MAD TV

MAD Magazine is officially America's most popular "humor" comic/magazine with a picture of a gap-toothed moron on the
cover. It's also not very good. It's also occasionally not a magazine.

MAD's attempts to branch out into different areas of media have met with varied success. The books have always sold well, from the earliest paperbacks to the more recent themed compilations, but that's because they contain the best material from the magazines. Musically, MAD have included several flexi-discs with certain special issues containing original songs and sketches. One song, "It's A Gas" featuring several burps and farts, has become a firm favourite of Dr Demento's radio show, and another song, "Blind Date", was recently performed by Green Day specially for Rhino music's "MAD Grooves" album. Another inventive record was "The MAD Mystery Record", free with a Super Special in 1980, which contained eight grooves, each with a different ending to a story stating why it was a "Super Spectacular Day". The last free music disc was with MAD #350 and featured "It's A Gas", Green Day's "Blind Date", and BeeGees parody "Barely Alive", along with some classic (for which read "old") extracts from MAD Magazine on CD-ROM, a precursor of the "Totally MAD" CD-ROM collection, a set of seven discs which contain all the issues up to #376, plus Super Specials, records, bonuses, interviews with the Usual Gang Of Idiots, and Spy Vs. Spy animations from MAD TV.

Glad you asked. MAD TV (or MADTV, or Mad-TV, or MADtv, depending which television listings you read) was a television spin-off from the magazine, premiering on the Fox Network in October,1995 on Saturdays at eleven, just before Saturday Night Live started on a rival network. It was highly publicised at the time as the new comedy sketch show in the Monty Python/SNL tradition and starring a new generation of comic talent. MAD Magazine even bought out a Super Special to promote the series containing screengrabbed spooves from the series (the best of which being "Gump Fiction", an amalgam of the two big film hits of the year), brief jokey biographies of the cast, and some new MAD TV-related material from Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, et al. The series itself was not as good. None of MAD's regular writers (known collectively as the Usual Gang of Idiots) contributed to the script, apart from the occasional Spy Vs. Spy cartoon, and so the sketches usually came across as a cheap copy of Saturday Night Live, which of course the whole concept of the show was. Jokes tended to be more lazily topical than in its magazine counterpart, such as in a sketch where Bill Clinton and wife appeared on an edition of The Jerry Springer Show. The few attempts at parody (a television cop show called "Black And White", for example, where two cops were teamed up, one being a black woman who dressed in leather, the other being a male albino who only wore Randall and Hopkirk-style white suits) failed spectacularly, especially when compared to the brilliance of early Dick DeBartolo and Larry Seigel spooves. It, like Saturday Night Live, the show it tried so hard to emulate, has gone similarly downhill but in the space of around six weeks rather than twenty-five years. Thankfully, MAD Magazine have noticed this and are now taking the piss out of MAD TV as they would any other poorly-written comedy show. Fa fa fa.

The first time MAD really branched out into a full-blown media production occurred with 1966's off-Broadway production "The Mad Show", conceived by Marshall Barer and Mary Rodgers, daughter of Broadway composer Richard Rodgers. It was written by MAD spoofers Stan Hart and Larry Seigel, and additional lyrics were written by Stephen Sondheim under a pseudonym. According to "Completely MAD", an excellent history of the magazine written by Maria Reidelbach, "there were constant wild productions happening on the stage, which was filled with cut out figures of comic strip characters and blank word balloons upon which were projected one-liners ("Ronald Reagan call your agent" "In case of atomic attack the Hadassah meeting will be cancelled" "Goodnight David"). Actors crisscrossed the stage, changing costumes and characters, props appeared and disappeared - nothing stopped moving".

The show got good reviews and was very popular with the public, despite its odd performance times of three in the afternoon and midnight, and it ran for two successful years (and was followed to this day by several local updated productions) and made MAD a very profitable resource. Of course, Hollywood became Sid Caesar tells it as it is

interested, but a MAD-approved film had to be given the go-ahead by William Gaines, editor and founder of MAD Magazine, and so many screenplays were written but failed to take off simply because Gaines wouldn't give his approval. That was, until 1979 when a script was finally compiled called "The Mad Movie" which Gaines thought captured the essence of the magazine and, best of all, Warner Brothers had already agreed to make it. It was to be a sketch film in the style of the recent Kentucky Fried Movie, only with additional material from (and very probably starring) The Usual Gang of Idiots. Sadly, Warner pulled out, fearing the sketch format would prove too expensive. As a sort of apology, Warner Brothers offered William Gaines the chance to lend the magazine's name to a script already in production, to which Gaines agreed, to his later dismay. The film was called Up The Academy or, as it was later named, MAD Magazine Presents: Up The Academy or, as it was even later named after a costly lawsuit, Up The Academy again, and was directed by Robert Downey, "well-known for his work on Putney Swope and Greaser's Palace" according to the video box, but slightly more well-known for being the man to father Robert Downey Jr, who has a small uncredited walk-on in Up The Academy. MAD Magazine had minimal input into this production, other than lending its name to the title and placing the odd advert in MAD Magazine urging people to see it. As with MAD TV sixteen years later, none of the Usual Gang of Idiots were invited to contribute to the script, and the only concession to the magazine was the brief appearance of a boy in an Alfred E. Neuman mask at the beginning and end of the movie, with a large speech bubble containing his catchphrase: "What, Me Worry?". But Alfred E. Neuman would worry about their reputation when the movie was released. The film owed more to Animal House and Rock And Roll High School than The Lighter Side... and Spy Vs. Spy, and focussed on a group of no-good teens (including a young Ralph Macchio, pre-Karate Kid, as "Chooch") who are sent to Weinberg Military Academy, to be taught by Major Vaughn Liceman with his unappealing catchphrase of "Say it again!". So humiliated was Ron Leibman (the actor who portrayed Liceman) that he asked, and succeeded, to have his name taken off the picture. Other cast members with this crossed off their CVs include Mork And Mindy's Tom Poston as the school paedophile (turning up in students' rooms carrying a sack and stating "I was just on my way to the laundry, why don't you slip out of your little undershorts?"), Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargus as the soccer coach ("And for this I gave up being white!"), and Ringo Starr's wife and ex-Bond girl Barbara Bach as a weapons-handling, low-cut-top-wearing, cannabis-smoking, ludicrously sexy teacher. The film features a farting commandant, numerous drug references, characters who wet the bed, abortion jokes, the running catchphrase of "it makes you stand out like a turd in a punchbowl" (which comes to a conclusion with a shot of an actual turd in a punchbowl), and finally ends with a lacklustre soccer game between teachers and pupils, the prize being blackmail-friendly polaroids of the captains of each team in various sexual positions. William Gaines hated the film's change from the light-hearted Airplane!-style comedy script he read to the bad taste, gross-out movie it became. So much, in fact, that he sued Warners to have all references to his magazine removed from the film's video release. He won, to an extent, having to pay Warner Brothers thirty thousand dollars for the cost of re-editing the prints for video release. However, only some of the videos have all the references to Alfred E. Neuman (who also gets a "Special Thanks" credit) removed whilst others only remove all MAD references from the video's box, which is a very different thing altogether (Gaines later was given back some of his money from Warner Brothers for this anomaly). However, the video lost out, having to sacrifice a brilliant poster design by MAD veteran Jack Rickard.


Before Gaines' complaint...	...and after.

If it can be said that Up The Academy has a redeeming feature, it's the excellent seventies soundtrack full of American punk, with songs from Blondie, Cheap Trick, Blow-Up, Iggy And The Stooges, The Dwight Twilley Band, Eddie And The Hot Rods, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers, The Boomtown Rats, David Johansen, Cheeks, Sammy Hagar, Nick Lowe, The Babys, Pat Benatar, and The Kinks. That is, if it can be said that Up The Academy has a redeeming feature.

Proving that they still had a sense of humour, MAD Magazine came back at Warners in style when it did its own memorable two-page spoof on the movie in the style of their regular movie parodies ("MAD Magazine Resents: Throw Up The Academy", #218, one month after they published a full-page colour advert encouraging people to see the movie!). It was up to usual MAD standard: instead of the teens being punished by going to military school, they are punished by appearing in the film Up The Academy! It references Ron Leibman's attempts to take his name off the picture ("My agent said that appearing in this bomberoo would establish a name for myself in the motion picture biz." "And did it?" "Yeah! 'Schmuck!'"), and ends in magnificent fashion with memos from all involved in the spoof to editor Al Feldstein:

FROM THE DESK OF STAN HART: Dear Al, I quit! I can't in all conscience foist a satire of this turkey on an unsuspecting public! I've got to live with myself!
FROM THE BOARD OF ANGELO TORRES: Dear Al, I agree with what's his name! Besides, it's tough to draw while you're retching!
FROM THE DESK OF AL FELDSTEIN: Dear Bill, Must we do this picture? Why can't we just bury our garbage, and do a satire of a more deserving film?
FROM THE UNDERGROUND BUNKER OF BILL GAINES: Dear Al, All right, already! I'm sorry! I was wrong! I hate myself! Have you any idea what HELL it is to be stupid and fat at the same time?

