New Dukes Stuff - 11/26/2024 - Kids Clothes and Adult Language - WB Inter-Office Memo

Every once in a while I get an opportunity to add some crazy items to the collection, things that we never knew existed, or that shouldn't exist.  Things that were a part of the production process of either the show or the collectibles.  Things that are so unique that they have to be one of a kind.  In the past, I was fortunate to add pieces like the cast and crew belt buckle mold, the slot machine decorations, and the screen used CNH 320 license plate to the collection. I just added another one of a kind item to the collection.  Read all about it after we look at a few pieces of golden era children's clothing.  

Ok, the piece at the bottom of this blog post is one of a kind, but this bad boy is super super rare.  You may remember twelve years ago when I was able to part our good buddy Rush Pedder with his beloved Dukes swim trunks.  It wasn't easy, but that was one of my first big acquisitions that took place after, and basically because,  I started this blog.  I don't think I would have met Rush if it wasn't for ol' DukesCollector.  Those trunks are a prized piece in the collection, and I felt pretty great about owning them, until later that year when I saw Dave DeWitt's Coy and Vance version of the trunks in his beautiful traveling museum.  I still feel great about the original pair of trunks, but I finally, after a dozen years of looking, added the Coy and Vance pair to my collection.  

These little blue trunks are in perfect condition.  They appear to never have been worn.  Every once in a while an item pops up on ebay at a too good to be true buy it now price, and it turns out to be true.  I was very fortunate to jump on these right away and at a decent price.  

The Coy and Vance pair are slightly bigger than my Bo and Luke pair as they came in different sizes.  They have the same graphic of the General Lee, but Bo and Luke's image is larger.  I'm pretty sure this drawing of the Gen'ral is unique to these trunks and not used anywhere else. 

The C&V pair was released in 1983. It must have been a tough time for memorabilia manufacturers to remake so many items with Coy and Vance's likeness and replace Bo and Luke.  I guess "so many" is an overstatement as there are maybe two handfuls of items that this happened on.  

The B&L version came out two years prior in 1981.  These Coy and Vance trunks are incredibly rare.  The Bo and Luke ones are rare and the other ones had to have a smaller production number.  I am very excited to add them to the collection.  This is a great addition!

Next up are a few pieces of Dukes kids clothes that I thought were fun and I jumped on.  I have quite a few articles of Dukes clothes for youngins. There was much more kids clothing produced in the golden era than there were adult attire. That changed in the silver and modern eras as the newer clothes were geared toward the same consumers who had grown up.  These days Cooter's is THE place to get Dukes garb and they have a variety to fit Dukes fans of all ages. 

This is a fun Boss Hogg pajama top that I picked up on ebay because I just love the image.  Boss looks like them Dukes just foiled another one of his schemes.  Them Dukes, them Dukes!  I love how the Ss are subtle money signs.  You almost miss that little addition.  I'm a sucker for anything Boss Hogg related.  He is such a great character!

  

Next up is a logo t-shirt, that, if it wasn't kid sized, I would totally wear today.  

The font is very uncharacteristically Dukes.  It looks so '70s and almost disco-y. I could totally see a kid in a Sears catalog wearing this shirt and bellbottoms.  This shirt is great.

This final piece of Dukes kids wear before we get to the showstopper piece features the one and only Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane!

Rosco is counting money and without question making his iconic kew kew kew laugh.  Boss must have just given Rosco his twenty percent of his twenty percent of the undoubtedly dirty money.  I wonder about the kids that wore Boss and Rosco shirts to school back then.  Were they looked at as villains, or just fun characters?  Did other kids wear Cobra or Skeletor shirts? How about Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor shirts?  Nah, Boss and Rosco were so good at being bad that everyone loved them.  I love having these shirts in the collection.  What's the best way to display t-shirts?

Ok, here it is.  The item I've been bragging about all this time.  This is an Inter-Office Memo from Warner Bros that was never meant to be seen outside of the studio.  This piece is amazing.  

