The story of money exploiting talent, product trampling art, is as old as human nature. The storyteller creates the concept, the stories, the characters, the spirit, drawn from ancient traditions. The snowman brings the platform, the channel to the masses, convinces power to give them fame and fortune. In too many cases the snowman cannot deal with the storyteller’s abilities, cannot be satisfied with their own efforts and must steal the storyteller’s soul to feed a never ending need for undeserved recognition. This is the story of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee but also the journey of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker¹ and Dan Carr and John Ferraro.
In the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, American Gladiators (Parts One and Two), currently showing, two friends in 1970s Eerie, Pennsylvania decide to turn the idea of the creative, muscular, working class, intellectual, writer, iron worker and Native American, Apache Dan Carr, Jack Kirby with a blowtorch, into a mass market film or TV show, American Gladiators. The other friend, Elvis impersonator John Ferraro, who allegedly marries into money, brings the hustle, the desire for fame, the snowman showman needed to unlock the Hollywood doors that the hulking, iron worker superhero Carr, cannot.
The two of them dream about making it big. Carr, who created the idea of American Gladiators with events he ran with his iron worker pals circa 1970, imagines a comfortable future for him and his family. He signs a legal agreement which he believes shows he is at he very least co-creator of the property and deserves his fair share of any financial gains. Ferraro hustles for years and then sells the TV show, American Gladiators which makes millions of dollars and kills in the ratings. Carr, however, barely sees a cent and learns that Ferraro is saying he, not Carr, is the sole creator. Like his stage role Ferraro impersonates Carr, he and Lee pretend to be people they are not, with abilities they don’t have and claim all the credit.
The American Gladiator’s show features a slew of characters with superhero names, Atlas, Beast, Bronco, Crush, Cyclone, Sabre, Thunder, Viper, Nitro, Malibu. A bullpen of gladiator artists with a high school morality cover story, each happy, each loving each other and so glad to be here, watched by a supercharged audience which marvels at the sensational sights on display. The gladiators who create life with their characters receive a relative pittance for their work, no royalties and when they’re unable to work, are replaced immediately by desperate wannabes, waiting in the cubicle next door. Funky Flashman’s ‘happy slaves, singing for the family’.²
The American Gladiators story is Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s story writ large. Lee/Ferraro takes Kirby/Carr’s art, he takes his voice, he takes his money and he takes his soul. Both Kirby and Carr deal with incredibly strong anger, in Carr’s case almost murderously so, as the ESPN 30 for 30 show finally tracks him down and talks with him. Carr tells the story of how he is only stopped from doing the killing deed when Ferraro’s snowman eyes pick up the danger and Ferraro cuts Carr a little financial slack. Carr and Kirby’s rage is bodily. Carr’s art comes directly from his brainy brawn, Kirby’s art from the creative mind and artist’s arm. Kirby’s reaction to the end of the Fourth World in 1972 was that it was like losing a family member.³
Carr came up with the American Gladiators concept. He created the original characters. He tested the stories real time on the Eerie fields. It has taken him years to finally get some of his due as unlike the Kirby/Lee story when the two were alive, he now has a legal agreement with Ferraro which presumably gives him the kind of money and recognition he deserves, to Ferraro’s credit. Yet it is decades removed from the late 1980s/early 1990s Good Times.
Our creative superheroes are always in the Fight. They are up against the power and might of great corporations, against an uncritical public that swallows anything their snowman tells them. Kirby, Wood, Finger, Elvis, others, are no longer here but their story must still be told. We’re still in a war and the American Gladiator is still raging against Snowman the Impersonator.
Footnotes
¹In Baz
Luhrmann’s 2022 film, Elvis, Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker is played by
Tom Hanks. In the film, Parker refers to himself as ‘Snowman’ and Elvis’
performance to the fans as ‘letting it snow. It turns out the Colonel Tom
Parker is not his real name, he impersonated him. Paker’s real name was Andreas
Cornelis van Kuijk. He entered the United
States illegally when he was 20 years old and the film notes he discouraged Elvis
from touring overseas (Elvis never did) because he was afraid that he Parker, would
not be able to return to the US.
In a Vanity
Fair article, ‘What Evis Gets Right and Wrong About The Real Col Tom Parker’,
writer Alanna Nash who interviewed Parker multiple times quotes Parker talking
about Elvis and saying, ““I have to be honest. He was the success I always
wanted.” Vanity Fair, 30 June, 2022.
²See my Jack Kirby Fourth World commentary
on Mister Miracle # 6, ‘Won’t Get Fooled
Again?’
³In April 1972, Kirby has just been told about the end of
his own Fourth World empire, forsaken by National/DC publisher Carmine
Infantino. In the words of Mark Evanier, the King, ‘…was grey and his voice had
the solemn tremor of someone struggling to remain strong while announcing that
a loved one had died.’ See Jack Kirby Collector # 80, pg. 114.
⁴Wally Wood suffered from a medical condition that left
him with migraines. He was also mistreated and denied full creative credit for his
contribution to Daredevil by Stan Lee. Wood drank heavily prior to a stroke in
1978. Comics Journal writer Bhob Stewart noted he looked a decade older than he
was. See The Comics Journal # 70, ‘Memories of Wally Wood, There Are Good Guys
and Bad Guys’ pgs 50 -67.
Bill Finger died in 1974 and official credit for his
creative role in Batman only came posthumously. Bob Kane took Finger’s credit due
to his shaky sense of personal and professional worth but also for business
reasons, echoing the establishment of Stan Lee as sole creator of Marvel’s characters
prior to the sale of Marvel by Martin Goodman to Perfect Film and Chemical in
1968. From The
Comics Journal Jerry Robinson interview:
GROTH: In an essay about Finger, Schwartz wrote,
“Unfortunately, Bob was unable to give Bill the credit he deserved, not
only because of his own shaky sense of personal and professional worth, but
because of the legal tie-up his shrewd and protective father arranged at a time
when DC was in delicate negotiations with McClure Syndicate they could not
afford to have anyone rocking the boat. This legal tie-up gave Bob unique
rights to Batman even though it was Bill who supplied the heart and soul of the
idea that somehow also managed to turn Bob’s amateurish and distorted drawing
into an advantage.’’
⁵William ‘Billy’ Smith, who played Thunder, died in August 2021. In 1992,
Smith was playing the game “Hang Tough,” where he battled another gladiator
while hanging from gymnastic rings. He fell onto safety mats that he alleges
were not properly blown up because the show’s inflation machine had broke and
leaf blowers had been ineffectually used in “a last ditch effort. He
suffered seven herniated disks in his back as a result.
“Today, I’m in a lot of pain and I will be forever,” Smith says in
the series. At the time he was interviewed, he required a specialized walker.
“I have a lot of regrets … I would do most of my life over again.”
Smith also says he became addicted to pain medications to cope with the
show’s toll.
Research this issue -
TV
-ESPN 30 for 30 American Gladiators Parts One and Two
Film
-Elvis (2022) by Baz Luhrmann
Comics
-Mister Miracle # 6, February 1972 (published 11 Novemver, 1971)
-Occasional Murmurrings, 11 November, 2021
-The Comics Journal # 70, January 1982
Media,
-New York Post, May 30, 2023
-Vanity Fair, 30 June, 2022
