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Shazam!
Captain Marvel Panel with Roy Thomas, Jackson Bostwick at Big Apple Comic Con
Captain Zorikh hosts the panel "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Captain Marvel" with Roy Thomas, Jackson Bostwick, and Richard Lee at the Big Apple Comic Con, March 11, 2017 in NYC. In this discussion Thomas (From Marvel & DC Comics) and Bostwick (from the TV show "Shazam!") discuss their parallel histories with the Captain Marvels with which they were involved.
It's all here and we want to hear from you on what you think of the episode. Write us as ShazamIsisPodcast@gmail.com.
Jackson Bostwick will be appearing this weekend of August 7th, 2021 at Eternal Con in Long Island, New York. He will be doing a Q&A on Saturday at noon in the main room and will be available for autograph and photo opportunities. Click on the image to take you to their webpage.
With the conclusion of our reviews of DC Comics' 1977 run of The Mighty Isis comic series, we're proud to present our interview with The Mighty Isis writer Jack C. Harris. Harris talks with us about how he got the assignment to write the book, the abrupt cancellation, and his plans with the series had it moved forward. Plus, we talk Kamandi and Captain Marvel in this all new episode.
Jack C. Harris was born in 1947. He received a B.F.A. from the Philadelphia University of the Arts. He began working in comic books as an assistant editor at DC Comics. He went on to become a comic book writer and editor, working for DC Comics and later Marvel Comics, among others. He taught History of the American Comic Book at Philadelphia College of Art from 1973-1975. In the early 1980s, he was the Art Director for Licensing International Magazine, and in 1985 he became its Managing Editor. From 1985 through 1992 he wrote books, primarily children's books. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the early 1990s to write The Ray series with Joe Quesada. He is currently an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY.
Episode 29
Radames Pera
From Grasshopper to the Prairie, actor Radames Pera performed in a number of iconic 70s television. He joins us in this special episode giving us a look at how his career all began with a chance encounter with the director of a movie his mother, actress Lisa Pera, was trying out for. From there, he went on to appear in shows such as Medical Center, The Rookies, Night Gallery and many, many more. He talks about his time as Grasshopper on Kung Fu and the adoptive son of Mr. Edwards on Little House on the Prairie. Also, he shares his memories of his appearance on "Fool's Gold" on Shazam!
Radames Perá (born September 14, 1960) is an American former actor best known for his role as "Grasshopper" the student Kwai Chang Caine in the 1972–1975 television series Kung Fu. He is the only living regular cast member from the show.
Radames serves as a member of A Minor Consideration, a non-profit organization formed to give guidance to young performers, past, present, and future.
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Just before we begin our review of The Secrets of Isis, we have the opportunity to sit down with the man who played Rick Mason on the series. Actor Brian Cutler talks with us about his career, his time on the show, how he was the first one cast, and The Actor's Studio he runs today.
Brian Cutler was born in Los Angeles; he has been involved in the entertainment industry for over 60 years. He has had an extensive career in theatre, film, and television, including starring in the hit series The Secrets of ISIS and co-starring in Emergency, The Long Hot Summer, and Young Lawyers. Brian has guest starred on over 100 major television shows and appeared in over 200 national commercials. He has been teaching film, television and commercial acting technique to both beginners and professionals for over 40 years.
Jack McCulloch was a character actor who appeared in television and movies throughout the 70s and into the early 80s. He has the distinction of being there for the start of Happy Days, by appearing in the pilot episode and playing a solider in the final season of M*A*S*H. In addition, he appeared in such movies as The California Kid and The Big Red One.
Jack played Vinnie, the leader of the vultures in the two-part season finale of Shazam!'s first season. After appearing in M*A*S*H, Jack walked away from Hollywood in 1982 and opened a business that specializes in wide width shoes - McCulloch's Wide Shoes. His store features tributes to Hollywood and many cone from far and wide, not just to buy shoes, but to see his museum-like store.
