by G. Jack Urso
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| Scene from “Space Mates,” by Mary Beams (1979). Full video provided below. |
Back in 1980, sitting
down in front of my TV watching episode 10 of Hot Hero Sandwich, I was
entranced while watching the animated short, “Space Mates,” set to
Paul Kanter’s (of Jefferson Starship) “Have you Seen the Stars Tonite.” Coming
off LeVar Burton’s recounting of a recurring “flying” dream and ending with
Barbara Feldon’s hushed, “We’ll Be Right Back,” I found the whole piece
transcendent. Raised on a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons, the imagery
of two whales in space cavorting and floating amid the starry firmament sparked
my imagination.
With no
syndication or video releases, over time, the actual content of the short film
faded away in my mind to just a few fleeting images — the “cosmic whales” as I
referred to them – it was a tribute to the artist that I remembered any of it
after just one viewing so many years ago. A similar experience that one fan
shared with the Hot Hero Sandwich
Project for AlJarnow’s short film for the series, a music video based on “Wild Night” by Martha
Reeves and the Vandellas.
As I would later
discover over four decades later, “Space Mates” was the
creation of artist Mary Beams, who also contributed the episode 2 animation segment
“Flying to Bermuda”
and episode 8’s “School in the Sky,” visual interpretations of children recounting their dreams to
Dr. Lee Salk (brother of Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine).
Born in Chicago
and having studied painting and graphics at Miami University in Ohio,
filmmaking at Boston University, and animation at Harvard (where she later
worked at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts), Beams brought with her to Hot Hero Sandwich an avant-garde
sensibility along with a broad range of animated techniques from experimental abstracts
to more conventional figured-based animation.
In this
interview, Beams shares with us the work she did immediately prior to the
series, how the animation was done in the era before widespread use of personal
computers, who the children were who narrated the “Flying to Bermuda” and “School in the Sky” short
films, even how much she got paid — all of which helps paint a better picture
of the era and the series.
I have a great
love for animation and being able to interview the artists who worked on Hot Hero Sandwich is an exceptionally
rare delight as the series was so influential for me personally. So, let’s find
out more about those children’s dreams by talking to Mary Beams!
__________________________________________________________________
Hot
Hero Sandwich Project (HHSP): Before we discuss your time with Hot Hero Sandwich, I’d like to talk
about your Boston Subway art panels. According to a 2015 New York Times article about your Boston subway panels, they were
on display until that year when they went up for auction. I believe that was
the last thing you did before moving to New York City in 1978. Is that true?
One of Mary Beams’ Boston Subway mural art panels (1978; credit, Skinner).
Mary Beams: Yes. Oh, God, yes. That was one hell of a year,
but it was pretty amazing too. I did a gazillion things in that year.
HHSP: In the interview with After-Hours
Animation, I think you called it the “gobsmack year.” How many panels did you
do for the subway project because only two were shown in the article?
 |
| Another of Beam’s subway panels (credit, Skinner). |
Mary Beams: I did 19. I actually did
20, but they didn’t get the twentieth one in time and it got lost in a divorce.
There were 19 of them, most of them by four by eight [4x8] feet, each one, and
a couple were shorter, different sizes that were cut to fit a certain spot that
they were supposed to go. They were only supposed to be up for two months and
they were up for 35 years.
HHSP: Amazing. How much time did you spend
putting all those together?
Mary Beams: Well, I spent the summer
riding the subway and taking photos and surreptitiously recording. I
interviewed quite a few different people that I ran into and I thought it would
have a lot of text on the paintings too, but in the end I decided it’s better
to try to imagine what they’re thinking and talking about.
HHSP: Agreed. Sometimes less is more, as the saying
goes.
Mary Beams: So, I spent the summer [of 1978] doing that, and then I spent the fall projecting. I had
this great slide projector and they projected onto the prepared panels and
traced what I wanted and then I hired a crew to help me paint. We used house
paint and it was basically paint by number.
New
York Groove
HHSP: After that, you came to New York in what
I guess would be late 1978. Hot Hero
went into production in the late winter months of 1979. When did you get
involved with the series?
Mary Beams: I was trying to remember, but there’s nothing
in myself that’s remembering physically doing those things. I know I did.
HHSP: Understandably, it was a long time
ago.
Mary Beams: I remember turning them in and having
meetings with Bruce and Carol [Bruce and
Carol Hart, the producers] and things like that. I remember those
circumstances, but I don’t remember what the weather was like, what season it
was, how it was done . . . I was living on Broome Street at the time.
[Note: Broome Street In lower Manhattan in
the 1970s became home to the burgeoning SoHo artist loft community].
HHSP: I see.
Mary Beams: My husband was partners
with Jonathan Pearlman, who had been an agent. He and Jeff [Beams then husband]
were filmmakers and Pearlman knew Bruce and Carroll. He [Pearlman] had represented them.
