Bob Edgren’s Little Biographical Sketch

   

1897 [1] Bob Edgren, pictured working with Hearst reporter W.W. Naughton and boxer Jimmy Corbett, unsigned art after a photograph by F.H. Bushnell. 3 March.

by John Adcock

Edgren weighs about 225 pounds, is six feet tall, does not know what a tremor or a funk is, and has as good an appetite for a scrap as he has for his dinner. During all of the acrimonious anti-cartoon debate in both the assembly and senate he calmly sat in the reporters’ row and made his caricatures in the midst of the throbs of Morehouse’s speeches, and the dull thuds of Grove Johnson’s verbal hammer blows on newspaperdom, and none of the shouters for the heart’s blood of editors showed any disposition to hold Edgren responsible. — Down the Line, in Los Angeles Herald, March 2, 1899

 C artoonist and sporting columnist Robert Wadsworth Edgren was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 27, 1874, and raised in California where he began a sporting career which led to 20 amateur sporting records between 1897 and 1910. Edgren played football on three western teams while studying at the University of California. In varsity athletics at Stanford University he won the world’s record for the hammer throw three times. Edgren was the first man in America to drive a speed boat, the Speed Demon, at the rate of a mile a minute, winning the Gold Challenge Cup.

1904 [2] ‘Fitzsimmons Is Being Bitten By Everything.’ 18 July.

EDGREN FAMILY. His Swedish-born father John Alexis Edgren was an extraordinary man who — at thirteen — spoke four languages and went to sea. At nineteen the King of Sweden granted him a commission as commander of merchant ships although he was under the legal age. Returning from South America he was becalmed off Fort Sumter where he witnessed the bombardment that commenced the American Civil War.

J.A. Edgren went to New York, resigned his commission and was made Active Ensign in the US Navy where he commanded war vessels and land artillery. He resigned after the war and attended Princeton and became a professor of ancient languages at the University of Chicago. He mastered 16 languages and was recognized as the world’s highest authority on Egyptian dialects. He was the founder of the Swedish Baptist Church in America and spent his final years preaching and writing on religious subjects. 

He had three daughters and two sons, Robert and Leonard. Both brothers were cartoonists, sporting columnists and photographers. Leonard worked on The World (New York) and died on January 7, 1918.

1895 [3-5] ‘The Victorious Berkeley Athletes,’ with a young Bob Edgren seated, third from the right. 18 July.

His [Bob Edgren’s] first newspaper work was done on the old San Francisco EXAMINER in the days when Homer Davenport, Jimmy Swinnerton, Gertrude Partington, Harrison Fisher, Jules Pages, Haydon Jones and Hank Raleigh were on its art staff and Bill and Wallace Irwin and Annie Laurie were cub reporters. — Edgren, International Sports Authority, Writer and Artist, Makes “Press” Bow Tomorrow, in Daily Press (Long Island), April 9, 1932

c.1900 [6] Ambrose Bierce, Hearst reporter.

Edgren, a graduate from the University of California in Berkeley, also studied art at the affiliated Mark Hopkins Institute of Art on San Francisco’s Nob Hill. Pugilist Bat Nelson recalled that “on the Pacific coast he put on weight rapidly until he weighed over 200 pounds. He was a human giant.” Edgren started out on the San Francisco Examiner as a sporting cartoonist in 1895. In June 1900 the Examiner received a letter from its staff writer Ambrose Bierce — often stationed in Washington — regarding a drawn likeness of him in his paper.

Perhaps it is none of my business, but I just want to say that a picture labelled ‘Ambrose Bierce’ in the issue of this paper dated June 1, is not a picture of Ambrose Bierce. I do not know of whom it is a picture; it looks as if it might be that of the assassin who put it in. I hope so; it will serve to identify him when I return. It may be that by that time I shall have experienced a change of heart, but my present feeling is that it would be better if he were dead. — Ambrose Bierce, in a letter

The manager of the editorial section where the offending image had appeared was Frederick W. Lawrence. Lawrence secured a large photograph of Bob Edgren stripped to the waist, “big as a house with muscles that hang over like bay windows,” which he mailed to Bierce with the following reply.

My dear Bierce: I am sorry you are displeased. Here is the photograph of the young person who printed your unlikeness. He cannot wait until you experience a change of heart, so leaves tomorrow for Washington to offer you a personal explanation. Please deal gently with him. — F.W. Lawrence, local staff of The Examiner

1896 [7] ‘Fitzsimmons Exhibits His Ring Methods.’ Unsigned art after photographs by F.H. Bushnell. 16 March. 

 E dgren found his place as sporting editor/columnist/cartoonist on Pulitzer’s New York Evening World beginning in 1904. Preceded by political cartoons he drew earlier for Hearst’s New York Journal, during the Spanish-American War of 1898, where his “Sketches from Death” series made his reputation. Edgren backed up his reports of atrocities with 500 photographs, subsequently displayed before Congress. It’s possible that these were Edgren’s own pictures. He variously signed his work: Bob Edgren, R.W. Edgren, R.E., or R. Edgren. 

In addition to his career as a sporting cartoonist and columnist Edgren profited from his own photographs. Forty photos he took of the Johnson/Jeffries fight at Reno in 1910 were made into slides which were exhibited at movie houses and theatres across America. While covering the Spanish-American War Edgren was captured by the Spaniards but escaped to Florida disguised as a tugboat deckhand.

Bob Edgren was a sparring partner for pugilists like the Cornish giant Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Corbett, James Jeffries, and Jack Dempsey. He was the lifelong friend of “Ruby Robert” Fitzsimmons, a giant freckled Cornishman who gained his unique top-heavy physique while employed as a blacksmith. 