In the middle of this two-page spread was a large statue of Alfred E. Neuman, crying, gun to his head, turkey on his hat, and with a plaque reading "What - Me Sorry!". It was to be the last time MAD would lend their name to another filmed project until the aforementioned MAD TV fifteen years later.

But one piece of MAD memorabilia seems to have been written out of MAD's official history: The MAD Magazine TV Special. In 1973, there was a half-hour animated "special" (essentially a pilot) produced for broadcast on American television when MAD Magazine was arguably at its peak in both its quality and its popularity. Much merchandising had already been created and was selling well, the most popular of these being the MAD board game, a Dick DeBartolo-devised spoof of Monopoly where the object of the game was to lose all your money faster than the other players. All the memorabilia of this time goes for much moolah to various collectors but the special hasn't been seen by anyone since its completion back in 1973 and then not by any members of the public. So what was the content of the pilot and why hasn't it been broadcast?

It stuck with the format of the then MAD Magazine more than any other spin-off has. It contains the traditional MAD features of a "MAD Interviews The... Of The Year" (usually the head of a not very popular corporation), MAD's "Academy Awards" feature (where normal people would receive the appreciation normally only reserved for actors), a "MAD Peek Behind The Scenes...", a movie parody, Prohias' popular Spy Vs. Spy cartoon strip, an extract from Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side...", and several ridiculous Don Martin cartoons.

The show starts with a brief glimpse into a romanticised version of the MAD building, where silly sketches occur behind every window, a teaser for what will happen later in the show. After a proposed commercial break, we're into the first of our sketches, as Howard K. Bluntley meets MAD's Auto Manufacturer Of The Year, the amusingly-named Edsel Lemmon. Slightly cut down from the magazine version, it tries hard to retain the viewer's interest despite just being a compilation of broken car jokes one after the other held together with the slimmest of premises. In the magazine, this was fine: the more jokes per page and the looser the plot the better, but on television it fails to keep the interest sustained for its four and a half minutes running time, mainly because most of the jokes aren't good enough to keep the viewer watching through to it's uninteresting and unoriginal punchline. A funnier article with some clever re-writing for television would have been a better choice to open the show here.

The animation of the two lead characters is very odd. In an attempt to remain faithful to artist George Woodbridge's drawings (which look fine when still) the animators have tried to retain the angles and settings of his original panels, making the people walk and move very jerkily, reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera's Star Trek animated series. People never animate realistically on a tight budget unless they're over-the-top cartoony caricatures like Fred Flintstone or Homer Simpson. As if to prove this, the blobby, rubber-faced Don Martin characters that feature in the next segment look as if they were designed specially for this Special, even though they appeared in MAD two years previously.

After Don Martin's piece of bathtub silliness, we have a look at some "MAD X-Rayvings". For those not familiar with the piece in the magazine, "X-Rayvings" are what goes on behind closed doors in everyday life. The article lends itself to a moving format suprisingly well, showing a bit of imagination in the animation. In the magazine, the "in-front" and "behind" elements of the pictures are seen at once. On TV, the "behind" section only emerges a few seconds after the viewers had a good chance to get familiar with the "in-front" situation. It also looks great, its style heavily borrowed from Bob Clarke's original sketches for the magazine.

Next up, the late David Berg's "The Lighter Side..." makes an obligatory appearance, represented by only one strip out of fourteen from "The Lighter Side Of Transportation". Berg's self-based hypochondriac character Roger Kaputnik gets a mention, if only as the name of a trailer park. The "camera angles" of the strip are followed exactly but not Berg's style, as no people are seen close-up. Actually, maybe that's why this strip was chosen: because the animators couldn't recreate Berg's style of drawing people and so chose one which solely featured cars and trailers. Seems unlikely, however, as the animators could capture Don Martin's style exactly, as proved with the next cartoon, a sublime piece of Don Martin silliness which works so well in animation you imagine it was written specially for the screen.

A thought: maybe the fact that they couldn't emulate the artist's pen-and-ink work to their own style of animation could be the reason for the absence of any contribution from Sergio Aragones, the only real MAD regular missing from this pilot. The only other MAD feature missing from this show is the Fold-In, and that wouldn't have worked on screen anyway. Actually, it might have worked in animation, considering the moving Fold-Ins on the "Totally MAD" CD-ROM look great when moving. Nice sound effect too.

Following on from Don Martin's patient aeroplane is one of MAD's "Academy Awards..." features, in this case "MAD's Academy Awards For Parents". This is an odd sketch. Although it should work on television it doesn't, and the whole thing just seems forced. It all takes place in a small apartment (a funny idea for an awards ceremony which doesn't quite work on television) and the format of showing clips of nominees is a good way of introducing and ending short sketches quickly (the sketch lasts just over three minutes) except that the whole awards ceremony setting of the sketch has gone, the awards limited to one nominee per category from the magazine's three, and only one award speech. Not that being longer would've helped, as this suffers the same problems as "Auto Manufacturer Of The Year": Jokes which read well in two speech balloons in a pen-and-ink panel don't work as well when spoken out-loud for thirty seconds of screentime, no matter how many Jewish or Southern accents the voice-over artistes do (and they do many).

Jokes have been changed for the worse. Stan Hart's dry, black humour has made him one of MAD's top writers, along side DeBartolo and Seigel. He puts his talent to good use in this piece, taking traditional problems from everyday life and dissecting them into a set-up and a punchline, thus:

In the magazine, there is a moment where Mrs Phyllis Freeble harasses her son non-stop ("You think it bothers me that you played football in your brand new suit? You think I care that it cost $65 of your father’s hard-earned money?...") until her son finally snaps: "I CAN'T TAKE IT! HIT ME! BEAT ME! ONLY STOP THIS ORIENTAL TORTURE!". Not especially amusing, but quite a nice unexpected response, shying away from the more predictable and obvious line. For the Special however, it was decided that a funnier line would be "Gee, Mom, I knew you’d understand" which is the more predictable and obvious line. A shameful change. If they didn't think this panel would work then why choose it in the first place? There are plenty of other panels they could have filmed instead. They were continuing in only using the first nominee from each category (a particularly lazy script-editing decision if I do say so) but why they couldn't have changed it to, say, the panel shown above is a mystery.

Perhaps the final nail in this sketch's coffin is that Mort Drucker's classy '64-vintage characters have been mostly ignored and replaced with the animators own designs for odd-looking fat ladies. They would look fine for any other animated show but here they just don't look right. They try to emulate the MAD style but end up looking weird: as if George Woodbridge had drawn "The Lighter Side..." for one issue as an April Fool's gag. With his left hand. Underwater. On acid. Still, at least it's short, and it's followed by a Don Martin character sinking an island with a flower, which is good. This is then followed by a piece about Tarzan.

The Tarzan cartoon, or "A Moving Jungle Tale" as it was called in print, was probably a problem for the television executives. Although it's clearly a piece of Don (later Duck) Edwing-penned whimsy transplanting modern-day prejudices to the deepest jungles of fictional Africa, it could have very easily been taken as racist propaganda, especially in these post-political correctness times, with the black Tarzan's "Mmm-hmm" noise coming across as particularly Uncle Remus. Personally, I was more concerned by how closely the animators copied the original drawings Jack Davis did for the magazine, and the awkwardness of the animation when Tarzan suddenly stops swinging in mid-air to gawp at his new neighbour. Still, such surreal wackiness was always the staple of MAD, blah, blah, blah. Note that this is the only MAD article printed in colour that makes it, similarly coloured (so to speak), to the pilot.

Next is Larry Siegel's joke-filled "Peek Behind The Scenes At A Hospital", illustrated in the magazine by Al Jaffee. The first shot of this looks great: it's a direct copy of Jaffee's original two-page spread of a cross-section of a hospital, only in colour. This was cross-section idea was a clever gimmick for the magazine, meaning that the reader could see into every part of the building, turning each room into its own individual comic panel. Jaffee's own visual jokes haven't gone missing either: Count Dracula can be seen looking over the shoulder of a doctor carrying a large beaker of blood. It's doubtful Jaffee would have got an additional writer's fee for this though. Unfortunately, one of his best jokes has gone missing where, behind a doctor, a heart can be seen laying alone on a bench, attached to a label reading "Found In San Francisco". The heart can still be seen in the TV show but sadly the label is far too small to read. There's an odd cut between jokes where the camera focuses on one room and then fades out to the room next door. The only explanation is that the joke that was meant to be there was animated then removed before the final edit for some reason. Maybe it was decided that the show spent too much time in this hospital, or that the fifteen seconds could be better used on seeing a Don Martin character sink an island with a flower. For the record, the missing joke is:

DOCTOR: What do you mean you want us to change your room?! The pairing off of people in Semi-Private rooms is a highly specialized science! It is only after much soul-searching that we decide when two patients are suitable for each other!
PATIENT IN HYSTERICS: But he's a TV Comic who's here for a Nose Job... and I'm an Appendicitis case!
DOCTOR: So?!
PATIENT: So did YOU ever try laughing with fresh appendix stitches?!

