dir: Robert Wise
The Broadway musical that became a movie (and remade a couple years ago) was parodied a few times. The premise, based on Romeo and Juliet, about members of two rival gangs falling in love, lent itself to the issues of other then-current rivalries.
EAST SIDE STORY
MAD #78, April 1963
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
When Mort Drucker died a few years ago, this was cited as one of the pieces he was the most proud of. Instead of the Sharks and the Jets in a pre-gentrified Upper West Side, the backdrop is the newly-founded United Nations and the leaders of the Western World versus leaders of Eastern bloc countries. Here we have Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, Wladyslaw Gomolka of Poland, and Fidel Castro of Cuba among other communist nations representing a gang led by Nikita Kruschev. A lot of the world leaders aren't likenesses of anyone in partocular.
WEST COAST STORY
MAD #142, April 1971
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Jack Davis
With campus protests in the news just this week, this article is another example of history repeating itself.
Sick #12, March 1962
BEST SIDE STORY
Not Brand Ecch #6, February 1968
w: Gary Friedrich
a: Tom Sutton
This takes on the rivalry between Marvel and DC (or “Distinguished Competition” as Marvel called them). Dr. Strange and Wonder Woman fall in love.
In East Side Story, the Red with the stripey shirt is Andrei Gromyko, the USSR's Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Funnily, some of Drucker's renditions of him are straight, and some get real cartoony.) On the West's side, the bald guy is Adlai Stevenson, then US Ambassador to the UN.
ReplyDeleteAlso, here's something only tenuously connected, but which I'll happily take an excuse to post. In 1966, Mad successfully staged an off-Broadway revue called The Mad Show, which boasted one number with lyrics written by West Side Story lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Here's his parody of The Girl From Ipanema, sung by Linda Lavin:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/WFC9uuHcxbA