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.

F. OPPER'S THANKSGIVING DILEMMA

To be a comic artist, 

thankful for ONE new idea! 

by Rick Marschall

The great Frederick Burr Opper was a mainstay of the comic-art staff of Puck Magazine when he drew this cover cartoon in 1881. In his future, encomia like "the Mark Twain of American Cartooning" (in fact he actually would illustrate Twain's work) and "Dean of America's Cartoonists" awaited.. 

He would draw for Puck for two decades; he illustrated many books besides Twain's; he mastered social cartoons and political cartoons; he created the classic comic strip characters Happy Hooligan; Alphonse and Gaston; Maud the Mule and many others; and he codified many of the conventions of the comic-strip art form of which he was a pioneer.

When he drew this cartoon he was not yet 25 years old but already a star on Puck's staff; an illustrator for Leslie's Weekly; and an illustrator of several children's books. 

You would think such a fertile mind would have problem handling an assignment for a cover cartoon, especially on an "evergreen" topic like Thanksgiving. Yet he depicted himself writhing in mental anguish on the floor his studio, bereft of ideas after being "told to get up 'something new' about Thanksgiving." In his studio are sketches and submissions -- all rudely rejected by his editor for being old or predictable or "already done by Thomas Nast in 1834"! 

Inside jokes, course. Opper was a concept-machine his whole career. So here he lifted the curtain for readers and shared one new twist, after all, on a Thanksgiving subject. Let us give thanks too for this giant of American cartooning.

BARTON IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

The Candle That Burns Twice As Bright

Burns Half As Long

by Rick Marschall

Ralph Barton and his friend Charlie Chaplin

A few words about Ralph Barton (1891-1931), one America's great cartoonists, caricaturists, writers, and wits. In his day he was prolific to an almost superhuman degree. Beginning in his early 20s he sprang like a desert flower, his cartoons appearing in major publications. He was tapped to illustrate many books, including some of the decade's best sellers; and he wrote several books of his own. As a wit, he was sought out as an intimate companion by some of the greatest talents of the day. As a caricaturist he ranks with the best of American artists, in apparent effortlessness "capturing" the likenesses of hundreds of notable celebrities.

Ralph Barton's collected work would fill proverbial volumes -- there ought to be a catalogue raisonné of his work -- and is, in fact, a challenge to track because of the many and varied outlets for which he drew. I have many of the magazines he drew for, and most of the books he wrote and illustrated. I also have original art -- "more than I need but not all that I want" -- as well as photographs and correspondence with his many friends. 

Actors populated his world as much as cartoonists did. Charlie Chaplin was a friend, as was the actor Roland Young (who was himself an excellent, published caricaturist; the Barton-Young correspondence of which I have many pages, and the actor's drawings, will be a feature in the upcoming revival of NEMO Magazine); and of his four wives, two were in the arts -- the actress Carlotta Monterey and the jazz composer (Les Six) Germaine Tailleferre.

Barton in his early 20s became a prominent contributor to Puck Magazine after it had been sold to the Straus family which sought to transform it into an American version of the iconoclastic German and French cartoon magazines. In the early days of the Great War Puck sent the young Barton to Paris as its European correspondent. In those days his drawing style resembled the linear and avant-garde hallmarks of Lawrence Felloes and the Russian-French fashion designer Erté, at that time being introduced to American in the pages of Harper's Bazar (a young John Held Jr was similarly influenced at this time). 

Puck cover, 1916

After Puck Barton worked for Judge, Photoplay, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. In fact Harold Ross named Barton a Contributing Editor of The New Yorker from its first issue, an honor in company with Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and Marc Connolly despite the fact that no contributions were required and no compensation exchanged. As with the others he did soon contribute many clever and memorable pieces -- in his case, caricatures, theatrical criticism, and full-page cartoons.

 

                

An example of caricatures -- spot on! -- that Ralph Barton frequently created. He executed these for magazines and newspapers; for ads and theatre programs; even for fabrics and huge theater curtains. 

The books Barton illustrated are testaments to his eclectic vision. He drew full-page cartoons for a deluxe edition of Balzac's Droll Stories; wrote his own humorous books including God's Country and Science In Rhyme Without Reason. The great editor H L Mencken suggested to the movie scenarist and humorist Anita Loos an idea for a series of stories that were collected in one of the 1920s' greatest books, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her friend Ralph Barton illustrated it and its sequel and a spate of similar humor books. His work with Loos inspired many spinoffs in print, stage, and movies, down unto Marilyn Monroe and Carol Channing's theatrical versions. 

Illustration from Anita Loos' s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The world was, as the saying goes, his oyster. Barton, as the 1930s dawned, had more assignments than he could handle... yet he did. His output was amazing. He continued to write as well as draw, and he even had dabbled in the movies himself, with the assistance of Charlie Chaplin. He generously introduced another great caricaturist, Miguel Covarrubias, to the American public. However, living half his life in France, his letters to Roland Young reflect a man experiencing severe mood swings about his art, his real-estate searches, and his love life.

