Pop Culture – Alan E. Hunter

The God Squad versus the Garbage Pail Kids.

December 10, 2022 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original Publish Date March 17, 2022

Looks like Major League baseball is on again. Right now, diehard hardball fans are on their knees thanking the baseball Gods that this Billionaires versus Millionaires battle is over and the season is set to start. I usually try and write a baseball article every Spring to kinda kick the season off and get my head on straight. But this year, since baseball fans are all “prayed out”, I thought it might be appropriate to write a story with a religious tint: The San Diego Padres God Squad versus Topps Garbage Pail Kids.
The Padres became a Major League franchise in 1969, but the namesake team was in existence long before then. The Padres’ first season came in 1936 in the Pacific Coast League after Hollywood Stars owner Bill Lane opted to move his team to San Diego. Lane built a stadium on the waterfront in downtown San Diego and gave birth to a new team that would carry its moniker to the Major Leagues and into the 21st century.
The “Padres” name is a tribute to the city’s history. It was the Franciscan Friars who founded the first Spanish colony in southern California. “Padre,” of course, is Spanish for “Father” (or “Friar”). Their mascot is the “Swinging Friar,” a sandal-clad Padre swinging a bat. They were known as the perennial cellar-dwelling team that often traded away their best players for little in return. That all changed in 1985. The 1986 defending National League champion Padres, led by manager Dick Williams, were coming off the best season in franchise history. The Padres’ gregarious owner, McDonald’s magnate Ray Kroc, had died the previous year.
The Topps Trading Card Company, Inc. (founded in 1938) was best known as the leading producer of American football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, soccer, and other sports and non-sports-themed trading cards. After being privately held for several decades, Topps offered stock to the public for the first time in 1972. The company returned to private ownership in 1984 when it was acquired in a leveraged buyout led by Forstmann, Little & Company, a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts.
Although both the Padres and Topps were hopeful about the upcoming season, things were about to come to a head between the two entities. The Padres were led by a group of young idealistic pitchers whose strong Christian faith would earn them the nickname of “The God Squad.” The pitchers were Eric Show, Mark Thurmond, and Dave Dravecky and together they comprised three-fifths of the Padres’ starting rotation. Their strong religious ideology, coupled with their even stronger anti-Communist leanings, made them the darlings of organized religion, the John Birch Society, and local media.
Press conferences in the Padres clubhouse often devolved into a discourse on political conservatism and a lecture on the evils of Capitalism. The Padres pitchers were proud members of the John Birch Society, a right-wing group that had become infamous in the ’60s by warning of communist infiltration of America. By the time of its resurgence in the Padres locker room, they were viewed as a fringe group and these Padres hurlers as fringees spouting political dogma.
Once these pitchers’ quotes were published in newspaper stories and columns, they began to creep across the entire country. The reaction was electric, like the first time Colin Kaepernick took a knee on the sideline. The most vocal of the “God Squad” Padres was 28-year-old Eric Show, the team leader in victories. In 1984 Show was Birching (the society’s word for political evangelizing) all the way through the Padres’ run to the World Series.

Show, a skinny pitcher with a prominent mustache, resented the stereotype that baseball players should be unthinking robot athletes. In the Birch Society’s New American magazine, he listed his hobbies as “philosophy, history, economics, astronomy, real estate, political affairs, business management — and, of course, God.” Show was a good pitcher (he is still the Padres’ all-time wins leader with 100), known for his fastball and his slider.

28-year-old Dave Dravecky went from the team’s best middle-reliever with 9 wins in 1984 to a 13-game winner in the starting rotation in 1985. Dravecky became a born-again Christian while playing Double-A ball in Amarillo, Texas in 1981. Padres players regarded him as an ideal teammate and moral conscience of the clubhouse . One teammate described Dravecky as having angel wings. Dravecky once told a reporter: “I think if Jesus Christ were in my shoes, he’d be one of the most aggressive pitchers around.”

