INSIDE LOOK -- THE BULLPEN OF EARLY HEARST CARTOONISTS - III: George McManus

"Let George Do It!"

And McManus Did, 

Many Times Over

We have visited, via rare archival material from King Features Syndicate archives, legendary cartoonists from the protean days of comic strips. George Herriman, Tom McNamara, and editor Rudolph Block thus far. Photographs, specialty drawings, data; the only deficiency -- out of our control, as it was "out of control" in 1917 -- is the insipid poetry that serves as promotion. But, that is why the book was produced, so we must endure. (And there are some valuable facts that leak through...)

It is interesting, and a well-known aspect of the Birth of the Comics, that commercialism played a major role. Comics were weapons in circulation wars between publishers. They received boosts -- creative freedom, vast publicity, and cartoonists treated like stars -- to assist in their acceptance by the public.

The "wars" also featured cartoonists themselves as weapons, objectives, prizes, and goals. many of the great early artists of the Funny Pages switched employers and venues, sometimes dissatisfied with their employers (we have documented that Block seriously annoyed numerous of his cartoonists to the point of their quitting Hearst)... but usually having their services bid and outbid by hungry publishers.

There is a story -- if not true it virtually encapsulates the truth of the times -- that T E Powers spent an afternoon in a Park Row bar, not working for Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World nor William Randolph Hearst of the Journal, but receiving reports from office boys how his salary was going up and up as the two publishers bid against each other for his services. (Hearst won out.)

Frederick Burr Opper drew for the New York Herald (and Puck Magazine) until purloined by Hearst. Rudolph Dirks was hired away from Hearst by Pulitzer; so was Bud Fisher with the assistance of syndicate pioneer John Wheeler. Winsor McCay drew for James Gordon Bennett's two newspapers before Hearst hired him away. George Herriman drew for the World but eventually settled in the Hearst stable. R F Outcault, whose Yellow Kid can be cited for inaugurating this crazy transmigration, worked for Pulitzer, then Hearst, then Pulitzer again, then the Herald, then Hearst until his retirement.

In the eyes of the voracious publishers (benign godfathers they were, when all is said and done; or wet-nurses) there was no bigger star in their constellations than George McManus. He had attracted the attention of Pulitzer in their original working environs of St Louis; then McManus drew for Pulitzer's New York World.

McManus the cartoonist had a short gestation as a struggling stylist; soon his artwork was polished, handsome, mannered... and funny. As a creator, he created multiple strips starring in multiple titles. His premises were funny, and his narratives flowed like stage-plays. In fact his several creations did become Broadway musicals. And his characters appeared on the market as toys and in games.

Probably the most popular of his strips was The Newlyweds, a one-premise strip (as most early comics were) about an obstreperous baby. When McManus switched to Hearst he continued the strip but renamed it Their Only Child!, finessing a sticking-point of other mutinies like Mutt and Jeff and The Katzenjammer Kids whose titles became bones of contention.

McManus created another strip for Hearst, a Sunday page called The Whole Bloomin' Family. It is curious to note that Bringing Up Father, which commenced full-term as a Hearst feature in 1913, never was a Sunday page until six years later. After that it became the major strip among Hearst and King Features' properties for years. It owned the front pages of the Hearst chain's Sunday comic sections until supplanted by Blondie in the early 1950s.

In the 1917 promotion book, McManus was allowed to illustrate the stars in his galaxy including characters he had created, and left, at Pulitzer's shop. We see the eponymous star of Let George Do It; Rosie and her Beau; and Panhandle Pete. In addition, Snookums Newlywed and his parents; the Whole Bloomin' Family; and Jiggs and Maggie of Bringing Up Father. 

 

By the way, and speaking of the Newlyweds and their only child (italics aside), we have a reprint book of daily strips from the New York World. It is from 1907. The strips appeared earlier in the year in the newspaper, not to mention the book collection -- which challenges the convention histories citing Mr A Mutt as the medium first daily strip (November 1907). More to follow in Yesterday's Papers and in the revival of nemo magazine...

A Crowded Life in Comics –

Happy New Year. Again.

By Rick Marschall

OK, I get it; I’m old. That’s part of the point of these columns. Otherwise they’d be called A Crowded Bunch O’ Dreams. But I have been thinking lately of the cartooning and comic-strip pioneers who were still alive when I barely was alive… or, that is, when I was young enough to overlap with legends.