HHSP:
Oh, okay.
Mary Beams: He [Pearlman] actually was pretty key in a lot of work that I did when
I was in New York because he had heard about things through different friends
and got us together and things like that.
HHSP: So, he was the one who sort of helped
put you in contact with Bruce and Carol Hart?
Mary Beams: Yeah. I had a lot of
animator friends in New York at the time, but when I moved there, everybody was
busy as everyone is in New York, and so I didn’t really know what to do to go
about getting work. Everything I did was word of mouth from one thing to
another. I think it was only later I found out who all else that I knew that
was working with Bruce and Carol.
HHSP: In addition to Bruce and Carol, Hot Hero had an animation producer,
Terry Kemper, and I’m wondering . . .
Mary Beams: Oh, right, yes. He was
another connection. Both Jeff and Jonathan had worked with him before. He
[Kemper] had produced commercials — live-action commercials — and he knew Jeff and
Jonathan through their work.
Techniques
and Processes
HHSP: I’m trying to get a feel for how
much direction Bruce and Carol gave you. The interviews were done by Dr. Lee
Salk, and in your notes you sent me you said that you got a transcript of the
children’s interviews, which you had to edit down.
Mary Beams: I had the sound as well.
HHSP: Really?
Mary Beams: The actual tapes were
pretty spontaneous and they had a quality to them that I’m sure some people
would have cleaned up and all that, but there was something about them that
seemed like it would be hard to work with as is. I masked two of the dreams together that the
kids said that they had recorded and cut down a lot of their details.
Bruce and Carol
were really, really generous about freedom of work. Given my difficulty in
breaking into New York commercial animation they were, like, unbelievably
generous.
HHSP: Did they give you like a time limit
for the pieces, like you got three minutes, four minutes or so?
Mary Beams: Oh, yeah. And they told me
generally what they wanted and we talked about it and I would do storyboards
and then go back and they would say, “Maybe this, but not that.”
“Space Mates,” by Mary Beams (1979) from the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube channel.
HHSP: I’d like to turn to “Space Mates,” the
short with the whales in space set to Paul Kanter’s “Have You See the Stars
Tonite?” First of all, you have no idea how long that piece rented space in my
head! I just saw it once in 1980 and remember being entranced by it. I referred
to it in my mind as the “Cosmic Whales” piece, and it just totally blew my young
self away. A very different short film
than “Flying to Bermuda” and “School in the Sky,” I can’t
help but notice some thematic similarities to your 1978 animated short film, “Whale Songs” [see videos below] How did it
come together?
Mary Beams: Well, in that case, they
had a script of some kind that was really, really similar to a Saturday Night Live skit that had been
done, you know, where they were actually humans in a spaceship and they ended
up smoking cigarettes after their encounter.
I can’t remember much about it, but that was kind of the gist. They
wanted a sexy space thing. And yes, you were right. I was working with the “Whale Songs” movie
too. I don’t even remember why I insisted it should be what I thought it should
be, but they bought it. It just felt like they should be more organic than.
“Flying to Bermuda,” by Mary Beams (1979) from the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube channel.
HHSP: Well, that was good choice! In the
production notes they refer to it just as “Space” but “Space Mates” makes more sense.
The entire piece, from the end of Levar Burton’s interview with Dr. Tom Cottle right
through to Barbara Feldon’s very quiet, hushed, “We’ll be right back,” at the
end, the whole segment is just wonderful.
Looking at your other short films from that
era, and granted I haven’t seen everything, but “Flying to Bermuda” and “School in the Sky” [see videos above and below], sort of
stand out because they have a stylized, figure-based animation and whereas your
other work a little bit more abstract. I’m wondering if “Flying to Bermuda” and
“School in the Sky,” were a bit more atypical of the work you were doing at the
time?
“School in the Sky,” by Mary Beams (1979) from the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube channel.
Mary Beams:
They were more atypical I would say. I didn’t do many people-based
things at all. I had two cat films actually that had a person in them.
HHSP: Right, yes, I saw “Tub
Film,” with the cat prowling
around the bath. Something all cat lovers can relate to! [laughter]
Mary Beams: These were really, I would
say, an aberration from what else I’ve done, other than doing rotoscoping. [Note: Rotoscoping is an animated process
involved drawing over filmed live subjects.]
HHSP:
What was the process you used to put these films together?
Mary Beams: They were done on 4 by 6
index cards. They were, you know, it’s pretty simple and small.
HHSP: Not being an artist, it’s a bit hard
to wrap my mind around. In the After-Hours Animation interview you note at
least some of them were done with on reversal film, where the colors you did
them in were not the same colors we see on the screen at the end.
Mary Beams: Yes.
HHSP: All of them or just a couple of them?