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Our series of interviews continues as we near the start of our reviews of the first season of The Secrets of Isis. Joining us for this episode is actress, dancer, teacher Joanna Pang Atkins who played Cindy Lee on the first season of the show. Joanna talks about her career leading up to her her on the show, her memories of the episodes and her co-stars, and her career following her departure.
Joanna Pang Atkins has a unique perspective gained from a fascinating lifetime of experience. Since she was a young girl, Joanna has traveled the world over, performing as an actress and dancer on stage, television and film. As a natural progression, she began producing and directing theater for teens and now brings her experience into schools with multi-cultural dance assemblies and residencies.
From her starring role as a teenage idol on CBS’ top-rated children's showThe Secrets of ISIS, which recently came out on dvd, Joanna's TV appearances have varied as widely as Saturday Night Live, numerous daytime soap operas, The Lawrence Welk Show, and dozens of TV commercials.
Joanna's stage performances have taken her throughout the country, touring in well-known musicals including West Side Story, South Pacific, Music Man, and The King and I, as well as close to home in the world premiere production of Sayonara at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. Performing with an Asian touring dance company carried her to the far reaches of Europe, South America, Canada and the U.S.A.
Her professional teaching background is in dance, ranging from ballet to jazz to folk. She teaches all ages from kindergarten through adult. Her special rapport with children has her teaching them on TV and as far afield as California studios, a school in Budapest, and right at home in New Jersey. At many schools, Joanna’s multi-cultural dance residencies have become an annual tradition. For over ten years, she has also been a teaching artist for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC).
In addition to her own performing, Joanna has traveled extensively with her husband, Dick Atkins, a producer and writer of television and feature films, and their son Davy, to movie locations from Los Angeles, Georgia and Vermont in the U.S., to Africa, Budapest, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Joanna’s biography has been published in Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who of American Women.
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Pamelyn Ferdin (born February 4, 1959) is an American former television and film child actor who grew up in Glendale, California, where she attended Herbert Hoover High School, graduating in 1977. She was mainly active both in live action and as a voice actress in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but has since appeared more sporadically in recent films, concentrating more on animal rights activism than acting.
Ferdin played the Bumsteads' daughter Cookie in the 1968–1969 CBS revival series Blondie. She played Felix Unger's daughter Edna in the 1970s ABC series version of The Odd Couple and Paul Lynde's daughter Sally on the short-lived The Paul Lynde Show.
She appeared on the original Star Trek in 1968 as one of a group of orphaned children led by an alien with sinister motives in the episode "And the Children Shall Lead", and in the 1977 series Space Academy as Laura Gentry.[1]
Ferdin provided the voice of Lucy van Pelt in three Peanuts cartoons: the 1969 TV special It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown, a 1969 feature film A Boy Named Charlie Brown and the 1971 TV special Play It Again, Charlie Brown.
She appeared as Mary Constable in the supernatural thriller Daughter of the Mind and as Abby Clarkson in The Mephisto Waltz (1971). Other films include The Reluctant Astronaut, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, The Christine Jorgensen Story, Happy Birthday Wanda June, and The Toolbox Murders. Pamelyn was a frequent guest star on episodic television in the 1960s and 1970s, with appearances on Bewitched, Green Acres, The Andy Griffith Show, Branded, Daniel Boone, Custer, The Monkees, The Flying Nun, Gunsmoke, Shazam!, The High Chaparral, Mannix, The Brady Bunch, Family Affair, Love, American Style, Marcus Welby, M.D., Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Apple's Way, The Streets of San Francisco, Baretta, CHiPS, and 240-Robert.
Her character "Amy" in The Beguiled (1971) turns against the Clint Eastwood character after he kills her pet turtle.[citation needed]
She voiced Fern Arable, the little girl who works to save the life of Wilbur the pig, in the 1973 film version of Charlotte's Web. [2][3][4][citation needed]
She has been married to Dr. Jerry William Vlasak Jr. since Oct. 12th, 1986.
