)

I illustrate my point today with the chair above, recently for sale on eBay as I write. It is a child’s chair from a set of furniture made around the Pip, Squeak and Wilfred comic characters – I love it! Oh lucky child who had this! I have written about this British strip before – Pip Squeak and Wilfred Perform – and frankly I have yet to stir great interest in them. (For better or not, I assure you there will be more forthcoming about it.) I love the gentle strip which is available in numerous Annuals still obtainable and perfectly splendid toys were made in conjunction with its many year run. Kim is somewhat mystified, but always supportive of my interest. Still, in a space like ours even small furniture purchases are a negotiation, as well as a bit of a jigsaw puzzle at best. Given this, and the seller’s refusal to help engage a shipping company, I will not be the owner of this chair. It did bring to mind, however, other furniture potentially loved but walked away from.

For Kim there was a chair decorated by fellow cartoonist Jay Lynch. (Kim describes it as oddly curious and he would have happily scooped it up.) Most memorable for me was a wooden table, kitchen sized, with black cats painted on the top to be had at the Elephant’s Trunk flea market years ago. (That one is still painful to think about.) Also, many years ago was an amazing floor lamp at a street fair on Third Avenue which appeared to be from the ’30’s, with a transparent world globe suspended for a shade, but also had a long sweeping base that would have taken up five or six feet this apartment does not have. The list goes on – a great couch or chair here, a darling cabinet there. If there was space my toys would live in those great glass front cabinets from an early store, or at least glass medical cabinets. Alas, as long as we reside here, these remain aspirational purchases. However, it is well known between us that should a large cat or elephant stuffed toy on wheels become available, all bets are off.

Krazy Kat Inn

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Pam’s Pictorama: This sort of pulls the idea of cat advertising in another direction. While this card, with its cat characters more Terry Tunes and Aesop’s Fables than Krazy, first called out to me for the location here on West 48th Street and Broadway, the patter on the back sold me. It should be noted that the artist who drew this thought enough of his swipe to sign his name – or at least Rusty signed with gusto and underlined below Miss Kitty. It is a later entry, decades after the glory days of Victorian cards, but as we well know, cats continued to sell.

In 1930, Krazy Kat the comic strip was roaring along in the midst of its run. Two of the five studios that were to have Krazy Kat entries had just about shot their bolt and in 1930 Columbia was launching their entry. The earliest cartoons, made in 1916 and ’17, were International releases. These are hard to find, but real gems in my opinion. Krazy maintains a look more or less true to the comics in these and some even have a sense of Harriman’s own hand. She/he gets more stylized as we move through the Bray and Winkler years. The toys seem to be based on this design for the most part. Finally, as we get to Columbia Krazy looks much less like the newspaper self. I was a bit stunned by this at first and dismissed them. However, Jerry Beck was kind to send us a disk of these several years ago and just judged on their own, I love these cartoons regardless of how little they resemble the comic strip. I am a tad sorry that no toys appear to have been made with this model – I would love to be wrong however, let me know. Meanwhile, I offer links to a sample of these cartoons here: Krazy and Ignatz at the Circus (1916); A Happy Family (1935). We are so lucky to be able to snatch a look at these on Youtube these days!

Diving down the internet rabbit hole of Buddy Walker and Harry Delson I found some references to Buddy Walker and Harry Delson at the Krazy Kat Inn in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1930 which helps date this card…the Krazy Kat Inn, where somebody ought to do something about Harry Delson. According to Variety he was heading a list of principals at the Alamo on 125th Street…a real vaudeville act when handled by these competent performers back in the teens. And further back, in 1912, he was the main feature who kept the audience spinning with laughter all night. I also found a radio listing for a broadcast from the above listing for the Krazy Kat Inn, so I guess it had at least a touch of prestige. Without find a real description Delson’s act was described as Hebrew humor and evidently Walker was known for a notable comedy performance in black face in the 1920’s. An obit for Harry Delson, vaudeville performer, who died at age 62 in New York City, appears in 1950.

Stretching this a bit further into the territory of interesting speculation and trivia. My husband Kim is related on his father’s side to the actress Gloria Delson. Gloria is a former Goldwyn Girl, actress and vocalist, once married to famed lyricist Sammy Cahn. Although I was unable to tie them out as related, we more or less assume that Harry was related to her and therefore to Kim as well.