Mark Thurmond, 27, a second-year pitcher out of Texas A&M, was definitely the quietest of the trio. Thurmond flip-flopped with Dravecky over those two seasons, winning 14 games as a starter in 1984 then moving to middle-reliever where he won 7 games the next year. In August of 1984, Thurmond, Show, and Dravecky were guests of honor at a giant “anti-sin” rally that took aim at abortion and homosexuality in San Diego. Most members of the Padres were content to ignore their teammates’ views on religion and politics. And in a baseball desert-like San Diego, fans didn’t seem to mind as long as they could hang on to that World Series appearance from the year before.
Instead, in 1985, baseball fans and players alike found a common nuisance to rally against. For that was the year that the Topps company came out with their Garbage Pail Kids cards. Cards is a misnomer though. Garbage Pail Kids was a series of sticker trading cards originally created to parody the wildly popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls from the same era. Each sticker card featured a Garbage Pail Kid character having some comical abnormality, deformity, and/or suffering a terrible painful fate/death with a humorous wordplay character name such as Adam Bomb or Blasted Billy. Collectors will recall the card backs that featured puzzle pieces that together form comic murals, humorous licenses, awards, and comic strips.
Garbage Pail Kids characters, with names like Luke Puke, Slobby Robbie, Oozy Susie, Fat Matt, and Messy Tessie, were the talk of the schoolyard in the mid-1980s. During those first couple of years, Topps exercised restraint by holding back a few cards deemed too offensive to distribute. One reject was of a baby in a pickle jar; another, of a kid receiving Garbage Pail Kids cards like Moses receiving the 10 Commandments, another zonk featured a little girl and her dog standing near a pile of feces, and one, this writer’s personal favorite veto, depicted Abraham Lincoln with bullet holes through his top hat and a copy of a Slaybill in his hand.
The first Garbage Pail Kids were released in June 1985 and sold for 25 cents a pack. They were sold in slick-looking displays featuring the atomic detonation of Adam Bomb’s own head. Kids were hooked immediately. With a sense of humor straight out of Mad magazine, stores couldn’t keep the cards in stock. Garbage Pail Kids came out at a time when kids were buying up disgusting toys like D. Compose, the action figure that could open its rib cage to reveal entrails, Slime, the gelatinous green goop that got into carpets and never came out, He-Man Masters of the Universe Stinkor, who carried a very unpleasant smell. No doubt about it in the mid-1980s, gross toys were becoming big business.
The series was the brainchild of Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker magazine cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Garbage Pail Kids cards were known variously as Bukimi Kun (Mr. Creepy) in Japan, The Garbage Gang in Australia and New Zealand, Les Crados (The Filthies) in France and Belgium, La Pandilla Basura (The Garbage Gang) in Spain, Basuritas (Trashlings) in Latin America, Gang do Lixo/Loucomania (Trash Gang/Crazymania) in Brazil, Sgorbions (Snotlings) in Italy, Havurat Ha-Zevel (The Garbage Gang) in Israel, and Die Total Kaputten Kids (The Totally Broken Kids) in Germany. The cards inspired an animated television series and a live-action movie, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, in 1987.
The 1985 series included characters like Junkfood John, Valerie Vomit aka Barfin’ Barabra, Gory Laurie, Drillin’ Dylan the nose-picker, Stuck Chuck the Voodoo doll, Rundown Rhonda (flattened by a steam-roller), and Woody Alan a wooden doll be-scarred by saw marks, nail/screw holes and a woodpecker pecking a hole in his head. Because the characters looked like Cabbage Patch Kids, the company was sued and forced to forfeit the royalties and change the design. Garbage Pail Kids were banned in many schools; teachers cited them as class distractions. A group calling themselves Parents Against Sadistic Toys (or PAST) successfully lobbied several Toys ‘R Us locations to stop selling the cards in their stores.
Enter the San Diego Padres “God Squad.” It was about this time that Padres players Show, Dravecky, and Thurmond stopped signing baseball cards. Not all cards mind you, only those cards produced by Topps. The trio continued to sign cards from fans made by the Fleer and Donruss card companies, but inquiries by mail were sent back unsigned with an explanatory note. “Dear Collector: I am sorry but I do not autograph Topps baseball cards. The Topps company prints the Garbage Pail kids cards which I am strongly opposed to. For this reason, I do not endorse their products by autographing their baseball cards. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Sincerely, Dave Dravecky.”

**Note to fans from Houston Astros Bob Knepper.**

Soon other players around the league took the same posture. The San Diego Padres Dan Boone, NY Yankees Mike Armstrong, Baltimore Orioles Storm Davis, Houston Astros players Bob Knepper and Jeff Calhoun adopted the same practice. Calhoun’s note to fans was a little stronger in tone than Dravecky’s. “If you have seen these cards you know they are very graphic in depicting violence, dismemberment, and other very grotesque things. I am in utmost disagreement with this and the adverse effects they can have on children, especially in this day of declining moral values. I encourage you to join me, and an increasing number of ballplayers, in voicing your protest to the Topps company.” Calhoun ends his note with the mailing address of the Topps company.

By 1988, the handwriting was on the wall for Topps Garbage Pail Kids. That year Mexico banned all Garbage Pail Kids as part of an Export and Import Law outlawing all representations of minors “in a degrading or ridiculous manner, in attitudes of incitement to violence, self-destruction or in any other form of behavior antisocial.” After an adverse lawsuit from Original Appalachian Artworks (makers of Cabbage Patch Kids), and a movie that bombed, despite selling some 800 million cards, the fad seemed to have run its course. Topps released a total of 15 sets of Garbage Pail Kids. By the time a 16th set was nearly completed, they opted not to release it due to a lack of interest. In the ensuing years, Topps sporadically continued the production of Garbage Pail Kids in limited numbers.
After Dave Dravecky was traded to the San Francisco Giants in 1987, he resurrected the God Squad with teammates Scott Garrelts, Atlee Hammaker, and Jeff Brantley. These players eschewed the hard-partying lifestyle of many of their teammates, preferring instead to hold Bible studies in their hotel rooms while on the road. After the God Squad vacated San Diego, reporters asked future Padres Hall of fame reliever Rich Gossage for his thoughts on the issue. Goose responded, “Heck, it’s just like being a Catholic, I guess.” After Gossage was traded from the Padres, he created a controversy of a different kind aimed at the owner of his former team by saying, “Joan Kroc is poisoning the world with her cheeseburgers”.
The Padres God Squad played together for parts of two seasons before splitting for other teams. Ironically, God Squad leader Eric Show became a victim of the moral decay he so strongly railed against. After his baseball career ended in 1991, he began using meth and cocaine. In 1994, Show died in a rehab center after ingesting a speedball (a mixture of cocaine with heroin or morphine taken intravenously or by nasal insufflation). In 1988, while pitching for the Giants, Dave Dravecky was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his left arm. A year later, he made a dramatic comeback, only to have his humerus bone shatter in his second start; his arm was later amputated, ending his career. Mark Thurmond pitched six more seasons in the bigs before retiring to Texas to sell insurance. Nowadays, the “God Squad” and “Garbage Pail Kids” seem tame compared with our net-driven society. But back in the mid-1980s, it was the talk of the town.

