Charlie Plumb, a vagabond who carried a cartoonist kit wherever he went, enjoyed the good life in Florida and Mexico. He left the property in the care of an “understudy” for six months while he toured Samoa, returning to Hollywood with the resulting book (“Tin Can Island”) in hand. Conselman worked in Hollywood as well writing for movies for the likes of Bing Crosby. Colleen Moore played the title role in the Ella Cinders movie, the first comic strip to be filmed.
Ella Cinders began as a poor girl, slave to a cruel stepmother and two domineering sisters, Prissy and Lotta Pill, just like in the fairy tale. Her young brother Blackie shared the home. Ella’s epic search for her Prince Charming was a soap opera and an adventure strip. She won a beauty contest which earned her free ticket to Hollywood where she worked as an extra for awhile until she met a big movie magnate who, it turns out, was her long-lost father Pa Cinders, on the lam from his harsh-tongued wife. Ella became a big movie star, made one fortune, lost it, almost married Tommy Harris, discovered a lost country where it was still the 1890’s…
The strip had gripping continuities and was beautifully drawn (until the feeble Fred Fox took over the strip) often approaching a dark surrealism. Ella herself, a freckle-faced gamin, had the wide eyed look of a silent movie star.
The color Sunday is borrowed from HERE, while the beginning dailies are HERE.
St. Louis, Mo., Dec 4. - Col. George Bungle has taken the offensive against his creator and tormentor, Harry J. Tuthill, comic strip cartoonist. Tuthill has just received, at his home in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, a fine large monkey. The brute was delivered by express, and the crate it traveled in bears this inscription: “From George Bungle, Siam.”
Now, as all the world of newspaper readers knows, George Bungle is the leading character in “The Bungle Family,” a comic feature produced by Tuthill. Col. George Bungle has been through many strange adventures in the course of his remarkable career in the comic strips. He suffered aphasia once, and was pursued by a designing woman. He got into a neck of trouble over a necklace that he never stole, and he has had remarkable experiences on the stock exchange.
Recently, however, Col. Bungle was flabbergasted, so to speak. Somebody sent him a white elephant. A real one, that actually ate enormous quantities of expensive hay and did a lot of damages in garages and other parking spaces. Bungle and his family were furious. They lay awake nights trying to identify the wicked sender of the elephant.
While the white elephant mystery was at its height artist Tuthill received the monkey. He doesn’t know who sent it, but the tag said it came from George Bungle. Tuthill has been almost as much embarrassed by his new pet as Bungle was discommoded by the elephant, that’s certain. Tuthill can’t give the beast away, and he doesn’t know how to support a monkey in the style to which he has been accustomed in the Siamese woods. But there is poetic justice in the situation, as Tuthill’s neighbors knowingly remark. The poor comic strip characters have to put up with a lot and Col. Bungle is the first one of them to turn on his master with some of his own bitter medicine.
John Stanley used certain themes and plots over and over. One for instance is that Lulu would be the victim of a theft and Tubby, as The Spider, would disguise himself and go after the perpetrator, who, as Tub instinctively knew, was none other than Lulu’s dad >
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