Jimmy Swinnerton, Rudolph Dirks, Rube Goldberg, Harry Hershfield, Russell Patterson, Frank King, Charles Payne, Ken Kling, Otto Messmer, Gene Byrnes, Edwina. You see I am not including legends and heroes who are in misty halls of memory now, but when I was a kid, I met and did not consider to be sacred (but living, breathing) relics – as I now with passage of time consider myself blessed also to have met: Roy Crane, Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, Hal Foster, Chester Gould, Burne Hogarth, Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, Herblock, Bill Mauldin, Johnny Hart, Mort Walker, Dik Browne; some of whom I knew more than casually, editor of some, neighbor of some, a few even at my wedding.

I stink at math, but as these fondly recalled ghosts inhabited my thoughts recently (perhaps because it is New Year time and auld acquaintance might get forgot if I am not careful) I realized that when I started to meet cartoonists, in my early teens or earlier with Al Smith, Vern Greene, and some early-birds, this stretch of time I call a (crowded) life, is approximately half the period from the birth of the newspaper comic strip, till now.

File it under “so what?” but it prods me to dig deeper in my memory. So in this brief contribution I pulled up a page by Rudolph Dirks, a Katzenjammer Kids strip on the same nostalgic theme… starring Father Time himself.

I think I have written here about Rudy and John Dirks; meetings and friendships; my role in preserving some dignity for John when his syndicate canceled the legendary page; sleeping in the studio of Rudy in Ogunquit, Maine, and being curator of a comics show in the town’s museum; of Rudy’s memories of Herriman, Mager, et al. … of designing the Katenjammer Kids postage stamp for which John did special art… and if I have not told those stories, I will someday soon.

In the meantime, here is a page that appeared in 1950, not exactly on New Year’s Day; neither on the precise birthday of Dirks’s landmark strip… but on the theme of the passage of time. Der Captain might be tweaked every week, but not Father Time! A clever reminder of the boys’ place in comics history… and our own life-histories if, dod-gast it, you grew up like me.

John Adcock

64

A Quiet Fourth In The Country!

JULY 4TH, 1909

🧨🧨🧨

Sunday With Rudy Dirks

The Katzenjammer Kids

Rudy Dirks

Chicago Examiner

Nov 29, 1908

&!*%#

A Crowded Life in Comics – Rudolph Dirks

–Rudolph Dirks panel 1917–

The Other Katzenjammer Kids

by Rick Marschall

In these installments of memoirs I will return more than once to Rudolph Dirks, the father of the comic strip. He was the primal source of sequential panels, a cast of characters, and the signs and symbols of cartoonists – motion lines, stars of pain, dotted vision lines, etc. – originating, or at least codifying, these elements as essential components of strips.

I will also refer more than occasionally to his son John Dirks. From Rudy I had the briefest personal encounter, in his nonage (he was born in 1877; d. 1968). I was born in 1949 (still kicking when last I checked), but we did correspond. His son John I knew much better, and visited him frequently at his homes in Ossining NY; later Old Lyme CT; and at his vacation home – Rudy’s old studio – in Ogunquit ME. For a while I was John’s editor on Captain and the Kids, and he arranged to have me be Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Ogunquit Museum of Art.

Finally, I likely will return to the landmark set of 20 commemorative stamps, “Comic Strip Classics” for the United States Postal Service, a project for which I was hired to provide artwork, consult on choices, write info and the book that was published.

–Rudolph Dirks stamp post office document–

So, having shared what I will tell, I scarcely have room to tell what I am telling. Anyway, I want to explain a couple of surface-skimming episodes in my precious friendship with Dirks vater und sohn, and honoring Hans and Fritz on stamps.

Rudy was still alive and still producing Captain and the Kids when I was young. I wrote a fan letter around 1962, and eventually received a nice answer, with an original Sunday page original. I thanked him and asked if I could visit – from the return address I saw that he lived on East 86th Street in Manhattan. My family lived in the New Jersey suburbs then, having moved from the German section of Queens, Ridgewood; and several relatives lived the German section of Manhattan – Yorkville, whose center thoroughfare was 86th Street. My father’s aunt lived in an apartment two blocks from Rudolph Dirks.

–Rudolph Dirks letter 1962–

So I didn’t wait for a possibly slow reply this time. Taking a chance, I took a bus to New York City (armed with drawings to be critiqued), but my real goal was to meet the Master  and extract information about the “Old Testament” days of comics history. The Yellow Kid coalesced in his definitive personality and showcase in 1895-96. But the Katzenjammer Kids were born, as a pair of male Athenas, their mischievous personas set from the start. Likely inspired by Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz in Germany (and in their first week, never again to be seen, was a third brother), there they were… and are. Never have their personalities or even costumes changed since then.

(A length interview I conducted with John Dirks, digging into matters as minute as whether Rudy retained a German accent from his youth in Schleswig-Holstein, appeared in Hogan’s Alley number 20.)

