9/9/2022 — Whoa! SOLD OUT! (All 1200 copies gone.) Email if you wish to be notified if I find any additional copies. gizwizbiz@gmail.com
William M. Gaines, the founder and publisher of MAD Magazine, passed away on June 3rd, 1992, more than 25 years ago! To get this memory of William M. Gaines into more hands (and out my very expensive Manhattan warehouse) here’s a special offer. If you buy a copy of GOOD DAYS & MAD, you’ll also receive a 35+ year-old Alfred E. Neuman photo as a thank you gift.
If you like the stories of the mad way William M. Gaines ran the very successful MAD Magazine that I tell on The Giz Wiz, then you should really enjoy GOOD DAYS AND MAD. It’s a biographical look at the 30 some odd years I spent working for Gaines and for MAD. All the strange stories are in there – like the time Gaines took the entire staff to a subscriber’s house in Haiti to beg him to renew!
Gaines and I also became fast friends and I get to relate of some incredible things we did together. Like the time Gaines, knowing I love trains, rented a 1890’s observation car and took 12 of us on a trip from NYC to Boston in total luxury. Gaines loved food and also had three chefs aboard! He arranged to have this private car hooked up to the Amtrak Metroliner! We went to Boston, spent 5 hours there sightseeing, and then the car was hooked up to another Metroliner for the trip back to NY’s Penn Station. Then there was the time I arranged to get Gaines onto the torch of the Statue of Liberty. It was an incredible adventure until Bill almost got stuck trying to push through the elbow of Miss Liberty!
The book is no longer in print, but I did squirrel away some copies in the warehouse. Each copy of GOOD DAYS AND MAD sold helps pay off the rent on Dick’s Gadget Warehouse which is now a shocking $425.00 a month!
Photos from Good Days & MAD / (Top right) Dick De resting in his private ‘think tank’ in his office. Gaines spared no expense to make me comfortable at MAD. Truth is, he let have a operating model railroad in my office!
(Top left) John Ficarra, Editor of MAD, Dick De, and Morley Safer record a spot that appeared on 60 Minutes. I think it was in the late 1980’s. Under the video section of this website you can follow a link to see it.
(Bottom left) Dennis Wunderlin, Annie Gaines, Bill (William M.) Gaines , Dick De, and Carol Stuart on the observation platform of the private railroad car Gaines rented so he could take a few friends from New York to Boston and back! He had three chefs aboard! We had a champagne brunch on the way to Boston, and a full sit-down dinner on the return!
(Bottom right) Bill’s office wall. Look carefully. Among all the photos of Bill is an oil painting The Usual Gang of Idiots gave Gaines for Christmas one year. Yes, it’s an oil painting of the back of his head! Come on, if we took a picture of him from the front, he might have suspected something!