**Dave Dravecky after the loss of his arm.**

Christmas, Pop Culture

A Jumping Jack for Christmas.

December 10, 2022December 10, 2022 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original Publish Date December 8, 2022

It is December first in the Hunter household and I can now officially declare that we are ready for Christmas. My wife and I have spent the last week erecting, placing, fluffing, and decorating thirteen Christmas trees. Yes, thirteen. Our children are grown, our pets have crossed over the rainbow bridge, and we are easing into our roles as empty nesters. Rhonda has themes for her Christmas trees. There is a Disney tree, a Hershey tree, a Steinbach tree, an advertising tree, a teddy bear tree, a smores tree, a Pandora tree, and then there is mine, a history tree populated by ornaments honoring Abraham Lincoln, NASA, Gettysburg, the National Park Service, Civil War battlefields, and Scrooge, my favorite ghost story of all time.
And then there are the two trees she has devoted solely to the traditional Austrian / German toy known as a “Hampelmann” (aka Hampelmaenner). In our house, we call them jumping jacks. They are multi-pieced wooden pull toys depicting traditional western European people, historical personalities, cartoon characters, or anthropomorphic figures that dance as the central string is pulled down. The jointed arms and legs of the toy hop, bounce, and jump wildly, bringing life to the previously inanimate figure. Generally, a jumping jack has three features: strings that are attached close to the pivot so that the physical principle of the lever can come into play; the parts are animated on a single plane only; and, finally, the manipulation depends on a single string to animate all the others.
Hampelmaenners are usually made entirely of wood and hand-painted in bright, shiny colors designed to catch the eye of all who behold them. In Germany, it is not unusual to see a whole cast of delightful Hampelmaenner hanging from the ceiling of a nursery, charming babies of all ages. The mechanical toy has been described as a cross between a puppet and a paper doll. The figure’s joints are interconnected by string ligaments to a central pull string hanging down from the bottom.

Traditional jumping jacks first became popular in Germany, England, and France, but similar mechanical toys date back to the Ancient Egyptians. Among the earliest-known examples are ivory dancing figures, made to spin by pulling their strings. Many of these toy artifacts were found at the archaeological site El-Lisht near the pyramids in Cairo.
In the mid-1700s French jumping jacks (known as “pantins”) proved especially popular among the nobility there. Unsurprisingly, versions were sold that satirized French Royalty and famous figures of the time. In 1747, French parliamentarian and author Edmond Barbier wrote that “one cannot go into any house without finding a pantin hanging by the mantelpiece”. In 1747, there was a fashion for carrying male and female jumping jacks around everywhere as an expression of good form. Some were sold for extraordinary prices. The Duchess of Chartres once gave 1,500 livres (pounds) for a figure painted by François Boucher. D’Alembert wrote in his memoirs: “Everywhere in the street, in the salons where they were hung from chimneys, at court, in the theatre, on the promenades, one could see, not only children and women but even the elderly, pull jumping jacks from their pocket and make them dance in the most serious manner in the world.”
In 1832, the “Hampelmann” character was created by German poet, architect, and theatre director Carl Balthasar Malß as a figure for the Frankfurt burlesque stage. Soon after, jumping jacks became known as Hampelmann in German-speaking countries. The mechanical toys were manufactured in the Erzgebirge (Ore) mountain range in Germany. The Ore Mountains are still known for the folk art created there.

In 1860s England, jumping jacks became known as “Quockerwodgers”. The term eventually became a negative appellation for a politician whose “strings” are pulled entirely by their own “puppetmaster”. The jumping jack maintained popularity in 19th-century Europe through popular imagery, much of it produced commercially by woodcut artists, printmakers, and lithographers like Pellerin in Épinal (France). Peddlers sold colored and stenciled prints that could be pasted onto cardboard, cut out, assembled using pins, and then fitted out with strings. Jumping jacks were often in the image of a Polichinelle (a vulgar “rough puppet” archetypal character of the masquerade) and sometimes of politicians, who were lampooned in this way.

Jumping jacks are also found in other parts of the world, including Africa, Canada, Portugal, and northeast Brazil where they are called mané gostoso. In Arizona and New Mexico, there is a Native American variant of the jumping jack among the Hopi tribe. Carved out of wood and crudely painted, these figures consist of a body-head element, with the lower part hollowed out and drilled through to allow for strings to attach the legs. At shoulder level, the arms are articulated in the same way. A double string passes through holes in the hands. It is crossed between the hands, and pulling on the loop in the string causes it to untwist, making the acrobat somersault.

Whether you call them jumping jacks, pantins, quockerwodgers, or Hampelmaenners, one thing is certain: they remain a timeless toy whose sturdy wooden construction and simple, yet resilient, mechanics assure its place as a legacy toy to be handed down from generation to generation. One of the toys occupying space on Rhonda’s tree is a particular favorite of mine.
Standing 7″ tall, 4″ wide, and 1″ thick and weighing in at 5.1 ounces, this antique wooden jumping jack looks to be over a century old. It depicts a pirate complete with eyepatch, peg leg, and bicorn hat festooned with an ominous-looking skull and crossbones. His mustached face is speckled with whiskers, his arms adorned by tattoos (an anchor on the right forearm, a heart with an arrow through it on the left), and his belt girds his body while holding a dagger against his midsection.
Most importantly, this pirate exhibits signs of having once survived a fire. An unintended fire that is. One look at this jumping jack and it becomes readily apparent that it has a history all its own. A story that will never be known but could easily be imagined. This little jumping jack betrays the hidden dangers of Christmas past.
Few things are likely to inspire seasonal awe as a well-lit Christmas tree. The Christmas tree tradition is one that has developed over many centuries. The ancient pagan ritual revolved around the Yule log which developed into 16th-century Christians using the combination of evergreens and lights to symbolize life in the dead of winter. In the 17th century, German Christians combined the burning of the Yule log with the evergreen tree, adorning its branches with candles and the tradition of illuminated Christmas trees began.
The Christmas tree was introduced to America by the German-speaking people (Pennsylvania Dutch) who settled in Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the early 19th century. By the 1820s the Christmas tree had become popular and within three decades the first Christmas tree stands began to pop up in Gotham City, bringing trees from the Catskill Mountains to New York City’s Washington Market. In 1856, the Christmas tree was cemented as an American tradition when President Franklin Pierce had the first White House tree decorated for a group of Washington Sunday School children. Some Hoosiers contest that, claiming there was no White House Christmas tree until 1889 during the Presidency of Benjamin Harrison.

