Los Angeles News Blog

Forrest J Ackerman, who passed away last week from heart failure at the age of 92, may  end up best remembered as the man who coined the term "sci-fi." That's no small legacy in a culture often chronicled in shorthand - Jack Kerouac's "beat generation," comes to mind, or Herb Caen's more reductive "beatnik." But Ackerman meant much more to the world of fantasy literature and film than a phrase. In those long decades between the end of silent movies and the advent of videos and DVDs, he was a werewolf John the Baptist, a monster's voice in the wilderness of pop culture when horror and science fiction movies, hampered by unconvincing special effects and poor scripts, were routinely met with critical dismissal.

(Forrest J Ackerman photo by author)



A literary agent (Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov), editor (Famous Monsters of Filmland), headline punster ("You Axed For It," "Fangs for the Memory," etc.), eternal background extra (The Howling, Michael Jackson's Thriller), Ackerman grew up in Los Angeles watching silent films and reading issues of Amazing Stories. He later helped form a group of fantasists that included writers Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein and pulp illustrator Hannes Bok. The friends spent hours at Clifton's Cafeteria on Broadway during the Great Depression discussing their favorite authors and movies.

Ackerman's biggest achievement was launching, in 1958, Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine whose appearance coincided with the horror-movie renaissance begun by Britain's Hammer Films. Less than a decade later the magazine's popularity began cresting upon a new wave of big-budget, quality sci-fi films (Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey) and thoughtful TV series (The Outer Limits, Star Trek) that took advantage of new special effects technologies.

Ackerman's shameless exuberance and profligate use of exclamation points dazzled me, then a gloomy 11-year-old who moped about reading his parent's copies of Time and the New York Times. Much to the dismay of my future friends, Ackerman's incorrigible punning would rub off on me for the rest of my life, and Famous Monsters' letters page was the first place my writing appeared in print.

However, despite a laudable dedication to celebrating the accomplishments of pre-talkies actor Lon Chaney and special effects wizard Willis O'Brien, Famous Monsters was too often stuck on the Universal Pictures horror cycle of the 1930s, along with a focus on contemporary, mediocre low-budget sci-fi flicks. There was no aesthetic discrimination - any late-career drive-in movie made by Lon Chaney Jr., the silent star's alcohol-ravaged son, rated as much space as King Kong or Metropolis.

Then, in 1962, Ackerman's L.A.-based magazine faced unwelcome competition from an East Coast publication called Castle of Frankenstein, whose cineastes exuded a cool, low-keyed appreciation for things outre while expressing an improbable bond with the French nouveau vague. While Famous Monsters was running spreads on Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and other cinematic jokes, Castle of Frankenstein's writers were discussing The Seventh Seal and Repulsion, or annotating the historical and literary antecedents of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

 Ackerman's magazine would eventually disappear in a sad dust cloud of legal troubles, having been surpassed, ironically, by slicker publications whose existence he had helped make possible. He still reigned, though, in the big Los Feliz hills house that was home to his Alexandrian library of first edition fantasy books, along with a formidable movie collection  that he began amassing as a boy and which included Bela Lugosi's Dracula ring and Lon Chaney's makeup kit. For years Ackerman would spend Saturdays cheerfully leading tours of people through his home. In some rooms props and costumes lay scattered and deteriorating, like stop-action animation master Ray Harryhausen's Ymre creature model from 20 Million Miles to Earth. But elsewhere there were well-tended shelves of various Dracula editions, and nicely framed art from such illustrators as Virgil Finlay.

In the end, though, most of this trove had to be sold to pay legal expenses as Ackerman fought vainly to regain control of Famous Monsters of Filmland. At least he lived to see Hollywood become nearly dominated by blockbuster films about monsters, space travel and super heroes.

Good-night, sweet prince of darkness.