Retro Fan #18 January 2022 (magazine review).
With a picture of actress Barbara Eden on the cover of the latest ‘Retro Fan’, expectations of a telephone interview with her by editor Mike Eury was fulfilled. Although her agent said she only had 25 minutes available, Barbara was enjoying the interview so much she extended the time herself and added another 6 minutes, delaying another interview. From the information here, I think she realised she has someone who knew something about her career beyond ‘I Dream Of Jeannie’. I hope you can try for another interview with her, Mike, as it would be interesting to hear more about her film career.
Will Murray examines ‘The Invaders’ TV show and how actor Roy Thinnes in real life becomes more open-minded about UFOs after a sighting himself. Something I didn’t know was his character name, David Vincent, was based off Vincent Price. In many respects, ‘The Invaders’ was the original TV alien invasion series and any that followed were more careful, until the second version of ‘V’ not to borrow its tropes.
Ernest Farino’s look at early home tapes of films was a delightful read. In the days of VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray, we have it comparatively easy today but the home choices in the USA in the 1960s were far more varied than we had in the UK where I think we had Super-8 in a limited way, although I think we had sound, at least at school we would have a sound film at Christmas because I remember seeing ‘Fail Safe’ (1964) one year.
I can’t say much about the short run magazine ‘The Monster Times’ from 1972 as I don’t think any issues reached the UK. Reading Don Vaughan’s article, I suspect fans of artists like Gray Morrow will certainly be on the look-out for the issues.
Scott Shaw!’s look at Hanna-Barbera’s 1960s animated super-heroes is far briefer than it could be, mostly because of how much ground he had to cover, although there is promise of looking deeper at ‘Space Ghost’ later. I hope the same applies to the brief series ‘The Impossibles’ especially as Shaw! shows some of their model sheets. Not all of these series reached the UK, but this one, along with ‘Frankenstein Junior’ did reach our shores.
Scott Saavedra’s look at the artbooks on how to draw in America is delightfully informative. We caught the tail-end of it in the UK. The Walter Foster books were widespread and still pride of my collection when I need inspiration or how to do something simply from the size of their books and still available.
I was more interested in the ‘Famous Artists School’ course, more so as it briefly came over here and tried their application. I actually did well on it but my parents wouldn’t fund it. Seeing the date they went bankrupt in 1972, I think it might have been a lucky miss. I hope we get more articles like this. So much of this is like woodwork and often ignored but should be explored.
Andy Mangels look at the Christmas cards the animated studios released, both inhouse and fans shows a delightful array of illustrations.
I should also add that the extended letters pages, subject to material, is useful as it shows how ‘Retro-Fan’ is hitting the nostalgia button in the readers, often bringing out odd connections and subjects that might otherwise be missed. Adding my own two penny’s worth here, nostalgia can be applied to anyone’s youth and there’s a good argument to reach further into the 1970s from time to time as well.
GF Willmetts
February 2022
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page magazine. Price: $ 9.95. (US). ISSN: 2576-7224. Direct from them, you can get it for $ (US))
check out website: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_152&products_id=1640