Billiken Button

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Billiken button

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Seems that with the gift of this Billiken button from my husband I am, as I always knew, a lucky girl indeed! The wonderous Mr. Deitch surprised me with this acquisition a couple of weeks ago while he was burrowing deep into Billiken lore on a Facebook post. For those of you who missed that, it appears to have been inspired by a Billiken image on a cigar box – Kim was having a good time with cigar box pics a few weeks ago. Seems that research turned up the origin of the Billiken as a pretty good story – the creator Florence Pretz, art teacher and illustrator, brought it into existence it after seeing it in a dream. She christened him (it?) Billiken based on a poem, Mr. Moon: Song of the Little People, the appropriate passage below:

O Mr. Moon,
We’re all here!
Honey-bug, Thistledrift,
White-imp, Weird,
Wryface, Billiken,
Quidunc, Queered;
We’re all here,
And the cost is clear!
Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin’ down?

Ms. Pretz did obtain a patent on Billiken, but where she made her mistake would appear to be in selling it to what became the Billiken Company of Chicago, which ultimately managed to merchandise him into a crazy cash cow nothing short of an international mania – his likeness was borne by toys, figurines, tobacco products, at least one football team, several early 20th century minor league baseball teams, and of course and evidently, clothing buttons. Strangely asian and eskimo cultures seem to be especially susceptible to his charms.

The other especially compelling fact about Billikens are that they are said to be the god of things as they ought to be. That’s a pretty interesting idea and I can see how it could be a double-edged sword as I consider it. Nevertheless, it is said to be good luck to purchase one – and even better luck to be given one. (Thank you Kim! I can use all the luck I can get.)

I hardly have to remark on the pearlized wonderfulness of this item. It fairly glows. It is actually beyond even my imagination to consider what an item of clothing might have looked like with a fewof these sewn on. Wowza!

A World of Toys

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo, a small early snapshot, hails from Hungary, or at least that is where I purchased it from. I couldn’t help but admire this fellow with his toy-proud pose, his treasure piled up in front of him. It was that pose that caught my eye – I can think of several photos where I am as toy proud and here below is an especially maniacal one of me holding Donald and an Aesop’s Fable doll.

In particular I like this kid’s elephant toy. (Although that alligator is sort of noteworthy too I think.) I am a sucker for elephants and it is amazing I have controlled myself for the most part. I am holding out for a Steiff elephant on wheels and always keep an eye out for one. However, years ago Kim found the elephant toy below, on a street where we were strolling. Kim very nicely painted eyes, tusks and toes on where there were none – although later we recognized traces of where the eyes were glued on previously. Now he, my only elephant toy to speak of, is a Kim Deitch special! Somewhat appropriately, here he is on Kim’s desk.

Stuffed elephant

Check out his tail!

Be Mine! Or The Luckiest Girl in the World…

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Pam’s Pictorama Valentine Special!

Last year’s Valentine post was a midweek special – Valentine Bonus Post – but this year Kim’s extraordinary entry is getting the marquee treatment it deserves! As many of you FB readers know, at my request years ago, Kim has made me a Valentine’s Day drawing every year we have been together. Since I was a fan before I was a girlfriend (and then wife) I can’t think of anything better – me featured in a Kim Deitch exclusive. And here is this year’s hot off the press.

For those of you who have been following the sketches for his new book you will realize that this drawing falls within the new story, fleshing it out a bit. Here’s a sketch from this part of the story:

Kim has expanded our real estate holdings substantially, and in the Valentine I am in one of the many rooms in our building dedicated to dioramas scenes designed to feature my toy collection. (Oh joy! Oh bliss!) Here I am with a variety of life size Felix dolls, lined up for people to pose with – we all know it is one of my life’s ambitions to get my hands on one of those, let alone several as shown here. Cookie and Blackie are checking things out, and you can make out Waldo considering a room dedicated to his origin story as well.

By way of reminder, below is last year’s Valentine, which as you can see, ties in here as well. I am sporting my Queen of Catland outfit and Bonzo, my Donald Duck and Oskar are there – even then Waldo was working the Plot Robot and of course Cookie and Blackie are going wild – and we are looking back in time to when this photo was taken. Hmm, looks like Katherine Whaley, Rousseau and Mr. Varney in that Felix photo!

Nathan Albert Headwear

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Pam’s Pictorama Pin Post: I usually limit my forays into pin purchase to Felix and Krazy Kat – I have collected several of the little enamel pins of each. However this little number called my name on eBay the other day and I purchased it for a couple of dollars. I learned from the posting that most of these pins have Nathan Albert Headwear stamped on the back, although oddly this one does not. I thought that nothing would be easier than finding this haberdasher online – or at least some reference. Oddly, although the pins (which are great) exist in abundance in a variety of colors online, I can find pretty much zero about the company. Please enlighten me, any of you readers if you have info!

I wonder if there are many cases of this – a great logo living on well beyond the product it advertises, the product fading into the mists of time. I cannot think of another example, although I occasionally wonder if the Geico Geko will not somehow outlive the memory that he was tied to insurance. Meanwhile, who wouldn’t this splendid cat and fiddle appeal to? On the other hand, what did it have to do with hats? I had trouble getting a good photo of it and have ended up snatching the one off the listing.