As more Christmas trees found their way into American homes, problems with the candle-lit design persisted. The first challenge was securing the candles to the branches. Some tried pinning the candles to the branches by sewing pins and needles, others lashed them to the branches with wire or string, and still more used the candle itself by melting the wax base to the branches. Unfortunately, none of these methods seemed to work and often, failed spectacularly.
In 1878, a clip-on candle holder was created to firmly attach a candle to any branch, but unless the trees were monitored constantly, the dried-out trees could quickly become fire hazards through contact with the hot metal. In those days, Christmas trees were only kept lit for about 30 minutes at a time, and even then, buckets of water and sand were always kept close at hand.
The Victorian Era is littered with newspaper accounts of Christmas conflagration, some serious, some minor, and all accidental of course. One such Christmas tree-related incident, this one from 1849, was documented in The Household Narrative, the almanac published by Charles Dickens between 1850 and 1855. In a section Dickens entitled ‘Accident and Disaster’, the creator of Ebenezer Scrooge reported: “There was a large party at the house, and during the night a “German Tree” about five feet high, with its branches covered with bon-bons and other Christmas presents, and lit with a number of small wax tapers, was introduced into the drawing-room for the younger members of the party. While leaning forward to take some toy from the tree, the light gauze overdress of one young lady, Miss Gordon, took fire and blazed up in a most alarming manner. One of the lads present, whose quickness and presence of mind were far superior to his years, with much thought and decision threw down the young lady, and folding her in a rug that was luckily close by, put out the flame before it had done any serious damage beyond scorching her arms severely.”Old newspapers reveal horrific Christmas candle fires. In 1885 a hospital in Chicago burned down because of candles on a Christmas Tree. One Oklahoma blaze killed 36 people. In 1905, a Kansas City man dressed as Santa Claus barely survived after he and his sack of toys caught fire. Legend claims that it was around this time that President Theodore Roosevelt banned Christmas trees from the White House. Although beautiful, a tree lit with dozens of candles was a major fire hazard. In fact, there were so many deaths and so much property loss attributed to Christmas tree fires that in 1908 insurance companies stopped paying out for fires started by candle-lit trees. Newspapers warned against the use of candles on trees and adopted the short-lived slogan “A House of Merriment is better than a House of Mourning.”

However, people continued to use candles to light Christmas Trees which led to more fires. In 1917, a New York City fire from Christmas Tree candles gave teenager and recent immigrant from Madrid, Spain Albert Sadacca an idea. His family sold novelty wicker bird cages that lit up. Albert suggested painting the bulbs bright colors like red and green and using the bird cage lights in long strings to wrap around the branches of Christmas trees. In the following years, he and his brothers formed the NOMA Electric Company, which became a very famous name in Christmas lights. NOMA dominated the Christmas light industry until the 1960s when competition from foreign imports drove them to bankruptcy.
At first, only the rich could afford these extravagant electric lights. Less than 10 percent of America had electricity when Christmas lights arrived. A Christmas tree with electric bulbs could cost as much as $300 in the early 1900s, the equivalent of around $10,000 today. The first strings of electric Christmas lights, known as “festoons,” debuted in 1903 and cost $12 each (slightly less than the average weekly wage at the time and equal to over $400 today). Within a decade (1914) the price of a string of “eight miniature colored glass lamps with screw-in wall socket” dropped to $1.75 (still over $50 today). By the 1920s, Christmas tree lights were even cheaper, and by the 1930s, electric lights were sweeping the market.

However, although candles were being replaced, electricity can also cause fires. One need look no further than White Christmas singer/actor Bing Crosby who lost his home to a fire caused by faulty Christmas light wiring in 1943. In conclusion: Christmas tree lights, whether candle-powered or electric, are all potentially dangerous. And this funny little Pirate jumping jack, with his telltale scorch marks and threadbare pull-string, is a mute witness to those dangers of yesteryear. His image is sure to set any fertile Yuletide imagination ablaze.

Creepy history, Hollywood, Indianapolis, Pop Culture, Television

WFBM-TV Cap’n Star a.k.a. Sinister Seymour

December 6, 2022December 6, 2022 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original Publish Date August 19, 2021.

