Monster's Ink: FM and me!

Our grand ol' Uncle Forry. He started it all!

Wow! I recently edited retro issue #70 of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Issue #70 represents the first of the missing FM issues that appeared when Warren Publishing replaced FM with Monster World for ten issues in the 1970s. For a monster fan growing up in Hawaii, Famous Monsters, or "FM" was my only lifeline to the horror world I loved. To get the opportunity to link my name to the magazine's legacy was, well, a dream come true. Years ago my dearly departed friend and original FM editor Forry Ackerman asked me, "So pal, when you were a little boy did you ever dream you'd grow up to be best pals with me?" I'd be lying if I said yes. But once I did become Forry's best friend, it was obvious to me that we belonged together. I seemed to have a positive impact on him and he found it easy to relate to me. We were an unlikely but remarkable fit. Opposites in personality, but our value for loyalty and sense of wonder was the same. Nonetheless, if you had ever asked me if I could imagine following in the footsteps of my mentor by editing an issue of FM? I would have laughed in your face.

The 1st issue of Warren/ Ackerman's "FM" c. 1958

I got a call from FM publisher Phil Kim in September. It was then that he offered me the managing editor position on Famous Monsters #70. I was over the (full) moon. The issue was going to replicate the old-school 70's FM as closely as possible, right down to the black and white newsprint pages! I asked if I would have any control over content and was thrilled to hear that I would. I hung up with Phil and immediately began spinning my wheels. Off the top of my head I knew I wanted to do a Dick Smith-style makeup layout and to have some of the iconic elements of the old mag brought into this issue. Things like Forry and Warren's anti-smoking ads and perhaps a whole segment on fan collections of the time (I had collected so many vintage pictures). As it turned out, FM was still growing and morphing. So, two weeks after agreeing to edit the mag, I got another call from Phil. Now I would be "guest editor" under copy editor Jessie Lilly, managing editor Mark Redfield and editor in chief Mike Heisler ... Oh, well. Growing pains. But I was still excited and wholly grateful to be involved.

MY first issue of Famous Monsters magazine.

As it was to turn out, Mike Heisler and Mark Redfield left the FM organization before issue #70 had been put to bed - but not before determining the content and layout of the issue. I confess, at first I hated the Hercules In New York cover, but it had already been locked in as the face of FM #70. The artwork was nice - but the subject? I made the best of it and asked my young, talented (and sarcastic) friend Justin Halliwell to write the "Filmbook" for HINY and I really warmed up to the subject as Justin's tongue-in-cheek treatment tickled me. Today when I look at the cover art, I kinda love it. I smile knowing what fun it represents. I also asked my good pal Elizabeth Haney to contribute a retro-article on Women In Horror - as I insist on female fandom being represented in any project I am involved in. Finally, I contributed the editorial intro (with as much pun-shine as I could muster) to honor our Ackermonster and captioned much of the mag - other than August Ragone's Destroy All Monsters piece and 2 of Max Cheney's terrific multi-contributions (I did caption his YORGA piece - some of my proudest groan-worthy work). Jessie Lilly and the rest of the FM staff were incredibly diligent in putting the finishing touches on the mag. I hear the final product is fantastic! As I write this, I understand that copies of the issue have just hit the FM offices and I am really excited to get one in my claws!

The cover of issue #70. Don't judge a book...

It was a bittersweet ending to the project when I was informed that I would now be credited as senior editor. I embraced the honor, but admit I was a little sad that the mag wouldn't truly represent what I woulda/coulda done. So, while the perfect opportunity to edit a real FM was not the perfect experience (like all journeys), I'm really glad I did it! I hope it opens the door to more participation in the stuff I love. Maybe down the line I'll get the chance to create MY perfect issue? I have other exciting projects planned with FM, Phil and his dedicated crew. As FM evolves, It will certainly hit its stride. It's no small feat transitioning from an entertaining novelty of the past into a relevant presence of the future - but we're all working away at trying to get there. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in the genre, honor Forry Ackerman, perpetuate FM and to have had such fun doing it. Buy a copy of FM issue #70. If you like it, tell Phil to let me do it again sometime! Do check it out. I'm proud of it and it was made with a lot of love of fandom, Forry and MONSTERS!