Mary Beams: “Space Mates” and “School
in the Sky” in particular were done that way, and also “Whale Songs.” I worked
a lot with Hi-Con [high contrast] film
and using it as negative. So, I would draw in black pen and then it would be
filmed in Hi-Con and that would be used as negative. So, it would be white
lines on the screen in a black background and then when I made “Paul Revere’s Here” [see video below] I added a blue so it’d be red, white, and blue, sort of.
There’s a kind
what you don’t see so much in the current in what’s available today is when
they were projected they had kind of a rosy red afterglow in the white lines, and
so it was like a, red, white, and blue film. It was surprising. I didn’t know
how to control that. It just happened, and it’s more an optical illusion than
anything.
Then, I moved
towards trying to work with more color, but still using the same reversal film
as negative. So, if I wanted to do recognizable human colors, I had to do all
those tests and then color people’s skin in various blues and greens.
HHSP: What I loved about the animation for “Flying to Bermuda” and “School in the Sky,” is that
it would have fit in with an Electric Company
or Sesame Street short in terms of
their whimsical nature, if I can use that word.
Scenes from “School in the Sky.”
__________________________________________________________________
Sidebar: The Kids are Alright
Two of the short films Mary Beams animated for Hot Hero Sandwich, “Flying to Bermuda” and “School in the Sky,” are visual interpretations of actual
dreams by children as related to Dr. Lee Salk for the series. Up until now, who
these voices belong to were unreported, including in the original production
documents I have; however, Beams was able to shed some light on who are these
young people.
The voice in “Flying to Bermuda” is, in fact, the original child’s
voice recorded with Dr. Salk, though their name is unrecorded.
For “School in the Sky,” two voice actors were hired, Leslie Pearlman
and Quinn Bakaty. Leslie is the daughter of Jonathan Pearlman, an agent and
friend of Beams then-husband Jeff discussed in the interview. Leslie is heard
first in “School in the Sky,” followed by Quinn who comes in about the :35
second mark.
Leslie grew up to become a lawyer, and now also teaches yoga. Quinn (sometimes
spelled “Quin” in media accounts) was a family friend of Beams. Of note, Bakaty was reported in a New York Times article
dated Jan. 28, 1980, as being among a team of journalists, including he and
another Children’s Express reporter, sent to interview refugee children from
the Killing Fields of Cambodia. In the article, Bakaty was reported at the time
to be a 13-year-old eighth-grader ay Intermediate School 70 in Manhattan’s Chelsea section.
Interesting that at the time Hot Hero Sandwich and the “School in the Sky” animated short film were being broadcast, Bakaty was half a world away reporting
from a war zone and talking to children about war’s impact on them — a story,
that, unfortunately, seems to reinvent itself every generation.
__________________________________________________________________
“Whale Songs,” by Mary Beams (1979) from the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube channel.
Into
the Digital Age
HHSP: Just to jump up a little bit, in 1980
you began to get involved in digital art and I’m kind of a tech head so I’m
interested in what equipment was being used around that time. In the notes you
sent me, I see you used IBM and Commodore computers and noted with amazement
when your 64K system got upgraded to 128K!
In 1979, however, I’m guessing no computers
were used for your animation on Hot Hero,
but 1980, the very next year, according to your notes again, you worked on a
$500 NYU grant [approximately $2,152.83
in 2026] to create work for a Videotex unit [Note: Videotex was an early system that could transmit graphics and
text through telephone or cable lines], a project that also attracted
artist Keith Haring. There was no overlap with the late ‘70s?
Mary Beams: Yeah, well, I wish I could
remember my own life a little better because I’ve separated out the different
things and they overlapped in some way . . . the grant from NYU, the one that
took me nine months and it took Keith Haring five minutes [laughter], was over that same period, and that was my introduction.
That was how I got my hands on digital stuff.
HHSP: The computers were very expensive
units back then, and if they were being used for art, I’m going to guess that
these were not exactly off-the-shelf computers you were using.
Mary Beams: No, but no . . . CompuServe was the text thing that was out
there. We kind of grew off of CompuServe and then IBM came out with the 128K
upgrade, I think, but it was all tied to telephone delivery to your television.
I mean, that was the big thing. That was
the wave of the future, as they said.
HHSP: And indeed it was. Interesting to see
how the two eras were so close. Now, since you raised it up in your notes, I’m
going to pursue it a little bit, about how much you made on Hot Hero Sandwich. You said you could be a bit off, but you thought
maybe about $20,000 [approximately $98,090.78 in 2026] for your work on the series.
Mary Beams:
Yeah. I’m pretty sure that is what that number was.