I’ve written about Jerry Vance, a.k.a. Larry Vincent, a.k.a. Cap’n Star, a.k.a. Sinister Seymour in past columns, mostly in conjunction with the late great Hal Fryar a.k.a. Harlow Hickenlooper, a.k.a. Grandpa Harlow. Confused? Well, so am I. However, if ever an Indianapolis children’s TV host from the Circle City’s golden age of television deserved a redux, it’s Jerry, I mean Larry. Bear with me now as we sort out this man of many sobriquets who left Indianapolis to become a Hollywood cult classic legend.
Larry Vincent (a.k.a. Jerry Vance) was born Larry Francis Fitzgerald Vincent on June 14, 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from Bishop-Lee College of Theatre and Radio in Boston, he enlisted in the Merchant Marines during World War II. He first surfaced in the mid-1940s, appearing alongside Kirk Douglas in the Broadway play Kiss and Tell from 1943 to 1945 and then as understudy for Douglas in the short-lived play Alice in Arms. Both are notable for being Kirk Douglas’ Broadway debuts.For a time, Vincent also performed in the play Life with Father. The Broadway production ran for 3,224 performances over 401 weeks to become the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, a record that still stands. Vincent changed his name to Jerry Vance and teamed up with Anderson, Indiana native Donald Craig McArt to form a stand-up comedy act that performed in nightclubs all over New York City. Don McArt later appeared in the Walt Disney films Son of Flubber and the “bsent Minded Professor and a slew of TV shows.

Vance landed in the Circle City in 1951. In the early 1960s he was working as a producer/director for Indianapolis’ first TV station, WFBM-TV (WRTV Channel 6 nowadays). Vance was among the first wave of Indy television personalities working alongside Howard Caldwell and Tom Carnegie. Since the early television business demanded an “all hands on deck” attitude, Vance created a character he dubbed “Cap’n Star.” Vance’s character appeared in a segment titled “Cap’n Star and Friends” alongside Harlow Hickenlooper and Curley Myers. The segment showcased cartoons and old Three Stooges shorts. Alongside his pet monkey “Davy Jones,” Cap’n Star sang songs and performed skits on the show.

Vance also directed many of Frances Farmer’s shows at the station from 1959 to 1964. The show, known as “Frances Farmer Presents,” aired five days a week, with Farmer doing her inserts live. She showed only the newest available movies from major studios. Farmer’s show was the number one show in its time period from the day it premiered until the day it left the air.

Vance lived in a house at 41st and Graham Avenue on Indy’s east side. Local children remember him as a kind neighbor who always had time for kids, often letting them wear his sailor’s cap from the show and play with the show’s mascot monkey. Vance had a background in Indianapolis theatre, performing as a leading man and directing many productions at the Circle Theatre, Catholic Theatre Guild and Civic Theatre. In 1961 and 1966, he won the city’s best actor award.
While in Indianapolis, Vance led the league in personal appearances. He spent his nights as a stage actor and his days as Cap’n Star. While at WFBM-TV, he handled nearly every chore affiliated with the production of his show, including beating the bushes for sponsorship and commercial advertising. Almost every weekend would find Cap’n Star at a local store, restaurant, school, carnival, or fair. The August 30, 1963 Indianapolis Star announced that “Cap’n Star, star of his own WFBM-TV show ‘Cap’n Star’ and ‘Deputy Dawg’ on Channel 6” would be appearing on Saturday morning at 11:00 at the new Eastgate Shopping Center on East Washington Street.
In 1967 he left Indianapolis to become staff director for KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. Utilizing a formula developed in Indianapolis, Vance became a member of the Barbary Coast Theater. In an October 3, 1967 column, well-known Indianapolis showbiz reporter R.K. Shull recalled a perchance encounter with Vance in Hollywood. “Last Spring, Vance left Indianapolis and decided to try his hand at the big-time in Hollywood. So far, he’s done well. He played a scene with Julie Andrews in her upcoming movie, Star. He’s had three guest roles on TV series, the first of which, an I Dream of Jeannie series. Only he isn’t Vance anymore.”
Shull continued, “‘I’m now Larry Vincent,’ he said, exhibiting a briefcase with that name under the handle, as though that proved something. But why Larry Vincent? ‘That’s my real name,’ he explained. Soon, Vance applied for his ‘SAG’ card with the Screen Actors Guild. ‘They already had a Jerry Vance registered as a member… a stunt man,’ he said. ‘So I had to pick another name and I chose my own… I found out about the other Jerry Vance the hard way. They mailed him my check for the work in ‘Star.’ He’s a decent guy though; he sent it back.’”
Vincent made guest appearances in others series: The Flying Nun (1967), Mission: Impossible (1969), Get Smart (1968–1969) and Mannix (1970). However, Vincent secured his legend as host for a few Sammy Terry-style Friday night horror show programs in L.A. The first was known as Fright Night and aired from 1969 to 1973 on KHJ-TV, the next, Monster Rally for one season in 1973, the last was Seymour’s Monster Rally from 1973–1974 (both of the latter shows aired on KTLA TV-5). Although the shows were different in name, they followed roughly the same format.

Vincent’s “Sinister Seymour” character presented low-budget horror and science fiction movies on both local Los Angeles stations. Fans remember Seymour’s “slimy wall” behind which was an ongoing party of ghouls that, try as he might, Seymour was never invited to join. They recall a pay phone from which Seymour was constantly trying to scam “Pizza fella” out of free pizza (on a borrowed dime no less). And they remember Banjo Billy (played by Vincent himself) whose bright orange band uniform matched his cheery disposition and one-piece Groucho glasses and nose combo was as bad as his banjo playing, played foil to Seymour on the show.

**Sinister Seymour advertising Volkswagens back in the day.**

He is remembered for his style of criticizing the movies, presented in an offbeat and funny manner, usually appearing in a small window that would pop up in the corner, tossing a quip, before vanishing again. Sometimes he would, using a blue screen, appear in the middle of the movie, apparently interacting with the characters in the film. Seymour called these movies “turkeys” right out of the gate. One need only look at the titles to understand why: Teenage Vampires, Monster from the Surf, The Spider Woman Strikes Back, X-The Man With X-Ray Eyes, The Crawling Eye, The Brain Eaters, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Attack of the Mushroom People, which he renamed “Attack of the Bunny Slippers” because of the unfrightening appearance of the film’s furry little parasite protagonists.

