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Good Sports
by Rick Marschall
[TOP] Pap
Depicted is the dean of
all sports columnists, Grantland Rice. Trivia: I own (or my son does, now)
Rice’s golf clubs. Bequeathed to his friend, syndicate pioneer John Wheeler,
and passed on to me.
Sports cartooning is, or was, a category of cartooning that
arguably can be considered an incubator once on a par with political cartoons,
magazine panels, and book illustration. The National Cartoonists Society used
to present a category award for Sports Cartooning, and hands out plaques for
New Media, Greeting Cards, and On-Line Short-Form Comics… but discontinued the
Sports Cartooning honor more than 25 years ago.
This situation surely is attributable to an ossified genre and
reduced population as much as the NCS’s institutional distractions.
But some of the finest cartooning talents in history have Protean roots…
and indeed some practitioners never “graduated” to other levels of cartooning.
I will share, here, some memories of sports cartoonists I have
known in my Crowded Life.
When I was a kid – I mean so young I had to take buses and subways
from our suburban New Jersey home into
Manhattan, and visit cartoonists and syndicates three times a year, Easter
holiday, summer vacation, Christmas break – I ventured to the bullpen of the
Associated Press.
In those days (obviously the halcyon times of virtually no
security in public buildings and newspaper offices) the AP had its own
syndicate operation. It was small but significant; and among its “graduates”
through the years were Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, Al Capp, and Frank Robbins.
R B Fuller created Oaky Doaks for the AP, and remained all
his life. During the time I am writing about, Ralph Fuller was a neighbor in Leonia
NJ. He willed me volumes of Judge Magazine from his time on staff in the
1920s. At the AP I also met Dick Hodgins Jr. I thought him austere in his
horn-rimmed glasses and looming height, but he encouraged me by looking at my
sketches and saying if I were five years older I could get a job in the
bullpen. I never did apply, but in five years or so I was taller than Dick, and
learned how affable he was. He became one of my best friends in this business.
But the end of the row of drawing-tables, in the corner, was Tom
Paprocki, sports cartoonist. On every visit I would check in with Dick, and
editorial cartoonist John Milt Norris, panel cartoonist Joe Cunningham
(“’ham”), and others, before sitting next to “Pap.” I remember two things
especially: a warm friendliness beneath his gruff visage; and a stack of his
original daily sports-cartoon panels. Added to for who-knows how many years,
the pile must have been 40 inches high! Pap gifted me with a few… but I have
always wondered what happened to them, ultimately.
The AP was a “service” organization for newspapers, not a true
syndicate. As with its news, features, and wire-photo services, newspapers
subscribed, or not, and received everything, to use as they wished. Comics,
cartoons, columns, and material offering advice to the lovelorn, bridge and
poker strategies, kids’ puzzles, and such, were part of the “package.” (It is
difficult to gauge, therefore, the popularity or client lists of its comic
strips, as editors variable commitments to cartoons and comics).
So Pap’s cartoons were run by major newspapers, many minor
newspapers seeking the look of a pro in their pages depicting major
personalities and events, and even Sunday color sections for a while. He was a
consummate professional indeed, composing this panels in the form associated
with (but not originated by) Willard Mullin – a large realistic
portrait, realized by aid of a Pantograph, from photo reference; smaller line
drawings, often humorous, illustrating facts and stats in an orbit around the
star of the day.
Pap
Yes, THAT Ozzie Nelson, later of Ozzie and Harriet;
father of Rick Nelson
Here are a couple of Sports Slants by Pap. The color
feature was offered to Sunday supplements; the AP struggled to maintain a
foothold in those venues, with minimal success. Nevertheless features like Things
To Come by Clyde Barrow; Scorchy Smith by Frank Robbins, Rodlow
Willard, and others; Neighborly Neighbors by Morris; and Oaky Doaks ran
for some years.
Charlie McGill
Charlie McGill was a local sports cartoonist – local to me in the
North Jersey suburbs of New Jersey – and he lived in my town of Closter. The
example here is a spot drawing he did for a sports column. McKevin McVey also
drew for the Bergen Record, a paper I delivered after school. McVey, who
joined the ADK hiking club I belonged to in upstate New York, drew more
theatrical caricatures than sports or editorial cartoons.
Ray Gotto “Play Ball! – New York Mets logo
I knew Ray Gotto in several capacities. I seldom read The
Sporting News, where his mannered sports cartoons often graced front pages.
