A Bodacious Birthday -- the First Hillbilly Elegy

BARNEY GOOGLE'S GOO-GOO-GOOGLY EYES... 

AND SNUFFY SMITH'S ASCENSION TO THE THRONE

by Rick Marschall

The current stars of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, drawn by their current master, John Rose

Recently the 90th birthday of Mr Snuffy Smith was observed. Technically, it was the 90th anniversary of the hillbilly's debut in Billy DeBeck's classic strip Barney Google.

Comic-strip characters are famous for "growing," or aging, at their own speed, or not at all. Snuffy is one character who has changed over then near-century... but somehow is younger-looking, cleaner, more active, and happier then when he was introduced to readers in 1934. Withal, he and his woman Loweezy (her name, appropriately, of inconsistent spelling) attracted the attention, and affection, of America to extent that he took over the strip. Its title is, formally, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, but Mr Google has become an occasional cast member.

Barney himself had his significant birthday in 2019, marking his strip as one of comics history's longest-lived sagas. Billy DeBeck was a successful political cartoonist in Pennsylvania and Ohio before moving to Chicago and creating strips for the great breeding-gound of talented cartoonists, the Chicago Record-Herald (by then, actually, Hearst-owned as the Herald-American; history and stories for another column). He created an anecdotal strip about about a tall, thin fellow, eponymously and eventually titled Take Barney Google, F'rinstance.

The Herald-American was, as I said, a breeding-ground for the already fertile cartoonist community in Chicago. Another cartoonist sharing his creations in the paper's Sunday color section was "Doc" Willard, whose past and future moniker was Frank Willard. In true Hearst fashion, these two talented cartoonists had their work and themselves headquartered in New York City (soon followed by another Chicago cartoonist named E C Segar...) Some day -- yes, here in Yesterday's Papers and in the upcoming revival of NEMO Magazine -- the parallel careers of the two friends Billy DeBeck and Frank Willard will be told.

They were more than friends, and did not hold each other as deadly rivals. Yet their paths were very similar. Both created wildly popular strips, Barney Google and Willard's Moon Mullins. Both strips starred low-life roustabouts. Both artists became, when humorous continuities became the order of the day in the 1920s and '30, absolute masters of the challenging form. Both artists created colorful and memorable casts of peripheral characters -- in DeBeck's case the hillbilly we celebrate here; Barney's horse Spark Plug; et al. (Willard's Moon Mullins lived in a boarding house, which enabled characters to come and go besides the permanent relatives and neighbors).

DeBeck and Willard were smart enough, or busy enough, or distracted enough by the High Life, or possibly lazy enough (naw) to hire assistants. Lightning struck twice in these instances. DeBeck's wing-man was Fred Lasswell; Willard hired (actually in the first months of Moon Mullins) Ferd Johnson. Lasswell was to succeed DeBeck and draw Snuffy's adventures until his own death, upon which his own assistant John Rose assumed the reins and continues (excellently) to depict the goings-on in Hootin' Holler. (More like DeBeck than Lasswell, Rose has introduced some new characters, and has Barney visiting more often).

One possible dissimilarity between DeBeck and Willard might have been the latter's temper. Rudolph Block was a de facto director of the Comic Art departments in the Hearst enterprises. He was talented enough (in his "other life" he was a short-story and Yiddish-theater writer as Bruno Lessing) and Hearst relied on him. But by a lot of evidence in my research I could find no cartoonist who did not bristle under his tutelage. Block was the real reason that Rudolph Dirks took Hans and Fritz, and his Katzenjammer Kids, to Hearst's rival, the Pulitzer chain. I have a letter by Frederick Opper (Happy Hooligan) to Block's successor expressing relief that Block was gone. When I interviewed the daughter of R F Outcault (The Yellow Kid; Buster Brown) the sweet, diminutive, 96-year-old lady responded to my question about whether she knew anything of her father's relations with Block. She leaned forward and said, "My father though he was a son of a bitch."

And a similar story about why Frank Willard did not remain with Hearst as Billy DeBeck did: Ferd Johnson told me that Block interfered and criticized Willard so much that one day "he punched Block in the face." Of course the cartoonist parted from Hearst; returned to Chicago, and, now with the Tribune, he created Moon Mullins.

But we are here to note the 90th anniversary of Snuffy Smith's debut. By this point, Barney had shrunken to the "height" we know; experienced wins and losses with his race horse Spark Plug; starred in magnificent mock-melodramas around the world, encountered colorful heroes and villains; inspired several famous songs; and uttered nonsensical phrases that swept the nation. On one of Barney's journeys he found himself in hillbilly country and... the rest is history.

