Digging Up Some Dirk

When Star Wars came out in 1977, steamrolling its way to staggering success at the box office (I recall one local theater playing it solidly for well over a year!), it generated countless imitators, both in the movies and on TV. Today's featured hunk rode the wave of that sci-fi trend for a brief while before securing another round of success, only to all but disappear from our screens afterwards. At least it seemed like it! This one could almost be one of those “What Ever Happened to...?” articles, though the man's diehard fans have always known what he's up to. We're talking about Mr. Dirk Benedict.



First, let's go back to March 1st, 1945 in Helena, Montana where a baby called Dirk Niewoehner was born to an accountant mother and a lawyer father. Raised in a tiny town called White Sulphur Springs, as a young boy he took part in all the activities that such a place might suggest such as hunting and fishing. He also emerged as a competent athlete, excelling in particular with running and football (making the All-State team his senior year.) He had also taken up the habit of cigar-smoking at the tender age of ten!



His parents divorce when he was sixteen left a small wound in his heart, but paled in comparison to the gouge that came two years later when his father died (more on that later.) The eighteen year-old went off to school at Whitman College (in Walla Walla, Washington) where he continued to play football, becoming a popular, animated member of the student body. When, on a dare from one of his fellow players, he auditioned for one of the school musicals (Showboat), he was stunned to land the lead role of Gaylord Ravenal and soon was bitten by the acting bug, opting to pursue that line instead of a life in sports.



He changed his major to drama, eventually graduating with a degree in fine arts, and proceeded to study and work with a repertory company in Washington. In 1969, he reported for duty in the U.S. Army during The Vietnam War, but was prevented from serving due to a head injury he'd sustained during his football career. He busily continued working in many theatrical productions, even travelling to Michigan for stage opportunities. One day, over a breakfast dish I need not describe in any further detail, he decided to abandon the unwieldy last name of Niewoehner in lieu of the far more professional-sounding Benedict. Thus, Dirk Benedict was born!



Things finally clicked for him when he went to a New York audition and landed a role as an understudy in the upcoming production of Abelard and Heloise. After a six-week tryout in Los Angeles, the play headed for Broadway, with the young actor performing opposite no less than Keith Michell and Miss Diana Rigg! This opportunity led to the chance for a film role, so he was off to Sweden to film the movie Georgia, Georgia, a story about a black female singer living in Stockholm, Sweden who falls for an American deserter living there. He played the deserter and Diana Sands starred as the title character. It was written by none other than Maya Angelou!



While there, Benedict was given his first glimpse into the world of health food. The beef and venison-eating young man was introduced to healthy options that resonated with him unexpectedly. This approach to diet was ignited further when he returned to the U.S. and was cast in the Broadway play Butterflies Are Free, replacing Keir Dullea. The star of the play was Miss Gloria Swanson, a longtime health food advocate who thought nothing of bringing a small, brown-bagged meal with her to parties and industry functions regardless of the planned menu.



Benedict and Swanson, playing mother and son onstage (with costar Pamela Bellwood having taken over for Blythe Danner as the love interest), became close friends. Before the show was over, he had become a vegetarian and was avoiding chemicals in his food and sugar entirely. This shift in diet would later play an important, even controversial, part in his life. First, though, the young thespian headed to Hawaii to recreate his Butterflies role opposite a new star, Miss Barbara Rush. While there, he made his network television debut with an episode of the popular series Hawaii 5-O.



In it, he played a young man who may have unwittingly given a sexually transmitted disease to a girl he was seeing. This being 1972, it was a daring, unusual subject for a television series to broach. The episode, titled Chain of Events, actually chronicled the passing of the STD to and from several people, quite a dash of spice for the time!



When the father of the infected girl finds out that Benedict might have given her the disease, he and a pal rough the young lad up tremendously (off-screen), resulting in some unintentionally hysterical bruising makeup! Dirk's beautiful face was coated down with enough pink and purple color to make Grimace of McDonaldland jealous! (Of course his perfectly layered hair is scarcely out of place!) Nevertheless, this was a key point in his career and is a perfect illustration of the domino effect of acting jobs.



TV director Bernard Kowalski was attempting to make a leap into feature films, having already helmed Krakatoa: East of Java, Stiletto and Macho Callahan. His next effort was a horror opus called Sssssss, all about a scientist (Strother Martin) who decides to use a human guinea pig as part of his research concerning King Cobra venom. He needed someone to play the young male lead and after he and his wife saw the aforementioned episode of Hawaii 5-O, he had found his man.