Hmm. Interesting to note that the opening caption for this has "A PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES…" in big letters, followed by a smaller "AT A HOSPITAL” underneath, indicating that if The MAD Magazine TV Special ever made it to series, this would be a weekly regular. They'd have plenty of material, as nearly twenty of the articles had been written in MAD up til that point, half of which were written by Larry Siegel. The series still continues in MAD to this day, although peeks behind the scenes at airports and laundries have now become peeks behind the scenes at coffee bars and militia meetings.

Next, 15 seconds of top class daftness with Spy Vs. Spy. The animation here is great, the Spies themselves being very fluid and flexible, and even aware that they're cartoon characters (White Spy holds his secret document up to the camera at one point for the viewers to read). Colour works nicely too, considering the strip was only ever printed in black and white (obviously, considering the characters sole titular differences). This style of animation works much better than the stark, colourless Spy Vs. Spy cartoons seen on MAD TV (clips of which are on the "Totally MAD" CD-ROM). These look like the figures were cut directly out of the magazine and stuck onto cardboard, so stiff and rigid are the character's movement. The Special displays them in a much better way, keeping the quick-fire surrealness of Prohias' original yet being improved by the slick animation, much like the Don Martin cartoons earlier.

The show ends with a classic MAD spoof, "The Oddfather", a parody (obviously) of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, again using the same script and many of the same set-ups as in the magazine. To tell the truth, this isn't half bad. The original print article was full of funny jokes and observations at the expense of the film, and the impressions of this, if not entirely accurate, are certainly passable and add to the silliness of the piece. The impressions don't really matter that much as the wonderful Mort Drucker caricatures are enough to alert the viewer as to who the person is (cf. Spitting Image, 2DTV). The only voice that has to sound familiar is Marlon Brando's, and as that's just muttering anyone can do an impression of Brando. Really. Try it. If you're reading this in a public place at the moment, say an office or an EasyEverything, stand up and ask if anyone in the room can do an impression of Brando and I guarantee that within a few seconds you'll be covered in "coulda been a contenduh"-fueled spittle.

"The Oddfather" animation looks a little odd, but then seventies adult animation always looks odd to me. There's something unsettling about the realistic style of drawing for human beings then about the bright, Crayola-scribbled animation for grown-ups of today, such as on King Of The Hill or Family Guy. The Simpsons are bright yellow, for Krusty's sake! There's an air of unease looking at this Special today. There's something indescribably creepy about seeing a cartoon mafia meeting. Or a humourously rendered drive-by shooting. Maybe it's just me. But it seems to work in this case, the original print version of "The Oddfather" having it's blackly comic undertone successfully transferring to screen, which is quite impressive for the first on-screen version of a MAD movie parody, especially such a popular one*.

* [Although this is the first visualisation of a MAD spoof, one has been recorded purely in audio before: "Gall In The Family Fare", Larry Seigel's spoof of All In The Family (the American version of Til Death Us Do Part) was performed in an abridged form on a free record with the Winter Special in 1973, two years after the spoof was printed in MAD.]

Throughout the Special, changes to the original articles have been made for potentially legal reasons. In "MAD's Auto Manufacturer Of The Year", the interviewer is referred to as "Howard K. Bluntley". In the original article (#151, June 1972) he was "Walter Crankcase", a clear parody of Walter Cronkite, the name changed presumably in case the network to which Walter Cronkite was under contract decided not to buy the show on the basis of the parody. Even so, the animation still uses George Woodbridge's caricature of Cronkite, and the voice used is a clear impression. Ditto Marlon Brando in "The Oddfather" being called "Marlo Brandon" as opposed to the "Marlin Brandow" of the magazine. It's all in the pronunciation. Singer "Ronnie Fonatra" is also renamed as the more generic "Angie Maggio", presumably to avoid lawsuits from the similarly-named Frank Sinatra, upset at being yet again associated with the Mafia.. Which brings us to another amusing change where, in a scene which refers to the fact that the word "Mafia" couldn't be said in The Godfather, they're not allowed to say the word "Mafia" themselves so, instead, they have to use the word "syndicate": "I propose a toast to Don Vito Minnestrone, the biggest syndicate leader in the country!" "Hey, you! I'm with the Syndicate Anti-Defamation League! Don't you know you're not supposed to use the word "SYNDICATE" in this picture?" "Oh, sorry. Er, how about a toast to Don Vito Minestrone, the biggest racketeer and murderer in the country!" "That's better!". Part of The Lord's Prayer is cut from a joke where Mr Bongiorno praises the Oddfather to the skies, presumably for fear of offending religious types. The cut is audible in the show, however, so it was presumably recorded and then cut out as an afterthought. Another odd line removal is when Micrin goes to the bathroom to get his gun. Presumably, the animators thought that the line "I'm just going to the Men's Room to take a pistol - I mean..." would corrupt the nation's youth, and is replaced with the far tamer and less funny line "I've just got to go to the gun room. The Men's Room!!! Er, I mean...". Another gun reference has gone missing in the background of a scene where Sinny Minestrone is on the phone. Behind him two children are fighting over a gun. In the magazine the one with his hand highest up the barrel says "I win! You got the contract!". It was obviously decided that this would be a bad influence for kids and so in the TV show, they are tussling over a baseball bat instead. A reference to Don Minestrone refusing to "bankoll [Plotzo's] narcotics operation" has been lost in the transition from page to screen, as has one of the spoof's funniest moments: when film producer Mr Woltz has the back-end of a horse placed in his bed: "Wait a minute! Didn't you say a horse's head?" "That's right! But on second thought, since you're a Hollywood Producer, we thought this would be more appropriate!". Maybe such violence toward animated horses would have caused controversy amongst would-be buyers, or maybe MAD didn't like calling their potential Hollywood backers a bunch of horse's asses! Either way, it's too good a joke to have cut. "Auto Manufacturer Of The Year", "X-Rayvings", and "Academy Awards For Parents" are shorter than their magazine originals ("Academy Awards For Parents" losing all but the first nominee in each category, as stated earlier), but this is presumably because of length (and possibly difficulty in animating the missing scenes) rather than the appropriateness of the material. "The Oddfather" sequence seems to bear this out because, even though the spoof's been stripped of many of it's nine pages, the sketch lasts nearly ten minutes, approximately a third of the entire show. Still, that's not bad considering the film on which it's based is over two and a half hours long.

There is a line that has been added to "The Oddfather" sketch, however. It occurs towards the end where, when Mikrin is discussing the movie's success ("Critics everywhere will love it… or else!"), an additional piece of dialogue had been added since the spoof was published about the film winning "an Academy Award... or else!". A clever update to the original script. Also added is the appearance of characters from other films in a scene where the Oddfather and son are looking out for a car that may be trying to kill them. The first car they see is a yellow cab driven by "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) from the film The French Connection, the second is driven by Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) from Bullitt. Interestingly, these characters seem to have been drawn by Mort Drucker but, although he illustrated the parodies for both of these movies, the pictures used in the Special don't appear to be taken from the magazine. Were they created in the Drucker style by the animators, or did Drucker create these caricatures specially for this pilot? If so, this would be the only noticeable new contribution to the show by one of the Usual Gang Of Idiots. Even more (less?) interestingly, MAD Magazine's French Connection parody ("What's The Connection?", #152) featured Bullitt in a similar cross-film cameo.

The pilot never aired because, according to "Completely MAD" "a major car manufacturer slated to sponsor the programme was uncomfortable with the 'Car Manufacturer Of The Year' sketch". After all those other cuts for sponsorship safety, it's amazing that this possibility was not considered. But then, of course, if MAD Magazine were to cut out every little thing that may cause offence to somebody, then the average issue would only be half a page long. Interestingly, Reidelbach's book is the only one to admit this show exists, even going so far to provide a piece of production information: it was produced by Focus Productions. Intriguingly, it also says that another, more recent unaired pilot (presumably also animated) was produced by Hanna-Barbera for CBS, entitled Going' Mad. It's "a compilation of favourite sketches and scenes, from "The Lighter Side" to "Spy Vs. Spy" and movie parodies".

