Stan Hart

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Len Brown about Stan Hart:

CBA: Do you recall the significant non-sports cards you worked on?
Len: I remember the first day I came into work, another fellow in our department who was on an equal footing with Woody, was Stan Hart...
CBA: Stan Hart, the humorist?
Len: Yeah! He worked for Mad magazine for many, many years.
CBA: Then he worked as a writer on the Carol Burnett Show.
Len: Yes. Absolutely. We became very close. In those days, it was Stan, Woody and myself in the new products department. Woody had hired me but in many ways, Stan was my boss. I was 18 years old and I guess Stan was about ten years older than that.
CBA: What was Stan like?
Len: Stan could be tough but he was a very funny guy and very creative. I don't remember exactly when but it was probably around 1965, when he left Topps and went to California. He was already working for Mad magazine by then... Somehow he did get involved with Carol Burnett and started writing for her and became head writer and eventually won an Emmy. He worked with Burnett for many years and he's done many different things. He produced his own movie and wrote a play that Hal Prince produced on Broadway. It was called Some of My Best Friends.
CBA: Did you maintain any contact with Stan once he went Hollywood?
Len: Oh, yeah, we stayed in touch and I'd visit him occasionally. He never really went completely "Hollywood" and he continued to consult for Topps. He'd fly in periodically for a series of meetings. I think after the Carol Burnett gig ended (I don't remember how long he worked for her), he moved back to the city and got involved with Topps again, though not on a daily basis. He'd come in a few days a week as a consultant and we'd still work together. Since I moved to Texas, we've spoken and, in fact, I have a note here to give him a call and see how he's doing. He's retired now and I think he's close to 70. He's got grandchildren. Stan was a very important aspect of my life, too, and very supportive of me during my early days at Topps.

Complete interview can be found at http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/14brown.html

Art Spiegelman about Stan Hart

Skipping forward a couple of decades; let's talk specifically about GPK. When that series launched, we've all read the stories about how it was a Wacky Packages that got commissioned as a GPK, then all of a sudden it was rushed off as its own series... can you talk about exactly when you ...?

That's not exactly the way I remember it. Did you ever see the book that Abrams did of the Garbage Pail Kids?

I did, I have read it ... it was a little while ago.

Okay. It was almost parallel and coincidental that Garbage Pail Kids was being made as a Wacky Packs or a very late series of those; when you're backed into doing Garbage Pail Kids as the series in that ... As I think that I outlined in that short piece that was at the front of the Garbage Pail Kids book, Topps had actually tried to get a license to do Cabbage Patch Kid dolls as a sticker series. As I remember it, the price being asked was very high for what Topps considered manageable. Then, everybody shrugged and said, "Well, I guess we're not going to do that."

Then, one of the people who worked at Topps named Stan Hart, who actually was a writer for the later version of MAD Magazine and worked on ... what was it ... I think the Carol Burnett Show, a TV show at the time; and was son-in-law of the head of Topps. He said, "Well, let's do a knock-off. Let's do a parody."

Nobody knew what he meant. Just, nobody knew what he was talking about, "Like a parody, that would be just one picture?"

"No. No. Just do a series."

"What would that be?"

"You figure it out." Left us flummoxed.

Stan [Hart] just came in once a week. That was... I don't know what year that was. I just went backwards from how long it takes to produce a gum card series, I guess. Whatever year that was happening in, it left us slumped. It wasn't obvious that it had to be a series. It wasn't obvious what it should look like. We were in charge of it ... Stan Hart wandered off on his white cloud. Len Brown, me, an assistant, Mark Newgarden, a couple of other people tried to figure out what that could possibly be.

For a few weeks there, what I remember was assigning different artists to do some of this parody of the Cabbage Patch Kid dolls. One thing I figured could work was naming these things. That was ... Cabbage Patch Kids came with their own certificate of authenticity like a birth certificate and had specific names. A much younger Topps had had several series that just were weird monster sticker-like things that looked like they were done by Dallas and Woodward. They just had a first name on them. That had been very popular. We did a few follow-ups there. That seemed like a natural approach to move in that direction and say, "We'll have the dolls and have names on them."

Complete interview can be found at http://members.tripod.com/garbage_pail_kids/GPKInterviewSpiegelman.htm

Abram J. Shorin (Stan's Father-in-law and Christopher's Grandfather) https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/30/obituaries/abram-j-shorin-91-baseball-card-creator.html

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