Benedict played an insecure college student who is hired as Martin's assistant, meanwhile beginning to fall for his daughter (played by The Sound of Music's Heather Menzies.) Without his knowledge, he is given injections thought to be protective medicine which are actually King Cobra venom, eventually transforming him into a human-sized snake!



With Sssssss freshly in the can, he proceeded to another role in a feature, this time opposite Twiggy, the slender former supermodel who was embarking on an acting career in the wake of 1971's The Boy Friend. He played her explosive ex-boyfriend who may or may not be stalking her in the obscure thriller W.



With a few screen credits under his belt, along with his stage experiences, Benedict now had the confidence necessary to press on as a working actor. He was cast as one of the stars of a weekly TV series, produced by Aaron Spelling, called Chopper One. In it, he and Jim McMullen played helicopter-flying police officers (reporting to their superior Ted Hartley) on the hunt for snipers, burglars and the like. Ultimately, the copter itself emerged as the negligible star of the show and it was cancelled after 13 episodes. He then worked on the TV-movie Journey from Darkness, one of a couple of projects that featured Marc Singer as a blind man (something about those pale blue eyes seemed to make him right for that!)



Just as Benedict was at the threshold of a career in Hollywood and at the age (twenty-eight) when his looks were near their peak, he was dealt a staggering blow, one that sent him packing for home and, perhaps, signalling the end of everything he'd worked toward. In fact, he had to face the fact that he may not be alive at all! Benedict was diagnosed with a tumor on his prostate, believed to be cancerous. He was advised to undergo surgery, but balked, instead turning to his close friend Gloria Swanson and her associate, Michio Kushi, a leading macrobiotic diet specialist, for help.



Through a regimen of strict macrobiotic dieting alternated with fasting, he spent three years concentrating on curing himself. With input and support from Kushi and Swanson, he followed this plan until he had conquered the illness. (Years later, he would write a book about this experience which underwent scrutiny similar to that of Suzanne Somers, who claimed to have taken a similar approach to her battle with breast cancer. I do not affirm or deny the legitimacy of any of this. Just relaying the info!) During his sabbatical in Montana, he turned to writing as a creative outlet and penned two screenplays.



Now healthy again by 1977, he sought to regain a foothold in the ever-fickle show business world of Hollywood. First, he went on tour (in one of the most unlikely combinations imaginable!) in the stage musical Li'l Abner opposite Lucie Arnaz! Next, his old friend from Chopper One Aaron Spelling came to his rescue and gave him a guest role on Charlie's Angels. This was followed by a part in the hooty Spelling telefilm Cruise Into Terror, where he rubbed elbows with John Forsythe, Christopher and Lynda Day George, Hugh O'Brian and Ray Milland, among others. A second guest role on Angels in 1978 cemented his return.



By now we've come to the advent of the Star Wars era, when science-fiction was seeing a resurgence it hadn't enjoyed in many years. TV producer Glen Larson was planning a series about humans in a far-flung corner of space whose home has been obliterated by war and whose survivors are journeying to a planet previously settled by their ancestors, Earth!



For the show, called Battlestar Galactica, he cast Bonanza veteran Lorne Greene as the commander of the title vessel, a gigantic spaceship escorting many other, smaller satellite ships. Richard Hatch (not the guy from Survivor, but a handsome soap actor who'd moved into primetime, ironically enough with three Hawaii 5-O appearances of his own) played Greene's stalwart son. There was also a part based somewhat on Harrison Ford's Han Solo from Star Wars, a dashing, charismatic, sarcastic rogue who would be a good counterpart to Hatch. Larson wanted Dirk Benedict for the part.



Trouble was, the network execs scoffed that Dirk Benedict “wasn't sexy enough!” (I'm right here to tell you as someone who lived through it that he WAS!) Don Johnson was a favorite for the part, but couldn't shake his southern accent enough to please the casting directors. Somehow, cooler heads prevailed and Benedict was given the part. He rose to the occasion, incorporating his beloved cigars into the characterization now and again and was part of the saturation publicity campaign for the project. His own personal inspiration for the part was said to have come from James Garner's Maverick and not Harrison Ford.



In a rare move, the two-hour pilot (at $7 million the most expensive ever produced up to that time) was edited into a feature film (also starring Jane Seymour, who was not to be a series regular) and was released in Sensurround, the final movie ever presented that way. This gave the producers a chance to make back some of that incredible expense as the movie was shown in countries around the world and later in the U.S. as well.