HHSP: Adjusting for inflation, that was
probably even decent for New York City at the time, but then we have to
consider, it’s like being an actor. You may get a big paycheck for one project,
but it’s got to carry you over through some thin times when you’re jumping from
one small job to another. I recall one telling tale in your notes where you’re
talking about you had ten W-2s at some point for just one year in your life. I
think one thing we don’t really kind of appreciate about a lot of working
artists is that often you’re an independent contractor. I’m sure some gets
regular, salaried jobs, but it sounds like most of your career you were an
independent contractor.
Mary Beams: Yes, I was, and fortunately
I was supported by schools and things when that happened, but, I mean, there
were times I couldn’t afford the index cards. So, I really felt cast adrift
once I left Harvard.
HHSP: I guess you wouldn’t need those index
cards today.
Mary Beams: I think about that every
time I take my phone out and I walk the dog. I think, “Okay, now I’m taking
video, now I’m doing stop motion, I’m taking still frames, I’m recording sound,
I’m doing all this on this thing in my palm, and I can go back to my . . . if I
actually knew how to do it . . . I could still use that thing in my palm to put
it all together and put it out there in the world . . . and that’s just a dog
walk.
HHSP: Yeah, absolutely. I remember 30 years
ago, back in 1995, working for a public radio network in the Northeast, I was still
using a razor blade, a Crayon, a spicing block, and splicing tape to put
together a radio interview and now it’s just click and paste. Few people have
any appreciation for how much work — actual, hands on work — was required back
then compared to what you can do today with a just a click of the mouse. I
think about how much more we could have done had we access to that technology
then.
Mary Beams: Yes, well, but on the other
hand, don’t you sometimes miss that physicality?
HHSP: Absolutely.
Mary Beams: That’s the other thing I
think about. You had a room that you went to and there was a bin that was
dangling all your film strips and you had to put them together and you had
another room that had a whole big, huge camera in it . . . you know, that kind
of stuff. I mean, this was vast and thank God places like Harvard supported
people.
HHSP: Right. How else was it going to get done back then?
Mary Beams: But it was wonderful, you know? I had to take a train
and a bus and then this and then that to take the film to the lab . . . to get it. I stopped making movie movies when I was
teaching in Tampa when they said the only film lab is out in Portland, Oregon.
So, the students had to film, and then we had to ship it out there and get it
processed and get it back before they knew what they had.
“Paul Revere is Here,” by Mary Beams (1976) from
the Hot Hero Sandwich YouTube channel.
HHSP: It’s a wonder sometimes how things got done. Shifting gears, I
see you had a show at the Museum of Modern Art
[MoMA] — when was that, 2015?
Mary Beams: Oh, yes.
HHSP: And School in the Sky was part of that, and I think you mentioned
your other two Hot Hero films might
be there as well. I wonder, did you get any feedback from your colleagues? I’m
guessing a lot of artists were probably not watching a Saturday morning kids’
show . . . but did you get any feedback or did it help play into your career at
all?
Mary Beams: No . . . I can’t remember
the exact arrangement that we had — Bruce and Carol and I had about showing
them — I think I had permission to show them in art situations or something, but
mostly that whole wonderful time has just dropped out of consciousness. You’re the
first person I’ve run into that knows about it, aside from those of us that had
worked on it.
HHSP: Well, that’s not unexpected. I’ve
heard variations of that from others connected with the show. It only ran that
one season and with no syndication or recordings, so, admittedly, it did fall
off the radar, but there are fans who remember it despite such little airtime, and I
love making them available now so people can see what they missed or relive
what they remember, as I did.
Thank you very much for your time today,
Mary. I enjoyed this so much!
__________________________________________________________________
Concluding Thoughts
Mary Beams
provides the Hot Hero Sandwich
Project with critical information about the series’ production, how Bruce and
Carol Hart worked with the animators, and how the animation process took place
in the era before the sophisticated animation, audio, and video creation
software widely, and affordably, available today. Plus, we also got a look at
the career of the sole female animator for Hot
Hero Sandwich and how it intersected with city government (Boston Subway
art), academia (studying and working at Harvard), and, of course, in public
broadcasting. With her work preserved with the Museum of Modern Art, Beams’
career receives one of the highest cultural recognitions for an artist.
It came as a
surprise to discover that in the 1990s Beams left the art world, largely
destroying her vast archive of work, and left with friends for the northern
reaches of Minnesota where they set up and ran a pie shop. Yet, having reached
a certain age, and being somewhat of a creative person myself, I admit that at
various times in my life I have thrown away or abandoned years of work. It can
liberate our creativity and allow us to more freely explore our ideas. For
artists, however, such an act is not so much one of destruction but, rather, one of
creativity. The ultimate work of art is our lives and how we create ourselves
on our own terms.
To be able to
discuss with the artist of a work that had so long lingered with me is a rare
privilege, so many thanks to Mary Beams for generously sharing her time and her
memories of her work with Hot Hero
Sandwich.
 |
| Scenes from “Flying to Bermuda.” |
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