Before we go any further, I want to discuss the parties involved.  William Raynor was a writer on the Dukes in California and wrote some great episodes.  He wrote many of my favorites including The Meeting, Carnival of Thrills, The Dukes Meet Cale Yarborough, Baa Baa White Sheep, 10 Million Dollar Sheriff, Birds Gotta Fly and twenty seven others.  He was responsible for many classic Dukes moments.  Al Garbade was a friend of William's that lived in Felda, Florida.  Mike B. is a new friend of the blog from Michigan that had the piece for over twenty-five years since his mom bought it at an antique store along with some Dukes autographs.  Now that we know the players, we can begin the story of what exactly this is and how it's flown all over the country to arrive in my collection here in Pennsylvania.  

Above is the original envelope it came in.  It has the WB logo on it and below Wm.'s name is "Dukes of Hazzard #166998."  I wonder if that number was a designation for the production or something.  Just an envelope with WB and Dukes signage would be cool to have.  But this one has such a cool story. 

Al didn't tear the envelope too bad when he received the correspondence decades ago.  Thanks for keeping it mostly intact Al!

The back of the envelope has the address to the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California.  

Along with the actual memo, William sent a note to his good buddy Al.  This is the adult language part I noted in the title of the blog.  Nothing too bad, but it would make this article TV14 or PG-13.  It was the '70s, anything goes.  So Mr. Raynor is letting Mr. Garbade know about the hoops he has to go thru to "immortalize his friends."  What does that mean?  The actual memo provides a lot of great info.

Now this is the meat of the package.  This is an actual memo that was sent around the production office during preproduction of the season two episode Road Pirates. Road Pirates is a great episode where Boss buys stolen TVs with the intention to resell them, but they are stolen from him and he tries to pin it on the Duke Boys and Cletus, who is filling in for Enos.  The character who sold Boss the TVs and steals them back from him is named Marty Garbade.  That sounds familiar.  

The point of the memo is to make sure names of characters and business in the show are not accidentally real names or close to real names.  Have you ever seen the fictitious persons disclaimer in the credits of movies and shows that says something like "This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental." Well apparently it's someone's job to make sure the coincidence doesn't get too close to the actual.  Writers like William have to come up with fake names and some rely on names of their friends to include in their work.  It seems that William used Al's last name when he came up with this week's bad guy and someone at the studio figured it would be a good idea to give Garbade a first name so actions wouldn't offend the Garbades that live anywhere near where the fictional Hazzard County might be.  Since the Garbade in question is based in Atlanta, the studio worker checked the phone books from Atlanta and found there is a Jennigs and a P.E. there and suggested giving the character a first name so these two people wouldn't "file a claim against us."  That seems like a lot of work just to clear a name.  William wasn't lying in his note to Al.  Seems like William landed on naming the fictional Marty Garbade, so Jennings and P.E. wouldn't sue. That turned out to be the right move, because Google tells me that Jennings Garbade is a lawyer in Atlanta that has been active since 1974. WB dodged a bullet there.  Nothing showed up on P.E. 

William probably made the checkmark on the page before he sent it to Al so Al would know what he was talking about on the note.  I'm sure William had no idea Al would keep this memo and it would go from Florida to Michigan to Pennsylvania over the next four decades.  I've never seen another memo like this and it offers such an interesting glimpse in the behind the scenes office work that goes into the production of a television show.   William didn't just send the page that mentions Al's surname, but the entire three page memo and there is so much fun information on it.  

The heavy hitters of the Dukes production team are all mentioned at the top of the memo.  Rod Amateau, Gy Waldron, Skip Ward and Ralph Riskin are all names we're familiar with because we love to watch Rosco chase the Duke Boys around that tree during the closing credits and these names all appear on screen.  We know Gy Waldron created the show and the rest were producers and writers.  They all probably handled this memo.  The memo was written my Linda Kodis, who Google tells me was a paralegal and script supervisor during her time with Warner Bros and addressed to Paul Picard, the legendary producer of the Dukes.  