When the pilot aired on American TV in 1978, it was a success (even though it was interrupted on the East Coast by a special news report on the signing of the Camp David Accords by Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat, as witnessed by President Carter.) Teenagers (and adults) eager to absorb as many space-age special effects as they could lapped up the gadgetry, the firepower and the creepy (and campy, to be honest) Cylons, led by villainous John Colicos. Meanwhile, the hunkitude of Hatch and Benedict, offering up contrasting “types,” was appreciated by connoisseurs of such.



In this, the era of Farrah Fawcett's mega-selling, red-swimsuited poster (along with others that depicted bikini-clad Cheryl Tiegs and a busty Lynda Carter), Benedict dove into the action on the distaff side with one of his own, a shirtless picture of him unzipping his already short shorts. He swiftly started making the pages of all the teen magazines of the day, sometimes fully dressed, sometimes (thankfully) barely dressed!

No one who's ever seen it is likely to forget the Battlestar Galactica episode featuring the game Triad, a space basketball type of sport in which two men in red and two men in blue compete against one another. The costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorleac, who was French and a relative of Catherine Deneuve and her sister Francoise Dorleac, concocted jaw-dropping uniforms consisting of a sports bra and Speedo-like panties, fitted out with various padding, a helmet and basically nothing else!

Benedict confessed that Dorleac (who was also later responsible for “designing” Christopher Atkins' abbreviated loin cloth in The Blue Lagoon!) was gay and was interested in making sure that the guys looked sexy and that their packages weren't too skimpy-looking. If only he'd also made sure they didn't look like complete buffoons! Oh, those hip pads. But, oh well... it was a terrific opportunity for the guys to show some skin as they were usually quite buttoned-up and covered up from neck to wrist to toe on the series.



Incidentally, George Lucas did sue the producers for similarities to his own work, Star Wars, but he was countersued by 20th Century Fox (who owned Galactica) for his own possible infringement on products of theirs such as Silent Running (which had included droid-like robots.) Eventually, these suits came to nothing. In any case, Galactica was different enough, thanks to the infusion of certain Morman philosphies from writer/creator Larson.



Not long after the premiere episode, CBS counter-programmed All in the Family and Alice in order to beat it in the ratings and that strategy worked. Galactica wasn't able to win its time slot any longer. Because it was an expensive series to produce, it was given a shorter leash when it came to performance in the ratings. After only twenty-four episodes, the series was canceled.



What ABC didn't expect was that the program had a deeply-invested core group of fans who then staged a massive write-in campaign to have the show reinstated. (Even NBC and CBS recognized the value of the show and made overtures to pick it up for themselves, but this never came to pass.) After cancellation, Dirk took a role in a feature film, believing Battlestar Galactica to be toast, so that when it was decided to reinstate the show, albeit in a retooled format, he wasn't available!



Since Benedict wasn't free to take part in the revamped series (to be called Galactica 1980), Richard Hatch was skeptical of how he would fit into it (nearly all of the supporting players he was familiar with had been written out), so he declined to participate. Thus, when the series came back on the air, set a generation later than the original, confused and annoyed viewers abandoned it to be cancelled again after only ten episodes. Benedict even made a last ditch guest appearance toward the end, but it was too late. Nevertheless, fans of Hatch and Benedict continued to adore them and their rendition of the characters. Hatch never stopped trying to reignite the concept, even after an entirely new approach to the material hit the airwaves without him in 2004.



The feature film that Benedict signed on for in 1979 was Scavenger Hunt, an all-star ensemble film in the vein of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World about an oddball game inventor (played by Vincent Price) who dies and leaves his greedy relatives scrambling for his sizeable estate. The one person who wins the title competition wins everything while the losers get nothing. Other stars in the cast included Richard Benjamin, James Coco, Ruth Gordon, Cloris Leachman, Roddy McDowall, Scatman Crothers, Cleavon Little, Tony Randall and a certain bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger. I must say I like his jeans in this lobby photo.



He then did a pilot movie for an unsold series (thank Jesus) called The Georgia Peaches, all about his moonshine-running character and two sisters (one played by Tanya Tucker) with the last name of Peach who are coerced into working for the right side of the law. It was an obvious rip-off, in a feminine way, of The Dukes of Hazzard. This was followed by the low-budget Ruckus, a veteran-in-turmoil action flick that was a precursor to Sylvester Stallone's First Blood and which costarred a now-grown and no longer bankable Linda Blair. His pretty face was covered for part of the film by a scraggly beard. Underground Aces was a lesser comedy about parking garage attendants that costarred him with Melanie Griffith (prior to her own career resurgence) and Welcome Back, Kotter's Robert Hegyes. That's them enjoying a jacuzzi with some friends in this shot!



