{"id":16768,"date":"2008-12-27T21:07:02","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T02:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=16768"},"modified":"2014-12-10T20:06:34","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T01:06:34","slug":"al-jaffee-and-will-elder-in-1939","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/27\/al-jaffee-and-will-elder-in-1939\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Jaffee and Will Elder in 1939"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The focus of this Sunday&#8217;s <i>New York Times Magazine<\/i> is its annual &#8220;The Lives They Lived&#8221; feature, which  memorializes many of those we&#8217;ve lost this year, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/12\/28\/magazine\/28carlin-t.html?ref=magazine\" target=\"_blank\">George Carlin<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/12\/28\/magazine\/28elder-t.html?ref=magazine\" target=\"_blank\">Will Elder<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/12\/28\/magazine\/28wwln-consumed-t.html?ref=magazine\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Winston<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite component of the issue turned out not to be the words, but rather a single photograph, taken in 1939 of pals Al Jaffee and Will Elder as they yukked it up  in their high school cafeteria:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeWillElder1939.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeWillElder1939-300x287.jpg\" alt=\"AlJaffeeWillElder1939\" width=\"300\" height=\"287\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16770\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeWillElder1939-300x287.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeWillElder1939.jpg 522w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to see why they were destined to become part of the &#8220;usual gang of idiots&#8221; behind <i>Mad<\/i> magazine.  I&#8217;d have <i>killed<\/i> to have lunch with those two guys.  They&#8217;d have had me snorting milk out my nose in seconds!<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s Al Jaffee 69 years later, when he and I spoke at this year&#8217;s San Diego Comic-Con International, immediately after the Golden and Silver Age Comics panel:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeSanDiegoComicCon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeSanDiegoComicCon-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"AlJaffeeSanDiegoComicCon\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16771\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeSanDiegoComicCon-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/AlJaffeeSanDiegoComicCon.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHis hairline may have changed, but at 87, the zaniness within that cranium still remains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The focus of this Sunday&#8217;s New York Times Magazine is its annual &#8220;The Lives They Lived&#8221; feature, which memorializes many of those we&#8217;ve lost this year, including George Carlin, Will Elder, Joan Winston, and others. My favorite component of the issue turned out not to be the words, but rather a single photograph, taken in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[567,18,436],"class_list":["post-16768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-al-jaffee","tag-comics","tag-will-elder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16768"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16772,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768\/revisions\/16772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}