#phantaman

Hi.  My name is Andy Shepherd and I saw your page/Tumblr post (Search for Phantaman) and thought I would share some things with you.

Ogon Batto (Golden Bat) was dubbed by Bill Ross and his wife Japanese wife, Michie, at Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo.  They rechristened the show ‘Fantoma’ for sales in the English speaking territories.  I think Ken Fujita hire them to do it.  More on Ken later.

Ross/Frontier was the go-to guy in Japan for a bit of comparatively inexpensive dubbing (when compared to Glen Glenn Sound, Titra, etc.) for Japanese media that was being distributed/shopped overseas.  Bill died a couple of years ago, but I and a few others (Steve Ryfle and August Ragone) corresponded with him via email and snail mail.  I spoke with him several times by phone over the course of a couple of years, and I have at least one taped phone conversation with him.

Frontier/Ross hired local expats and military personnel living/stationed in Japan in the 1960s.  The series, according the scant records Bill sent me copies of (which I cannot find at the moment), was titled “Fantoma” and the only English audio clip that has survived the decades bears this out.  Not sure where alternate spellings/names, Fantaman or Phataman, come from.  Maybe it was printed this way in the Aussie TV guides/promo material.  I’ll have to ask Kelly Patrick Lannan about that.  He’s in the weeds on the series and films shown only in Oz (i.e. The Samurai, Phantom Agents, Gazula, Space Ace, Fantoma, etc.).

Although, Ross never kept records of the people he hired to dub these things, he did recall a couple of names and those were enough to start the dominoes tumbling for me.  The narrator on the Fantoma ‘coming attractions’ audio clip is Burr Middleton, once known in the business as Burr Hoyle.  He’s an actor and announcer, and you can catch him eps of Matlock, Hunter, and such things.  During the 1960s, he was stationed in Japan (military, I think) and was hired by Ross for dubbing in Fantoma and Princess Knight (confirmed).  He also acted in the Bill Ross-co produced sino-American sci-fi movie, The Green Slime. [...]  But he confirmed for me his voice in the Fantoma clip.  He also voiced Duke Duralumon, the villain, in the little-known Princess Knight/Choppy and the Princess dub, which finally saw a release in the U.S. a few years back, after decades of legal issues and copyright mishandling.  I can try to ask Middleton who else worked on the Fantoma dub.  Maybe he’ll remember.

Also, you’ve got the two ‘K. Fujitas’ mixed up.  Yep, two.  Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions was also known as K Fujita in the 1960s, but he shouldn’t be confused with the other and, I think, more important, K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates.  Kazuhiko (a.k.a. Ken, or just ‘K’) of K. Fujita & Associates was one of the first, if not the first, to have the idea of marketing Japanese movies and tv content outside of Japan.  For years, little more than an enigmatic name found only in the end credits of Speed Racer, Marine Boy, The Amazing 3, Star Blazers, etc., I hunted for years for him and finally my persistence paid off, found him semi-retired in Japan.  We became friendly and got his story.    

He first took sample footage of what was to become Astro Boy to shop around in the states and was pretty much laughed out of New York by the folks at NBC, ABC, Screen Gems, etc.  Until he later sold a b/w live action Samurai series to Mexico.  It was such an enormous success/ratings hit, south of the border, that the Americans were more ready to listen to him on his second pass.  However, when he returned again to the states to negotiate a sale for Astro Boy, he walked away from the puny deal at NBC Films.  Then, along comes Kiyoshi Fujita, of Video Promotions, apparently now negotiating on behalf of the Japanese producers/Mushi and accepts the same shitty NBC deal, or so I was told.  The Japanese needed whatever NBC offered in order to bankroll future projects.  I think Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions may still be around.  I don’t know him and have never spoken with him.  Since Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions had made the deal with NBC, he/they were well-positioned for the Kimba deal.  You can read most of this in Fred Ladd’s book.  Fred directed the dubs of both Astro Boy and Kimba for NBC Films, as you know.