EPILOGUE: I now have copies of FM #70 in my grubby little paws. It's really fantastic! It does exactly what we'd all hoped. It looks, smells and feels like vintage FM! Phil plans to learn from this issue and continue to tweak the authenticity (he's gonna up the paper thickness a bit), but all in all it's quite a faithful replica of the original. I gotta admit, it choked me up a bit to imagine Forry examining this issue. I could see him, beaming as he turned it over in his hands and read every single word. Hope you enjoy it! Looking forward to more...

I'm in there!

My pals Jessika and Rich were out thrift-shopping the other day and they sent me this pic...

Forry Ackerman friend (and my best gal-pal) Jessica White posthumously introduced her guy, Rich Moreno, to the world of Forry and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Rich was totally hooked! To see a grown-up man experience the same wonder and discovery as I did starting when I was 9 is just inspiring and delightful. Rich can't get enough of FM and he found this one (issue #124 with a gorgeous Ken Kelly cover) in a stack of mags for only 25 cents! This pic followed:

The ol' "You Axed For It!" section of the magazine where fans could write in to Forry requesting pics from their favorite Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror movies. Then I got this pic...

That's nice. A pic requested by Vampire lovers Kyle Adamczak, Mark Olds and...What? You're kidding?

JOE MOE! It's me! All of these years I've complained that I never had the nerve to send more than a few letters to Forry at FM. Many of my friends had been included as "Wanted More Readers Like" or had issues dedicated to them and such. But here Rich found me hiding under a picture of a vampire-vixen flexing her fangs! Turns out my beloved Uncle Forry knew of me even back then (I was only 16 when this issue hit the stands).

The thrill of seeing my name in FM is matched only by my excitement in knowing that my pal Rich Moreno must have read that issue #124 from cover to cover to find me. He obviously pored over it more thoroughly than I or any of my childhood friends did back in 1976!

Uncle 4e making a Monster kid beam.

Famous Flame-wars of Forryland!

[The following is an article from the 1974 vanity publication "AMAZING FORRIES" that was updated in 2003 to include more recent material. It was intended for a contemporary reissue of Amazing Forries, but sadly was never published. So, here, for the first time, Forry gripes to you from the great beyond! Enjoy, my Monster cousins.]

Love Letters From My Fan Club

by Forrest J Ackerman

“Ackerman, you are a basketcase of acrimony!” – famous prozine editor (via air mail special delivery) upon the occasion of completely misinterpreting my motive in calling to his attention an obscurely published criticism of his periodical. “As for Ackerman’s ebullition, I fear he can hardly be taken seriously in matters involving the criticism of imaginative literature." He once wrote me a letter with a very childish attack on my work – "he evidently enjoys verbal pyrotechnics for their own sake and seems so callous to imaginative impressions.” – An Elder God of the weird canon.

“What does this Ackerman guy know about weird and fantastic fiction? From the way he writes, he must be an unimaginative person unable to stretch his mind away from spaceships and foreign star clusters.” – Fan of the early 30s.

“Ackerman’s Folly” – Referring to the first issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. The individual with the critical opinion was a fan 18 years ago, is now a pro.

“You are the greatest catastrophe that ever happened to Science fiction!” – Fan turned book publisher in the 50’s who objected to me as an agent “bugging” him once a year for overdue royalty payments for my clients he had published.

“Ackerman, shut up! – And get those damn Monster fans of yours out of here!” – Author to me at a World Convention when a group of horror film aficionados had clustered around at the back of a hall and were eagerly asking me questions.