I have another theory as to why it was never purchased by a television company: producing it would be too much effort for something that simply isn't much good. Sure, the Godfather parody is quite good, and it's nice to see some of Don Martin's wobbly, big-nosed, hinge-footed characters moving about, but it's little more than a novelty which soon wears thin as it turns out that, although fine for four pages in a comic book, much of the material isn't strong enough to sustain as much as a ten minute sketch without a decent story running through it and an unpredictable punchline at the end. And besides, all the sketches had previously been read in MAD Magazine as long as nine years ago, and then they were not subject to the censorship cuts that almost certainly have been included should the pilot ever get to series. Why should people stay in at nights to watch a bastardised version of something they have piled up in their garage? There's a problem with the scripts which, although being the only MAD project to be written by The Usual Gang of Idiots*, seemed to be compiled and edited by someone more in tune with the workings of television sponsorship rather than the workings of comedy, hence the "Mafia" and "Horse's Ass" edits mentioned earlier.

* [Strange that The Usual Gang of Idiots haven't collaborated on further television shows considering that many MAD contributors started out in television as gag writers on shows like The Carol Burnett Show, What's My Line?, and My Mother The Car. Indeed, Dick DeBartolo personally saved quiz show The Match Game from an early cancellation simply by making the questions sillier (the format he created for it became the extremely popular Blankety Blank in Britain). However, these experiences in television may be the reasons that they don't wish to go back, a fact bared out by "Auto Manufacturer Of The Year"-scripter Tom Koch when he admitted that by 1970 he had enough made enough money to "achieve my lifelong ambition: get out of the TV industry".]

Similarly, why should a television company pay shitloads to make a series of animated variety shows when it can churn out hundreds of live action variety shows with real people like Carol Burnett, Bobby Darin, Sonny And Cher, and The Muppets for a fraction of the price? These people's shows were already going at the time and were very popular, and could have a wide variety of guests, singers, sketches and songs, whereas the animated MAD shows would never have any guest stars, and the only type of song that would feature would be a Frank Jacobs parody of Little Miss Muppet. Okay, so the MAD series would have been several million times funnier than any sketch from The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour, but it wouldn't have been profitable, and that's all TV executives care about. An animated MAD Magazine TV Series simply wouldn't have been worth the paper it was animated on.

The MAD Magazine TV Special is no lost classic, let's admit that much, but it is certainly an curious addition to the MAD legacy. It's not even that lost, as copies are available on a wide variety of bootleg tapes everywhere. I found mine at Midtown Comics, New York, on a tape entitled "Unaired Pilots 3" where it shares NTSC space with two uncommissioned Irwin Allen pilots, Ed Wood's dreadful Western Crossroad Avenger, and an early version of Mr. Ed. It was also available on a tape called "Unaired Animated Pilots 1" along with a half-hour animated spin-off from Lost In Space. Copies are also available from video rarities service 5 Minutes To Live at a price of $20 each, plus p&p, as well as from Scorched Earth Productions for a similar price. Dick Hanchette's MAD Collectables website also seems to have acquired an interesting looking bootleg from somewhere, judging from the tape box. Anyway, here's a transcript, illustrated with some screengrabs and extracts from the original articles from MAD Magazine:

Groovy music starts to play. Fade in on a large building in a city which has a large picture of Alfred E. Neuman under an electric neon sign which reads “the MAD MAGAZINE TV SPECIAL”. A voiceover starts to speak.

ANNOUNCER:
Regular programming will not be seen at this time so we may bring you The MAD Magazine TV Special.

The neon words light up as they are said. The picture zooms in on one of the windows. The blind goes up to reveal Howard K. Bluntly, microphone in hand, standing in front of Edsel Lemmon, trying to stop a door falling of one of his cars.

With the Automobile Manufacturer Of The Year,...

Pan across to the next window. This time, the blind goes up to reveal a mother snatching a statuette out the hands of a smiling host.

The Academy Awards For Parents,...

Pan down to see a sexy girl sitting at a window. An x-ray noise occurs and we can see through the wall to reveal that her thighs are enormous.

MAD X-Rayvings,...

Pan across to another window. Bullets shoot out through the blind, leaving bulletholes which read “THE ODDFATHER”. The blind goes off to reveal a wedding picture of all the cast, similar to the cover of MAD #155 except that they are all holding smoking machine guns (and Alfred E. Neuman is nowhere in sight).

The Oddfather,...

Pan right to the next window. Some surgeons are huddled around something that one of them is dissecting. He moves out the way to reveal it’s a pizza. They all take a slice, saying “Mmm!”.

A Peek Behind The Scenes At A Hospital,...

The camera moves up to the final window. As the Announcer speaks strange things happen: Tarzan swings from right to left, yelling; A woman comes out of the corner and screams; White Spy and Black Spy walk backwards into each other as a hand comes out from below carrying a bomb, which explodes; and a Don Martin man falls from the sky, a construction hat landing on his head, the liquid falling back in his thermos flask, and all the filling landing back in his sandwich.

And the kind of MADness you’ve come to expect from MAD’S Usual Gang Of Idiots. The MAD Magazine TV Special is bought to you by…

A brief pause for the sponsorship message voiceover (and possibly caption) to be dropped in later. The picture freezes on the Don Martin man (who blinks occasionally) and the music continues for a few seconds. Then the Don Martin character drops out of frame with a crash, the food, liquid and hat all falling as before. The music stops and the picture fades out, presumably for a commercial break. Fade in on Howard K. Bluntly in a car lot.

HOWARD K. BLUNTLY:
Hello there. I’m Howard K. Bluntly speaking to you from Detroit, Michigan. We’re here for another interview with the people who make America great.

Pull out to reveal that standing behind him is Edsel Lemmon, trying to keep a door from falling off a car, à la the opening titles.

Our guest today is Mister Edsel Lemmon, the famous industrial tycoon who was recently named as…

We see a blank billboard. Then the words “MAD’S AUTO MANUFACTURER OF THE YEAR” appear on it. The words start to flash.

…MAD’s Auto Manufacturer Of The Year.

Howard K. Bluntly and Edsel Lemmon are outside a factory, seeing several car-carrying trucks going in.

Hmm. Well, seeing all these new cars rolling out of the plant, I’d assume that business is very good these days, Mr Lemmon.

EDSEL LEMMON:
No, business is very rotten these days. Those are last year’s cars rolling back into the plant to have their mechanical defects fixed.

Bluntly and Lemmon walk away from the factory and we see a close-up of a moving car’s wheel falling off. Cut to an assembly line where lots of men are working on all types of cars

Some layout, huh? We’ve got thirty-eight thousand men working on the assembly line,…

One worker accidentally pushes another into an unfinished car’s hood.

…fifteen thousand engineers designing expensive new accessories,…

Two workers take a new windscreen from a machine and put it on a car. One sees the camera and slams the door of the car, smashing the windscreen.

...and one kid who comes in after school to work on our anti-pollution device.

Six workers are under a machine being very carefully passed a car bumper.

This is the bumper section.

HOWARD K. BLUNTLY:
Oh.

EDSEL LEMMON:
Those men are about to attach a bumper to a car.

HOWARD K. BLUNTLY:
Well, I, I had no idea a bumper was so heavy that it takes six men to carry.

EDSEL LEMMON:
Oh no, that’s not because it’s so heavy. Those six men are carrying it as a safety precaution; it’s so brittle that if they ever drop it it’ll shatter into a million pieces.

There’s an off-screen crash. Bluntly is startled. Cut to several bored (and some sleeping) workers fiddling with pointless toys and sketching on drawing boards.

This is our accessory department where we design all the innovations like, uh, these power seat covers, the electric ashtrays, and the Spiro Agnew dashboard clock.

Who nee--? Our dealers! How do you expect them to get rich if they can’t sell at least three thousand dollars worth of accessories to go with each two thousand dollar car?

A man under some large lamps is studying a document carefully with several desk-mounted magnifiers along with some other magnifying glasses he has attached to a band around his head and a jeweller’s magnifier in his eye.

And that man, I take it, is trying to make some new accessory from transistorised components.

No, no, no, no, he’s double-checking the fine print in our new car warranty to make sure that everything that could go wrong is always the customers’ fault, heh heh.

Lemmon takes Bluntly over to his car, a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a mechanical key sticking out the back which spins whenever the car is moving.

Hop in, I’ll take you over to the proving grounds where we’re testing the prototypes of our new model.

They are in the car which drives to an obstacle course: a tall hill where a car is placed at the top by two cones and the word “START” written in the middle of the road.

Every model prototype must successfully cover this very dangerous obstacle course. Now, the test driver starts the car at the top of that hill there and rolls it nearly five hundred feet to the bottom.

Are you kidding?!? That’s enough of an obstacle! If our prototype can go five hundred feet without falling apart, we put it into production.

Just before the car reaches the finishing line, it stops, the bumper falls off, the doors fall off, the tires fall off, it collapses in on itself, and the engine explodes. The workers watching turn to the camera and shrug.

The car collapses in on itself some more. Bluntly and Lemmon drive and stop outside an enormous domed building.

No, no, no, no, no, no, this isn’t it. This is our executive indoor golf course. Safety research is over there.