Billy DeBeck, who was not lazy, quickly was enamored of Appalachian culture and lore. Surviving from library are books of notes and sketches, annotated books of rural mountain humor (Sut Lovingood, et al.) so there sprang verisimilitude if not similitude in the stories he spun and the characters' dialog he wrote. But he did pursue leisure activities, thanks to his assistant Lasswell (Ferd Johnson became a companion, as the two followed their bosses around the country, from golf course to golf course. They sometimes were joined by Zeke Zekely, as his boss George McManus joined the other two cartoonists researching putting greens and bars...)

I will share here some DeBeck sketches from my collection of Barney and the early Snuffy... and a songsheet featuring Snuffy, not to be outdone by the songs that Barney inspired. Think of them as bodacious snapshots from a Fambly Album of a truly remarkable comic-strip.

In the late 'teens Billy DeBeck was barely a professional cartoonist, yet he produced "How-To" cartooning manuals and taught under Carl Werntz of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

Barney and the star of the Sunday page's brilliant top strip Parlor, Bedroom, and Sink, Bunky

You'd have to be pretty famous to have as your address something like "DeBeck, New York City." DeBeck was.

Drawn by DeBeck for an event in St Petersburg Florida, where he eventually settled for its warm weather and golf courses.

A Christmas card drawn for Joe Connolly, president of King Features Syndicate.

There were songs about Barney Google and Spark Plus and other DeBeck inspirations, catch-phrases, and storylines. The legendary Billy Rose wrote the famous "Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes" song... when it was Snuffy's turn the uber-legendary Duke Ellington wrote his song.

Ferd Johnson described Billy DeBeck to me as a "dapper little guy." In this photo he is being shown off on a European cruise, S S Rotterdam, by the infamous Comics Editor of the Hearst syndicates, Rudolph Block.

 About to sail on another European cruise are DeBeck and his wife Mary. Back in "the day," when famous cartoonists went on vacations or bought touring automobiles, it was the stuff of newspaper society columns and press releases. For almost a decade the major annual award of the National Cartoonists Society was the DeBeck Award, a silver cigarette case. Mary endowed and helped administer the prize. After her death, the NCS's own "Oscar" became the Reuben Award, a statuette designed by Rube Goldberg.  

Fred Lasswell and I sporting neckties with the Yellow Kid at an event marking another anniversary, the 100th "birthday" of the comics, 1995.

A Crowded Life in Comics –

More About Google (Barney, That Is)

by Rick Marschall

We got good response from last week’s essay on Barney Google, from our Yesterday’s Papers Editor John Adcock who remembered his mother’s fondness for the eponymous song; from John Rose who directs the course of Snuffy Smith’s adventures today; and from… Google, or Facebook, or whichever member of the Big Brother League put a hold on Sharing of the article.

Race? Religion? Politics? No boxes were checked, but that means little to Big Brother or Blinky.

Nevertheless time marches on, at least in the Papers of Yesterday, and the little gray cells of memory in this crowded life.

The fond memories of John’s mother made me dig into the archives of another collecting specialty, vintage comics-related songsheets. I have about 200 of these, I guess; and a few can be pinned on Billy DeBeck, the comic genius who created Barney Google, Spark Plug, Snuffy Smith, Sunshine, Bunky, and a cast of thousands.

“Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes” arguably is the most famous comic-character related song. In 1923 Billy Rose and Con Conrad composed it, and it was a popular tune performed and recorded in new versions until at least the 1950s. In those days, cartoonists and syndicates did not profit from such productions – it was regarded as promotion, rather, until the early 1930s – but DeBeck profited in other ways. America sang and whistled this song, and still does, even if Spark Plug the horse is virtually forgotten.

The lyrics are:

Barney Google, with his Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes.

Barney Google had a wife three times his size.

She sued Barney for divorce,

Now he's living with his horse.

Barney Google, with his Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes.