His love life, or lack of one, became an obsession after his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, left him. She soon married the playwright Eugene O'Neill, and that loss sent Barton into -- so to speak -- a long day's journey into nightmares. (Note: this is a cheap attempt at a literary pun; there was no relation between the play and Barton. It is ironic, however, that Oona, daughter of O'Neill, eventually married Barton's friend Charlie Chaplin.)

A caricature of  Marion Davies (I believe) (if any reader can identify the actress, please let me know!). From the original art; published in Photoplay Magazine. 

One evening in 1931 the increasingly distraught Barton, in his Manhattan penthouse, wrote a note about having lost the only woman he ever loved. He raised a pistol to his temple and blew his talented brains out.   

There are many geniuses in humankind's history that have lived relatively brief lives; perhaps disproportionately. I have tracked such lives, and deaths, in desultory fashion, and in the 1980s wrote an article for The Comics Journal on the anomaly of cartoonists' suicides. But among creative figures in history -- not all cartoonists; and not all suicides -- there is the very sad list of geniuses who died young: Caravaggio, Raphael, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Beardsley; Purcell, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gershwin; Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Gram Parsons.

Different factors took these creators from us. Schubert died of  syphilis. Van Gogh was a presumed suicide (I am persuaded it was not suicide); as I said there have been many cartoonists, and many "distraught" creators who overdosed or otherwise committed "soft suicides." And of course accidents have claimed the lives of many such as Buddy Holly.

The word "tragedy" is often applied, or misapplied, and these days vulgarized: stripped of its distinctions. Oftentimes, deadly storms are, really, just bad weather (and when not categorized as tragedies are more seriously mischaracterized as "acts of God"). When people "tsk-tsk" over someone's momentary encounter with bad luck, we can be inured to the healthy and contemplative grief wherewith we should reflect on cultural losses. "What if?" is more than a parlor game. 

Mozart and Schubert and Van Gogh created bodies of work that would have exhausted other creators who might have lived to 100. So we think of the adage at the top of this essay (an ancient Chinese proverb, allegedly). If tragedy is, as Aristotle defined and as Elizabethan dramatists thematically affirmed, more than a horrible circumstance but something from which a protagonist is virtually doomed or finds inextricable due to inherent "character flaws," then we must choose our words carefully.

In that view we can imagine what works might have been produced if, say, Ralph Barton had lived to twice his age. Eighty is not an unusual age for artists to attain, and moreover "active till the end." We might have had Ralph Barton's cartoons and caricatures and illustrations and written humor into the 1970s. I am tempted say that the tragedy is ours, too.

An admirer asked Ralph Barton for an autographed and was blessed to receive one... and a self-caricature... and a poem he wrote!

"My autograph cannot be read, (a frightful task to start on!) I'll draw my effigy instead -- Sincerely yours, Ralph Barton"

Before Terry AND the Pirates...

 ORIGINS:

THE ROOTS OF

MILTON CANIFF -- HIS FIRST PUBLISHED STRIPS

by Rick Marschall

In 1925 Milton Caniff of Dayton, Ohio, was a senior at Stivers High School. He was torn between his creative muses, cartooning and the theater. Young Caniff pursued a dual path until he graduated -- he was an actor in the senior class play "Going Up," about an aviator's romance; and he drew cartoons for the school newspaper.

His major contribution was an ongoing strip starring two students, Chic Woozle and Noodles Dingle. It was a humor strip featuring gags and, about half the time, school activities: sports, plays, trips, etc. Chic and Noodles was the awful eponymous title.

Stivers High School began its life in 1908 as Stivers Manual Training School. It has merged with other schools and had its building renovated, and had its named changed from Stivers High School to is today known as Stivers School for the Arts. Milton Caniff is its most famous graduate, and Milt occasionally paid homage to his alma mater, calling it "St Ivers" in his strips. The school honored its alumnus by naming an adjacent street "Milton Caniff Drive."

 

When Milt attended Ohio State University the next year he continued both activities, and progressed in talent and notice. In a story he recounted many times, he besought one of his heroes, the local political cartoonist with a nation reputation, Billy Ireland. The cartoonist's supposed advice: "Stick to your inkpots, kid. Actors don't eat regular." He acted in campus plays, but also signed up for the mail-correspondence cartooning course, the Landon "School."

In my collection I have a rare reprint book he produced at his own expense, collecting the Chic and Noodles strips. It was in the style and format of reprints books of a few syndicated strips -- Mutt and Jeff; Bringing Up Father; TAD's Silk Hat Harry; Roger Bean; Doings of the Van Loons. I also have, and will reproduce material from here in Yesterday's Papers, Milt's college yearbooks (he was Art Editor) and a bookplate he designed.

