#mad trips

[usualgangofidiots]

The Usual Gang of Idiots

Published Wednesday, August 11, 2021

William M. Gaines, the publisher of MAD magazine, used to take the folks who worked for him on an annual trip to some exotic place. It was a way, he felt, to engender loyalty and productivity and to take a trip with a lot of funny people and then write it off as a business expense. The gent labelled #13 above probably advised him on this.

A lot of folks online have been trying to identify all the folks in this photo taken on one of those trips. As a public service, I sent it to my partner Sergio Aragonés and asked him to help out.

The online folks are theorizing this photo is from the 1960 trip, which was the first.  1960 was when Alfred E. Neuman made his first real bid at the presidency; ergo, the campaign poster and pins suggest that year.  Well, maybe…but Sergio is also certain the man on the far left is Paul Coker, Jr. and Mr. Coker did not have work in MAD until 1961…so maybe this is '61 or '62 in spite of the poster and pins.  It would have to be one of those three years since Sergio isn't in it.  His first MAD trip was 1963 and he was a steady participant after that.

Bill Gaines later decreed that freelancers had to have contributed some specified number of pages to the magazine during the previous twelve months in order to qualify for each year's MAD trip but Sergio says that rule came along later.  (The policy led to a great quip by longtime MAD writer Arnie Kogen when Gaines' mother died.  Someone asked Arnie if he was going to the funeral and he said, "I can't.  I don't have enough pages.")

If you look at the photo, you can see everyone is numbered. Here are his identifications…

Joe Orlando (Artist)

Frank Jacobs (Writer)

Jerry DeFuccio (Editorial Assistant)

Nick Meglin (Editorial Assistant)

Almost Certainly John Putnam (Art Director)

Maybe Larry Siegel (Writer)

Al Jaffee (Writer-Artist)

Unidentified

Paul Coker, Jr. (Artist)

Leonard Brenner (Production Manager)

Unidentified

Unidentified

Sidney Gwirtzman (Gaines' Accountant)

Unidentified

Al Feldstein (Editor)

Bob Clarke (Artist)

Dave Berg (Writer-Artist)

George Woodbridge (Artist)

Nancy Gaines (Gaines' Daughter)

William Gaines (Publisher)

Sergio is reasonably certain that one of the Unidentified men has to be Gaines' lawyer Marty Scheiman, who was credited for years in the masthead where it said, "Lawsuits: Martin J. Scheiman, Esq." Sergio is also reasonably certain that this photo does not contain any of the following people who were contributing to MAD at the time: Don Martin, Wallace Wood, Mort Drucker, Sy Reit, Gary Belkin, Frank Kelly Freas or Tom Koch.  That is, unless one of them is the guy in the Alfred E. Neuman mask which seems highly unlikely.It might or might not contain Larry Siegel, who was one of MAD's most prolific writers.  MAD's photographer at the time was a gent named Lester Krauss so it's possible he took the picture.  Or maybe someone else did and he's one of the Unidentifieds.  Or maybe he isn't there at all.  Who the hell knows?

Obviously, if anyone knows for sure what year this was or has corrections or additions, send 'em in.  And hey, take another look at the photo.  Doesn't it look like this is a bad, all-male road company of Guys and Dolls and Dave Berg is about to start singing "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat"?

- From Mark Evanier’s blog

[truantraver]

[usualgangofidiots]

One day in 1960, Bill Gaines called a general meeting of staff, writers, and artists -- in all about twenty men.  Assembling them in his office, he distributed guide books to Haiti and told them they would soon be going on an all-expenses-paid tropical holiday.  This would be the first of the legendary "Mad trips", which became an annual tradition.

Gaines' elaborate planning became the butt of many jokes during the trips.  Don Martin once remarked that Bill was "sort of like a Sunday school or first-grade teacher.  We almost had to stand in line with no talking allowed."  But his attention to detail was responsible for some of the more memorable events of the trips.  Before leaving New York on the first trip to Haiti, Gaines had checked to see if Mad had any Haitian subscribers; he found that there was only one, and also that the man was about to let his subscription lapse.  Upon arriving at the island, Gaines piled the entire Mad group into rented jeeps and headed for the man's house.  The group greeted the stunned reader at his door, Gaines bestowed on him a gift subscription, and the Madmen all drove off into the sunset.