The upshot is that Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions, while he maybe still around, isn’t the K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates that sold Ogon Batto and the other anime and live action Japanese series in Australia.  It was Kazuhiko (or Ken as he liked to be called by his western friends) who did that.  Sadly, Ken passed in 2012.  Kiyoshi probably won’t be much help to you in your search.

Kelley Patrick Lannan and Glen Johnson in Australia have been poking around for years for surviving prints of some of these series, including Fantoma.  Kelley, if remember correctly, works in the TV industry, there, and he has his tentacles out, forever groping and prying to see if somewhere in Oz, somebody has 16mm prints of these series in storage, an attic, a basement.

Sometimes, all of the groping and prying by fans pays off.  Episodes of both b/w live action shows “The Samurai” and “Phantom Agents” were finally located and released on DVDs.  Unfortunately, the “Space Ace” and “Fantoma” dubs seem to more elusive.  When I asked him, Ken Fujita couldn’t remember the names of the producers he sold/licensed the properties to.  He’d thrown out 40 years of old paper work from his former companies, along with tons or original artwork and cels from his company’s (Japan Tele-Cartoons) production of “Marine Boy”.  I nearly had a heart attack when he told me that.  He simply had no idea anybody would be interested in having it, much less paying money to own it.

[...]

Starting in the mid-1990s, I decided that I hated reading misinformation/incorrect crediting in all of the animation reference books and articles about 8th Man and Princess Knight, and spent subsequent years researching Copri, Frontier, and Titra dubbing facilities.  There wasn’t much information out there at all.  I was starting from scratch.  I would get one half remembered name from somebody, which then led to another half remembered name from somebody else, and so on.  I finally got enough to put a picture together of the Miami dubbing outfit in the mid-1960s.

I’ve shared this information over the years with Fred Ladd, Dave Merrill, Glen Johnson, August Ragone, Chris Palmer, etc. and now it’s public information, which is good.  The Copri and Frontier folks, unlike the Titra dubbers (Pete Fernandez, Fred Ladd, Corrine Orr, Jack Grimes, Paulette Rubenstein, Earl Hammond, Jack Curtis, etc.) never got credit for their work because of how it was done (under the table to skirt the union rules and union pay scales in Florida for Copri) and in Japan, it just wasn’t thought important and seen as an added (unnecessary) cost (i.e. cast list/end titles).  Besides, the Florida and Japanese casts were local actors, school teachers, disc jockeys, moonlighting military personnel and their bored wives, etc.  Nobodies, really.  So, what did credits matter to them?  They got paid few shekels and had some fun.  End of story.

Many of the folks are gone, now.  I was lucky that I got to know and speak with many of them and get their stories for posterity.  I have a number of taped phone interviews, and still have some chapters of Pete’s unpublished auto-biography, hand typed, that he sent to me.  He was a real sweetheart, and he is missed.  I’ll what I can do about digitizing this stuff to post for everybody to enjoy.

In any case, I’ve written more than I intended.  Sorry.  I hope you find it some of it useful and if not, at least interesting.

It’s been years since I was actively researching.  Just got busy.  But I can try to reach out to Kelley Patrick and Glen to see if they’ve made any headway on the Fantoma and Space Ace hunt.

Regards,

Andrew Shepherd

What a surprise, right?  As you guys following this blog know, I spoke with Mr. Burr Middleton myself, and he confirmed for me that he voiced not only the Narrator for Phantoma but also Gabby, Dr. Zero, and the big golden skeleton himself!  (Though, granted, Phantoma didn’t exactly have a lot of dialogue in the series -- mostly laughing.)

As I mentioned to Mr. Shepherd in my response, I also discovered some Australian TV listings from the time, which is where the title “Phantaman” came from.  My post about that can be found here:

https://thesearchforphantaman.tumblr.com/post/143665817167

Regardless, this is such exciting news!!  Hopefully we’ll be able to continue the search from here.