Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       This week is a full matinee from the '30s on an alternate Earth, replete with a cartoon, a comedy short, a serial, a trailer and the main attraction.  CARTOON The video for "The Ghost of Stephen Foster" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers was made to look like an old Max and Dave Fleischer cartoon. It directly references the Betty Boop cartoon of "Minnie the Moocher" and "Bimbo's Initiation".  COMEDY SHORT In 1991 Rob Reiner introduced six episodes of a television show called "Morton and Hayes". They were supposedly lost comedy shorts of Chick Morton and Eddie Hayes (played by Kevin Pollack and Bob Amaral). The shorts were played in the style of great comedy duos like Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy and the Three Stooges. SERIAL Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was Kerry Conran's love letter to the old serials. It was originally going to have cliffhangers and chapters with title cards.  TRAILER The fake trailer for ...

       I kept going back and forth on what design to use on the cover and I went first comic cover altered to be the pulp cover but I also loved Steranko's retro painting, so I decided to include that design here. I also included an alternate title page and an extra page of story, both with art from the 1940 Better Little Book of the Green Hornet. Let me know which design you prefer.

       Every once in a while, I will see an article or video about great pulp heroes. They will mention The Shadow, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, etc. Many times, the Green Hornet will be listed. He was on radio, in comics, serials and television but never had a pulp magazine. The Lone Ranger, who was created by the same people who created the Hornet, did have a pulp. This is my interpretation of what I think a Green Hornet pulp look like.

       On a forum some years ago, I asked if anyone would have wanted period appropriate music for the movie The Sting  instead of Ragtime music. Someone responded that since the music won an Academy Award for best score, it was ridiculous to consider anything else. I presume they were someone that had agreed with all of the Academy's choices but that's not me. I love the soundtrack to The Sting  but, you know me, I can't leave well enough alone.       Since the movie takes place in the 1930s, I tried to find a musician/composer who could fill the appropriate moods needed for the scenes. For the opening credits, instead of Joplin's "The Entertainer" I chose Django's "Are You in the Mood?", I substituted "Tears" for the track "Luther" where Hooker finds his partner had been murdered and the original end credits had the jaunty "Ragtime Dance" over which I replaced with Django's equally jaunty rendition of "Ava...