In addition to the paragraph about Garbade, there's info about the use of a nitrous oxide injector, which Bo and Luke install on Cletus's patrol car.  Linda or someone in the legal department had to call mechanics in the area to make sure the use in the show makes sense.  They also had to check the yellow pages and white pages to see if there is any store called "Tri-Counties Video" and contact Southern Bell, the phone company in Atlanta, to make sure there are no phone numbers that start with 999 in the area.  That's a lot of checking.  

And it goes on!  Page two has more cool references.  We learn that Boss has a relative named Agnes so the legal team had to make sure there was no Agnes Hogg in Hazard, Kentucky.  This is interesting as the first page only mentions Atlanta, but now we are moving in to Kentucky and Hazard, the town that loved the Dukes and hosted the cast several times in their Black Gold Festival.  You might also remember Carroll Fugate, a politician from Hazard, who took his admiration for Boss Hogg and his antics a little too far.  

There's also direction about not showing the the newspaper and clearing any music used.  The bad guys are called "Heavies" and one of their names needs to have the spelling changed.  The first use of Colonial City is challenged and cleared.  So much checking and clearing.  Each scene and line is referenced with the corresponding page of the script on the left. 

The final page has fun information too.  Several of the passages are about not showing manufacture names on the boxes and crates of the stereo and TV equipment.  There's also mention of the store names on the trucks, "Stereo City" and "Southern Express Co." that are both cleared.  Scene 141 , page 47 is very interesting because it mentions a real highway in Georgia but is cleared to be used because the highway runs through the entire state and would not "pin-point" the location of Hazzard County.  The producers were very serious about keeping the actual location of our beloved fictional County a mystery. 

There is so much info on these few pages.  The envelope and the personalized note really add to it as well.  William sent this note to Al in June of 1979.  Both William and Al passed away in the early '90s.  Sometime in the late '90s or early 2000s the letter with the note and envelope ended up in an antique store along with some autographed pictures from the Dukes.  Our pal Mike B.'s mom purchased the package from the store in Florida and Mike had the now collectible in his possession in Michigan for the last twenty five years.  Through the power of this blog, Mike reached out to me about adding it to my collection.  I love when that happens.  So the piece went from getting printed in California, to mailed to Florida, to purchased in Florida and taken to Michigan to shipped to me in Pennsylvania.  That's a good bit of travel for this piece of Dukes history.  I have scripts and call sheets that tell me a lot about the production of the Dukes of Hazzard, but this document added a different level of information and fact checking that goes into a production.  I'm so excited and grateful that Mike entrusted me with this collectible and it will be a cherished part of the Dukes of Hazzard collection.    

New Dukes Stuff - 11/20/2024 - 01 Fight Trunks, Greek Poster, Atari Video Game and More

New Dukes Stuff!  I've been slacking on my reporting of new additions to the collection, but definitely not falling behind in my buying of new additions to the collection.  In this new entry, we got some unique things that I've never seen before.  Let's take a look. 

 

First up is a pair of MMA/Boxing shorts dedicated to our favorite show from a company called All Valley Fightwear.  There's a good bit to unpack here.  First, we see the 01 and rebel flag.  All Dukes.  The name of the company, All Valley, is obviously taken from Karate Kid, where Daniel San fought Johnny Lawrence at the All Valley Karate Tournament at the end of the movie.  And the blue stripe with white stars on the side is reminiscent of the iconic red, white, and blue shorts worn by Apollo Creed and later Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movie series.  That's three franchises in one!

 

We all know about my love for the Dukes, and you are probably familiar with the fact that I love Cobra Kai and Karate Kid, given some of my Halloween costumes and stories I've shared on here.  You might even have seen some pictures of me in my Rocky shorts swimming trunks on the old blog.  When I saw these pop up on ebay, there was no way I wasn't buying them.  