Dressed in black with a wide-brimmed gaucho plantation hat and cape, Sinister Seymour stalked his way into the films to openly mock the films as they aired. He equally derided his viewership, calling them “dummies” and “Fringies” while admonishing them for wasting their time by watching his program. No one was immune from Seymour’s insults, which could help explain his cancellations and reinstatements. For the last episode of Fright Night, Seymour ended the show by walking out of the studio, and the first episode of Monster Rally had him breaking into KTLA-5.
As he had done in Indianapolis, Seymour blanketed Tinseltown with personal appearances. Seymour was the Master of Ceremonies for the costume party at the first annual Witchcraft and Sorcery Convention in Los Angeles in 1971. He hosted “Seymour Day at Marineland” and was the first host of “The Seymour Show” in 1973/1974 — a Halloween Haunt show in the (then) John Wayne Theater at Knott’s Berry Farm. The event has since grown to become the largest and most haunting Halloween experience in California known as “ScaryFarm.”

Vincent a.k.a. Seymour’s last show came in 1974. Traditionally, Seymour ended the show by saying, “I’d like to thank you… I’d like to, but it’s not my style! Bad Evening!” But on his final telecast, Seymour eschewed his familiar goodbye and said nothing. He merely waved as the stagehands disassembled the set behind him. His last movie performance was in 1975 in an uncredited role in The Apple Dumpling Gang. For the last years of his life, Mr. Vincent battled stomach cancer. He died on March 9, 1975 at the age of 49.

Several years later, Elvira took over Larry’s place as horror-film hostess on Fright Night, which later morphed into her own series, Elvira’s Movie Macabre. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Indianapolis, Music, Pop Culture, The Beatles

The Beatles, John Lennon, WIFE… and Irvington. Part III

December 5, 2022December 6, 2022 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original Publish Date May 20, 2021.

In the John Lennon film “Above Us Only Sky” (a segment from the larger film “Imagine”) there’s a scene from a 1971 encounter with a young man who shows up at Lennon’s house in England. Lennon talks with him and eventually invites him in to eat some food. In the clip, Lennon’s Mini Cooper car (parked outside the house) has a WIFE Good Guys radio sticker in the back window. How in the world did a sticker from a local Indianapolis radio station end up on a car in John Lennon’s driveway in England? The mystery was uncovered by Irvingtonian Bill Price in part I of this article and solved by Irvingtonian Stephen Bruce Smith in part II. Part III reveals another Irvington connection.
When the Beatles played two shows at the Indiana State Fair in September of 1964, Radio station WIFE 1310 sponsored the show in the Coliseum, and WIBC sponsored the show in the grandstand. In 1963, WIFE-310 AM signed on the air with a rock-heavy playlist. And by the time The Beatles arrived, the station had rapidly surged to the top of the ratings race, bringing an end to radio station WIBC-1070 AM’s reign as the champion of Indianapolis’ airwaves. In 1964, programming on WIFE largely focused on top 40 hits and bubblegum rock including The Beatles.

The Beatles concerts have been detailed by this writer in past columns and the specifics of those shows are well-known to all Circle City Beatles fans. Stephen Bruce Smith added more details to that story and revealed that Lennon “got the bumper sticker in 1964 at the station when The Beatles awarded tickets to a lucky high school girl who won a contest. I knew her brother at Howe High School. John got that sticker at the station from either Jay Reynolds or Jack Sunday (Jerry Baker).”
Turns out Smith, who knows everybody, rediscovered that lucky ticket-winning girl too. Did I mention Stephen Bruce Smith knows EVERYBODY? Her name is Elaine Conly and she is a Howe graduate, class of 1966. She was Elaine May when she won that contest back in 1964. Elaine’s mother, Virginia Casey May, who passed in 2002, was active in the Irvington Women’s Club as past chairwoman and past president of the Irvington Music Study Group. She was also a pioneer member of the neighborhood CrimeWatch program and Human Rights Commission, retiring from the Indianapolis Mayor’s office in 1977. Virginia was also a former chairwoman for the Junior Civic Theatre and scriptwriter for the “Time for Timothy (Churchmouse)” program. So Elaine, who performed in some of those productions for her mother’s Civic Theatre, knew a thing or two about the entertainment business.

**Elaine May Conly With Paul, Ringo, George & John at the Concert Press Conference.**

15-year-old Elaine entered a 50-word or less summertime essay contest by the Indianapolis News titled “I want to meet the Beatles because…” Elaine entered (without telling her parents) and her 47-word essay was selected as the winner from more than 3000 entries. Her winning entry read: “I want to meet the Beatles because they have a special magic. When they perform, the oppressing world crisis and other problems can be temporarily forgotten. They sing happy, swinging songs. I’d love to meet the four young men who can make everything seem a little brighter.” Just like in the movie Bye-Bye Birdie, Elaine supplants Ann-Margret who likewise wins a contest to meet her Elvis-like hero, Conrad Birdie.
“I had to keep it a secret though, that was hard to do,” Elaine says. When her picture appeared on the front page of the newspaper announcing her victory, “The phone rang off the hook, it was pandemonium.” Elaine, the daughter of Harry A. May, grew up at 1134 N. Butler Ave., “Butler Avenue North of 10th, Two blocks from the Steer Inn,” she states.
“I was worried that they (The Beatles) would not want to meet a teen-aged kid and that they might poke fun at me. I expected to get a cold reception.” Elaine recalls, “But they were perfect gentlemen and very nice to me. I shook all of their hands and when I entered the room, John stood up an offered me his seat.” Which was a good thing because John Lennon was her chosen Beatle. “He had written a book of poetry and he was my favorite. They were all very nice and gentlemanly but John was the nicest of the four.” Elaine recalls. “I went out and bought a special black crepe dress because I heard that John liked black.”

