dir: Walter Lang
THE PRODUCER AND I
MAD #60, January 1961
w: Nick Meglin
a: Mort Drucker
Loosely follows the plot of The King and I, a musical about a woman who becomes tutor to the wives and children of the King of Siam, mostly parodying the song lyrics. A lot of people I know didn't read song parodies in MAD because they never heard the songs. They probably still haven't (I know I haven't some of the time), so I provided them. King Mongkut is portrayed by Yul Brynner, but here he's caricatured as Phil Silvers but made bald like Brynner's character. Actors on the lot in the last panel are Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, and George Raft.
Sooky is Burt Lancaster.
Ah, Mad. Boldly identifying a sexist double standard, and... affirming it. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteBibi Va Voom is Ava Gardner. I needed help with Zelda, but the Totally Mad CD-ROM tells me that she's Diana Dors.
In the splash, Zorro and his sidekick must be Guy Williams and Henry Calvin, from the then-current Disney TV show.
In the last panel on page 1, the guy signing the autograph looks a little odd with his chin tucked in, but I think that's meant to be Jimmy Stewart. And in the cluster on the right, along with George Raft, I think the swashbuckler is Gilbert Roland, rather than Errol Flynn. The other man is Anthony Quinn. Why they've been grouped together, I can't guess.
Marilyn Von Mansfield has a composite name, but she looks more like Mamie Van Doren than either of her other two namesakes. (Van Doren actually was set up by her studio on dates with Rock Garden - I mean, Rock Hudson - and she was very fond of him. I don't know how widespread the rumors that Hudson was gay would have been at this point, but Meglin must have known something.)
As for the musical itself, here's Forbidden Broadway's take on the 1996 revival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QzNJMjRxyQ