Plus they are about my size, just a little big.  They aren't your average shorts, and have a bulky front which I'm guessing is for protection during a match.  Doing a little research, All Valley Fightwear was a short lived brand of fighting clothes that closed up shop about a decade ago.  I wasn't aware these existed, but I can tell whoever made them loved all the great TV and movies.  Speaking of Cobra Kai, I just finished the second part of the last season last night, and I loved it so much.  In this era of legacy sequels, where old franchises are brought back with the original cast and also introduce a new cast, Cobra Kai does it so perfectly.  Ghostbusters also gets it right.  I am going to miss Cobra Kai after the last part of this final season is released.  The show is so fun and the action is great.  The fight scene in this latest episode was epic.  In a world of great legacy sequels, I sure thinks Dukes of Hazzard deserves a new moment to shine.  

Back to the Dukes stuff.  This is a Dukes poster from Greece that I've never seen before.  When it popped up on ebay, I tried to figure out exactly what it was, but it had a decent price and I didn't want to miss out on it, so I bought it and waited until it got to my hemisphere to really examine it.  I took a chance and it paid off.  This thing is incredible!

My first thoughts were it was a magazine pull-out poster.  The fold in the middle gave me that impression.  I was wrong, and I'm happy about that.  It is a thicker, almost cardboard material.  It isn't in perfect condition, but I'm not going to complain about it.  It's a little bigger than what a fold out poster would be.  The image is interesting.  It has NTIOYKE on top.  This translates to just Dukes.  We've seen that on different DVD releases of the show and movie from Greece.  The bottom has writing that translates to Carousel Offer.  Maybe this is from a Greek magazine or research says it could be a trading card company.  I'm not really sure.  But the real jewel is the artwork.  This artwork should be familiar to Dukes fans, but were rarely, if ever, seen it complete like this.  The right portion with the flying General Lee and Boss and the Duke cousins is shown on many items, most prominently the album cover.  But the album cover includes Rosco with Boss, Daisy, Bo and Luke. The character-less image of the General Lee is seen on the shoebox for the super rare Dukes tennis shoes. The left side of this poster is also partly seen on the shoebox, but edited all up.  The image is also seen on the the cover of the Dukes novel, Gone Racin', but the Gen'ral is partly invisible on the American version and the flag is only half shown on the British version.  The back of the American version of the book includes the left half of the artwork, but doesn't show it all and adds Coy and Vance to the mix.  I can't think of a single instance where this entire image is used of a Dukes product.  And the omission of Rosco from the artwork is really confusing.  Because the album uses a little different version of this artwork, I'm guessing this poster does not coincide with the release of the album.  And it's not a part of the shoes release, like the big General Lee display I have.  My guess, given the word "offer" on the bottom, is that this poster was used to advertise the release of the novel, Gone Racin', and perhaps was displayed at book fairs in schools in Greece to persuade kids to buy the book.  Maybe that's why we've never come across another one.  Maybe it is a rare foreign advertising piece for another rare collectible, the novel.  Now I gotta find a Greek copy of the book.  I like this little adventure this poster took us on, and I think I'll stick with my assumption.  Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an advertising poster for the Dukes novel from Greece.  Prove me wrong.  

 

Moving on.  In my discussion of the above poster, I mentioned that I thought it might be a magazine pull-out and was happy I discovered it wasn't.  And proved what it was.  Magazine pull-outs are fun, but I haven't really gone down that rabbit hole, because there has to be quite a few out there and finding them all might be a little difficult.  I do like a challenge.  But I did recently buy this one.  Mainly because it's a great image of Bo in his Cast and Crew jacket.  I have an affinity for the C&C Jackets (first time I've called them that) because I happen to own three different ones.  This is a fun candid, behind the scenes photo that I haven't seen before.  Tom isn't wearing his jacket.  John's has a rebel flag where all three of mine have an American flag.  I know of one jacket a fellow collector owns that has the rebel flag.  I would love to add one of those versions to my collection.  This pull-out poster is a fun addition to the collection.  Let's see if I start buying more pull-outs.  

