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AMERICA'S FAVORITE
FUNNY-MAKERS OF THE 1910s MEET
by Rick Marschall
If a poll had been conducted in the early 'teens in America -- and there might indeed have been such surveys -- despite the heavy competition, it is certain that the nation's favorite comedian was Charlie Chaplin; and the nation's favorite comic strip was Mutt and Jeff.
Chaplin burst on the scene in 1914, and was an immediate hit. His tramp character evoked sympathy, affection, a bit of derision, and even identification, all at once. Seemingly overnight he was a major star of the nascent "movies"; there were Chaplin dolls and toys; and there would be two comic strip featuring him as a character (one would be drawn by the newcomer E C Segar, years before Popeye). In 1915 he was writing, producing, and starring in a series of shorts for Keystone; Mutual, Essanay, and United Artists in his lucrative future.
In newspaper comics, Bud Fisher was the virtual father of the daily strip, certainly the first successful one. After Mr A Mutt wowed readers in San Francisco, Fisher moved to New York, was hired by William Randolph Hearst, introduced a second-banana, Jeff; and -- where have we heard this before? -- had a national sensation on his hands. Toys, dolls, sculptures (!), lapel pins, and comics' earliest successful daily-strip reprint books flooded the nation. A coupon-clipping promotion of a Boston newspaper proved that the public would be interested in comic-strip compilations, and the Ball Publishing Company produced five reprint books during the 1910s.
Here is the cover of Volume 4, published in 1915, the year Chaplin hit it "biggest" in moving-picture theaters... and the year that Mutt and Jeff was so popular that (thanks in part to the legerdemain of syndication pioneer John Wheeler) Bud Fisher slipped away from Hearst and drew his strip for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.
In a "meeting of the mirths," we see in my copy of this book that the funnyman Bud Fisher inscribed it to his cinematic counterpart, Charlie Chaplin. (Even though he spelled Charlie's name wring. So, he didn't win any spelling bees...) And the book has Charlie's bookplate! This is how he saw himself at the beginning of his career -- the drawing (alas, unsigned) show the Tramp, rather more bedraggled than usual, as a new arrival in the Big City.
Chaplin recently had arrived in America from England as a member of Fred Karno's music-hall troupe (Stan Laurel, his young understudy) and this indeed might have represented his very first impressions of America.
In newspaper comics, Bud Fisher was the virtual father of the daily strip, certainly the first successful one. After Mr A Mutt wowed readers in San Francisco, Fisher moved to New York, was hired by William Randolph Hearst, introduced a second-banana, Jeff; and -- where have we heard this before? -- had a national sensation on his hands. Toys, dolls, sculptures (!), lapel pins, and comics' earliest successful daily-strip reprint books flooded the nation. A coupon-clipping promotion of a Boston newspaper proved that the public would be interested in comic-strip compilations, and the Ball Publishing Company produced five reprint books during the 1910s.
Here is the cover of Volume 4, published in 1915, the year Chaplin hit it "biggest" in moving-picture theaters... and the year that Mutt and Jeff was so popular that (thanks in part to the legerdemain of syndication pioneer John Wheeler) Bud Fisher slipped away from Hearst and drew his strip for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.
In a "meeting of the mirths," we see in my copy of this book that the funnyman Bud Fisher inscribed it to his cinematic counterpart, Charlie Chaplin. (Even though he spelled Charlie's name wring. So, he didn't win any spelling bees...) And the book has Charlie's bookplate! This is how he saw himself at the beginning of his career -- the drawing (alas, unsigned) show the Tramp, rather more bedraggled than usual, as a new arrival in the Big City.
Chaplin recently had arrived in America from England as a member of Fred Karno's music-hall troupe (Stan Laurel, his young understudy) and this indeed might have represented his very first impressions of America.
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