Another unsold pilot was the drama Family in Blue, about relatives devoted to police work in which Efrem Zimbalist Jr. played his father. There was also Scruples, a failed pilot for a series based on the successful miniseries that had starred Lindsay Wagner. In this version Shelley Smith had her part while he inherited Barry Bostwick's. These and some guest spots on The Love Boat kept him going until another hit project could make its way to him. One finally did, but almost did not!



Stephen J. Cannell, producer/writer of The Rockford Files and other successful TV shows, was developing a new series about a quartet of ex-soldiers, Vietnam veterans, who band together to work as good guy vigilantes, writing various wrongs around the globe while being hunted for a crime that wasn't their fault. For the pilot, a cast was assembled including former movie star George Peppard, outre bouncer and bodyguard personality Mr. T and lanky Dwight Schultz. The fourth member of the team was played by Tim Dunigan, a young actor with dark feathered hair.

When the show, called The A-Team, was picked up as a series, it was determined that Dunigan was too young to have been a Vietnam vet since he was a sophomore in high school when the war ended! So a new actor was sought to play Templeton Peck, nicknamed “Face” for his attractive mug. Who better than handsome Dirk Benedict to take on the role? He did and the show was a rousing success, especially among boys and young men, containing countless displays of combat, firepower and explosions. The charismatic, (again) cigar-chomping Benedict endeared himself to another raft of fans with his work on the show.



During the course of his tenure on the series, which ran from 1983 to 1987, he met and married actress Toni Hudson, who had guested on The A-Team. They proceeded to have two sons together. (When the couple divorced in 1995, he retained custody of his boys and took them to Montana to be raised in the same environment he'd loved so much as a child.)



After the cancellation of The A-Team, Benedict's workload decreased significantly. He guest-starred on Hotel and the revamped Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starred in a couple of TV-movies (one each with ex-Dynasty actresses Catherine Oxenberg and Emma Samms.) In 1991, he paired up with fellow hunk Ted McGinley and Patsy Kensit to make the straight-to-video film Blue Thunder, about a pilot who feels as if he's had an encounter with UFOs.



After some other TV gigs (like guest shots on Walker, Texas Ranger and the obligatory Murder, She Wrote), he did the family adventure movie Alaska in 1996. A pilot himself in real life, he kept a plane of his own to transport him from Montana where he resided to Los Angeles or other locations where he was working. He chose to raise his sons in a rustic atmosphere (reportedly a 900 square foot log cabin!) away from L.A. and on the same dietary regimen he had adopted long ago.

In 1998, he got the shock of his life when he was approached by a twenty nine year-old man who turned out to be his son! He had no prior clue to the existence of a child born in 1968. The two established a relationship with one another and both were interested to find out that the young man had graduated college with majors in both communications and theatre, the fields of each of his biological parents.



In 2001, he directed one of the screenplays he'd written while treating himself for cancer in the mid-'70s. Cahoots starred Keith Carradine, David Keith, Wendie Malick and his one of his old Galactica costars, Anne Lockhart (daughter of June.)



Having worked only sporadically during the rearing of his boys, interest in him returned when a new version of Battlestar Galactica was aired in 2004. Attending a sci-fi convention in Germany, he was offered a role in a project there. Since that, he has continued to work in lesser-known film projects. More importantly, he has penned two books. One, 2005's Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy, covers his career, illness, lifestyle and other matters in his trademark amusingly brazen style. The other, 2007's And Then We Went Fishing, examines his own experience with fatherhood contrasted with the death of his dad when he was eighteen (revealed to be at the hands of his own brother, by gunshot during a harrowing domestic dispute, and witnessed by him firsthand.) Benedict has gone on record as having said that the only things he is truly proud of in his life are his sons and his first book.



He took part in the 2007 edition of the U.K. Series Celebrity Big Brother, finishing third. The winner that year was Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, who encountered a degree of racism from some of the female housemates, but who Dirk found completely captivating. (The actress, who seems to be a lightning rod for controversy, is the same one who was involved in the Richard Gere debacle during which he kissed her publicly, leading to a firestorm of anger.)



Benedict's lifelong love of cigars (something that seems at great odds with his otherwise healthy lifestyle!) came full circle when he accepted the role of Lieutenant Columbo in a 2010 London production of the stage play Prescription: Murder. The material was the basis for the long-running Peter Falk detective series Columbo. He also made a brief appearance at the tail end of the 2010 movie, The A-Team, one of the countless updates/remakes of old television shows that have clogged movie theaters in recent years. His original part was played this time by Bradley Cooper.