Close-up on the wooden building. The door falls off, a tyre rolls out, and it leans over, close to collapse. Bluntly and Lemmon then walk to a man who is pulling hard on a seatbelt which is strung all around the interior of a car.

That’s right! As you know the average car has, uh, two safety belts in front. Now, we’ve added five more belts. One runs from the dashboard to the rear window, one runs from the engine to the trunk, one runs from the roof to the floorboards, one runs…

One of the seatbelts snaps and the car falls apart, leaving George spinning and hollering.

What about the pollution problem, Mr Lemmon? What are you doing about exhaust fumes that foul our air?

(clears throat) I’m happy to report that next year we are doing something. We are following the lead of cigarette manufacturers.

You mean like putting a filter on the end of the exhaust pipe to trap the dangerous gases?

No, like putting a sticker on the side of every car: “Breathing In Auto Exhaust Fumes May Be Hazardous To Your Health”.

As he speaks, zoom in on a sign in a car’s window: “WARNING: BREATHING IN AUTO EXHAUST FUMES MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!”. The car starts and one of the men in the gas masks has a coughing fit and collapses. The other runs inside a nearby building. Bluntly and Lemmon drive their little yellow car away.

Then, basically, you don’t go along with Henry Ford’s idea on automobile production?

Well, uh, he discovered that by keeping the same design year after year he could afford to sell cars for three hundred dollars each.

Heh heh, no wonder I never heard of him. I don’t associate with Commie radicals. Come on, I’ll drive you home.

Fine. I’ve been looking at ads for your cars and I hate to say it but they’re misleading and deceptive.

They say, uh, your cars are durable and dependable. You just showed me your cars and they’re not durable or dependable.

Oh, I know, but what difference does that make? Even if we made good, fast, dependable cars, who’d ever know it when there’s no room for them to move anyway?

Pull out to reveal a massive traffic jam which Lemmon’s car has no chance of getting into. Much honking of car horns.

More horn honking. Fade out. Fade in on the groovy opening music and a boy and a duck, who are bobbing about in a bath looking at each other. After a second, the mother walks in, followed by the pipe-smoking father.

Okay, Mama’s little Snookums Darling Sweetie Honey Baby. Bathy time is over. Time to get dry and ready for beddy-bye. First we take out the little rubber dolly…

She pulls out and flaps a towel. She pulls the child out of the bath and pulls a stopper out of his back. He deflates. The duck starts to quack and flap its wings. It flies out of the bath and kisses the mother.

The duck hugs Edna and she dries it lovingly with the towel. Fade out. The music continues.

Three sick people are sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. X-ray through his closed door to see that the doctor is practising his putts by hitting golf balls into a glass.

A woman in a department store walks up to a suggestion box and puts a piece of paper in. X-ray on the box to see a shredder inside slowly destroying the note.

A man pulls up to a garage. There are two pumps, labelled “SUPER, 40¢” and “REGULAR, 27¢”. As a pump attendant takes the “SUPER” hose to the car, an x-ray on the ground reveals that the both a connected to the same fuel tank.

An aeroplane is flying very shakily in the sky. There is a terrified passenger looking out the window. X-ray on the cockpit to reveal that the pilots are drinking heavily and both have a beautiful lady on their laps.

In an expensive restaurant two smartly-dressed people are eating. X-ray on the door behind them to reveal that the chef is a slob who smokes while he cooks and swats a fly on his apron. Fade out.

Fade in (with the music continuing) on a trailer park with a large sign reading “KAPUTNIK TRAILER CAMP”. One man comes rushing in.

MAN 1:
Did you hear about the new trailer camp they opened up about five miles down the road? It’s a heck of a lot nicer than this place. I’m moving down there.

MAN 2:
Really? I’m going too.

MAN 3:
So am I.

WOMAN:
Me too. Wait for me!

They all speak at once, getting in their trailers. All the trailers drive out of the camp except one. A man at the one remaining trailer speaks:

MAN 4:
Well, there goes the neighbourhood.

Fade out.

Fade in on a street (still with the music going in the background), of which in the middle of a road lies a completely flat man. Two Don Martin men walk into frame.

MAN 1:
Good lord, hoo-hoo! This man’s been run over by a steamroller!

MAN 2:
Get him to a hospital quick!

The men fold him up into the shape of a paper aeroplane and fly him into a hospital. Fade out.

Fade in on a city at night, two spotlights shining from an apartment in the centre. There’s a drumroll and then some award ceremony music starts.

ANNOUNCER:
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to MAD’s Academy Awards For Parents!

The words “ACADEMY AWARDS FOR PARENTS” appear in the sky. Over the next line, the picture zooms in on the apartment and onto the balcony so that we can see the action through the window.

HOST:
Here, in this over-stuffed garishly decorated living room, [of] Mr and Mrs Wilbur Nasal, overlooking their other three-and-a-half uncomfortable rooms,…

Inside the apartment is the host of the awards, surrounded by a lot of smartly-dressed parents all crowded together on various sofas. A large screen is behind him. The crowd applauds.

…we have gathered to honour those people whose acting performances best illustrate the time-honoured and traditional concepts of parenthood. The winner will receive this lovely fourteen-carat solid-gold-plated statuette, “The Mommy”.

He holds up a small golden figurine of a smiling woman with outstretched arms.

And now on with the show! The nominees are…

He picks up an envelope, rips it open and takes out a card, which he reads out loud.

For Best Supporting Actress In A Teenager’s Sloppy Room, Mrs Elsie Gladbuck for her memorable performance in “You’re Just Impossible!”.

Pan up to the screen to see footage of Mrs Gladbuck standing in a messy bedroom, nagging her son. She picks up various clothes and toys as she speaks.

MRS ELSIE GLADBUCK:
What do you think I am, your personal maid? You think all I have to do is pick up after you? Your friends should see how you keep your room! I’ll bet their rooms are neat, I’ll bet their rooms are clean, I’ll bet their rooms…

BOY:
Their rooms are worse!

She angrily drops all she was holding, including a football that the son catches.

MRS ELSIE GLADBUCK:
Don’t change the subject, it’s your room I’m talking about!

Applause from the crowd. The host reads more from the card.

HOST:
For Best Adaptation Of An Original “Getting-Rid-Of-The-Kid-For-Summer” Routine, Mrs Alice Corker for her heart-rending scene in “It’s You We’re Thinking Of”.

On the screen, a woman in a fur coat (Mrs Corker) is hugging her son who is standing by a large suitcase. They are in a train station.

MRS ALICE CORKER:
Darling, your leaving hurts us more than it hurts you. How do you think we’ll feel all summer long without our little man around the house? But don’t worry about us: we’re happy to sacrifice so you can have a wonderful summer at camp!

Two big men pick up the suitcase and drag the boy away.

BOY:
But what if I hate camp?

MRS ALICE CORKER:
You write us all about it when we’re in Europe.

She walks off. More applause from the crowd.

HOST:
For Best Original Score In The Typical “Coming-Late-For-Supper” Song And Dance, Mrs Hortense Inlay for her inspiring number in “I Could Drop Dead For All You Care!”.

Mrs Inlay is cutting vegetables into a bowl, which she then stirs. Her son is sitting, fed up, at the table.

MRS HORTENSE INLAY:
What do you care that I sweat all day over a hot stove? You were supposed to be home half-an-hour ago! Instead of waltzing in late, you should get down on your hands and knees and be grateful you have such a devoted mother! Well, this is the end! For all care you can eat your dinner cold.

BOY:
What are we having for dinner?

MRS HORTENSE INLAY:
Tuna fish salad!

Applause.

HOST:
For Special Effects, in the “You Kids Today Have No Respect For Money” category, Mrs Phyllis Freeble for her touching performance in “Upset? Who’s Upset?”.

Mrs Freeble is walking past a school. Walking behind her is her son who is in a badly-torn outfit and carrying a football.

MRS PHYLLIS FREEBLE:
You think it bothers me that you played football in your brand new suit? You think I care that it cost sixty-five dollars of your father’s hard-earned money? You think I’m upset that it’ll take fifteen to twenty dollars to reweave it? You think I’m disturbed that you disobeyed my orders? You think I’m angry?!?

BOY:
Gee, Mom, I knew you’d understand.

Applause.

HOST:
The winner is…

He rips open the envelope.

Mrs Richard Klaus for her brilliant reversal in “I Get No Help Around Here”.

Mrs Klaus is washing dishes while her teenage daughter is in the other room, listening to a portable radio and eating chocolates.

MRS RICHARD KLAUS:
Who do you think you are, the Queen from Sheba? Is it beneath you to help with the dishes? Are you afraid you’ll sour your dainty little hands? Well, from now on everyone in this house her share or else she can move out.

The girl leaps up excitedly.

GIRL:
Whoopee! I’ll move out!

MRS RICHARD KLAUS:
Don’t you get sarcastic with me, young lady!