But here is the cover and three strips from his "professional debut," the Chic and Noodles book. R C Harvey, in his ponderous cinderblock of a biography, nonetheless devoted only a couple paragraphs to Chic and Noodles (spelling it Chick and Noodles in its first reference) and sharing only three strips.

Three strips here, too: one with a self-caricature of Milt (in his mustachioed role in the school play); and a strip in which the two characters unsuccessfully try to outwit a Black sleeping-car porter. Within 10 years Milton Caniff would be depicting other ethnic stereotypes -- and much more: action, adventure, pretty girls, danger, and exotic locals -- in Terry and the Pirates.
  

 

WHEN ELECTION DAY IS CONFRONTED BY DEADLINE DAY

 

How Cartoonists Addressed Presidential Campaigns' Results...

BEFORE the Votes Were Taken

by Rick Marschall

Appropriate to the theme of this post, I wrote this before the results of the Trump-Harris were known (medical distractions...) and before the votes were cast. The "mysterious" aspect resonates, however. 

Back in B.I. (Before the Internet), voting in America was different than now. There were election days, although some rural areas extended the times to cast ballots. Paper ballots everywhere, excpet for arcane wrinkles -- dropping balls in separate boxes (hmmm... poll watchers could tell who you were and which party you favored); glass "fishbowls (so observers could see your ballot), and so forth. Eventually, the United States adopted the "Australian Ballot" -- private preferences.

Results were, of course, eagerly awaited. Telegraph messages were prized. And for years the New York World cast giant magic-lantern messages with the latest headlines and vote tallies onto the face of their imposing building on Park Row, New York City.

But the staffs of weekly magazines -- especially their cartoonists -- had a tougher challenge. The journals might appear on newsstands the day of the election, or close to it... but conceiving, drawing, engraving, printing, and distributing the magazines obliged the cartoonists to either skip the topics (no way!) or fudge the issue. Somehow. 

Joseph Keppler, the founder, chief cartoonist, and editor of Puck Magazine embraced the challenge. He loved creating cartoon puzzles -- if they could be called that: incorporating faces into the backgrounds, props, peripheral elements of his cartoons. One Christmas, Puck even offered a readers' contest for those who could discover and identify the faces of celebrities Keppler "hid" in his cartoons. In 1880, the political wisdom reckoned that the presidential candidates were neck-and-neck. Republican James Garfield was challenged by Gen. Winfield Hancock. 

How to address the campaign, which would be stale news -- anyway, not "new" when the issue would be on sale? Keppler draw two figured representing the two parties, shaking hands in unity. And he incorporated a great number of contemporary politicians' faces on the trees, rocks, and bushes. Here is the cartoon, from the issue dated Nov 3, 1880 -- but drawn and printed several days earlier:

You will find Sen. Roscoe Conkling (after whom the comedian Fatty Arbuckle was named); Sen. James Gillespie Blaine; Interior Secretary Carl Schurz; Marshall Jewell, former postmaster-general; GOP vice-presidential nominee Chester Alan Arthur; former President Ulysses S. Grant, who had contended for the nomination in 1880; Pres. Rutherford Birchard Hayes; Samuel Jones Tilden, 1876 Democratic presidential nominee; Democrat VP nominee William English; Senator John Logan; Tammany Hall boss John Kelly; presidential aspirant Benjamin Butler; Sen. Thomas Bayard; and future New York City Mayor (he would defeat young Theodore Roosevelt in 1886) Abram S Hewitt.

Bernhard Gillam addressed the same challenge in 1892; but he answered in a different manner. Grover Cleveland had been elected president in 1884, the first Democrat since before the Civil War. In 1888 he lost to Benjamin Harrison -- despite winning the popular vote, he lost in the Electoral College... corruption and chicanery winning the day for Harrison in his own state of Indiana. Not unique.

In 1892 the two "incumbents" met. The race was expected to be tight, so Gillam did not feel safe drawing with crossed fingers. His outlet was Judge Magazine. It was a Republican version of Puck, which was generally Democrat. Gillam had drawn the effective "Tattooed Man" cartoons at Keppler's side in 1884, be bolted and made Judge his new home.

Gillam's idea was to draw a political train wreck... and leave blank on his lithographers' stone the pertinent elements until the very last minute! This included the face of the losing candidate. One can discern that he expected, or hoped, that Cleveland would be the loser, because the body on the tracks is more like the corpulent Cleveland than the diminutive Harrison. But... Harrison's bearded and bewildered face was drawn in at the last moment. As were a few other elements, including the annoyed face of The Judge, the magazine's symbolic boss. And -- the elephant with the eye patch? Gillam originally intended that the animal would be a triumphant, rampaging GOP pachyderm.

Two more "in jokes" Gillam managed to fit in: lower left, the bitter face of Judge's publisher and Republican activist James Arkell; and Gillam's self-caricature on an upside-down monkey's body, with an arrow pointing to him from the signature. 

"Honesty is the best politics." 

-- Stan Laurel