–John Dirks rough for stamp–

In any event, I realize that I was on quest to encounter Living History. Rudy was ill on that first call, and as his wife held the door we exchanged some conversation – not enough! – from his room where he sat. He was merely elderly, with a shock of white hair; I suppose I expected him to have a foot wrapped in a bandage for the gout; a heating pad on his head; and other accouterments of… well, his own comic-strip world.

I will fast-forward here past the visits and friendship with John and Mary Dirks.  A wonderful, warm, creative couple. Some day here I will tell the story of his syndicate rudely ending his strip, and how I fomented a minor public protest campaign. The syndicate was embarrassed… apologized to John… and since “The End” was ordained, took satisfaction in their humiliation. As I say, later.

–John Dirks pen and ink for stamp–

In 1994 I was invited to consult with the US Postal Service as they prepared a set of comic-strip stamps for their “American Classics” series. The designer said that he was getting desperate to find someone could provide decent images of the 20 famous comic characters (the first consultant provided almost laughably inappropriate, almost irrelevant images). So… I was hired, and had a year of interesting and often absurd adventures.

But one of the things I determined to do was have John Dirks draw the image for the Katzenjammer Kids. Every other cartoonist represented was deceased, except for Dale Messick (Brenda Starr) who was included mostly because they wanted least one woman cartoonist represented. I lobbied for Edwina, Rose O’Neill, and Grace Drayton to no avail.

–John Dirks color guide for stamp–

They accepted the idea that John, son of the creator of Hans and Fritz, and their decades-long papa, would do the art, or least submit same for approval. You will see here, in steps, an original panel done by his father (in 1917) that I thought would be a good image, displaying Captain, Kids, Inspector, and mischief. Then John’s rough; then his pen-and-ink drawing; then his color guide; then the stamp as it appeared in a Postal Service internal approval document.

Pure nostalgia!  – I don’t mean the Dirks team, or comics history, or the back-story of the postage stamp. I mean… when a stamp cost only 32 cents! Dod gast it.

★

8

Crossover Sunday/Hooligans and Katzenjammers

F.B. Opper/Rudolph Dirks, 

Chicago Examiner, 

Dec 6, 1908

🔻

Rudolph and Gus Dirks drew The Katzies of the 90s

[1] Rudy Dirks, photo 1917 

—   

“Hearst took on Rudolph Dirks in 1897 to do the Katzenjammer Kids (German slang for ‘hangover’ kids), and thereby headed toward the first big legal battle of the comics. The World, not forgetting Hearst’s capture of Outcault, enticed Dirks into its camp. The bitter legal controversy which followed finally resulted in Hearst’s obtaining the rights to the Katzenjammer Kids, but not to its creator. Dirks continued the characters in the World under the title Hans and Fritz, which during the World War was changed to The Captain and the Kids to purge it of its ancestry. Hearst’s Katzenjammer Kids (drawn by H.H. Knerr) and United Features Captain and the Kids (obtained from the World upon its death in 1931) remain as the sole survivors of all the strips started in the 90s.” — Men of Comics, by William E. Berchtold, in New Outlook, April 1935 

—

[2] Ach. Those Katzenjammer Kids Once More! Already Again They Make Troo-o-o-oble! 

[3] Dec 19, 1897

[4] Dec 11, 1898

[5] Dec 26, 1897

[6] Nov 27, 1898

[7] His brother Gus Dirks, photo 1901

[8] Gus Dirks draws Hans and Fritz, Nov 6, 1898

[9] Gus Dirks draws Hans and Fritz, Oct 9, 1898

 •¡)¡.•   •¡.(¡•

[NOTE] There are two biographies of the brothers Dirks, in German only, the latest is Gus Dirks; Käfer, Kunst & Kummer (Gus Dirks; Bugs, Art & Distress) by Tim Eckhorst, published by Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag in 2016.

Rudolph Dirks (1877-1968) – Katzenjammer, Kids & Kauderwelsch

2012 cover of first edition

A few months back a book was published on a classic strip maker that may have escaped the notice of most English language readers. The book is written by young Tim Eckhorst and published by Deich Verlag in Germany. 

The word ‘Kauderwelsch’ in its title – ‘Rudolph Dirks; Katzenjammer, Kids & Kauderwelsch’ – translates to ‘bafflegab’. 

Tim Eckhorst was born in the same small town as Rudolph Dirks in Heide, Germany. The house where Gus and Rudolph Dirks were born is still standing and a street is named in his memory. Brother John Dirks passed his entire collection on to the town of Heide. 

The Dirks ‘Katzenjammer Kids’ strip

At the moment the book Rudolph Dirks; Katzenjammer, Kids & Kauderwelsch is only available in the original German language edition. You can look inside the book HERE, see a trailer (with wonderful vintage film footage) HERE or order a copy HERE.

