Harry Shorten

There Oughta Be a Law!

In 1944, while still at MLJ, Shorten made his fortune by creating a gag cartoon called There Oughta Be a Law!, with illustrator Al Fagaly. The panel was highly derivative of Jimmy Hatlo's They'll Do It Every Time. The panel was syndicated by McClure Newspaper Syndicate; eventually, it incorporated reader ideas (including elected politicians who wrote in with suggestions). Shorten provided the scripts, Fagaly the art. There Oughta Be a Law! ran from 1944–1984; Fagaly died in 1963, Shorten provided scripts until 1970, The company was named after Shorten's neighborhood of Midwood, Brooklyn; the publishing house itself was headquartered at 505 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan (along with fellow paperback genre publisher Lancer Books).

Midwood's first release were paperback collections of Shorten's There Oughta be a Law comic strips, and an unnumbered book series in the same style as Beacon. Contributors included Loren Beaucham (a.k.a. Robert Silverberg), Sheldon Lord (a.k.a. Lawrence Block), Alan Marshall (a.k.a. Donald E. Westlake), and Clyde Allison. Cover artists included Rudy Nappi and Paul Rader.

The covers sold the books: many pages contained sex scenes full of insinuations and veiled references,

In 1971, Tower acquired the assets of Belmont Books, merging the two companies to form Belmont Tower. (Belmont had been founded by all three Archie Comic Publications founders: Silberkleit, John L. Goldwater, and Maurice Coyne.) Although the new line continued to publish fiction, Belmont Tower published many notable nonfiction books from 1971 to 1980.

Tower ceased publishing in 1982; Shorten retired shortly thereafter.

From 1957 until his 1982 retirement, Shorten was publisher of Leisure Books,

Tower was most notable for Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents; notable creators associated with Tower included Wood, Schwartz, Dan Adkins, Gil Kane, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Richard Bassford, Len Brown, Steve Skeates, Larry Ivie, Bill Pearson, Russ Jones, Roger Brand, and Tim Battersby-Brent. The company went defunct in 1969.

Daytime television industry Some time in the late 1960s Shorten founded Roband Productions, which published, among others, Afternoon TV magazine, devoted to soap operas and daytime television. Afternoon TV administered the Daytime TV Soap Awards, a precursor to the Daytime Emmy Awards. Afternoon TV published from c. 1970 to c. 1984.

Retirement and death Shorten retired in 1982, moving from Rockville Center, Long Island, to Pompano Beach, Florida. He and his wife Rose had two daughters. Shorten died from the effects of a stroke on January 14, 1991; he was 76 years old.