Dirk Benedict rode a rollercoaster of personal and professional ups and downs. He worked through an ugly family tragedy to excel at his chosen craft, then was cut down by the threat of cancer. Coming back to work again, and finding great success, he then found himself the single parent of two children and the unexpected father of a grown man. Through it all, he kept his rogue-ish sense of humor and his optimistic outlook. In The Underworld, of course, he is prized mostly for that cute face and captivating body. Thus, we end this tribute with a few more shots of them!

Stand-Up Comics

If you've been wading through the waters of The Underworld for a long time now, you know that I periodically do a little feature on classic comic book covers, ones that I find either amusing for some reason or that feature stars I like or that I happen to find appealing in some way (or feel that maybe one of my readers will enjoy.) In my many travels through the worldwide web, I come across these things from time to time and stick them away for a future grouping. I very well may have come to the end of this sojourn (which may delight some people out there who are sick to death of hearing about them!), but I do have enough for a third go 'round! Some of these shows are repeats, but not the covers themselves.



I have long sung the praises of these vintage comic books, sometimes dotting my tributes with them, not so much for the (often pedestrian) art and storytelling inside), but because they offer a wonderful chance to own a keepsake of a favorite celebrity, TV show or movie. Often, the photographic cover is a rare picture that is difficult to find elsewhere. Look at this vivid cover featuring Chuck Conners and his TV son Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman.



Take this comic book based on the popular series Bewitched. Made during the earliest stages of that show, it clearly plays up the supernatural, almost scary, aspect of the (then) black & white program. It's a far cry from the colorful, campy, light-hearted product that the show eventually morphed into. How can anyone not love that shot of Agnes Moorehead's imposing face?





Less imposing (I guess!) is this shot of Miss Eve Arden. Known to millions of younger fans for her role as the school principal in Grease, she was, prior to that, an indispensable feature film supporting actress (in Mildred Pierce, to name only one) and then the star of her own television situation comedy, Our Miss Brooks.







The show first saw life as a radio program in 1948. Shirley Booth and Lucille Ball were considered for it first before Arden was signed. A big hit from the start, it was adapted for TV in 1952 and ran through 1956. Then a feature film version was put together in which Miss Brooks was finally married to her longtime object of affection Mr. Boynton, a fellow teacher. This particular comic book even gives readers a photographic backstory page that makes sure they understand the premise of the series prior to reading, making it even more fun and collectable!





The portraiture of actors and actresses on these covers is one thing that gives certain issues special meaning to collectors. Look at the striking shot of Jonathan Frid (as Barnabas Collins) on this issue devoted to Dark Shadows. The mysterious, gothic soap opera amassed a sizeable cult following during its relatively brief five-year run. Note, too, the ornately carved handle on Frid's walking stick. When the series was revamped for prime-time TV years later, there was another round of comic books issued.



Back when comics were big, westerns were big, too. It was rare for a western series to not be represented in comic form, for one issue at least. These gave young fans a great opportunity to have pictures of their favorite cowboy heroes (in color, too, when so many shows were in black & white.) Nowadays, they give fans of good-looking cowboys and wranglers a chance to see them in their prime. Wagon Train ran for eight seasons and included several shifts in the regular cast over the years. This shot (I believe from season seven) has a nice shot of Robert Fuller's trousers (which couldn't get too much “fuller!”)



I all but worship Clint Walker, but I prefer him with some more meat on him than he displayed in the early seasons of his hit series Cheyenne. This shot is from his lean days, but I'm including it because it shows a surprising bit of crotchery. (Yes, I made that word up!) I also like the caption, “It was a different kind of MANHUNT, with Bodie the hunted.” Indeed, many men had been after Walker during his heydey, but he seems to have escaped their grasp (most of 'em anyway!)



During Walker's contract dispute with Warner Brothers, a couple of other cowpokes were brought in to fill up the missing space. One of them, Bronco, was played by Ty Hardin (who is profiled elsewhere here) and the other was Sugarfoot, played by Will Hutchins. Hutchins was not my type, per se, but he definitely had (and has) fans out there. Hutchins' time in the sun was relatively brief and by the early '70s he was playing unbilled pit parts. For four years in the late '60s, he was Carol Burnett's brother-in-law (married to the “real” Chrissie, who was played in a fashion on The Carol Burnett Show by Vicki Lawrence.) In time, he became a professional clown (!) and made only the most sporadic appearances as an actor. Still with us today, he is eighty-one as of this writing.