Cyril Kornbluth author and thuggish welcome wagon!

“So you’re the Ackerman who writes those ridiculous letters to the magazines!” Followed by a punch in the stomach. This was my welcome to Fun City in 1939 when I was met at the other end of the train line by some New York fans of the day, including the 15-year old Cyril Cornbluth who was to die prematurely but not before making a serious mark in the sf world as an author of pessimistic power. I always thought of him as the Sci-Fi world’s Oscar Levant.

“Peculiarly ridiculous” – An author who loved the craft, Ackerman must be daft or an imbecile or a notoriety-seeking clown and knave” - Member of the Lovecraft Circle describing me at 18. At least he gave me the benefit of an or rather that drubbing me into the ground with “ands”.

“Since you take 10% of my money, I feel you owe me 10% of your time.”- Disenchanted art client. In other words, no agent could have more than 10 clients.

“Ackerman is young”- yes, I was, once, especially at 18 – “as proved by his tendency to regard ordinary civilized language as alien and incomprehensible.” Who would have believed that this egregious stripling would have burgeoned into the terror of the English tongue, the Ackermangler of the King’s lingo, the creator of telescopiancontractions, telepathicommunications, neologisms & novacious coinages, portmanteau words, the scourge of the Anglo-academicians, the promulgator of the dictum that “The Pun is Mightier than the Sword”, the presentime purveyor of monsteriffic bone mots from his lair in Horrorwood/Hollyweird Karloffornia, a compleat collector of Lovecraftales and the auctorial representative of Clark Ashton Smith in the penumbral days of his life!

Anonymous voice on the phone: “Ackerman, you’re a son-of-a-bitch and you’re going to die for what you did to Glenn Strange.” Glenn Strange was the actor, now deceased, who took over the role of the Frankenstein monster after Karloff, Lugosi & Chaney Jr. had played it. What I did to him was give him a big publicity break in the pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS and supply him with a number of free fotos, lobby cards & posters of himself in roles he had played. But the story persists to this day that I stole stills from Glenn Strange.

Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's Monster

“Do you know why Ackerman took that 8700 mile trip all over the country visiting monster fans? Where do you think he got all those great stills for the “Bride of Frankenstein” issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS?” Well, I sure as fate didn’t steal them from every kid in the country (or even the kids in the city) because the issue in question appeared several months before I took the trip! Time travel???

“Ackerman is a crooked agent.” – Editor of about a quarter a century ago who was convinced I was selling stories to Mexico and telling my clients the Mexican editor wasn’t paying. He was – his translators one-thirteenth of a cent a word. At my own expense and with the authorization of such authors as van Vogt, Evans, Beaumont, Bradbury, etc., I was implementing a Hands Across the Border Seminal Scientifiction Program. But the author (a prominent one) “bought” the editor’s story that venal Forry was a crooked agent.

“Why did you hang onto my Hugo Award for a year and then, when I found out you had it, and asked for it, delay another month in delivering it to me?” (In case the anonymous author ever sees this and takes exception to this quote as not being verbatim, he may be correct, but I do not have the letter handy as I type these words – which are burned into my brain – but I think that it’s safe to say that the quotation is substantially correct.) I was being accused – but bitterly-of accepting an author’s Hugo in absentia, not informing him of it, keeping it for a year before he learned I had it, and then delaying several weeks in delivering it thru the mail after he had requested it. Well, it never happened, but it cost me approximately a hundred bucks & a lot of unpleasant emotion to prove my innocence. In the first place, I couldn’t have picked up his Hugo because embarrassingly, they weren’t physically present that year to be handed out – so I was reminded by long-distance phone call to London to the man who had been head of the World Convention that year. Secondly (but who needs a second with a first like that?) Franklin Dietz, who’s been taping the Cons since the time Alley Oop gave up chipping the reports on tablets of stone;- Franklin Dietz eventually played off the tape as the awards were announced and…naturally, there was no “California drawl” (the way my voice was described by an Anglofan after I visited London in 1951) saying, “I am honored to accept this Hugo on behalf of -.”