Applause.

HOST:
Well, that’s it, folks. As MAD’s Academy Awards For Parents draw to a close,…

Dissolve to the host standing in a corridor as the crowd shuffles out behind him.

…and the recipients and hopefuls rush for the exits so that they can get home quick and start screaming and raving and carrying on, trying to qualify for next year’s coveted awards, we bid you all goodbye.

A small child walks in shot and stamps on the host’s foot.

Bye!

Fade out. Fade in on a Don Martin man who is standing on a desert island with a large flower sitting in the middle. He looks at the flower and plucks it from the ground. Water comes spurting out of the hole where the flower was and the island sinks beneath the sea, man and all. After a second, the flower floats to the surface. Fade out.

Fade in. Tarzan comes out of his treehouse, does his ‘Tarzan yell’, and swings across the jungle on a vine. He stops and watches a black Tarzan swing past the other way, making a “Mmm-hmm!” noise. Tarzan swings backwards to his home and nails something into the treehouse. He moves out the way to reveal it’s a “FOR SALE” sign. Fade out.

Fade in on a caption: “A PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES… AT A HOSPITAL”. We see a cross-section of a hospital, where every room can be seen into. In the middle of the screen, four nurses run into a room where a man is packing a case. Outside, a doctor and nurse speak.

DOCTOR 1:
There hasn’t been a nurse in that room for two weeks. How come they’re all rushing in now?

NURSE 1:
It’s tip time! Nurses can smell patients who are checking out a mile away.

DOCTOR 1:
I guess you’re right. Four of them are from another hospital.

The picture zooms in on another room where a doctor and nurse are examining a wheezing patient. Outside the room, two doctors are talking. One is carrying a large jar of blood and thusly has Count Dracula hovering over his left shoulder. A bat flies in and sits on his cape.

DOCTOR 2:
The heart patient in four-thirteen just had a serious relapse.

DOCTOR 3:
What happened?

DOCTOR 2:
He rang the button over his head for a nurse, and one actually showed up!

The camera moves up to another room. An odd fade to the room on its right where a matron and a nurse are looking at four babies lying in cribs.

MATRON:
Miss Fuddle! You’ve got the nametags on these babies all mixed up! Now we’ll never know which infant is which!

NURSE FUDDLE:
Don’t worry; the mothers will never know either!

Next, a nurse banging on a lavatory door. Behind the door we see a patient pulling faces and blowing raspberries at the nurses.

NURSE 2:
(banging on door)
Hey! Who put a lock on this bathroom door? Bathroom doors in hospitals are not supposed to have locks!

NURSE 3:
I know. They’re taking all the fun out of nursing. Now how can we walk in unexpectedly and embarrass the patient?

In an operating room three surgeons are preparing to operate on a patient by drawing a cross on him.

SURGEON 1:
Ready to operate, doctor?

SURGEON 2:
(to patient)
Okay, Mr Gumbill, now just drink this glass of whiskey and bite down on this bullet. We’ll have that li’l old gall bladder out in a jiffy!

SURGEON 3:
Maybe I’d better check the credentials of this new anaesthesiologist.

He walks out. In another ward in the hospital. Two nurses are covering up a dead patient.

NURSE 4:
How awful. If only he could have held on for another hour.

NURSE 5:
Why? Is his doctor coming?

NURSE 4:
No, we could have charged him for an extra day.

By the next bed, a doctor is scolding a nurse over a sleeping patient, who snores loudly.

DOCTOR 4:
Nurse, what’s the idea of Mr Froobish to fall asleep? You know he’s supposed to have the medication I prescribed at precisely eight p.m.

NURSE 6:
I’m sorry, doctor. It won’t happen again.

DOCTOR 4:
Okay. Now wake him up and give him the sleeping pills.

By the bed opposite, a distraught nurse is explaining her patient problems to a doctor.

NURSE 7:
I gave the patient lunch and he threw up!

DOCTOR 5:
Well, that’s not unusual considering the food in this hospital. Uh, try feeding him intravenously.

NURSE 7:
I did.

DOCTOR 5:
And?

NURSE 7:
His vein threw up!

In the hospital reception, a messed-up patient lies on a stretcher, mumbling unintelligibly. A doctor is encouraging him to speak.

DOCTOR 6:
Come on, try again.

More mumbling. A man nearby complains to the doctor.

MAN:
This has been going on for three days now. Why can’t you admit this patient?

DOCTOR 7:
Well, he hasn’t been able to tell us his Blue Cross number.

A patient looking at his bill is complaining to the receptionist.

PATIENT:
But these charges are ridiculous! Thirty dollars for a box of monogrammed stationery, and two-hundred-and-fifty dollars for a donation to your new Sarah J. Fingerhut Memorial Pavilion?

RECEPTIONIST 1:
But sir, one of our solicitors sold these to you, right after you came up from the recovery room.

PATIENT:
I don’t remember that at all.

RECEPTIONIST 1:
Of course you wouldn’t, you were delirious at the time.

Next to him another patient is complaining to another receptionist.

FEMALE PATIENT:
How dare you charge me for a private room when my bed was in a corridor?

RECEPTIONIST 2:
Because yours was the only bed in the corridor!

Fade into a revolting looking kitchen. The chef is cleaning a sink with a mop while his assistant is taking a trash can outside. The can contains two large bird’s claws sticking out the top.

CHEF:
(French accent)
Hey, where are you going with that garbage, hmm?

MAN:
I’m taking it out to dump it.

CHEF:
Idiot! That garbage isn’t garbage going out. That garbage is the food coming in!

Pull out to see the whole hospital. Fade out. Fade in on a Spy Vs Spy cartoon. The words “SPY VS. SPY” appear in the sky, then the two differently-coloured “SPY” words swap places. It fades out as White Spy, dressed in a nightgown and nightcap, jumps over the fence to place an envelope marked “TOP SECRET” (which he holds up to camera) in a mousetrap outside his house. Black Spy looks over a fence as he’s doing this, a large question mark above his head. White Spy enters his house and goes to bed while Black Spy leaps over the fence with a large stick and tries to set off the mousetrap. It goes off, breaking the stick. Black Spy leaps over and tries to take the document, only for the wall of White Spy’s house to fall on him. Black Spy sees hundreds of little black stars. Fade out.

A cymbal clash. “The Oddfather” theme starts and we see a caption for “THE ODDFATHER” that takes its font from the original Godfather movie poster logo. Fade into Don Vito Minestrone (a clear caricature of Marlon Brando) strolling into a garden full of partying gangsters. One stands up.

GANSTER 1:
I propose a toast to Don Vito Minestrone, the biggest syndicate leader in the country!

The other gangsters applaud and a band starts to play. A man with stiches in his forehead and a “SADL” badge speaks.

GANSTER 2:
Hey, you! I'm with the Syndicate Anti-Defamation League! Don't you know you're not supposed to use the word "Syndicate" in this picture?

GANSTER 1:
Oh, sorry. Er… how about a toast to Don Vito Minestrone, the biggest racketeer and murderer in the country!

GANSTER 2:
That's better!

VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE:
What a fantastic make-up job! How did they ever get him to look so old? I can’t believe it’s really Marlo Brandon.

Don Minestrone mumbles unintelligibly.

Mmm, yeah, that’s really Marlo Brandon alright.

Don Minestrone kisses his daughter Canny and dances with her, spilling money everywhere.

CANNY MINESTRONE:
Oh, Papa, I’m so happy on my wedding day! Why aren’t you happy too? Why do you look so pained?

DON MINESTRONE:
Do you think it’s easy to see your little girl grow up? You think it’s easy to give her away to another man? You think it’s easy to talk with eight pounds of cotton in your cheeks?

Fade out. Fade in on Don Minestrone’s office Minestrone is sitting at his desk. Standing by him is Tim Haven and Mr Bongiorno.

DON MINESTRONE:
Uh, what’s on the agenda today, Haven?

HAVEN:
There are people waiting to ask favours of you.

DON MINESTRONE:
Okay, bring them in one at a time and have ‘em pay their respects to the Oddfather.

Mr Bongiorno gulps.

HAVEN:
This is Mr Bongiorno…

MR BONGIORNO:
Don-a Minestrone, I kneel and-a kiss your ring…

He does so.

DON MINESTRONE:
Uh, so far so good.

MR BONGIORNO:
…and I grovel at-a your feet…

He kisses Don Minestrone’s feet.

DON MINESTRONE:
Not bad.

MR BONGIORNO:
…and I lick-a your left shoe!

He does.

DON MINESTRONE:
Okay, now show some respect!

Don Minestrone steps on his tongue.

MR BONGIORNO:
Oh, dear illustrious-a Oddfather, manipulator of-a world-a governments! Most exalted of-a personages! Hallowed be thy name!

DON MINESTRONE:
Beautiful! Now what can I do for you on this holy occasion?

