I wanted to share this interesting sighting of Silver Age comics. The Naked City was a TV show that ran from 1959-1963. Season 4, episode 1, original airdate 9-19-62, episode title "Hold For Gloria Christmas", had the following comics connection. At the beginning of the show, guest star Burgess Meredith is running down a New York city street. (this show was filmed on location in NYC.) He stops at a sidewalk newsstand. Plainly visible in the scene, hanging on a wire in the newsstand is Amazing Fantasy number 15. And right next to it is Journey Into Mystery number 83. Later in the show, Naked City detective Paul Burke returns to the same newsstand to question the vendor about Meredith. The Amazing Fantasy is now gone, with an empty space where it had been hanging. The Journey Into Mystery is still there, and also visible are the Dell comics Thirteen (by John Stanley) and the Flintstones. I thought this was a neat comic book sighting.
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I used to watch The Naked City when I was a kid. IMDB has a notation from a fan review mentioning the Amazing Fantasy comic, but not the JIM comic. This episode isn't currently available for streaming on either Netflix or Amazon. Netflix doesn't have Season 4 available on disc, either. It IS part of the DVD collection "The Best of the Naked City," which contains it and 39 other episodes at a reasonable price new or used. I may get it in the near future.
Both Amazing Fantasy 15 and Journey into Mystery 83 went on sale in June 1962, according to Newsstand Time Machine. Hold for Gloria Christmas aired in September of that year.
Talking about Naked City got me interested. I discovered that the DVD set Best of Naked City has 40 episodes, including this one. There is an amazing group of guest actors, similar to The Twilight Zone. I had to get it, at 41 cents an episode. I was able to get a screen shot of the scene.
Richard Willis said:
I enjoy seeing comics in the background of old TV shows. The "Ozzie and Harriet" episode "Making Wally Study" shows Wally with a Batman comic. There is a "That Girl" episode where Marlo Thomas is babysitting a boy who is reading a Dell Beverly Hillbillies comic. In "Dobie Gillis", on the magazine rack in the Gillis grocery store, you can see Batman, some Classics Illustrated, and a Charlton Strange Suspense Stories. I believe there is an "I Love Lucy" episode where Ricky and Fred are seated at a restaurant counter and in the background are issues of Batman and Wonder Woman, among others.