Links
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We present a new interview in our series with those who were a part of making it happen. And this time around, we have the man himself, Michael Gray, who played Billy Batson on Shazam! Michael talks with us about his career, his time on Shazam! including his favorite episodes, his dealing with typecasting and how it is so different for actors playing hero types today, and his comeback starting with an appearance on Archer.
Good looks and a couple of television roles helped to give actor Michael Gray many years in between and on the covers of Tiger Beat magazine. Born in Chicago, Michael moved to Florida when he was a young boy.
He caught the acting bug in high school, and eventually made his way to Hollywood. In 1972, Michael won the role of Ronnie on the NBC series The Little People, a charming sitcom that starred Brian Keith as a pediatrician with a practice on Oahu, Hawaii. The series was reworked for the second season and retitled The Brian Keith Show, and Michael was let go.
Signed to a management deal with Charles Laufer, pubisher of "Tiger Beat," Michael was able to keep a high profile while rounding up other acting roles. Michael's second series came in 1974, when he was cast in his signature role, as Billy Batson on the Saturday morning series Shazam. The series ran for 3 years but was then cancelled due to increasing production costs.
Some of Michael's other credits include:
Life with Father Entertainment Tonight
Room 222 MTV's - I Love the 70's
The Brady Bunch E Television, Life After Stardom
Marcus Welby M.D. The Rretro Radio Live Show
The Flying Nun VH1 - Superheros, Where Are
Dynasty They Now?
Although Michael Gray had all the tools one would expect to be necessary to build a sturdy career, due to type casting it became harder for him to make
a living at his craft.
The ever youthful Michael Gray is happily married and living in Northern California. He is currently writing a book about his life in Hollywood.
Links
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The first in our series of interviews with those who worked on Shazam! and/or Isisstarts with author Donald F. Glut. Donald is the writer of the first season Shazam! episode, "The Brain". Donald talks with us about how the episode came about, why he never wrote for Shazam! after his highly rated episode aired, and about his near opportunity to work with Jackson Bostwick on another iconic character.
DONALD F. GLUT has been professionally active in both the entertainment and publishing industries since 1966.
Born in Pecos, Texas, Don grew up in Chicago, IL. At age nine, already bitten by the film-making “bug,” he made Diplodocus at Large, the first of 41 amateur movies featuring dinosaurs, human monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Teenage Werewolf, etc.) and superheroes (Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, etc.) Some of these films made during the late 1960s (e.g., Spy Smasher vs. the Purple Monster) were eventually shown in theatres and on TV.
Moving to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, Don professionally entered show business as an “extra” (a POW) in the movie Von Ryan’s Express (1965), the first of several such “roles.” He began his professional writing career in 1966, writing articles for and finally editing the magazine Modern Monsters. In 1967, after graduating from the University of Southern California with a BA degree (for Cinema) in Letters, Arts and Sciences, Don worked as a musician, singer and songwriter in The Penny Arkade, a rock band produced by “Monkee” Michael Nesmith. Shortly after that he briefly furthered his acting career, having a speaking role in a national television commercial starring Dick Clark.
However, most of Don’s professional life has been as a freelance writer. To date he has authored numerous motion picture and television scripts (Shazam!, Land of the Lost, and animation, e.g., Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, Transformers, G.I.Joe, Duck Tales, Jonny Quest, X-Men, others), comic-book scripts (Captain America, Tarzan, etc., including creating for Gold Key Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor and Tragg and the Sky Gods), more than 35 novels and nonfiction books, also numerous short stories, articles, songs, album-liner notes, etc. The Dinosaur Dictionary(1972) and Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia (1997), two of Don’s many non-fiction books about dinosaurs, both were listed by the American Library Association among the best reference books of their years of publication. With The Dinosaur Dictionary Don created the much-imitated book format based upon an alphabetical listing of dinosaur names. Perhaps Don is best known for his novelization of the movie The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the nation’s No. 1 bestseller for almost two months, which to date (still in print) has sold over 3.5 million copies. In 1982 he created characters and back story for Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe” toy line. Among his more recent books is Chomper, an entry in the popular “Dinotopia” series.
