Flipping through a huge stack of dusty 'ol hep 'TEEN magazines at an antique mall last week (no, not those kinds of teen mags!), and if spotting a frisky cute Fall picture of actress Carol Lynley on the cover of the October 1958 issue wasn't enough, then the "Why Ghouls, Tarantulas Haunt Teenage TV" article blurb near the bottom left would have likewise surely grabbed my undivided attention. It's a brief but fun little 2-page write-up (by "Carmella Cleaver", no less!) about the popularity of 50's late nite TV horror host shows (NOTE: this article was published 3 years after VAMPIRA was booted off the air), and focuses mostly on iconic "Cool Ghoul" Zachary, as well as Portland Oregon's fiendish KPTV fave, Tarantula Ghoul!
4 comments:
Everything right and wrong about the late 50s, right there! Horror hosts! Good! Teens and their cows! Neutral! Black face! Yikes!
It is a bit of trivia that Zachary got his start as a horror host in Philadelphia PA before moving on to New York and greater fame.
Before leaving the Philly viewing area, he passed the baton (or is it bat-ton) to Dr. Shock, who was the horror host on channel 17, until Dr. Shocks untimely passing back in 1979.
Horror hosts never truly die, they just fade into memory, or end up on internet videos.
I'm not neutral about the heifer pic. I think that's great! Also, the bizarre incongruity of its placement on that page is wonderfully absurd. It's amazing. And yeah, on the other hand it's really disquieting to run across examples of honest-to-god blackface. Not by evil Klan jerks or whatever, just goofy kids having a good time being racist.
I love stuff about horror hosts. This write-up is about as florid as a piece by Uncle Forry. I want to see more pix of Tarantula Ghoul, who I've never heard of before. What I'd really like to see is a good documentary with all the footage they can conjure up from these earliest days.
I already have some of the Zacherle recordings. He fake laughs too much.
Cute teenager on the cover, strange to think she's an octogenarian now.
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