I love advertising pieces.  I especially love advertising pieces that advertise niche areas of the hobby.  This is a pin back button advertising the first video game of the silver era of Dukes of Hazzard collecting.  The PlayStation game The Dukes of Hazzard Racing For Home came out in 1999 and was a huge success that spawned a sequel and a PlayStation 2/X-Box reimaging.  I'm sure the popularity of the game was further achieved by video game store employees wearing this button.  Maybe not.  

 

The front of the pin is nearly perfect and the back has a little scuffing to it.  I've seen one or two of these advertising pins before, but never had a chance to buy one.  It's taken me a quarter century since it was made, but I finally have one in my collection!

Next up is another piece that wasn't generally meant for mainstream audiences.  Do you know how hard it was for me to type "generally" and not General Lee?  This is a magnet meant to advertise the Dukes within the cable syndication industry.  It has a date of 2001 on it and is labeled Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution An AOL Time Warner Company.  American Online was THE name in the early internet days.  I have fond memories of a 14.4 kbps modem, at this very office where I'm writing this blog (same room), logging on to AOL with by buddy Brett and discovering chat rooms and message boards.  The second thing I ever searched online was the Dukes of Hazzard.  AOL was huge in the mid-to-late '90s.  But every wrestling fan knows that AOL got too big.  They merged with Ted Turner's Time Warner right before the dot-com bubble burst and tech titans caused the market to crash.  It was a crazy time.  But before it all went south, The Dukes was briefly owned my AOL, just like Bugs Bunny, Superman, and Hulk Hogan's wrestling contract.  This magnet is one of the only Dukes items I can think of that mentions that time in the Dukes lifespan.  

It was meant to be sent out to individual cable network licensees to persuade them to carry the Original "Original" Dukes.  Weird, because were we four years before the movie at this time, and the original Dukes was the only Dukes.  Maybe it meant that the Dukes is the original down home family TV show.  Whatever the "Original" line is referring to, it's a cool piece and I'm glad I own it.  I love these weird little insider pieces.  But I love all things Dukes, you know this. 

This is a piece I'm so happy to own.  I've posted many blog posts about the Dukes school supplies.  There are notebooks, folders, drawing pad and pencil pads all made by WriteRight.  There are at least thirteen different images used on the covers and several of the images are used on different notebooks and folders.  Some are super rare, like the pencil pads and drawing pads, and some can be purchased very reasonable like the more common folders.  I've heard legends of a notebook with multiple covers from fellow collectors.  Some say it was just hearsay or a phantom and others say it was a homemade craft project.  Actually that's not true at all.  A fellow collector has one and I've always been jealous.  Well I got one now!

I really don't know why WriteRight released a 10.5 inch by 8 inch notebook with seven different covers bundled in one. All of these covers were released individually on their own notebook.  The front cover features the Dukes family, including Cooter, in front of the Hazzard County Courthouse.  The next one is sweet Daisy hanging out of the driver side of the General Lee

The third image features the General Lee jumping and three images from the show. 

The fourth is an image of the General jumping the other way with Boss's billboard and Bo and Luke beneath. 

The fifth is Bo and Luke talking through Hazzard Square. 

The sixth is Bo and Luke posing with a brown background.  

The seventh and final cover features Boss Hogg in the gazebo at the center of Hazzard Square.  With all Boss's faults, he sure made a great politician and managed to keep himself in office for a long time.  

The notebook is unused and has all the paper intact.  

The back cover is identical to the standard, one-cover, notebooks.  