– and about three dozen other verses added through the years. A partial list of those who performed and recorded the song:

Georgie Price, 1923; Great White Way Orchestra (vocal: Billy Murray), 1923; Ernest Hare & Billy Jones, 1923; Frank Williams,1923; Missouri Jazz Hounds (vocal: Arthur Hall), 1923; Haring's Velvetone Dance Orchestra (instrumental), 1923; Selvin's Orchestra (instrumental), 1923; The Badgers (instrumental), 1923; Harry Blake and Robert Judson, 1923; Ed Smith, 1923; Master Melody Makers,1923; Thomas & West,  1923; The Georgians (instrumental), 1923; Les Steven's Clover Gardens Orchestra  (instrumental), 1923; The Two Gilberts, 1924; Charlie Ventura & His Bop For The People, 1949; Joe “Fingers” Carr and Pee Wee Hunt, 1956; The Andrews Sisters, 1958; The Sauter-Finegan Doodletown Fifers, 1958; Frances Faye, 1959; Mitch Miller and The Gang, 1962. There are also recordings by Mel Blanc (on the piano!), Spike Jones, Eddie Cantor, The Firehouse Five, The Buffalo Bills, and Dorothy Provine. Gyp Rosetti sang it before getting murdered in the last episode of Boardwalk Empire. I will suppose that Dave van Ronk, Leon Redbone, and R Crumb have performed it too.

Billy DeBeck was prolific. Several strips and many characters. When he discovered the dialects and traditions of Appalachia, he became a virtual expert and scholar on the ways and words of those mountain folk; Snuffy Smith speaks in authentic, not stage-words. DeBeck did invent phrases that entered the English, or rather the American, language: “Sweet mama,” “horsefeathers,” “heebie-jeebies,” “hotsy-totsy,” “doodlebug,” “time’s a-wastin’,” and possibly “Great balls o’ fire.”

I never met DeBeck, but through the years have stories about the colorful cartoonist. From Fred Lasswell, of course, who succeeded him during World War II. From Zeke Zekely, assistant on Bringing Up Father. And from Ferd Johnson, who drew Moon Mullins for years. These three artists were the assistants of, respectively, DeBeck, George McManus, and Frank Willard. When the “big boys” would golf or carouse, the assistants did the work… and then golfed and caroused themselves.

Ferd remembered DeBeck as a “dapper little guy.” To complete the circle from the previous column, I share a self-caricature of DeBeck from when Barney was just about “hitting” in Chicago… when he transferred his own mail-order cartooning lessons to the aegis of the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. Many “name” cartoonists were to study there, and, later, teach there. One of the last was a cartoonist I knew in the ‘70s, Art Huhta.

OK, let’s share a gallery of the dapper little guy’s great creations, via songsheet art. The first, however, is not by him, despite the signature. Pirate cover art for a stage show.

The rest of the songsheet covers are roughly if not precisely chronological:

As part of a continuity – featuring a secret society whose password was “OKMNX” (which turned out to mean nothing more than “OK; ham and eggs”) – Debeck and King Features offered membership cards. The response was so great that applicants received letters apologizing for delays.

A great legacy. But songs and songsheets were just a part. In my Crowded Life, I also have skimmed the surface, as a collector, of toys, figurines, board games, reprint books, and more delightful effluvia. Sometime to be shared here. Time’s a-wastin’!

 30 

A Crowded Life in Comics –

With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes

(Barney and Snuffy; DeBeck and Lasswell)

 

Christmas Sketch - DeBeck Barney and Bunky, 1930s

by Rick Marschall

One of my collecting specialties is the Sketch. There is as much charm, and insouciant skill, in a lightning sketch as there is, or can be, in a finished work of art. As an artist I am often happier with my preliminary work than my finishes; I say that I tighten up, but a lack of ability is the likely culprit, daring me to show work to the world.

So I have several albums of sketches, quick-draws, caricatures and self-caricatures, “roughs” and “comps.” Some are ancient; some were done for me.

I will share some sketches by Billy De Beck here; and work of his successor Fred Lasswell too.

1930 Drawing of Barney Google on DeBeck stationery

Billy De Beck was a cartoonist’s cartoonist. His earliest work, in Pittsburgh, seemed professional from the start, unlike his contemporaries whose work we see in retrospect followed natural evolutions from amateurish to polished. His early political cartoons owed something to J H Donahey of the nearby Cleveland Plain Dealer. Especially his background shading and the types of pretty girls both drew.

While he yet was scarcely known, DeBeck launched a correspondence school for aspiring cartoonists, replete with lesson books of “action sketches.” Little advice, except to copy his drawings. An odd practice – in the ‘teens and ‘20s many cartoonists started similar mail-order “schools,” but, curiously, many of the cartoonists were rank, and clearly needed lessons themselves. (I will be doing a book for Fantagraphics on these correspondence courses.) But… among the many, DeBeck’s books were useful – polished, mature, worthy of study.