**Paul McCartney with Elaine in the background.**

The whole encounter, which took place in the communications building at the State Fairgrounds across from the Coliseum, took less than five minutes. Elaine reveals, “I wore the class rings of four of my classmates to the meeting. They belonged to my friends. They all wanted their ring to touch a Beatle.” When I asked if she got any souvenirs or autographs, she responds, “No, I was told (by the Indy News) that I couldn’t ask for autographs or take photographs of my own. I wish I would have because I probably could have paid for my college tuition with that money now.”
Elaine states that the newspapers followed up on Elaine’s story every few years. As for the Fab Four, “They were very funny but very polite.” she recalled. Part of Elaine’s duties that day, aside from the obvious photo op for the news, was to deliver an original editorial cartoon from the News to the Lads from Liverpool. “Then I just stood to the side for the rest of the Press Conference”, Elaine says. When she left the building, she was bombarded with questions from local reporters.

Part of her prize package included tickets to the show. When asked what memories she had of the concert, Elaine says, “Security was very tight. It was very dark and very hard to hear them. But it was great to look at them, they were so handsome.” Her tickets? “Oh, they were very close, first 10 rows or so.” Did anyone recognize her as the contest winner? “Yes, a few people picked me out right away, but then the Beatles came out and that was that.” Elaine is still saddened by the death of her favorite Beatle. “I was watching Monday Night Football (December 8, 1980) when they broke in to announce that John Lennon had been shot. I cried. I cried a lot.”

And what about that little black dress, the only physical souvenir she has left from that encounter? “That dress was good luck.” she says, “I was wearing that dress a year later when I walked a friend to the bus station. A friend of a friend, University of Cincinnati architecture student Michael Conly, was on the bus and kept asking, “Who’s that girl in the black dress?” Long story short, Elaine and Michael Conly have been married for 51 years. And her engagement ring? Michael purchased it for her in Beatles Country: England, where he was studying in Europe.
Several years ago, Michael had a special print of his wife’s brush with the Beatles enlarged and the poster-sized photo hangs on the couple’s wall inside their Fishers home. “That’s my claim to fame I guess. Over the years it (the photo) was a big hit with our babysitters who would gasp and ask me about the encounter. I was always amazed because most of them were not even born when that meeting took place. The Beatles still have that power though, after all these years.”

Indianapolis, Music, Pop Culture, The Beatles

The Beatles, John Lennon, WIFE… and Irvington. Part II

December 5, 2022 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original Publish Date May 13, 2021.

In part I of this series, I told you about an obscure episode involving The Beatles John Lennon and the Indianapolis radio station WIFE. In the film “Above Us Only Sky” there is a car parked outside Lennon’s house that has a WIFE Good Guys radio sticker on the back window. How did a sticker from a Circle City radio station end up on a car 3,947 miles away in John Lennon’s driveway?
Anyone over the age of 50 should remember WIFE AM 1310 in Indianapolis. How can you forget those Coppertone commercials in the summertime: “Time to turn so you won’t burn.” Or the WIFE Lucky 13? Or the billboard near Indianapolis’ Weir Cook Airport (later Indianapolis International Airport) which amused passing motorists with the message, “While you’ve been gone we’ve been spending night and day with you WIFE!” Or even the “window on the world” of the WIFE studios at 1440 N. Meridian Street where pedestrians and downtown shoppers could walk past the window and see one of the “WIFE Good Guy” DJs in action?
WIFE was the top 40 giant of Indy for years and the only real AM radio rockers in town during the mid to late sixties (sometimes garnering as much as a 40% share of the Indy radio audience). WIFE is remembered for their endless contests (“The 100 Thousand Dollar Dream Home” or “The 100 Thousand Dollar Cash and Car Give-A-Way”), ear-worm jingles pounding the call letters and station numbers ad nauseam, and, maybe worst of all, the station sped up the records to cram more music in between the ads, witty banter, and promos. This last practice confounded pre-teens who wondered why the songs sounded so much different on WIFE than on the 45s. Most of all, radio fans remember the “WIFE Good Guys”: Big Jack Armstrong, Roger W. Morgan, Reb Porter, Jay Reynolds, Joe Light, Jay Hawkins, Buddy Scott, Jim Fox, T.J. Byers, Scott Wheeler, Mike O’Brien, Dan Summers, and Steve Miller.