You know, I have always wanted to like The Lone Ranger, but I just can't seem to get there. I love his li'l blue outfit and this particular cover shot is pretty, but somehow the popular series always winds up leaving me kind of cold. One of these days, I'm going to get around to seeing the horrifically dismal feature film redux The Legend of the Lone Ranger with Klinton Spilsbury. I have a feeling its hapless ineptitude will appeal to my love of bad movies.



This comic book based on the TV western Laramie gives folks a chance to see actor John Smith. Born Robert Van Orden, he was a client of notorious talent agent Henry Willson, who gave most of his young, male clients snappy new names like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Dack Rambo, Rad Fulton and so on. When it came to Van Orden's turn, Willson was almost fresh out of ideas and, instead, pendulumed the opposite way, giving him the most generic name ever, John Smith! This resulted in a certain amount of publicity in its own right, though. A Native American named Pocahontas Crowfoot was in attendance when he signed the papers to change his name and he also got mileage at Thanksgiving with publicity pictures in line with his pilgrim-ish moniker. Like a lot of his peers, his screen career petered out in the mid-'70s. Smith passed away of cirrhosis in 1995 at the age of sixty-three. Shown with him is Robert Fuller, from the aforementioned Wagon Train. It's surprising that Laramie isn't a more popular western in reruns (especially given the anatomically correct pants shown on this eye-opening DVD cover, from Smith in particular!) I'd rather see some of it than the never-ending Bonanza and Gunsmoke currently running (and re-running) on TV(Waste)Land.



Speaking of tight pants, check out Lee Majors' on this cover from one of the few The Big Valley comic books. This was my own favorite western for a variety of reasons. I did a tribute to it way back in the early days of The Underworld (before I started doing posts that rambled on and on and ON!) Likewise, there's a tribute to Majors himself here, which can be found by clicking on his name in the column to the right.







One of TV westerns' most beautiful men ever was the tan, tightly-packed Robert Conrad of The Wild, Wild West. Every issue of that show's series of comic books cruelly places a block of verbiage over his crotch. This one is the same as the rest, but at least we get a nice view of that amazing, tan, chiseled face. You can find further info on Mr. Conrad by clicking on his name to the right as well. In his day, he was one very stunning specimen!





Segueing from cowboys to the Indian front, we move to film and to young Sal Mineo as White Bull in the Disney movie Tonka. Mineo, who was nearing twenty at the time of this film, but was able to stave off aging for quite a while thanks to his inherently youthful looks and build, played a brave whose love for a horse coincides with General Custer's conflict with the Sioux. Ultimately, the Battle of the Little Big Horn comes about with both Mineo and his horse coming into play.



Eve Arden and Sal Mineo are hardly the only movie stars to appear on the cover of a comic book. Many times, major stars can be found in this area whether they were on the way up at the time or, perhaps, on the way down. One who was entering the twilight years of his career was Robert Taylor. Once the dashing love interest of Greta Garbo and a major movie star in his own right, he eventually turned to TV as a means of keeping himself employed (his ex-wife Barbara Stanwyck had done the same with her own anthology series and, later, The Big Valley.) This cover is from his moderately successful show The Detectives. If I were going to watch it, I'd want to do so in the second season when future Lost in Space star Mark Goddard was in the cast or the season after when a pre-Batman Adam West came on board as well.



A star who was on the up (up and away!) is Sally Field. She'd been starring in Gidget, which was prematurely cancelled before anyone realized just how popular she and the show were, and next rushed into The Flying Nun. To her dismay, Nun was a hit as well and ran longer than Gidget, making her something of a joke for a time thanks to its goofy premise. It wasn't until she won an Oscar (or perhaps, two, according to her own feelings) that she corrected her career trajectory and become an accomplished actress.



Popular TV shows were great fodder for comic books, especially ones that appealed to youth. When you consider the enduring fame of The Brady Bunch, it's really surprising that there weren't more editions published. I know of only two! Surely, the simple stories performed on the show could have translated into more books. This one has a rather fun publicity portrait on the cover, taken from the earliest days of the series' production, but there's a glaring error on it. Indicative of how meagerly known the child actors were at the time, Christopher Knight (who played Peter) and Mike Lookinland (who played Bobby) have each other's names placed next to them! Also, note Bobby Brady's dark wig, intended to drive home the fact that the boys were all related... God forbid that one's hair is lighter than the other two!



