A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
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THE CRUMMYMOONERS
MAD #260, January 1986
w: Larry Siegel
a: Sam Viviano
From a feature they had in MAD for a while called A Bad Case of the Re-Runs. The show only lasted one season but is famous because it lived a life for decades in syndication. This program about two working class couples in Brooklyn starred Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason), his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows), and their neighbors Ed Norton (Art Carney) and Trixie (Joyce Randolph).
The opening panel shows Fred and Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy and 80s New York mayor Ed Koch. The show has become more controversial lately because Ralph was always threatening to punch Alice. The joke was that he talked big but was too meek to ever really go through with it,and she was always the smarter and stronger one. You may have a different perspective but regardless of how you see it, you can still enjoy the show if you can overlook that.
The show was spun of from sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show. Virtually no clips of that show exist.
THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW
1952-1970 DuMont, CBS
THE JACK E. GLISTEN STORY
MAD #25, September 1955
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood
There was a Honeymooners comic in the mid-80s. MAD artist Jack Davis did the cover for one issue.
Jackie Gleason was one of many comedians and TV shows DC comics adapted along with Bob Hope, Martin & Lewis (later just Jerry), Dobie Gillis, and Sgt. Bilko that will never be reprinted because of the red tape that would be involved with the licensing. Except for a few covers, most have been miscredited to Mort Drucker. The art looks kind of like his but is usually by Bob Oksner or Owen Fitzgerald.
There were two Warner Brothers cartoons that spoofed the show.
UPDATE:
BIG JOHN IS COMING
Cracked #31, September 1963
a: John Severin
This is attributed to Jackie Gleason though I don't know how much he had to do with it.
UPDATE 2:
THE HONEYMOANERS
Cracked Monster Party #7, December 1989
w: Rich Kriegel (lou Silverstone)
a: Win Mortimer
After this cover by Mort Drucker and Frank Jacobs, they parodied the movie
THE FLICKSTONES
MAD #334, October/November 1994
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
The main cast was Fred Flintstone (John Goodman), Barney Rubble (Rick Moranis), Wilma Flintstone (Elizabeth Perkins), Betty Rubble (Rosie O'Donnell), Wilma's mother (Elizabeth Taylor), Pebbles (Elaine & Melanie Silver), Bamm-Bamm (Hlynyr & Marino Sigurosson), and Fred's Dictabird (Harvey Korman). The movie reportedly had 30-35 writers, depending on the source you read, but only three were credited after guild arbitration.
Fred and Barney are the best of friends, working in the quarries together in the town of Bedrock, and Fred has lent Barney his life's savings so Barney and Betty can adopt a son. Wilma tried to buy a new garbage disposal but saw they were out of money. Fred didn't want her to know he gave the money to the Rubbles, and when she finds out, she admires him for his selflessness. At the quarries, Cliff Vandercave (Kyle MacLachlan), the supervisor, gives all the workers an aptitude test and whoever gets the highest score will be promoted.
Fred gets the promotion, not knowing Barney switched tests with him. At his new office he meets his new secretary Sharon Stone (Halle Berry), and has a dictaphone/bird. Part of his new job is to fire Barney Rubble for scoring the lowest. There is a surprise party for his promotion that night, and he has to break the news to Barney.
Katharine Gibbs was someone who invented the system of secretary-ing as we know it. I guess they thought it would be funny to associate her with the bird.
The Flintstones take the Rubbles in while Barney take several new jobs and tries to land back on his feet. His dictabird lets him know that he was promoted to take the fall for mass firings and that the requisition forms he's signing will allow Vandercave to set up fake companies and embezzle funds.
Since Fred has been framed for the firings and everyone hates him, he has to go into hiding, but the angry mob finds him and tries to hang him. Not shown is Fred running into Barney and making up with him again after a big falling out they had. Wilma moves back in with her mother after Fred becomes a scapegoat, but she and Betty know he's innocent, break into his office, and steal the dictabird that has the evidence. The company retaliates by kidnapping Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm and putting them in peril. In saving them from a conveyor belt to a machine that would have smashed them into rocks, they pull a lever too hard and end up drowning Cliff Vandercave in a flood of stone, sand, and water. Mr. Slate, owner of the quarry shows up, and impressed that Fred inadvertently invented concrete, demands all workers be rehired.
THE FINKSTONES
Cracked #292, September 1994
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
I mentioned before that the movie went through several script revisions, so I think this parody was written off an earlier draft of the script without seeing the movie, since it isn't at all like the movie I saw. The plot here has something to do with Fred and Barney inventing some kind of new material that proves profitable for the company (???)
But unlike the other parody it has Mr. Slate and the Water Buffalo Lodge.
When the original TV show was on, viewers noticed how derivative it was of The Honeymooners. It wasn't exactly an accident, since most early Hanna-Barbera series were based on live action counterparts (Yogi Bear=Art Carney, Top Cat=Sgt. Bilko, etc.). MAD pointed this out in their piece Adult TV Cartoons in #63, June 1961.
They did another piece about it, in #69, March 1962, showing stone age versions of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Paladin, and Lassie
UPDATE:
From TV Theme Songs in MAD #266, October 1986, by Frank Jacobs and Sam Viviano.
Cover for German edition of Mad
For Mexican edition.
The American cover combined the Flintstones with Bill Clinton and his family, which wouldn't have translated in other countries.
MAD #307, December 1991
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
You'll have to forgive me for not knowing who Lt. Mudrock is supposed to be. I didn't watch much TV around this time. I couldn't find anything in the 1990 or 1991 schedules with a character that had a name even close. Usually in the caricatures there would be a label giving a clue but nothing here.
But I know enough about the characters from Family Matters he was investigating. The lead was Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson), his wife Harriette (Joe Marie Payton), Laura (Kellie Shanygne Williams), Mother (Rosetta LeNoire), Rachel (Telma Hopkins) her son, Eddie (Darius McCrary), and Steve Urkel (Jaleel White).
Urkel started out as a date with Laura the first season and was so popular he became the breakout star like the Fonz and added to the main cast. He always hung around initially because of his crush on Laura.
That's Robert Stack in the first panel
The last page is supposed to show how the accusers are saying the characters are derivative of their characters, but theirs are derivative of previous characters as well. Estelle Getty, Roseanne Barr, Dick Van Patten, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and David Leisure all had precedents on other sitcoms. Malcolm Jamal-Werner did too, the fact that he's black doesn't matter.
The "Air France" button Jerry Lewis is wearing refers to how he's supposedly considered a genius in France.
As I mentioned earlier, Steve Urkel became the breakout character. There was merchandising of him, and even a dance...
FAMILIAR PATTER
Cracked #265, September 1991
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Saturday Night Live is always criticized for being "not as funny as it used to be" but I'll always argue that it's been the same since the beginning, you just have the best memory of it from when you were in high school. Something they even say themselves. It's wildly inconsistent but there's always at least one sketch that's top notch even if most the show is just plain unfunny.
My favorite recurring bit they did a while back was their parodies Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney did of 80s sitcoms. They did about five that were usually cut for time, and had the chance to be timed well because they were pre-recorded. The character played by Kyle Mooney here is based on Urkel.