Rudolph Dirks Way, Heide, Germany

Book Presentation

Dirks House, Heide, Germany

 

Rudy, Gus, and John Dirks

“It all began two score years ago. When the editor of the New York Journal turned to a young staff artist and said:

“Hey, Dirks! Draw me some pictures of kids. And make ‘em funny.”

From: “Und So Dey Iss in Der Moofies Now! “The Captain and the Kids,” Rudolph Dirks’ Forty-Year Comic Favorite, Is Making Its Screen Debut.” Corpus Christ Times, January 14, 1938.

Rudolph Dirks (1877-1968) was born in Germany, and moved to the US when he was seven, with his parents. The family lived in Duluth then Chicago where the elder Dirks practiced trade as wood-carver.

“I intended to follow my father’s footsteps but one week in the shop settled that. I almost cut off one hand.”

His brother Gus, author of the popular “Bugville” cartoons, inspired him to emulate him by moving to New York. He freelanced for a year or so, doing covers for Street and Smith “thrillers,” then got a job on the Journal.

In the early nineties the New York World adopted color printing for its revolutionary Sunday supplements and introduced the first color comic pages. The Journal took note and obtained the services of Rudolph Dirks, and asked to submit something along the line of Wilhelm Busch’s German comic max and Moritz, created the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897.

Pulitzer’s World warred with Hearst’s Journal and lured Dirks away. Hearst owned the title “The Katzenjammer Kids” so Pulitzer’s version became “Hans and Fritz.” With anti-German feeling s high during WWI the title was changed once again to “The Captain and the Kids,” and a daily appeared under the title “The Shenanigan Kids” with art by John Campbell Cory.

For the record, the kids, Hans and Fritz are Mamma’s kids, the Captain was not her husband but a boarder, and the Inspector was a mere truant officer, and no relation to any other character. Rudolph served with the American army in Cuba throughout the Spanish American War as a corporal. But he managed to send his drawings for the Sunday page regularly.

Rudolph Dirks brother Gustavus “Gus” Dirks, was born in Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border and shot himself in the head on June 10, 1902. He used a 38 revolver and did not survive. The suicide occurred in a studio on West Fourteenth Street, which was shared by three artists, Gus Dirks, Charles Sarka, and John Tarrant. Many of the headlines mis-reported the tragedy with news that the “Katzenjammer Artist” was dead. Dirks parents were living in Phillips, Wisconsin at the time.

Dirks was a good friend of the eccentric artist “Old Pop” Hart in the thirties. “Pop” was George Obery Hart, a sign painter, who was discovered by art critics when he was in his sixties and was lauded as the “American Gaughin.” It was claimed that he could mix colors in the dark. His popular canvases featured “cockfights, ravishing damsels in tropical courtyards and South Sea Islanders.” He lived for a quarter of a century in a 3 room shack in the woods atop the Palisades where “Walt Kuhn, the comic artist, and Rudolph Dirks repaired regularly to the Jersey shore, climbed to the hilltop and soaked their sorrows away in the beer of a nearby German restaurant with the then unknown eccentric who was “Old Pop”.”

Once Dirks and a group of American painters were sitting in a café in Munich when Pop’s name came up. One member of the party expressed the wish that “Pop” were with them. Dirks immediately sent a check to Hart in America and they were soon joined by “Pop” Hart. He had a little money left over which he spent on a top hat and a walking stick.

“At night, after “Pop” had gone to sleep, they would get the cane, remove the ferrule, saw off an inch of the stick and put the ferrule back. The stick grew shorter and shorter. One day in the midst of a walk, “Pop” stopped in his tracks.

“Fellows,” he said, “this is a wonderful climate over here. Do you know, I believe I’ve grown six inches since I came to this town!”

Dirks was a member of the famous Kit Kat Club and played golf with a group of cartoonists residing in Ogunquit. Each year the winner of the golf matches was given the title “Big Boy.” The winner in 1938 was Robert Laurent, a sculptor. Rudy’s son John Dirks won the cup in 1939 and artist Richard Leahy in 1940. In 1941 it was the turn of Cliff Sterrett, cartoonist for “Polly and Her Pals,” while runner-up Rudy Dirks was given the consolation prize of a necktie.

Dirks was 91 when he died one Saturday night in 1968 at his Manhattan home. His son John Dirks, who had been helping out on the strip for 15 years said he would carry on with the “Kids.”

*Again the original sketch and the letter are from the Don Kurtz collection. The Dirks letter would appear to be in answer to a query by Martin Sheridan, author of the seminal 1942 book on comics, Comics and Their Creators.