MR BONGIORNO:
I want-a you to rub out two lousy finks!

DON MINESTRONE:
Okay.

MR BONGIORNO:
Oh, Don Minestrone, how can I ever-a thank you?

Don Minestrone claps Mr Bongourno on the cheeks.

DON MINESTRONE:
Swear to me on your mother’s grave that when I ask you for a favour, you will grant it.

MR BONGORNIO:
Mother’s grave? My mother, she isn’t-a dead yet!

DON MINESTRONE:
Just remember that when I ask for a favour! Now crawl out of here, others are waiting.

He rings a bell on a wall. The number next to the bell changes from “1” to “2”.

Number two? Who’s got number two?

HAVEN:
This is Angie Maggio.

An awful lounge singer in a white suit and red bow tie leaps in, singing.

ANGIE MAGGIO:
(singing badly)
San-ta Lu-ci-a! San-ta Lu-ci-a!!

He blows kisses to the camera with both hands, always smiling.

DON MINESTRONE:
It’s a miracle, a miracle.

HAVEN:
What’s a miracle?

DON MINESTRONE:
I have just met the only Italian in the world who can’t sing! What can I do for ya?

ANGIE MAGGIO:
There’s a great part in a new movie that I want, but the producer won’t give it to me!

DON MINESTRONE:
Haven, tell the producer to give Mr Maggio the part or I break his back.

ANGIE MAGGIO:
Oh thank you, Oddfather! (singing) San-ta Lu-ci-a! San-ta Lu--!

DON MINESTRONE:
Haven, tell Mr Maggio to stop singing or I break his mouth!

Haven points to the door with his thumb and Angie Maggio sadly leaves. Fade out. Fade in on some eerie music as Don Minestrone and his son Freaky are standing by a fruit stall on a busy market street.

DON MINESTRONE:
I’m worried about Plotzo. I think there’s going to be bloodshed between his family and ours.

Car screeches can be heard in the distance.

FREAKO:
Hey, look at the big car barrelling down the street! Maybe it’s them!

A big yellow car drives up to camera. We see the driver is Gene Hackman as “Popeye” Doyle from “The French Connection”.

DON MINESTRONE:
Don’t worry, that’s not them.

A green car jumps up a hill. In the driver’s seat is Steve McQueen as the title role from “Bullitt”.

Don’t worry, that’s not them. Now you can worry.

Don Minestrone and Freako duck. A big black car drives past, dozens of guns shooting from its windows. A woman selling fish from a stall is unfazed. Fade out. Fade in on Freako sitting by Don Minestrone’s ‘dead’ body as two passers-by look on.

PASSER-BY 1:
(British accent)
Is he dead? Did those two hoods in the big black car gun him down?

PASSER-BY 2:
Well, not exactly. When they got within fifty feet of him, a mugger who was stealing a woman’s purse ran into the path of a hijacked truck going the wrong way at a one-way street which swerved into a drug-pusher’s stolen motorcycle and they all fell on top of him. In other words, he died of natural causes.

PASSERBY 1:
Natural causes?

PASSERBY 2:
In New York, that’s a natural cause!

Don Minestrone starts to mumble.

PASSERBY 1:
Hey, wait a minute, he’s not dead after all! He’s trying to speak.

PASSERBY 2:
What’s he saying?

PASSERBY 1:
It’s hard to tell. He’s hurt so bad he’s mumbling, so I can’t understand him.

FREAKO:
I got news for ya, he talks like that when he’s not hurt too!

Cut to Mikrin, Don Minestrone’s son and a caracature of Al Pacino, who is walking down a hospital corridor with a doctor.

MIKRIN:
How’s my father, Doc?

DOCTOR:
Well, he’s retching and he’s gasping for breath and he’s moaning a lot.

MIKRIN:
He’s fighting for his life?

DOCTOR:
No, he’s fighting for an Oscar.

Cymbal clash. “The Oddfather” theme starts to play as Mikrin goes into Don Minestrone’s room. Don Minestrone has several bottles of plasma plugged into him and a small tent on his head. At the foot of his bed are some “Get Well Soon” cards from grandchildren and gangsters.

MIKRIN:
It’s me: Mikrin.

DON MINESTRONE:
How have you been, son?

MIKRIN:
Fine, Pop. I’m engaged to a swell girl, I’m tops of my class at law school, and in my spare time I work for united charities.

DON MINESTRONE:
I’m sorry I asked!

MIKRIN:
Oh Pop, don’t start it again! I mean, just because I believe in law and order…

DON MINESTRONE:
Get out of here with your dirty mouth!

MIKRIN
But, Pa…!

DON MINESTRONE:
Get this stranger out! Bring me a son!!

MIKRIN:
Papa, sometimes you get me so angry I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself! Because you know what I feel like doing right now? I feel like killing you! I feel like killing my own father!!!

DON MINESTRONE:
Hey, my boy’s gonna be all right!

Fade out. Fade in on Sinny, another of Don Minestrone’s sons, in his house, along with Mikrin, surrounded by four ugly gangsters, one of whom has the face of a chimp.

SINNY:
Mikrin, with Pop in the hospital, and this gang war going on, we need ya. It’s time you joined the family business.

MIKRIN:
But, Sinny, I have great aspirations. I’m going to be a governor or a senator!

SINNY:
Listen, kid! If you wanna be a big time criminal like a governor or a senator, you gotta start at the bottom and work yourself up! We want you to meet Plotzo in Charlie’s restaurant.

Sinny walks Mikrin to the door. Fade out. Fade in on Plotzo who is gorging himself in an Italian restaurant. Mikrin is dining with him, and is extremely nervous.

PLOTZO:
So the way I see it, Mikrin, is if your family wants to stay ’ealthy you better come in on the narcotics deal, uh? Hey, wh-, wh-, what’s the matter? You look-a nervous.

MIKRIN:
Me? Oh-oh no, no, no, I’m not Plotzo, uh, Mr Nervous! Er, I mean…

PLOTZO:
Well, what’s with-a you?

Mikrin stands up.

Now where you going, huh?

MIKRIN:
Oh, I’ll be right back, I just gotta go to the gun room. Uh, uh, uh, the men’s room!!! Er, I mean…

Mopping his brow, Mikrin enters a cubicle in the men’s room. Graffiti on the wall reads “GRAFFITI”.

MIKRIN:
Whew! I almost blew it. Oh boy, am I scared! Now where’d they stash the gun? Maybe they left me a message. Hey, here’s something written on the wall: “Here I sit, broken-hearted…”. No, that’s not it.

He pulls a bandage-wrapped pistol out from behind the water tank. He unwraps it.

Ah, got it! Okay, now all I gotta do is remember is what they taught me. Walk out calmly, go up to Plotzo, shoot him twice in the head, drop the gun and leave. That’s simple enough. Be calm, be cool, and above all…

Shaking and sweating, he walks into the main restaurant.

...DON’T PANIC!!!

He fires the gun randomly ten times. Fade out. Fade back in on the restaurant, only now it is full of dead bodies (including Plotzo). A policeman and a detective are investigating.

DETECTIVE:
What happened?

POLICEMAN:
Some maniac came out of the men’s room firing a gun!

DETECTIVE:
Looks like he shot everybody in the place.

POLICEMAN:
Everybody but Plotzo.

DETECTIVE:
How did he get it?

POLICEMAN:
From complications brought on by eating too much scungilli, veal parmigiani, and lasagne. In other words, he died of natural causes.

DETECTIVE:
Natural causes?

POLICEMAN:
In an Italian restaurant, that’s natural causes.

“The Oddfather” theme plays. Don Minestrone is still bed-stricken but is now at home with his family, tiny grandchildren playing on the bed’s wire frame.

SINNY:
Ah, it’s great to have you home again, Papa, and I got good news! Micrin took care of Plotzo!

DON MINESTRONE:
My little boy’s first killing! I’m so proud of him! Remind me to have his gun bronzed.

A small girl kisses Don Minestrone on the forehead. A small boy does the same but sticks his tongue out to the camera to show his disgust.

Where’s he now? Sicily, waiting for the heat to die down?

SINNY:
No, in the bathroom, waiting for his stomach to die down.

Fade out. Fade in to Canny and new husband Carly’s rundown apartment. They are sitting at the table. Carly throws a plate of food into Canny’s face and she falls back off her chair.

CARLY:
You dumb tomater, how can you serve me this slop! I told ya, I wanted chicken tetrazinni, pepperoni, ravioli, vermicelli, manicotti!

Phone rings. Canny answers it.

CANNY:
I know…

Another meal splats in her face.

…but for breakfast?!?

On the other end of the phone is Sinny. Behind him, two of the grandchildren are arguing over a baseball bat.

SINNY:
What’s that, Canny? Carly beat you up again? That dirty fink, I’ll kill ’im!! Hold him til I get there! What? I don’t know how! Hit him over the head with a lamp or push him down the stairs. Just don’t do anything rash!