The reason for the existence of this notebook is a mystery.  Now that mine was unearthed, it proves that my fellow collector's version isn't homemade or a factory mistake. The other one has different covers and in different order.   Maybe it was sent to retail buyers to display the different offerings WriteRight wanted them to sell in their stores.  It seems like a cheaper option then to send seven different notebooks.  I like that reasoning.  I'm all about solving mysteries today.  

Wizard Magazine.  Throughout my younger years in elementary and middle school, I bought Wizard Magazine at my local Foodland nearly every month.  I was a comic book fan but rarely bought monthly issues of comics.  I bought the occasional trade or special edition, but I kept up with everything in the comics world thanks to my love of Wizard Magazine.  All my old copies of Wizard are still around here somewhere too.  The internet brought on the end of most niche magazines, but Wizard was still going strong in 2005 when the movie was coming out and they featured Jessica on the cover.  The concept of Dukes on the cover of Wizard would have been too much for me to handle in the early '90s.  

This issue of Wizard is dedicated to Batman Begins but also covers other movies released in the summer of 2005.  

But does not cover them well.  There is exactly one page that mentions the Dukes, and it barely gets a paragraph.  The inclusion of the Dukes was just a means to get "it-girl" Jessica Simpson on the cover.  The description of the Dukes includes comparing the General Lee to the Batmobile and calling Batman Boss Hog, so it isn't all that bad.  I would have liked a little more General Lee inclusion, though.  Maybe a cartoon of the Batmobile and Gen'ral racing or something.  But it is the Batman issue.  Cool to reminisce about Wizard Magazine and cool to have one as a part of the Dukes Collection.

Here's another video game addition.  This is the 8-bit Atari 800 game Hazard Run by Artworx.  I really don't know how this game was released and the creators weren't sued into oblivion by Warner Bros.  It is a rarer piece and I'm very glad to add it to the collection.  The box art features an orange Charger jumping the creek.  

The back describes the antics employed in the game mentioning the sheriff and jumping the Hazard Creek.  The internet tells me the name of the car is the Gee Lee.  I guess the industry wide video game crash of 1983 kept this game off WB's radar because it was released just prior in 1982. 

The game is cassette based, like the Australian video game "Hazzard" that appears to be licensed by WB and the British video game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48. A video game on a cassette is still foreign to me.  

I actually bought this game is two parts.  I found the box and instructions at one time and the found the game cassette later.  I'm glad I could finally complete this package. 

The instructions are so basic.  I mean baby steps basic.  But it's really cool to have the original instructions.  

Ok, I was born in 1981, video games from when I was one or two are a little before my time, but I am obsessed with a show that premiere two years before I was born, so I know a little more than the average joe about pop culture in the early '80s.  But I really don't know much about any Atari game consoles before the Atari 2600.  This is all new information to me.  The Atari 800 Computer had an accessory cassette drive that looked very similar to the standard cassette recorder you picture when an crime drama flashes back to an interrogation in the '80s that's being audio recorded.  I guess it plugged into the computer and let you play the game.  It seems there is also a disk version of this game out there.  Gotta find that now.  

The package warns you that the game is protected by US Copyright law.  I bet Warner Bros would have something to say about that.  

The internet always comes through and I managed to find some videos of the game in action.  There is no defense as to what this game is trying to be.  There's the dixie horn and the Gee Lee has a flag on the roof and the number 10 on the door.  Maybe they tried to get the Dukes licensing but it didn't work out and they released the game anyway.  Wikipedia says they tried to rerelease the game with the licensing as if it wasn't created as a Dukes ripoff game in the first place.  You can't always trust Wiki folks.  I've embedded different early Dukes video games before on different blog posts, but I'll end this post with the Spectrum game, the Australian Hazzard game and the video me and Jeff put together of the ColecoVision Dukes of Hazzard game so you can compare and see how far the video game industry has come since it's primitive beginnings.  Stay turned, more New Dukes Stuff blog posts are right around the corner!