Word: comical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Publisher William M. Gaines, a hearty, hefty man of 250 Ibs., launched Mad in 1952 as a sideline to the comic-book business he inherited from his father, M. (for Max) C. Gaines, who started the whole industry in the early 30s when he hit on the idea of selling reprinted newspaper comic sections for a dime. Using the standard comic formula-32 pages, newsprint, four colors, a 10? price tag-Mad was just holding its own when Gaines played a hunch in 1955, switched to semi-slick paper and higher quality black-and-white drawings, upped the price...
...booming popularity astonishes Publisher Gaines. Says he: "All I can say to explain it is something glib like, 'Everyone is under a strain, and some sort of comic relief is a good thing." If we knew exactly what we were doing right, we'd do more...
...hair was skimpier, the waist thicker, but Comic Bob Hope, onstage at the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the Broadway role he created 25 years ago, seemed the same slat-nosed, perpetual lad with the innocent leer. Playing Huckleberry Haines, the matchmaking student bandleader of Alpha Beta Pi, in the Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach musical Roberta, Gagman Hope (aided by his writers) stuck to the creaky plot, but inserted his old vaudeville number Invitation to the Dance, convulsed the audience with typical, topical Hopela: "The President is getting off better drives -he has Sherman Adams' picture on the ball...
Cartoonist Yager, 46, is now negotiating with three syndicates on a new spaceman comic strip that he thinks will make Buck Rogers seem as obsolete as a caveman. "Buck Rogers' day is here," explained Yager. "So now a fellow has to think up things the scientists haven't got yet." In the divorce, National Newspaper Syndicate kept custody of Buck Rogers himself, who was created 29 years ago by Dille's father and taken over by Yager alone only in 1948. Dille will continue to peddle Buck's 25th century adventures to the post-Sputnik boom...
...fishwife's eye. The Callas voice is in soaring form, buttressed by Baritone Gobbi's smooth, superbly flexible rendering of the role of Figaro and Basso Zaccaria's sumptuous, tomfoolish Basilio. Conductor Galliera provides the coherence and dramatic drive necessary to Rossini's comic frenzy...