And who can forget Jack Sunday: aka ABA / NBA Indiana Pacers radio voice Jerry Baker. Jerry handled the noon to 3:00 shift for a couple of years at WIFE chanting “Hey, this is Jack Sunday” every break and intro and while hosting the “Pool Party” segments. It was Jerry Baker who introduced the Beatles during their two concert stops at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. For years, WIFE would replay Jerry’s Beatles intro from the fairgrounds every time they played one of the Fab Four’s songs: “On behalf of the Indiana State Fair Board and WIFE Good Guys…The Beatles!” No doubt about it, WIFE 1310 is an Indiana institution. And somehow, a bumper sticker from the station ended up on John Lennon’s car in England.
I found the answer, where else? On Facebook, which led me right back here to Irvington. I started by joining the WIFE RADIO ALUMS & FANS Facebook page. It was there that I found Irvingtonian Stephen Bruce Smith. That name should be familiar to many Irvintonians. Smith is a former Irvington Council President (1997-99), 1975 Howe high school alumni, and 1980 Butler grad. Smith, who grew up on the corner of Brookville and Grand (421 So. Grand), is a Beatles superfan, authority and collector. And he knows EVERYONE in Irvington. I called Smith on a Saturday afternoon. When he answered the phone I could hear that he was spinning Beatles vinyl on the turntable in the background. EXACTLY what you might expect from an Irvington Beatles guy.
Smith unraveled the mystery of the bumper sticker quite succinctly. “The Beatles came to Indy in September 1964 to do two concerts at The State Fair on the 3rd. WIFE sponsored the concert and had various contests surrounding the concert. The Beatles visited the WIFE studio earlier that day and were given various gifts to remember their visit to Indianapolis. They were greeted by Miss Indiana State Fair as well as meeting a girl who won the Meet The Beatles Contest. She happened to be a Howe High School girl. The WIFE Good Guy sticker on John’s Mini Cooper in the 1971 film came from that studio appearance that morning at WIFE 1330 North Meridian. John loved stickers and t-shirts so I’m sure he just stuck it on there many years later.”

However, the story doesn’t end there. Stephen went to the first Beatles concert at the Fairgrounds. There were two, one inside the Coliseum and the other on the stage/grandstands outside. “I went with my father, Stephen Smith Sr., in exchange for punishment to see Andy Williams and the Osmond Brothers,” Stephen jokingly says. “My dad was shipping supervisor at Atkomatic Valve Co. at 141 S. Sherman Drive at Brookville and Sherman. They produced valves used in the NASA space program. He passed away in November of 1967. He got the tickets for free from a coworker.”
Smith remembers actually being excused from school to go to the concert. “It was a weekday, a Thursday I think. I was 8 years old and I was worried my teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, wouldn’t agree. I went to Orchard Park School and I think I got on her bad side because I had dressed up as Vic Morrow from the Combat TV show for Halloween. She gave me a frown as she lifted my mask. Everyone else was dressed as princesses, ghosts, and cartoon characters and my costume was a little rough looking, but she let me go.” Smith found out later that several other kids in school went to the concert too.
I asked what he remembered about the concert, and he stated, “It was about 35 minutes long and they played maybe 6 songs. You couldn’t hear anything.” Smith adds that, years later, he became good friends with WIFE Good Guy DJ Jay Reynolds and they often talked about that concert. “I remember Jay gave me the greatest quote about the noise. He said, “it got so loud that it got quiet.” And he was right.” Smith recalls that the Coliseum was “remodeled and brand new after the explosion.” (On October 31, 1963, during a Holiday on Ice show, a propane leak at a concession stand caused an explosion that killed 74 people and injured around 400 others. A subject I’ve written about in past columns.)

Smith continues, “Even at that young age, I could see that the security seemed unprepared for what was happening. Girls were screaming, fainting, and crying and there was even a rumor that one girl died from an asthma attack during the concert. Girls were all peeing themselves and getting hurt jumping from seat to seat. There were 16 Marion County deputies around the stage and they were all scared to death. You could not hear a word.” Stephen continues, “My dad was a pilot in World War II and he said he hadn’t seen that kind of crazy since wartime.”
One image that sticks with Smith is that of a smashed golf cart he and his father walked past after the show. “I remember staring at that thing for a long time. It was totally destroyed. After the concert, they used it as a diversion to get the girls away from the band. These screaming girls chased it down and literally tore it apart. I can still see that trashed golf cart in my mind.”

As an adult, Stephen Bruce Smith also encountered Jerry Baker, aka WIFE Good Guy “Jack Sunday”. Smith relates, “Jerry told me that the Beatles were each given goody packs that included Bibles in each bag. And the only thing they requested was a black and white TV, coca-colas, hamburgers, French fries, and Marlboro cigarettes. Also in those goody bags were t-shirts and stickers from WIFE. John loved trinkets and collected all that stuff, t-shirts, patches, and stickers of any kind; anything American. John had stickers on everything in his house.”
It makes sense that Lennon, fresh on the heels of The Beatles’ 1970 break-up (which many attribute to Yoko Ono), chose the WIFE sticker, with its slogan “WIFE Good Guy”, as a wry contrary comment on his relationship with Yoko. The Indianapolis connection was purely coincidental.
Many years later, Smith won a contest to meet Paul McCartney backstage in Chicago in 2005. “I was ushered in to meet him with a group of reporters. It was only 6 minutes, but it seemed like 6 hours. The reporters were stunned and really weren’t talking to him. I asked him if he remembered the concerts in Indianapolis. He said, “Oh yes, I remember Ringo went drinking with the cops.” Smith adds the little-known detail that Ringo traveled up to Noblesville where one of the police security officers (State Trooper Jack Marks) owned a horse farm. “When word got out about that visit, those poor people were invaded by teenage girls wanting details.”
Smith continues, “knowing Paul owned a sheepdog, I told him I had a sheepdog myself. He asked, “Oh really, what is the dog’s name?” I answered, “Jack the Moose” and Paul said hmmm, “Jack the Moose, Jack the Moose” over and over a few times. I was hoping he was gonna use it in a song, but that never happened.” Smith, who lives next to Pleasant Run Golf Course, ran into Paul’s assistant at another McCartney concert later. “He recognized me and said as we parted, “Cool, Paul will see you after the show.” Smith says, “It never happened. But the concert was great.”

Next week, Part III

The Beatles, John Lennon, WIFE… and Irvington.