He graduated from political cartoons to strip work in the late ‘teens in Chicago. After several false starts, he created So This Is Married Life, then Take Barney Google, F’ r Instance. Soon the tall featured character lost half his size, lost his shrewish wife, acquired a race horse named Spark Plug… and literally was off to the races. Barney Google became, and remained, one of America’s most popular strips until DeBeck’s early death in 1942, aged 52.

Those early “DeBeck School” lesson drawings presaged his lifetime style. While still drawing political cartoons that were a little stiff and formal, in these published sketches he drew with a loose pen, fluid lines, and lively exaggeration. This “look” became the visual trademark of his art. Barney (and the later Snuffy Smith when the hillbilly walk-on dominated the strip) was forever a melange of action, reaction, motion, crosshatching and detailed shading.

Envelope of DeBeck, 1930

I recently acquired a sketch Billy did for a fan in 1930. Its charm – particularly its curiosity – is the cartoonist’s stationery. The letter page embossed with his solitary signature is typical enough.  But the envelope reminds me of the business cards of Newman and the Postmaster General in a Seinfeld episode – the return address is “DeBeck, New York.” Maybe the postmen knew all about him; he was a celebrity.

DeBeck Christmas Sketch, 1930s

I share, then, two Christmas greetings DeBeck drew. Sketches, as loose and charming as one could wish.

We can fast-forward to a photo of me and Fred Lasswell, who succeeded DeBeck on the strip (after a wartime fill-in by Joe Musial); just as the terrific John Rose carries on today.

Photo of Fred Lasswell and Rick Marschall, 1995, making fashion statements
 during the US Postal Service’s 100 Years of the Comics celebration. 

Fred and I were at an event celebrating the US Postal Service’s issuance of 20 stamps commemorating the centennial of the comic strip. The year was 1995, almost (gulp!) 25 years ago. Barney Google was one of the stamps’ stars, and Fred attended events with the Yellow Kid on his tie. As I was the USPS’s consultant for the project (providing many images; an 11-city speaking tour; writing the 100-page book they produced, etc) I invariably wore a tie with the Yellow Kid, hand-painted by Robin Doig of San Diego Comicon fame).

We are showing off the ties in the photo – not really a competition between the Yellow Kids, since they each were in a tie – under which, on a subsequent visit, Fred drew a portrait of ol’ Snuffy. A good ol’ sketch, dadburn it; good enuff fer me!

000

29

Christmas With The Cartoonists,

Billy DeBeck 

(Barney Google)

🕭

Barney Google and (the great) Bunker Hill Jr

Barney Google, Lowizie and Snuffy Smith
🕭

RM

4

The Last Word in Twentieth-Century Fun

–July 31, 1920–

–September 22, 1917–

–April 17, 1920–

–August 27, 1921–

★

Circulation magazine – 14 covers from early 1921 to early 1927

   

[1] Circulation #29, April 1927, King Features Syndicate’s worldwide newspaper services — cover by Dan Smith.

Of the 1920s Circulation magazine little more remains than rumours. Published almost a century ago by King Features Syndicate, Inc. in New York, its 1921 subtitle was ‘A Magazine for Newspaper-Makers.’ Its contents hovered between gimmicky and entertaining. Its tone was highflying. But its press run was a modest 5,000 issues per number — sent via direct mail ‘to every newspaper executive in the country, and to hundreds of advertising agencies and national advertisers’ — and its numbers were published at irregular intervals with gaps of several months at a time. For some years Circulation was edited by Sidney Loeb. The four sides of its front and back covers were printed in colour, the interior pages in plain black and white; the printing was of ordinary quality but the journalists and comic authors and artists clearly enjoyed contributing to it. The magazine was reportedly the idea of journalist Moses Koenigsberg (b.1879), the man at the helm of several Hearst companies: Newspaper Feature Service, Universal Service, and finally King Features Syndicate since 1915.

[2] Universal Service — M. Koenigsberg, President.

The greatest mystery at present is why the KFS company in the year of its centenary celebrations still hasn’t been able to retrieve any files on Circulation magazine — not even back issues.

[3] Circulation #4, September 1921, ‘Circulation Chat’ editorial page, illustrated by Joe McGurk.