It inspired me to dig around a bit and I grabbed up several notable buttons in our household collection, featured below. There is a Countess Aesop Fable pin that would have been sported by the doll, (I believe I purchased the pin alone before buying the doll) of course Bonzo’s Chad Valley pin which is affixed to my Bonzo, and I have (for good measure) included two versions of Kim’s Sunshine Girl pin – one original one from the Kim Deitch archive, and a splendid one that Bill Kartalopoulos had made for an exhibit a few years ago. Last but not least, I have thrown Kim’s Buck Jones Ranger pin in for good measure – certainly a collectible in its own right.

Kim Deitch, Jan. 26, 2016 at 7pm

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Come one and all and hear my hubby, the amazing Kim Deitch!

New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium

The 141st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 7pm at The New School, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510 (the Klein Conference Room). PLEASE NOTE: NEW LOCATION. Free and open to the public.

Kim Deitch on a work in progress.
Kim Deitch will discuss and show samples of the book he’s been working on for the past three years. It’s a pseudo autobiography in that almost nothing in it is true. The over-riding theme is reincarnation — a concept that the author has no firm convictions about one way or the other.

Kim Deitch has a reserved place at the first table of underground cartoonists. The son of UPA and Terrytoons animator Gene Deitch, Kim was born in 1944 and grew up around the animation business. He began doing comic strips for the East Village Other in 1967…

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Felix as Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: Oh Merry Christmas to me! This extraordinary Felix was a gift from Kim this Christmas. In truth, I picked him out on eBay months ago and Kim purchased him and tucked him away. Christmas morning was my first good look at him though – and wowza!

I have only ever seen one or two Felix dolls posed on all fours, but never this model. Felix walking (upright) was part of his whole appeal – and schtick. His humpbacked thinking manner is recreated in two and three dimensions – often with the hump in his back exaggerated, as he walks, pondering something, which his hand/paws behind his back. I have a plate which bears the much used motto Felix Keep on Walking which is a play on this. (See my prior post Living the Felix Life which features this item.) As Mickey Mouse and countless others would ape later, the anthropomorphic charm is all about being upright and therefore more human.

Christmas night Kim and I stumbled home after our annual trip to my folks in NJ and curled up on the couch to take a look at another of my Christmas gifts – the superb DVD Cartoon Roots. (I know, I am a very lucky woman!) This outstandingly curated DVD put together by Tom Stathes deserves a shout out. Instead of the usual entries in the early animation stakes, this disk manages to have the one or two outstanding examples of each that you’re pretty sure you have never seen. I have not yet viewed the whole thing (why rush?) but already have seen a few excellent Terry Aesop Fables, a strange and interesting Krazy Kat (where he seems to be trying to morph into Felix…) and Felix Comes Back, a splendid example from 1922.

I have been known to opine on how Felix started out drawn more squarely (pointier I like to say) and both more feline and a tad bit doggy. According to Kim, Bill Nolan was responsible for this subtle neutering of Felix which Messmer passively allowed. Anyway, I was reminded that back in ’22 Felix spent a good portion of his time on all fours – running away fast from things most frequently – but sportier and a bit wilder.

However, all this to say, Felix spent the majority of his career walking on two legs and virtually all the toys and merchandising reflect this. In all the many hours (days, years) I have spent combing through Felix toy offerings I have, as I said above, only seen him portrayed on all fours a few times so this toy is very unusual. I originally thought of the subject of another post, East London Toy Factory due to the almost hand-made, individual aspect of this and was going to attribute that company as his maker. I lean now instead toward thinking this was made by the folks at Chad Valley. I have not devoted much time writing about the company, they appear to have been the biggest makers of stuffed Felix toys, a company that still makes some toys today. I am, however, open and raring for discussion.

Cookie and Felix Christmas Morning

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For those of you who have an Amazon gift card burning a hole in your pocket post-Christmas, the DVD above can be found at: Cartoon Roots

The eBay seller who sold us Felix did not seem to know much about the origin, but she was lovely. She is Mme Regine Beghin of Belgium and this is a nod to her.

O Mr. Moon, We’re all here! Honey-bug, Thistledrift, White-imp, Weird, Wryface, Billiken, Quidunc, Queered; We’re all here, And the cost is clear! Moon, Mr. Moon, When you comin’ down?

O Mr. Moon,
We’re all here!
Honey-bug, Thistledrift,
White-imp, Weird,
Wryface, Billiken,
Quidunc, Queered;
We’re all here,
And the cost is clear!
Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin’ down?