All the pretty Hugo Awards

“I won’t rest until I see Ackerman in jail where he belongs- with John W. Campbell!” How Campbell got into the act or how I got so lucky, I’ll never know. Pronunciamento of a “litigational paranoid,” who died in an asylum in Germany, after dragging me before the Board of Equalization or something.

IRS: “You only reported $1000 income from the Greenleaf Publishing Co. [IMAGINATION] but they say they sent you $10,000!” “Well, of course! Don’t you understand? I’m an agent! I only keep a commission…and pass most of the money on to the authors!” “Oh! Say, this is an interesting collection you have here - mind if I look at it?” IRS agent later, just before leaving: “By the way, I believe we owe you $32.” Thank you – come back anytime!

You have some nerve, printing First Class on this package of 4^th class trash you’ve sent me.”- Magazine editor of the 50's to me as agent.

“Ackerman, I’m mad at you. I’ve read my eyeballs out on this million words of junk you’ve sent me and there isn’t a word worth buying.” – Editor who had 3 or 4 titles going at the time. One man’s trash was another man’s treasure as I eventually sold a good deal of the material to other editors.

“I’m stony broke in the big glass jungle. You got any money for me?” I didn’t have, but for this client who I figured had such a big potential (and he did) I dug into my own pocket and aired him enough money to buy himself another week of time in New York. Seeing editors, I thought; seeking assignments. Instead, with my stake, he was shopping around for another agent. After he got one, he justified dropping me by writing a cantankerous, vituperous, excoriating 5-page letter (and those were the nice things he had to say about me) outlining all the things that were wrong with me as an agent. (Don’t you wonder sometime what I’m doing right to still be in business 30 years later and representing close to 150 names? Are you sure you’d like to read my autobiography – if I ever write it? And name names?

“Forrest Ackerman stole the METROPOLIS Robotrix!” I always believed the original, film-femmebot was blown to bits in the great Blitz of Berlin during WW2. It only recently came to my attention that I had actually watched (over 100 viewings at the time of this writing) my beloved “False Maria” burn up on screen in the climax of Fritz Lang’s Sci-Fi masterpiece. Fact is, I commissioned Bill Malone and crew to spend hundreds of hours to recreate her for me. I even designed the (never seen on-screen) back panel of the Robotrix myself!

Ultima Futura Automaton and Rotwang in METROPOLIS!

“Forrest Ackerman is destroying Lon Chaney’s makeup kit!” One of the saddest days in my life came when an LA museum reclaimed the Lon Chaney makeup kit I had proudly displayed to thousands of fans for years. And all due to poor wording (not mine this time!) of an ad for a product I merely endorsed. A fan who had refurbished the kit for preservation, decided that rather than waste the makeup dust cleaned from the kit, he would manufacture a tribute Chaney ring with a speck of the residue makeup included. The ad read: “Own an actual piece of Lon Chaney’s makeup kit.” Fans were alarmed at the thought that I might be chopping the historic kit of the Man of 1000 faces into a mess of a million pieces! As a result of the controversy, the museum decided to reclaim the kit to languish in the obscurity of a cold dark vault.

A handmade poster (in very familiar handwriting) was nailed to my front door upon my return from my recent horrible hospital habitation: “Hurry up and die Forry Ackerman! You’ve been cursed.” Well, I’m still here, which leads us to the burning question; Would you buy a used curse from this fan? Say, I could arrange for an annual death-curse. I might live forever! At any rate, this terrible cruelty didn’t inspire Anger in me. Just pity for the person who delivered it.