Don produced, wrote and directed various videos (including the documentaries Dinosaur Movies and Hollywood Goes Ape! and the music-video compilation Dinosaur Tracks®), theatre and movie projects. He has worked as a consultant on numerous other video, film and TV projects, and was “Dinosaur Consultant” on Roger Corman’s movie Carnosaur (1993).
In 1990, Don and Pete Von Sholly founded Fossil Records, which has already produced a half dozen albums. These include Dinosaur Tracks®, More Dinosaur Tracks® and Dinosaur Tracks® Again, featuring paleontology-related rock music written mostly by Don (Dinodon Music/BMI), performed by Don and Pete (as the Iridium Band).
More recently, Don became president of Frontline Entertainment (www.frontlinefilms.com), for which he wrote, directed and co-produced the comedy/fantasy motion picture Dinosaur Valley Girls™, followed by a series of campy/sexy/horror movies, which have already achieved “cult movie” status, and Before La Brea, a documentary commissioned by the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles. In 2000, he was commissioned by Irena Belle Productions to direct the movie The Vampire Hunters Club, featuring an all-star genre cast.
In addition to his entertainment and publishing fields work, Glut is known internationally for his work with dinosaurs (see http://www.donglutsdinosaurs.com to see Don's "prehistoria" collection), a subject he has been seriously interested in since the age of seven. He has lectured on dinosaurs at museums, universities and other institutions in the USA and Europe, and often appears on TV and radio talk shows, and in videos, discussing dinosaurs, monster movies and other topics. Regularly he speaks at seminars for actors. In 1999 and 2000, respectively, he became a volunteer at both The Field Museum (Chicago) and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Among Don’s many interests are paleontology (obviously), movies (especially the older horror films, Westerns, serials and film noir), science fiction and fantasy, music (playing and listening), comic books, motorcycles, reptiles, stage magic, electric trains, the Three Stooges, Jackie Gleason, old-fashioned amusement parks and side shows, partying and “holy relics."
Learn even more about Donald by visting his website - http://www.donaldfglut.com/
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We start off the podcast by sharing a Roundtable episode of The Chronic Rift. In it, Shazam star Jackson Bostwick talks about his time on the classic Saturday morning series. He gets into how he was hired, how he did many of his own stunts, and how he ultimately left the series as the second season was starting.
The actor says his audition was a very low-pressure situation. "I had just signed with a commercial agent, and a week later he sent me out on an interview. I thought it was for a Captain Marvel cereal, like Captain Crunch, because he was a commercial agent. So, I went out there in a white T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, thinking it was a general cattle call at Filmation Studios. They had done the Lone Ranger cartoon, which was their big claim to fame before Shazam! I walked in and met the producer, Bob Chenault. Bob told me later that he knew when he heard my voice and saw my smile that I would be their Captain Marvel. I didn't realize that they had been looking for more than four months! They had narrowed it down to four people, and had gone from actors who were athletes to athletes who were actors. Now they were back to actors who were athletes."
Bostwick approached the role of Captain Marvel in much the same way that his friend, legendary actor Clayton Moore, approached the Lone Ranger. "Being a fan of the Lone Ranger, I wanted to give the kids something to lookup to like Clay gave me to look up to. And I hope I did that. I know how critical kids are, and I wanted to make sure I was presenting myself right, and not putting my hands on my hips and preaching to them.
Bostwick has always been inclined toward the arts, ever since childhood in Alabama, where he was also a comic book reader. His favorite? Captain Marvel, of course! "Captain Marvel was always a hero of mine when I was growing up with comics. My mother, God love her, threw out all my comics when I went to college, thinking she was doing me a favor. The would be worth a fortune today.
The actor still reports that he's still recognized today for his role in Shazam! "Most of the time it's, "I know I've seen him--no, you ask him!" And once they find out, then everybody knows! It loosens them up. Then it's "I knew you looked familiar!" My dad told me that he knew I was doing all right when they went to the country club and it was no longer "Dr. & Mrs. Bostwick," but "Captain Marvel's mom and dad..."