JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

November 25, 2020

A John Keel Résumé

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:12 pm

buy cheap neurontin in iowa overnight Two of the recent posts here, “Report from Hollywood” and “Al Mercy,” were taken from a folder of miscellaneous papers that John labeled “Milky Way Productions.” Milky Way published Al Goldstein’s risqué periodical Screw, and the folder does contain a few unfinished ideas for Screw. (Goldstein did publish several humor pieces by John, under the pseudonyms Thorton M. Vaseltarp and Thaddeus T. Farnboggle.) But it also holds three scripts for Mack and Myer for Hire, fragments and ideas for several TV shows (Lost in Space, The Flintstones, The Dick Van Dyke Show), gag letters to something called SNAFU, a 1972 letter about a burglary of his home in Woodstock, a 1971 letter from Loren Coleman, an outline of a book called The Last Great Mysteries, and two résumés from 1965. John’s filing system was as idiosyncratic as the rest of his life.

I posted one of the résumés here. This one may have been a first draft. As usual, it raises a few questions. What, for example, are John’s two hundred film credits? Was The World of the Living Dead ever produced? I can find no trace of it, although it may have been made under another title. John is not listed in the credits of Diary of a Bachelor (you can see them here), but it was produced by Sandy Howard and featured Joey Faye (one of the stars of Mack and Myer) so he was probably called in to provide a few gags. He did write about the technical problems of sound for 8mm film (at least two articles in 1963, for Better Home Movie Making and U. S. Camera); his film The Whimper has survived, and has been digitized. Call My Bluff did air for a few months in 1965, although John is not credited in any of the accounts I’ve seen. I don’t think John ever wrote for Playboy, except for a letter; his proposed article on UFOs was rejected as too long. He did write for the American Forces Network; I’ve listed the scripts he saved in the bibliography on this site. “Hundreds of radio shows,” I’m afraid, is an exaggeration. He did work for Funk & Wagnalls, and is credited as “assistant editor” in the 1960 Book of the Year. I haven’t seen the 1958 edition of Who’s Who in America, but inclusion reportedly involved a fee. The other résumé is a bit more reliable!

5 Comments

  1. In 1958 Who’s Who in America did not require a fee to be listed, at least the Marquis Who’s Who didn’t. It was a standard library biography title, at least while libraries still had books. Because you can’t copyright a book title (although you may be able to trademark a series title … as far as I know that’s still in litigation) there are a myriad of Who’s Whos. Many of those are scams. I know that at least in the early 2000s there was no fee and no enticement to purchase because for some unfathomable reason they sent me a potted biography to edit for inclusion. So there I was on the same page as Ozzy Osbourne. Pretty weird feeling, but I didn’t put in in my resume.

    Comment by ozinor — November 27, 2020 @ 9:57 am

  2. Ah, thanks, Ozinor. I looked up Who’s Who and saw that most of them were scams, so assumed the 1958 one was. At any rate, I assume this was a rough draft of his résumé, because of the typos; John didn’t list it on the revised version.

    Comment by Doug — November 27, 2020 @ 3:25 pm

  3. […] A John Keel Résumé […]

    Pingback by A John Keel Resume – Not an Authority on Anything – TruthUncovered.TV — December 12, 2020 @ 4:24 pm

  4. What was his idea for the dick van dyke show?????

    Comment by Patty g — April 28, 2021 @ 12:25 am

  5. He got as far as one line. Laura and Ritchie are watching TV; Rob comes in with a plate of cold cuts and asks, “You sure you two don’t want a little snack?” I’m sure he had more in mind, but that’s all he wrote!

    Comment by Doug — April 28, 2021 @ 9:22 am

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