Joseph Greene

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For other authors with similar names see Joseph Green.

Joseph Lawrence Greene (1914-1990) was a science fiction editor and author, best known for his role in creating the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet television series and writing the Dig Allen novels, both space adventures intended for boys. He also wrote comic books and was an editor for the Grosset publishing house until 1972.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Comics

Joseph Greene was born on August 1, 1914, and was involved in many key titles during the so-called Golden Age of Comic Books, during the late 1930s and early 1940s. He apparently acted as "a ghost writer for the some of most famous.. comic characters of the era," including The Green Lama, Spunky and Golden Lad (for Spark Publications).[1] In 1942, he is believed to have began working for DC Comics on their All-American line of comics writing for characters including Aquaman, Boy Commandos, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Superman and Wonder Woman.[2][3]

He is also said to have worked for comics publishers including the American Comics Group, Better Publications (including on The Fighting Yank), Dell Publications (including Tom Corbett, Space Cadet), Lev Gleason Publications, Marvel Comics, Fawcett Comics and Hillman Periodicals (Greene wrote various Romance comics for both Hillman and Fawcett during the early 1950s).[4]

According to comics historian Jerry Bails, Greene wrote for Frank Frazetta's syndicated newspaper strip Johnny Comet/Ace McCoy between 1952-53[4], and CIO News' first strip, The Adventures of Jim Barry, Touble Shooter. He also reputedly provided work for the pulp magazine features The Black Bat and The Phantom.[4]

[edit] Pen-names

Greene purportedly wrote under the house name "Alvin Schwartz," and sundry variations of his own name (Joseph Lawrence, Joe Green, Joseph Verdy, Larry Verdi and Lawrence Vert - "Vert" being French for "Green") and "Richard Mark."[4]

[edit] Tom Corbett

Greene also produced work for radio, film and television, most notably for various versions of Tom Corbett.

[edit] Beginnings

Around 1945, Greene submitted a script for a comics magazine storyline likely entitled Space Academy, before (on January 16, 1946), submitting a script to Orbit Feature Services, Inc. entitled "The Pirates of Space" for a prospective radio show under the revised title of Space Cadets, featuring primary cadet Tom Ranger.[1][5] The following year, Greene reversed the title to Space Academy, submitting another radio script to NBC, and then later to Rockhill Studios, with whom he began developing the show, which was now being developed for television.[5] By 1949, the title was reconsidered, as both "Cadet" and "Academy" were thought to be somewhat ubiquitous - indeed, in 1948 Robert Heinlein has published a novel entitled Space Cadet - so the title was expanded (by Greene and Rockhill's Stanley Wolfe) to include the name of the main character: Tom Ranger, Space Cadet.[5] In order for this to come about, Rockhill licensed "the "Space Cadet" name from Robert Heinlein... [and] milk[ed] th[e] connection... in its publicity."[5] Thus, in October 1949, Tom Ranger and the Space Cadets was developed as a syndicated newspaper strip, although the strip went unused until it was recycled a few years later.[1]

[edit] Debuts and legal challenges

Drawing on the unpublished newspaper strip, and undergoing a last minute name-change, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet launched on CBS on October 2, 1950. It is followed a year later (on September 9, 1951) by a newspaper strip of the same name, written by Paul S. Newman (with unknown levels of input from Greene[4]) and illustrated by Ray Bailey (a ghost artist for Milton Caniff on the Steve Canyon strip).[5] This strip, for the Field Enterprise Syndicate draws heavily on the unpublished 1949 Tom Ranger strip, itself recycled and adapted into the first TV episode.[1]

In 1951, Greene sued Rockhill over royalty payments, ultimately being awarded a judgement over payments "for the television or radio show but not both," as well as full rights (minus royalty fees to Rockhill) to any comic book version of Tom Corbett. Greene writes Tom Corbett, Space Ranger comics for Dell Publications between 1952 and 1954.[4] In the same year, Grosset & Dunlap begin publishing a series of Tom Corbett books, beginning with Stand by for Mars!, the second and third seasons of Tom Corbett.. start on ABC television, and a six-month radio show airs on ABC radio.[5]

In 1953, the feature film It Came From Outer Space is released, Rockhill subsequently sued Universal Pictures for using "a modified Practi-Cole Products Tom Corbett helmet" in the production. Universal settled the case for $750.[5]

[edit] Books

Published by Grosset & Dunlap (which, by the 1950s was the well-established publisher of series such as Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Rick Brant) starting in 1952, the Tom Corbett series was published as a tie-in to the character whose copyright lay with Rockhill Radio, and the plots echo the radio scripts more than the television or comics, which also provide inspiration.[6]