I was a fan of his two baseball-themed comic strips, Ozark Ike and Cotton
Woods. But to many of us Ray’s place in history was cemented as the
designer of the New York Mets logo. My hometown team, wherever I have lived;
suffering with them today. Ray’s design was their first, in 1962, and is on
uniforms and licensing products still.
Bill Gallo drew, and wrote (mostly about boxing) for the New York Daily
News. Always nice to me, Bill was the old-fashioned “colyumnist” and sports
cartoonist – taciturn and cigar-chomping – but warm and congenial very close to
the surface. He was a very effective president of the National Cartoonists
Society for a term or two (thanks in large part to his great wife Delores).
Here is a drawing he did of the colorful boxing legend Rocky Graziano, when we
were all at some dinner together.
John Cullen Murphy –
caricature of Jack Dempsey and Jack’s autograph
Speaking of sports strips, and boxing legends, I will call up
again a caricature from another dinner when I asked John Cullen Murphy – who
drew the boxing strip Big Ben Bolt for years prior to Prince Valiant;
Al Capp’s brother Elliott Caplin was its writer – to sketch the legendary Jack
Dempsey.
Before I leave – I will write more about other sports cartoonists
I knew in future columns – no mention of the genre should be allowed with
pausing at the greatest of them all, Willard Mullin. (Yes, deserving of a
separate column.)
Willard Mullin –
“’Tain’t a fit night out for man nor beast...” except in the hands of Willard
Mullin
This example, of hundreds that could be called up, shows Willard
at his best. Concepts? He was Mr Sports. Likenesses? Thanks to the
sports cartoonists’ best friends, Pantographs and “Lucie” projectors –
flawless. But Willard was astonishing at his cartoon line-work: casual but
impeccable anatomy (figures seemingly in poses impossible to photograph, but
invariably spot-on as Willard drew them); arresting compositions; humorous all
the time, but never a detour from the subject matter.
Willard Mullins’ pen lines and anatomy and composition all struck
me – no matter how unlikely the juxtaposition – of what Russell Patterson
sports cartoons would have looked like if he strayed from Broadway and
Hollywood to the gyms, camps, and prize fights. I mean that as high compliment
to both artists.
More to come. This topic can go to extra innings!
40
Rick, I owe you a great deal for getting me into comics as part of my writing career, not the least of which is you recommending me for the DICK TRACY strip when the Trib Syndicate was doing its talent hunt in 1977. But you rather overstate it when you say we dreamed up "Heaven and Heller" together. That was a concept I came up with and pitched to you, and to which you surely contributed your editorial expertise as we got it ready, since you were then the editor at the Sun Times syndicate. Suggesting that I later took a mutual creation of ours out to market in various ways is rather an unfair and inaccurate way to express it. The Nate Heller character, minus the psychic Heaven and incorporating major research into real 20th Century crimes, appears in many of my novels and short stories, and I have thanked you in public many times for your editorial work on the original comic strip. I continue to be grateful, and always will be, but that does not include allowing the suggestion that you were co-creator of my property to stand. Ray Gotto was my idea, and later you brought Fernando DaSilva in for another round of try-out strips; no other cartoonists were involved.
ReplyDeleteWell, we might not have dreamed up “Heaven and Heller” together, at least in the sense of the title, which was yours and did not steal my heart away at first. But the concept surely was born in an upstairs bedroom (overflow books and art room) of my house on State Street in Geneva IL. During my tenure as Comics Editor of Publishers Syndicate in Chicago I oversaw many iconic story strips – Steve Canyon; Steve Roper and Mike Nomad; Kerry Drake; Mary Worth; Rex Morgan; Judge Parker; Apartment 3-G... and I was frustrated, especially with the soap-opera strips, but even Caniff’s work, which was de-clawed at that stage of his career.
ReplyDeleteThe whole industry, in Editor and Publisher, at Comics Council forums, etc., was declaring the end of the story strip. It was my view that story strips were not dying because of TV or movies or brilliant humor strips… but because many of them stunk. I worked with what I had on hand. I took writer Nick Dallis “to school” on the slow pace of Morgan, Parker, and 3-G. We had battles royal but a few years later he thanked me. I leaned on Al Andriola, but he was so busy fighting with his long-time ghost Su Gumen I could make little headway (but I did succeed in having him send synopses to me in advance; and we had palavers). What to do with Mary Worth? Allen Saunders turned out to be the most cooperative writer in the stable. We couldn’t have the old gal in gun fights; but I suggested that we walk astride the headlines, and have Mary counsel a pregnant teen girl. In the Mary Worth context, that was contemporary, if not revolutionary. We got good press.
