ULYSSES ULYSSES

ULYSSES (1954)
dir: Mario Camerini

ULYSSES ULYSSES
MAD #27, April 1956
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

Retelling of The Odyssey focusing on the fantasy-adventure aspects, with Kirk Douglas in the title role.

The movie starred Silvana Mangano playing both Penelope and Circe, Rosanna Podesta as Nausicaa, and Umberto Silvestri as Polyphemus the Cyclops.

While Ulysses is out on his adventures, Penelope has potential suitors. She holds them off by telling them she first wants to finish her tapestry, but she unweaves it every night to stall. Telemachus (Franco Interlenghi), the son of Ulysses and Penelope, is sick of the suitors' behavior and decides to search for his father.

COURTING SLEEP WITH NANCY BERG

COUNTING SHEEP WITH NANCY BERG
?, some time in the fifties

Cockeyed #4, c. 1956
a: Steve DuQuette

Don't fall for the clickbait thumbnail like I did. Mention of her and the show comes seven minutes into the video. No clips of the show seem to exist. Nancy Berg was a model who often played “someone's girlfriend” in movies and maybe had one or two lines. (I can't think of a modern equivalent right now. Help me out.) She had a show every night, presumably during the signoff (back when TV had signoffs) for about five minutes, sort of a flipped version of The Continental, where she was in bed at the end of the night reading a book or eating a snack, doing what one would do before they go to sleep, accompanied by the metaphor of sheep jumping over the fence.

THE $64,000 CRACKED-POT QUESTION

THE SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLAR QUESTION
CBS 1955-1958

THE $64,000 CRACKED-POT QUESTION
Cracked #1, February/March 1958
a: John Severin

The game, hosted by Hal March, was just contestants answering questions with the jackpot increasingly doubling until the prize got to $64,000. It was one of the major casualties of the fifties quiz show scandal.

THE SIXTY-FOUR MILLION DOLLAR ANSWER
Riot #4, February 1956
w: Stan Lee
a: John Severin

The IRS does carefully audit game show contestants to this day, even when they only win goods. In the last panel are Fess Parker and Jack Webb. John Severin had done a couple Tarzan parodies for MAD before this.

Revlon cosmetics was the show's sponsor.

HE ROSE TATTOOED

THE ROSE TATTOO (1955)
dir: Daniel Mann

HE ROSE TATTOOED
MAD #28, July 1956
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

Based on a play by Tennessee Williams. This is about Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani), a seamstress who mourns over her husband dying in an accident. A few years pass and she has become a recluse much to the dismay of her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan), who is graduating high school, and has started dating a sailor (Ben Cooper) who Serafina only accepts when she finds him to be pure. Later she attends a church bazaar to find out if her husband has been cheating and fights with the priest who told her of his confession. She's driven home by a truck driver, Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster) and she fixes his shirt, loaning him a temporary one.

Alvaro returns later and shows Serafina he got a rose tattoo like her husband's, he thought she'd like it, but it sends her into a rage. She makes Alvaro taker her to the club where her dead husband's lover Estelle (Virginia Grey) works and she admits their affair, proving it by showing she got a rose tattoo to prove their love. Alvaro gets extremely drunk, shows up at Serafina's house, sees Rosa sleeping, and makes a pass at her thinking it's Serafina, then gets kicked out of the house. The next morning after the daughter has moved on with the sailor, and Alvaro is outside confessing his love, Serafina decides she has had closure and becomes her old self again.

I know you can't see the top panels, but that's not because of bad reproduction. It's the joke. In the background in the last panel is the slogan Maidenform bras used in their print ads.

TIN-RIN-RIN-TIN-RIN

THE ADVENTURES OF RIN-TIN-TIN
1954-1959 ABC

TIN-RIN-RIN-TIN-RIN
Trump #1, January 1957
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Jack Davis

Childrens' show about Rusty (Lee Aker), an orphan boy, who's been adopted by Lieutenant Ripley Masters (James E. Brown) and their adventures at Fort Apache with his dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, who's been made a Private. Other cavalry soldiers included Sgt. Biff O' Hara (Joe Sawyer) and Randy Brooks (Rand Boone).

MY FAIR LADDIE

MY FAIR LADY (1964)
dir: George Cukor

My Fair Lady has been parodied several times, particularly by MAD. First a Broadway musical, but most famously a movie, it's based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, which itself is based on several British plays, which were based on the Greek figure of the same name. The formula has inspired modern versions such as Trading Places. My Fair Lady uses the same names and setting as Pygmalion, though.

The plot, in a nutshell, has Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) and Col. Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) as phonetics professors, teaching common Cockney girl Eliza Doolitle (Audrey Hepburn) proper diction. They make a bet that Henry can do it. He hates women but she wins him over.

MY FAIR AD-MAN
MAD #54, April 1960
w: Nick Megliola
a: Mort Drucker

His Wikipedia page and Times obituary don't reveal Nick Meglin's real name which is weird. Unless there are two different people but that's way too much of a coincidence. That's neither here nor there, though.

Freddy Einsford, a nobleman with a crush on Ms. Doolittle, is drawn here as Dean Martin. The BBD&O mascots are Harry and Bert Piel (Piel's Beer, voiced by Bob & Ray), Mr. Clean, Old Gold, Johnny Philip Morris, Tony the Tiger, Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Swanson Birds-Eye (triplets), Greyhound (dog), Mobil Oil (pegasus), Bufferin (body diagram), Peter Pain (Ben-Gay), Johnnie Walker Red, Elsie Borden, and one of the Campbell's kids. Henry Higgins and Col. Pickering are Cary Grant and Charles Laughton. Eliza Doolittle is Frank Sinatra.

None of these have the songs in the proper order or have the same characters singing them but they're just a way to parody the songs.

HELLO, LYNDON or MY FAIR LADY BIRD
MAD #107, December 1966
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

The title parodies the name Hello, Dolly but only the title. Lady Bird was LBJ's nickname for his wife. His daughters were Lynda and Luci

LBJ was known for lobbying congressmen while on the toilet but MAD probably couldn't show that.

They thought he'd seek another term. Dean Rusk was his Secretary of State and Robert MacNamara his Secretary of Defense.

Barry Goldwater was Johnson's opponent in 1964.

Part of LBJ & Lady Bird's campaign was to rid the country landscape of billboards.

MAD #167, April 1974
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker

Here Henry Higgins snd Col. Pickering are drawn as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, and the Eliza Doolittle role is Burt Reynolds.

Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm are the other faces on Mount Rushmore.

The last panel has Burt Reynolds posing as his Cosmopolitan parody centerfold.

From Future Singing TV Commercials by Frank Jacobs and Jack Rickard in MAD #84, January 1964.

MORE COMBINED MOVIES
Cracked #133, July 1976
a: John Severin

MOVIE SPOOF:MY FAIR LADY
Sick #49, December 1966
w: Bill Majeski

MY FAIR SADIE
Humbug #2, September 1957
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Jack Davis

It all comes back to George Bernard Shaw.