Another family show from that same period (as a matter of fact, it was scheduled in between The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family!) is Nanny and the Professor. Juliet Mills and The Big Valley's Richard Long starred in the show, with one of the three children being little Kim Richards. Richards would later grow up to be one of the hot mess ladies starring on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with her sister Kyle, who had also been a child actress. The show has devoted fans even now, though it only managed to last for 54 episodes stretched across three different television seasons when it first aired.



A more topical program from that same era was Room 222, running from 1969 to 1974. (It eventually took over Nanny and the Professor's time slot, nestled between Bunch and Partridge) The quartet depicted on this cover stayed with the show for all five of its seasons with the show, Michael Constantine and Karen Valentine all winning Emmys in 1970. The high school setting allowed for a gallery of characters to rotate in and out while facing a myriad of social and political problems. Miss Valentine became almost as famous for her appearances on Hollywood Squares, cracking up at everything Paul Lynde said, as she did for her work here. (Strangely, she seemed to disappear entirely, long before one might expect such a performer to, with only the rarest of TV guest shots since the dawn of the 1990s.)



Richard Chamberlain as young, idealistic Dr. Kildare was a major player in early '60s TV, but not to be forgotten was the alternative Ben Casey. A slightly older, more combative and more hirsute figure, Casey (as portrayed by husky Vince Edwards) was decidedly more intense than Kildare. Both shows premiered around the same time and lasted just about as long as each other (from 1961 to 1966.) Pertaining to nothing, why does it bother me that Miss Ackerman spelled her name Bettye?



Fantasy shows translated very well to the form, too. There have been countless issues of Star Trek comic books made from a variety of publishers. I like this cover the best because, unlike so many others, it includes the entire primary cast (the ladies, in particular, never seemed to make the cover of the issues that featured photographs.) I can never say enough about how much I loved these original costumes/uniforms and how unaccepting I've been of virtually any others that have come down the pike since! I think I mentioned in a long ago post how, as a bored (and warped) sixteen year-old working the dining room attendant shift at Wendy's (back when such a thing existed!), I would picture the diners in these uniforms, deciding which color and style would best suit each person! HA!



Another very colorful and adventuresome (yet fun) science-fiction show was Land of the Giants. All about seven people and a dog stuck on a planet where everything was similar to Earth except that the inhabitants were ginormous (and often very threatening and dangerous), it was produced by Irwin Allen. Here, years before MacGyver, Don Marshall seems to be creating something out of a thimble and an aerosol spray can. Meanwhile, hunky leader Gary Conway poses next to a huge pocketwatch. The two-season show boasted a different, bouncy, John Williams theme song for each year it was on and I dearly love both of them.



My Favorite Martian was a sitcom that starred Ray Walston (of Damn Yankees! and South Pacific fame) as a man from Mars with extraordinary powers who finds himself stranded on Earth and passes himself off as the uncle of Los Angeles newspaper reporter Bill Bixby. The caption on this amusing comic book says “A real live Martian visits Earth and out-of-this-world things begin to happen” (such as being mounted from behind by a guy in a navy blue suit while a trio of soldiers looks on?? Sounds hot!)



Bixby went on later to star in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (the show itself being based on a prior movie that starred Glenn Ford and Ron Howard.) At the wonderful blog Stirred, Straight Up, with a Twist, there is a follower who delights in answering most any “Guess Who?” question with the response “Helen Twelvetrees.” Likewise, I have a friend who tends to toss out the name Miyoshi Umecki at the drop of virtually any showbiz trivia question. Thus, I couldn't resist posting this cover, which prominently features Miss Umecki.



Though it wouldn't be long before comic adaptations of TV shows fell out of favor (only to be resuscitated years later with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the trend did continue through the late '70s with Happy Days. The primary cast is shown here with Henry Winkler's The Fonz taking center stage. Back in the day, Fonzie seemed so cool. Looking at the show now during an occasional rerun, Mr. Winkler often comes off as one of the least cool things I have ever witnessed! Thank goodness he is surrounded on the show by comparative buffoons so that he can at least come off in a better light than they often do. Also, you can see the oncoming lack of charm and quality in the cover art as the classic era of comic tie-ins was drawing to a close.



Back to the movies for a bit, I give you the comic version of John Paul Jones, starring Mr. Robert Stack, the first of several epic films made by producer Samuel Bronston. I'm going to be watching this movie for the first time pretty soon as it is recorded on my DVR. It is there chiefly because Miss Bette Davis has a role in the film (as Catherine the Great.) Seeing as it is a two and a half-hour motion picture, I'd love to know how they whittled it all down into a single issue comic. I may be checking in again later with an update on the film once I've seen it.