“Ackerman, you’re a basket case of acrimony!” (Just wanted to make sure you’re awake and paying attention. We’ve come full circle. End of gripe session and on to more pleasant topics. -FJA

Sci-Fi High (school)

I wonder what the James Abernathys and John Addlemans on this yearbook page thought of their young classmate, our future mentor - Forrest Ackerman? Did Forry preach the virtues of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror to his peers? Did he ever get busted for sneaking peaks at an Amazing Stories magazine during class? Was his notebook scribbled with cartoons of spacemen and monsters? Forry has said that in high school he was, "the resident crazy!"

(click pic to enlarge)

The "sense of wonder" evident in Forry's 18-year-old eyes, sparkled right up until his final moments. It's great to see his face here among his classmates. I wonder if any of Forry's contemporaries ever found themselves buying (or destroying) copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine their kids brought home. Forrest J Ackerman shall not die!

Over My Head in Hollywood

Fresh off the boat from Hawaii In 1982. Special FX dreams swirling, I walked into the red brick offices of Don Post Studios on Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood and begged to do something - I dunno? Anything! I had learned of Don Post, the man, years ago in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. I'd fallen in love with his deluxe, "over-the-head" classic monster-masks from the striking photos in the Captain Company catalog in the back of the mag.

My Don Post mask: Schizoid

As a teen I corresponded with Don Post and was a huge fan. By the time I made it to Hollywood, Don Sr. had passed away. But on that exciting day I visited the studio, Don Post Jr. actually remembered my gushing fan letters to his father and took pity on me. I didn't have so much as a portfolio or snapshot of any work to speak of. Yet, within an hour of my first visit, Don Jr. had loaded me up with a plaster armature/mask-form, modeling clay and a handful of sculpting tools to get me started. He also gave me a guide-sheet to follow to his specifications. He said, "go to it, kid." I felt like this was the biggest break in the world for me.

1983 Don Post Catalog featuring MY mask!

(courtesy the Halloween Mask Assoc.)

I worked diligently in the kitchen of my apartment in Northridge, California. After a couple of weeks, I dared to bring the sculpt into the studio. It was a mask of a humanoid creature with an underdeveloped twin growing out of its head. Don Post was not only receptive, he was downright encouraging. He called a meeting of his staff and they did an on-the-spot critique of the piece. They educated me about doing more to sculpt wrinkles that would contribute to the "stretch factor" of the mask, making it easier to pull over a head. They told me to tone down my detail as too many lines would cause the plaster mold to develop razor sharp grooves that might cut a worker's hand.

Bottom - center on a shelf of painting-masters at DP Studios

Don then offered to take over my sculpt or to give me another chance to implement his notes, which of course, I did. In a couple more weeks, I turned in the finished piece and it went into production! My original name for the mask was "Johnson & Johnson," but Don thought we might get into trouble using that familiar corporate brand name. So, "Schizoid" it was! Having my mask join the Don Post family was a highlight of my young life. Viewing it in the company CATALOG was just crazy! I saw it in stores and at Disneyland too! Don gave me 5 copies of the mask to give to my family and friends. One went to my high school art teacher Jean Noguchi, one to my Mom, one to Dad and one to my best monster-pal Sean. Naturally, one went to Forry and his Ackermuseum where it lived happily among fellow monsters until the big old place was shut down and we moved to the mini-mansion.

Schizoid - proud to be at home at Forry's Ackermuseum

The entire Don Post Studios family was so generous and nurturing at a time when I felt myself a stranger in a strange land. Contributing professionally to the Post legacy that had inspired me as a kid was an incredible confidence builder for this island boy. Today, when I see Don Post Jr. I feel such gratitude. When I shake his hand and tell him my story, he looks at me a little funny. I recognize that look. It's the reaction of a person who is so used to doing kind turns that it's almost embarrassing to be singled out for doing a kind turn. But truthfully, Don's kindness allowed me to conquer one of my life's dreams. Thanks to him, I can say that I fulfilled my fantasy of designing and sculpting a Don Post, deluxe, over-the-head mask!

My fist born goes the way of all rubber...