https://bonarhistory.wordpress.com/brin/chiam-clorfene/

The Bonar Family History Site

Richard Clorfene / Chiam Noach Clorfene’s Great Adventure

Richard Chiam Clorfene

Richard Clorfene / Chaim Noach Clorfene has led a colorful life: from ‘Hippie’ to ‘Chabadnik’. His latest book, The Path of the Righteous Gentile is a major turnaround from his first publication, A Child’s Garden of Grass (as in marijuana) a hilarious comedic overview which he co-authored with Jack Margolis in 1969. An additional work, Confessions of a Jewish Cultbuster was co-authored with Shea Hecht. Chaim now lives in Israel and is a promoter of the religious ethical system known as Noahide which supports the building of a ‘Third Temple’ in Jerusalem.

In a 1999 interview for FFPlaza.com, Richard Clorfene’s colleague Peter B. Lewis, recounted Richard’s early days:

“As I recall, Richard Clorfene, was fresh from being head creative writer/producer at Mel Blanc & Assoc. in LA where he created Super Fun, a brilliant series of radio comedies that was syndicated to many ‘pop’ stations in the mid-late 60’s. Clorfene usually worked with my recording-engineer mentor, Rich Petersen in NYC; and when Clorfene moved from LA to NYC, he had too much work for Rich to do, so he came to me with a radio drama pilot for a series called Tales of the Energy. We produced the coolest hour-long deal ever, really. It was great! Went nowhere. We played it for several radio advertising and programming people and it was exciting but eminently unfruitful. Never even got as far as being a ‘turntable hit’ — just a great tape that only probably 200 people ever heard! Incidentally, the editor at Cream Magazine heard it at the studio one evening and laughed his head off. He subsequently paid for several hour-long sessions to play it for his friends.

Richard was really into Silver Surfer and wanted to do it as a radio series. He had experienced the Silver Surfer cult in Southern California and knew it would be popular with them. We talked about it (and millions of other possibilities) through the production of the pilot.

Another part of my day gig was working at 21st Century Communications, producers of the National Lampoon Radio Hour. Remember that? It’s really the precursor to Saturday Night Live. I worked on some bits of the show, but mostly I worked on the other stuff they were developing, such as editing the Mary Travis Show, interviews with Bob Dylan, etc. I got to hang out with the cast and crew of the Lampoon, and got to know the guy who put together the group of stations on which Nat’l Lampoon Radio Hour was distributed, Bob Michaelson. Since the Lampoon show was kinda winding down, Bob thought the Marvel show would be a good product to cycle into his network of stations.

Clorfene was nowhere to be found. After we finished Tales of the Energy, Richard went back to LA and I couldn’t reach him as things started coming together. In fact, we’ve only spoken a couple times since, and now not in decades, I guess. He’s in Israel, last I heard, a Rabbi. Religion was a very big deal to him when we did the pilot. He wrote an inspired book, The Book of Hype. This was just before we did the pilot. There are 4000 copies of that book somewhere and I’d love to have one now. I was quite affected by the book’s content and the whole experience of being around a person who is being inspired. He had no interest in doing the Fantastic Four and said he’d do the Silver Surfer when it came time. “Good luck, Peter,” he said, and that was it.”

The front cover of Jeff Bonar’s prized copy of Richard Clorfene’s hilarious best-seller, which Richard co-authored with Jack Margolis in 1969.