The rumours about it are as yet hard to prove. Collector and historian Bill Blackbeard mentioned it in 1986 as ‘…the old Hearst trade magazine Circulation…’ But no specification of the total number of issues had and has been found yet. Blackbeard’s research in the mid-1960s, when he’d found only one issue of it, led him to the New York Public Library, which seemed once to have owned ‘a full bound run’ of Circulation. As it turned out these bound issues had mysteriously disappeared from the library’s shelves already.

[4] Circulation #3, July 1921, “Wuxtry!” — cover art by Nell Brinkley.

In January 2001 in Angoulême, France, comics historian Robert Lee Beerbohm surprised and excited me and other interested researchers with xerox copies of ten Circulation issues, of 44 or more pages per issue. Not one of us had ever seen it. (We were all invited by Thierry Groensteen for his international symposium ‘Comics in Europe,’ my lecture about the Dutch shenanigans at the time was titled The Comic Strip: the Incredible Shrinking Medium.)

[5] Circulation #9, September 1922, “Forty-five Minutes Ahead!” — promoting the fastest newspaper news by telegraph, supplied by Universal Service, Inc.

Up to now just 15 numbers have resurfaced of Circulation magazine (11 full issues, plus from 3 issues only the covers, and from 1 issue only the interior). Issues are downright rare. My present estimate is that at least 29 issues were published. The earliest I saw is from 1921, the latest from 1927. Of one — number 4 of September 1921, with the McGurk “Wings of Circulation” cover — I have not been able to find an original full-colour version.

[6] Circulation #4, September 1921, “Wings of Circulation” — cover art by Joe McGurk.

[7] A 1925 photo of comic author-artist George McManus in front of a Persian rug made after his Circulation cover art.

[8] The resulting Persian rug — made after the cover of Circulation #6, February 1922.

[9] Circulation #18, February 1925, the Persian rug article.

[10] Circulation #9, September 1922, “Please page Barney Google!” — cover by Billy DeBeck.

[11] Circulation #11, March 1923, Barney Google on his horse Spark Plug — cover by Billy DeBeck.

[12] “Barney Google Fox Trot” — 1923 sheet music front cover by Billy DeBeck.

[13] Circulation #12, April 1923, ‘The Picture Folk’ — a poem about the soul of the Sunday Funnies.

[14] Circulation #12, April 1923, Bringing Up Father — cover by George McManus.

[15] Circulation #13, July 1923, “Hey Boob!” Boob McNutt prepares for the 4th of July— cover by Rube Goldberg.

[16] Nemo, the classic comics library #24, February 1987, cover for a special issue on Rube Goldberg.

[17] Circulation #18, February 1925, St Valentine’s Day — cover by James H. Hammon.

[18] Circulation #19, April 1925, Bringing Up Father — cover by George McManus.

[19] Circulation #4, September 1921, comic author-artist Elzie Segar ‘…getting ideas at home where all is quiet…’ — strip cartoon by E.C. Segar.

[20] Circulation #20, Augustus 1925, five bathing beauties present “Front Page Marine News” to Neptune, the god of water and of the sea — cover by Alexander Popini.

[21] Circulation #22, December 1925, Polly and Her Pals, wooden christmas tree and puppets — cover by Cliff Sterrett.

[22] Circulation #25, July 1926, Abie the Agent and friends blown away from the author’s table, with a self-portrait of their maker — cover by Harry Hershfield.

[23] Circulation #26, September 1926, “The Magic Carpet of the Comics” — cover by Louis Biedermann.

[24] Circulation #26, uncropped xerox copy of the front cover.

[25] Circulation #18, February 1925, “A Scribe’s Lament” by William F. Kirk — illustrated by James H. Hammon.

You have now seen fourteen surviving Circulation covers, most over ninety years old, finally shown together here — some in damaged state, some xeroxed, some too closely cropped, but, one excepted, all in their original colours.

Any lead, or any more background information to solve this Circulation mystery is welcome.

Huib van Opstal

[ to be continued ]

★

This is part 2 of a series — see Part 1 HERE.

THANKS TO

[all issues] Robert Beerbohm & BLB Comics       

[10] [14] courtesy of Brian Walker 

 [1] courtesy of Hake’s Americana & Collectibles 

[20] courtesy of  Carsten Laqua & Galerie Laqua 

[4] courtesy of Craig Yoe & I.T.C.H.     

[17] courtesy of Rob Stolzer  

Allan Holtz & Stripper’s Guide

Rick Marschall

Leonardo De Sá
Paul Tumey

Mark Johnson

KFS Comics Kingdom

Cyril Koopmeiners

Ianus Keller