Written under the name "Carey Rockwell," authorship of the series is not nearly so well documented as that of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's output, but suggestions naturally include Green himself as editor (an association made by Jerry Bails[4]) if not also writer.[7] Another possibility names The Cincinnati Kid-author Richard Jessup as a candidate for authorship of the Corbett novels.[7]

Technical advice was provided by Willy Lay, who not only "helped design the Marx Tom Corbett Space Academy playset," for the character, but was "one of the leading rocket experts of the 1950s." Lay is touted as urging the United States into Space, and author of a number of journal articles and books, including contributions to Collier's Man in the Moon series.[6]

[edit] Corbett continues

The programme would ultimately run for five seasons, beginning its fourth season on the DuMont Network in 1953, and its fifth and final season a year later on NBC. Grosset & Dunlap published its eighth "Tom Corbett" title (Robot Rocket) in 1955/56, marking the effective end of the series on radio, television, and in books.[5][7]

Following an investigation by the IRS in 1965 over non-payment of back taxes, Rockhill's rights to Tom Corbett were purchased by a new entity, Direct Recordings, Inc. while papers owned by Stanley Wolfe were later donated to the University of Southern California.[5]

In 1980, well-known comics author Chris Claremont produced a Tom Corbett, Space Cadet novel for Dell Publishing. Clarement's novel remains unpublished. Four years later, Greene gave his personal "kineoscopes" of the television episodes to Wade Williams, who subsequently assumed some rights to Corbett.[5]

In 1990, Eternity Comics produced a five-issue collection of the 1950s newspaper strips, under the title Original Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.[5]

[edit] Books

[edit] Grosset

Greene is likely to have overseen, plotted and edited - if not also ghost-written - some (or all) of the eight Tom Corbett, Space Cadet novels for Grosset & Dunlap, published between 1952 and 1956.[6][7] Between 1959 and 1962, he wrote six titles in the Juvenile SF series "Dig Allen - Space Explorers for Golden Press."[1] These began with 1959's The Forgotten Star, and finished with 1962's Lost City of Uranus.

Greene worked as an editor at Grosset between c1964 and c1973, ultimately working his way up to the positions of "managing editor and acting editor-in-chief before leaving the company."[1]

[edit] Almanacs

During his semi-retirement in the late 1970s and 1980s, he published a number of independent almanacs - "several about astrology and one called the American Elsewhen Almanac."[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Joseph Greene's Tom Corbett Connection By "Cadet Ed". Accessed May 7, 2008
  2. ^ Biography by Joe Desris, in Batman Archives, Volume 3 (DC Comics, 1994), p. 223 ISBN 1-56389-099-2
  3. ^ Note: Alvin Schwartz casts doubt on some of the information surrounding Greene's credits, writing that:
    “ "[Greene] was credited with writing Batman from 1942 to 1945. 1942 was the very year I started doing Batman, along with Finger and Cameron, and also the Daily, starting in 1945. Not a Joe Greene in sight anywhere. Hidden in a box under editor Schiff's desk, perhaps?

    ...I also wrote stories for the slicks some years before I came to DC. But I used a different name. I did NOT use Alvin Schwartz... I changed my name to Vernon Woodrum. If you were a rising literary critic, novelist and poet, would you have wanted your real name as a byline for a story called Detoured Sweetheart?

    ...But wait--the story gets even crazier. According to the mysterious Joseph Greene, he also wrote slicks. But he did so under the name of--you're not going to believe this, but we got it from Jerry Bails, who possibly got it from our friend Joseph. Greene claimed that he wrote slicks under the name of Alvin Schwartz!

    Very very strange. Maybe he was a shape-shifter. But hold on, folks. It gets even stranger. J. Greene claimed to have written a whole number of scripts for DC characters I also wrote for and at about the same time, but somehow our paths never crossed. Nor did I ever hear any mention of him at the time.

    		 ”
    "After the Golden Age" Volume 2, Number 53 by Alvin Schwartz, October 14, 2002. Accessed May 8, 2008
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Joe Greene at the Who's Who of American Comic Books by Jerry Bails et al.. Accessed May 7, 2008
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tom Corbett Timeline. Accessed May 8, 2008
  6. ^ a b c Tom Corbett: Grosset & Dunlap Books. Accessed May 8, 2008
  7. ^ a b c d Tom Corbett: Grosset & Dunlap Books II. Accessed May 8, 2008

[edit] External links

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