But I wanted a strip that would have more action… more violence, yes… rough-hewn plots and characters… maybe a few Hells and Damns – always an eye to the prudish “Pittsburgh market,” where blue-nosed complaints frequently arose. Supposedly. Syndicates were scared of their own shadows, sigh.
(Continued)
2.
ReplyDeleteI reckoned that one way to “sanitize” the revival of an action strip was to make it a little abstract. That is, a “period piece” would be seen differently than a strip starring the Guy Next Door of the day.
Frankly, the Polanski / Towne / Nicholson "Chinatown" impressed the heck out of me; and still does. So a hardboiled-dick strip was appealing. THAT was a reason I turned to you; that, and your occasional visits to Geneva from Muscatine. Solo (I think) but also with Terry Beatty, Monte Beauchamp, and of course Barb. You came, too, with Matt Masterson, my never knowing at the time the visits to Chester Gould’s daughter… who I did not know lived in town. (Afterward. On the Board of the Museum of Cartoon Art, I later had to address some brushfires she endured…)
You had written some paperback detective stories in the Mickey Spillane style; and you knew strips, as a collector. I loved the idea of turning to you.
(Continued)
3.
ReplyDeleteBut I have stated my overarching approach. Classic genres, newly conceived. I talked with Ron Goulart (similar credentials to yours) about a retro-flavored science-fiction strip. I had discussions with Warren Tufts about a good ol’ Western strip. I almost got him tempted… but he felt burned by the business after two other Western strips; and he was too involved with building and flying planes. I sobbed at the news of his death in a crash of one of his planes. I even tried to lure Alex Toth into strips – a carte blanche as much as I could assure – but, no go. Other names, hard to locate, included Ray Bailey, Frank Robbins, Lee Elias (to whom I did give work when I was editor at Marvel a couple years later)…
The point is that when we met, to brainstorm, the forecast was to dream up a hard-boiled 1930s / ‘40s detective strip. From the start of my discussions. I remember suggesting that a principal character – one whom the readers would otherwise assume would be a continuing co-star – be killed in the first episode. I don’t think I was borrowing from the premises of Tracy or Batman; but maybe so. I think the pretty secretary, her mildly occult powers, and title, were yours.
But we brainstormed well into that night. It was not a concept you “came up with and pitched” to me. (By the way, there was no Sun-Times Syndicate I worked for.) Don’t be so touchy. I am not claiming royalties or anything. My memory is good, honed as a spectator, and I have correspondence. But during the unsuccessful peddling of the strip (to other syndicates when I left Publishers) you were happy to talk about converting the premise into the "Ms Tree" series. And, yes, when Heller “went solo” in the series of books, there was much that was familiar – according to your inscriptions to me, by the way – and when I lived in Connecticut a few years later you placed a call to me asking me, and to put into writing, that I would claim no proprietary interest in the premise, name, or character. My gosh, I never raised the subject (and scarcely have now, as an accusation!?!)... so one of us might be displaying a consciousness of collaboration. And I sent that letter, with contents similar to the foregoing.
Back to Ray Gotto, whose name raised your hackles in this essay. Yes, he was your suggestion – and I loved the instant perception of the mannered look of an earlier time. I suggested Fernando daSilva, an advertising artist whom I knew and admired… who came to America from Brazil for a second audition and likely job with Alex Raymond. He arrived the week Alex was killed in the auto crash. Fred stayed; had great success in advertising; eventually worked on strips – where else? At Publishers!
I paid both Ray and Fred for their two weeks and one Sunday each. Solely. I also talked, you might remember, to William Overgard about doing samples. But what a fuss in the henhouse that would have been (he was sick of doing Roper), and he clearly would have wanted to write it, too. By that time I had returned to the East Coast, had squeezed the pitches dry with syndicate editors.
My being “thanked in public many times” is something I am not aware of and never heard about. Recommending you to Don Michel for the "Dick Tracy" strip with my friend Dick Locher, was not a “thank you” on my part. I just thought you were a clever guy who had a feel for strips; a onetime friend; and with no strings attached. That is not how I go through life.
I have thanked you in public, Rick, many times. I will continue to. Much of what you say above gibes with my memories. I believe I came up with "Heaven and Heller," and that you then suggested we kill Heaven off, early in the run, as a shock tactic. I somewhat reluctantly went along with that, wanting to sell the strip. The confusion here, I believe, is an editor -- and friend, but editor, who I was attempting to please with my efforts -- wanted a tough detective strip out of me and I provided it.
ReplyDelete