My Majestic Memory of Mad Magazine

Much has been written about the decision of MAD Magazine to cease publication of new material this week; jeez, it even made it to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Rather than merely add to the lamenting of the passing of another powerfully-influential cultural touchstone (at least to my generation), I’d like to recount a very personal story of a majestic, memorable encounter I had with the magazine’s principals about 40(!) years ago.

We go back to 1979. I was the 19-year-old Entertainment Editor of the Sunday Express newspaper at the time, and armed with way more guts than talent, was looking to supplement my meagre income with some freelance writing gigs. A friend had provided me with a contact to Gerald Rothberg, at the time the publisher of Circus Magazine, a New York-based rock and roll mag, and on a cloudy January Monday, I took the first flight out of Montreal for a 9:30 meeting with him. Lugging a briefcase filled with my published writing samples, I was joined for the journey by Bob Amesse, my closest buddy at the Express.

Don’t know how I did it, but I walked out of the Circus offices with an agreement to provide the mag with movie and TV celebrity stories. Mission accomplished…but it was only 10:15 a.m., and Bob and I had a whole day to fill. We did the typical Times Square walkabout thing, grabbed lunch at Sardi’s, and still had eight hours to kill. So we ambled aimlessly like goofy tourists, until we found ourselves trekking down Madison Avenue.

“Hey, isn’t this where the MAD Magazine offices are?” I asked Bob. Its address was iconic, listed as 485 MADison Avenue in its masthead, and we were only blocks away. “Let’s see if we can interview them,” Bob suggested, story-seeking even on his day off. So again, fronted by an overabundance of guts, I ducked into a phone booth (so quaint, but mobiles weren’t even a dream then), called the number in the phone book, and asked to speak to legendary editor Al Feldstein.

To my heart-pounding shock, he took the phone, and told us to come right up! Ten minutes later, Bob and I were in MAD’s less-than-sparse reception area, and ushered into Feldstein’s office. We were puzzled, but ecstatic.

“Where’s your press pass?”

Until we met Feldstein. He sat us down, moved to his side of the desk, leaned in to us and barked “Where’s your press pass?”

Huh? Uh…who had press passes? Maybe hard-scrabbled crime reporters in classic 1940s film noirs, but not us. “Where’s your press pass?” he repeated.

Luckily, I had with me all the by-lined articles I had prepped for Circus Magazine. I poured them on Feldstein’s desk and managed to convince him that Bob and I were real, actual journalists. And with this, Feldstein sat down, softened, and sweetly said “Sorry to be so gruff, but you have no idea the amount of kids who come here telling us they work for a newspaper. So, what do you wanna know?”

For the next hour, Bob and I were in heaven, grilling Feldstein with a question barrage that was way more personal curiosity than journalistic scouring. He was amazingly candid, recounting battles with the moral right during the early days of the comic book industry (for more details, check out “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America” by David Hajdu), explaining the power of self-deprecation (MAD always referred to itself as “trash”), and taking shots at the National Lampoon magazine, which he believed to take comedic liberties too far.

Just as we felt that we were overstaying our welcome, Feldstein asked “Do you wanna see the place?” 

Huh? Uh…yeah!

We expected zaniness, Three Stooges-like pie fights and sprayed seltzer bottles

We expected zaniness, Three Stooges-like pie fights, sprayed seltzer bottles, but the offices were small, quiet and nondescript. That it, UNTIL he took us into the domain of even-more-legendary publisher Bill Gaines; a tight box cluttered with colorful memorabilia, zeppelin models and dozens of rubber stamps on carousel stands. Gaines was massive, bearded and even friendlier than Feldstein. He signed the most recent copy of the magazine for both of us (Issue #205, with a parody of the film “Grease” on the cover).

Was that enough? Not for the “more guts” guy. 

“Would it be too much to ask for some original artwork?” I meekly queried as we left Gaines’s office. “Uh, for the article we’re writing, of course.”

“That I can’t do. Copyright and all that stuff. But how about this?” Feldstein said, as he gave me Issue #205’s “MAD Pad,” his outline of the magazine’s page-by-page content, hand-written on a template designed by Al Jaffee (scroll to top of story to see again).

Cut to January 21, 1979. Despite almost drowning Feldstein and Gaines with thanks, Bob and I thought we should top off our appreciation with a small gift — a copy of the article, printed on thick, glossy paper and framed professionally. We picked it up, and wrapped it protectively before sending it off.

Well, perhaps not “protectively” enough, as about a week later, we received the following letter (note the Alfred E. Neuman watermark!):

Great memory? Obviously. But more important is the lesson this taught me — when your lens on the world is one of joy, even the biggest irritation can be construed as funny. 

Thanks for everything, Al Feldstein. And thanks for everything and more, MAD Magazine.