Another lengthy film that I saw once long ago and doubt that I will subject myself to again anytime soon is The Happiest Millionaire. An all-star cast that included the promising cast of Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, Geraldine Page (!), Gladys Cooper, Lesley Ann Warren, Hermione Baddeley and John Davidson was rendered nearly unwatchable by the over-the-top antics and presence of Tommy Steele, a bouncing, braying Brit whose personality (an acquired taste to be sure, that I have yet to develop) soiled a few musicals in the 1960s. This one laid an egg upon release despite being the last personally overseen movie of studio founder Walt Disney.



You never know just who you will see on the cover of a vintage comic book. Why, here “I” am, Poseidon, Ruler of The Underworld, threatening the hell out of the Argos in the adaptation of the adventure movie Jason and the Argonauts! Ha ha! If you've gotta go, I guess there are worse ways than by a wet, shirtless, hairy-chested, salt 'n pepper daddy with an axe to grind.









More hysterical is this copy of David and Goliath, a 1960 Italian feature that boasted Orson Welles in a supporting role (with top-billing) as King Saul. Someone named Ivica Pajer played David while a person who went by the name Kronos (actually real-life circus giant Aldo Pedinotti) portrayed Goliath. Get a load of that hideous, fake muscle suit that he's wearing!! Interestingly, Pajer went on a couple of decades later to play Meryl Streep's father in Sophie's Choice... Folks, there is no other world like the world of show business.



Movie adaptations continue to this day, though comic books have changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. More traditional was this tie-in to the cinematic version of Annie (haplessly directed by a dispassionate John Huston), though it eschews a photo cover for illustration. I always wish for people to click to enlarge all applicable photos at The Underworld (for some unknown reason, those that are “centered” in the posts do not enlarge, but all others usually do), but in this case I demand it. Look at the ungodly shitty artwork offered up in the depiction of Sandy the dog! Someone basically chose a human face with hair on it, like Star Wars' Chewbacca, in lieu of a golden retriever or whatever type of canine Sandy was in the movie!! This Sandy looks more like Burl Ives or something. How tacky!



Our tour of vintage comic books is going to end on what I consider to be a high note. Perhaps I'll make believers of you yet! One of the most common subjects from the movies to be covered in comic strip form is that of Tarzan the Ape Man. Though Johnny Weissmuller is the actor most closely identified with the character, he was rarely, if ever, depicted on the cover of a comic book. By the time it became commonplace to use pictures on the covers, he'd departed the role. Here, we have the primary TV Tarzan, Ron Ely, trimly tied to a tree and perhaps about to be rescued by his loyal chimpanzee pall Cheeta.



Before Ely had taken on the role for TV, Denny Miller and, more importantly, Mike Henry had played the role in the movies, but they never made it on to comic covers for some reason. Their predeccessor, Gordon Scott, did though. Scott was one of the most muscular and stocky Tarzan's, but a very handsome one. (He was also the onetime husband of Miss Vera Miles!) It's not hard to picture him in this shot sitting naked in his little grass hut!





He was actually quite tall at 6'3”, but, strangely, seemed to come off shorter than that on film and in still photos. One reason could be that, unlike many of his fellow Tarzan's, Scott was frequently photographed in a crouching position and tended to be shot from below. Maybe because he was so broad, carrying all those thick muscles, it made him look less lanky, as 6'4” Ely certainly did.





One benefit of having Scott depicted crouching and from below was the great glimpses we sometimes got of his behind. In this cover, his ass is practically bare! No wonder someone held on to this issue for all time and kept it in such stellar condition. While I certainly appreciate Scott and most of his fellow Tarzans, my own personal favorite is Weissmuller's immediate successor, Lex Barker.







To most people, Barker may not have been the best Tarzan, either in acting or authenticity, but, for my money, he was the most beautiful. That face! He looked stunning from practically any angle. I never, ever tire of looking at his sleek, classic features. Of all the comic book Tarzans, Barker appeared on the most covers.





Some of his pictures were beautiful, some flattering, some sexy, but there were more than a few that were corny or even bordering on humiliating! Look at the coy, hilariously affectionate way he embraces Cheeta in this one. Not to mention it was rather rare in the staid early '50s to show this much male skin. No wonder he ran into severe type-casting issues when he finally vacated the role. A movie to Germany in the late '50s led to major stardom there. But we will end this post with some of his Tarzan covers, the glorious and the goofy. Do enlarge them in order to fully appreciate his handsomeness!