Fade out. Fade on to see a big black car following Sinny’s car on a road leading up to a toll booth. Two voices from inside the car start to speak.

GANSTER 1:
Why are we following Sinny?

GANSTER 2:
Don Minestrone suspects Carly is working for Linguini and may be setting Sinny up so we gotta protect him and, uh… uh oh, too late!

Sinny stops at the toll booth. Several men in dark clothes come out of the booth and fire machine guns into the car. Cut to Sinny’s dead body lying on the road full of smoking bullet-holes.

GANSTER 1:
Poor Sinny. Papa knew it would happen to him one of these days. Papa warned him so many times.

GANSTER 2:
You mean the Don was right? Those were Linguini’s men in disguise?

GANSTER 1:
No, they were real toll collectors! Papa must have told him a thousand times: Never go up to a toll booth with a twenty dollar bill!

The familiar cymbal clash starts “The Oddfather” theme. Don Minestrone is chairing a large meeting of cigar-smoking syndicate heads. Behind him is a map of America divided up and labelled by who owns which piece: “MINNESTRONE FAMILY TERRITORY”, “LINGUINI FAMILY TERRITORY”, “TATTAGLIA FAMILY TERRITORY”, and so on. One smoker knocks his cigar ash into a glass of wine throughout.

DON MINESTRONE:
I call this meeting of all the families because my heart is broken. My son Sinny is dead and my boy Mikrin has been in exile in the bathroom for six months!

A man falls asleep, snoring loudly.

Now, between us we control the nation’s gambling, prostitution, narcotics: Without us this whole country would come to a standstill! I say it’s time to get this county moving again! This war must end!

The sleeping man’s head hits a wine bottle, knocking it over. He awakes with a start.

We must stop destroying each other and start destroying those plain, ordinary citizens again, like normal American businessmen! Agreed?

GANGSTER:
Agreed!

OTHER GANGSTER:
Agreed!

ANOTHER GANGSTER:
Yeah, agreed!

A gangster takes a sip of wine from the glass that’s been used as an ashtray and makes a disgusted face. Cut to the gangsters lining up to kiss Don Minestrone.

LINGUINI:
I gotta do that too?

HENCHMAN:
You only have to kiss him, you don’t have to marry him!

Fade out. Fade in on Don Minestrone in summer clothes standing in field picking tomatoes.

DON MINESTRONE:
At last, there’s no more war between the families, and now I can live to a ripe old age in peace.

A small boy speaks to him.

GRANDSON:
You chase me, Grandpa?

He runs away. Don Minestrone chases after him.

DON MINESTRONE:
(running)
Of course I chase you, Angie, my little grandson. And then we will play some Syndicate kiddie games, like “Hide And Fink” and “Cops And Good Guys”.

He clutches his throat.

Ugh!

Fade out. Fade in to see Freako crying over the dead body of Don Minestrone as Haven props the body up. The grandson stands in the background.

HAVEN:
The Oddfather is dead. He suffered a heart attack chasing little Angie. He was a kind man, a gentle soul, a good-hearted person and a decent human being.

FREAKO:
Did he say any last words before he died?

HAVEN:
Yeah, he wants someone to lean on the kid!

The kid scarpers. Fade out. Cut to a door opening on a room full of henchmen. Linguini and two of his men walk in.

LINGUINI:
Boys, with Don Minestrone dead, I’m taking over as head of all the families.

Mikrin walks into shot dressed as the Oddfather.

MIKRIN:
Not so fast, Linguini!

LINGUINI:
It’s Mikrin Minestrone! He’s back from the bathroom!

HENCHMAN:
He’s beginning to act like the Oddfather!

MIKRIN:
Now, let’s get things straight. I’m in charge here!

Mikrin’s face changes into saggy old Marlon Brando’s.

HENCHMAN:
He’s beginning to look like the Oddfather!

MIKRIN:
And from now on, what I say goes! (voice changes into Don Minestrone’s) Do I make myself clear? (mumbles unintelligibly)

HENCHMAN:
He’s even beginning to sound like the Oddfather!

Mikrin takes his hat off.

MIKRIN:
And I’ve got plans. Big plans! We’re going to make millions!

HENCHMAN:
He is the Oddfather!

A cymbal clash, and “The Oddfather” theme plays again.

MIKRIN:
Now here’s what we’re gonna do: We’re going legit.

The henchmen look worried.

We’re going into showbusiness. We’re going to make a movie about us! Can’t you just see it now? Theatre-owners everywhere will show it… or else!

HENCHMEN:
Yeah!

MIKRIN:
Critics everywhere will love it… or else!

HENCHMEN:
Yeah!

MIKRIN:
And people everywhere will be standing in line waiting to see it… or else!

HENCHMEN:
Yeah!

MIKRIN:
And it will win an Academy Award… or else!

HENCHMEN:
Yeah!!

MIKRIN:
Now, we’ll start the movie off at my sister Canny’s wedding, and then, what’ll happen,…

He mumbles unintelligibly. Fade to black. Over this the groovy music starts to play again.

ANNOUNCER:
The MAD Magazine TV Special has been --

And that's where my tape ends. No credits, but the continuing fade to black implies that their never were any even if the tape were to continue. Here's all the credits from the magazine:

"MAD's Auto Manufacturer Of The Year", #151, June 1972. Artist: George Woodbridge. Writers: Tom Koch with Earle Doud.
"One Evening In A Bathtub", #141, March 1971. Writer/artist: Don Martin.
"A Collection Of MAD X-Rayvings", #144, July 1971. Artist: Bob Clarke. Writer: Don Edwing.
"The Lighter Side of Transportation", #138, October 1970. Writer/artist: Dave Berg.
"One Tuesday Morning", #155, December 1972. Writer/artist: Don Martin.
"Academy Awards For Parents", #89, September 1964, Writer: Mort Drucker. Writer: Stan Hart.
"Shipwrecked", #83, December 1963. Writer/artist: Don Martin.
"A Moving Jungle Tale", #158, April 1973. Artist: Jack Davis. Writer: Don Edwing.
"A MAD Peek Behind The Scenes At A Hospital", #131, December 1969. Artist: Al Jaffee. Writer: Larry Seigel.
"Spy Vs. Spy (Mousetrap)", #141, March 1971. Writer/artist: Antonio Prohias.
"The Oddfather", #155, December 1972. Artist: Mort Drucker. Writer: Larry Seigel.

If you have any more info on the pilot, or know who Focus Productions are (and if can name voice artists, script editors, link writers, music composers, animators, or directors in particular), or have a longer or better quality version that you are willing to swap, then please e-mail me. Also, get in touch if you have any information on Hanna-Barbera's unaired production for CBS, Goin' Mad. Fa fa fa.

BOOKS:
"Completely MAD: A History Of The Comic Book And Magazine" by Maria Reidelbach. Little, Brown & Company, 1991.
"Good Days And MAD" by Dick DeBartolo. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1995. Contains information on DeBartolo's work in television.
"MAD About The Seventies", edited by Grant Geissman. Little, Brown & Company, 1996. Contains "The Oddfather" and "A Moving Jungle Tale".
"MAD About The Movies", edited by Nick Meglin and John Ficarra. MAD Books, 1998. Contains "MAD Magazine Resents: Throw Up The Academy".
"MAD About The Eighties", edited by Grant Geissman. Rutlidge Hill press, 1999. Contains Tom Koch quote on television.
MAD #423, November 2002. Contains "MAD Timeline" with information on Up The Academy, MAD TV and "The Mad Show", but none on The MAD Magazine TV Special.
"TVparty!" by Billy Ingram. Bonus Books, 2002. Information on mid-seventies variety shows.

VIDEOS/TELEVISION:
"Unaired Pilots 3", 110 minutes. Contains The MAD Magazine TV Special (1973).
Up The Academy (1980), 87 minutes. Warner Home Video, 1985.
Vague recollections of whichever random MAD TV episodes I caught whilst in America, 1995 - present.

INTERNET/CD-ROM:
"Totally MAD", seven disc CD-ROM collection of MAD issues 1 - 376. Broderbund Software, 1999. [I've lost discs four and five if anyone has a pair going spare.]
The Internet Movie Database's entry on Up The Academy.
Dick's MAD Stuff: Contains section on Up The Academy and is the only website to admit that The MAD Animated TV Special exists, illustrating it with screengrabs which I stole for this page. Sorry, Dick.
Ilana Rudnik's MAD Magazine, Cover To Cover.
The official MAD TV website.
5 Minutes To Live.
Scorched Earth Productions.
Midtown Comics.
wallowing in a melodic mudpile: Contains a mention of Up The Academy.
Ralph Macchio Fan Site: Contain positive review of Up The Academy (!).
And of no use whatsoever: The Official MAD Magazine Website.

And I didn't even mention Dick DeBartolo's radio spots, the "MAD Minutes"...