1897 [8] ‘…Some of Them Yawned When the Bigger Man Was Knocked Senseless, and Some of Them Giggled Hysterically, and Some of Them Wished Both Men Would Be Killed in the Ring…’ Unsigned illustration, text by Winifred Black. Title: Does Modern Photography Incite Women to Brutality?, in American Sunday Magazine, Popular Periodical of The New York Journal and Advertiser. 30 May. 

1904 [9] ‘Fitz Starts Training,’ with pasted in photograph of the artist and columnist. 18 March.

 T he Fitzsimmons cartoons enlarged Edgren’s reputation. On June 1, 1913, Fitzsimmons penned a series of newspaper articles about the current crop of “White Hopes” (white boxers who, it was hoped, would topple black champion Jack Johnson), articles all illustrated by Edgren. Finally, Robert Fitzsimmons and James J. Corbett battled for the world heavyweight championship at an arena in Carson City, Nevada, on March 17, 1897. Fitzsimmons won the title after a fourteen-round match. Edgren appears to have entered the ring with both champions at the boxer’s training camps.

But to get back to the Corbett fight. Three days before the match Robert Edgren boxed with Fitzsimmons alone in a barn. After a few minutes Edgren felt himself deposited in a corner with a single blow, one that made him deathly sick and paralyzed his arms and legs.

“I ’ope I didn’t ’urt you, Bob,” apologized the great fighter, “but I thought I’d show you what I’m going to do to Corbett. You can tell ’im if you like.”

Sure enough that was exactly what he did to Corbett, who had been fully warned and was amply prepared, and who for nearly fourteen rounds avoided the fatal blow. Corbett emerged from the fight unscratched, apparently as whole as he went in, but defeated. Fitzsimmons came out cut, bleeding, his face torn in a dozen places, but victorious. He had taken a terrific beating for the sake of landing a single blow and it won him a fortune. Nor was that blow a chance one. It was deliberately planned and perfectly placed. — “Fitz” – Napoleon of the Prize Ring, by Richard Barry in Pearson’s Magazine, Oct 1912

1897 [10] ‘Fitzsimmons With His Trainers And His Great Dane Yarrum.’ Unsigned art after photograph by F.H. Bushnell. 22 Feb.

—

 S porting columnist William O. Inglis described his first glimpse of Bob Edgren to columnist Bob Davis. He was “the finest physical specimen I ever looked upon. A Dane with blue eyes, light hair, and the complexion of a girl. He was covering the Corbett training camp for the San Francisco Examiner. A high-spirited kid but likeable…”

I slipped out to Shaw’s Hot Spring to have a peek at Corbett, then at the top of his form and daily knocking half a dozen of his sparring partners more or less cockeyed. To my astonishment, I saw young Edgren standing by clad in trunks, obviously waiting to box a couple of rounds with Pompadour Jim. This, thought I, is going to be good, if the lad can take it. Anyhow, he will get a good story for the paper (…) In the first minute of the second round, the preacher’s son led with a right smart left, stabbed James in the beezer, and was starting a fast second poke when Corbett crossed with his right and walloped Edgren – also, as the saying goes – like nobody’s business. It was a pippin. “Good night!” I said under my breath. “That is the raspberry,” expecting to see the artist-writer cave to the mat. Imperceptibly his knees wavered, his head bent forward as a heavy shock of light hair cascaded down his forehead into his eyes. But he didn’t fall. Not that boy. Corbett, a slightly sinister expression in his eyes, stepped back to observe.

Edgren shook his head ponderously, caught his stance, came up tossing the lock of hair from his eyes, took a swift posture of defence, and laced Jim on the point of the jaw with a right and left that would have dropped for the count any man not in perfect condition. It was the swiftest, best-timed comeback I ever saw launched by a groggy man. For a split-second Jim contemplated a kill, but the glitter in his eyes faded, and he held out his hand. Edgren took it, smiling. To my dying day I shall remember that three-second mix-up. I can still see Edgren bending forward as the lock of hair spilled over his eyes, and his sudden lion-like recovery. It was magnificent. All the rest of his life I looked upon him as a superman. Every mortal has his idol. Mine is Bob Edgren. — Bob Davis Reveals: When One Man In a Split Second Made a Lifelong Friend, in The Sun (New York), Nov 7, 1939

1897 [11] ‘Fitzsimmons Observes the Courtesy of the Highway.’ Art by Homer Davenport. 16 March.

1897 [12] ‘Struggle Between Harvard and Yale,’ the art signed ‘Bob Edgren’. 14 Nov.

 A nother sporting columnist, Damon Runyon, reported on the same event, claiming that Corbett heard rumors that “Edgren was whispering to some of his friends to be present at the meeting to see the champ get belted around.”

Corbett, a vain fellow in those days, made about two deft feints at Edgren as soon as they put up their hands and then sank his left into the cartoonist’s midriff with a force that caused Robert to go oof and fold like an opera hat. It was a little malicious on the part of the champion and Edgren never forgot it. I think he may have let the incident impair his judgement of Corbett’s real ability even in retrospect. — Boxing ‘“The Champ” An Old Stunt, by Damon Runyon, Albany Times-Union, June 3, 1946

1897 [13] ‘Will Fitz Make Corbett An XMas Present?’ Art by Edgren. 21 Dec.

—

LIFELONG GRUDGE. Unfortunately for our present little biographical sketch, all the purported witnesses to the event are dead leaving the question of the veracity of one party or another unanswered. In the same article Runyon opined, “it seems to me that all of the San Francisco sporting chappies hated one another. When Edgren and “Tad” were the great rivals of their professions in New York they waged such a violent personal battle in their respective papers that their publishers had to step in and call it off.” Bob Edgren’s longest running newspaper feud was with the gunslinger/referee/sporting columnist Bat Masterson, who carried his grudge against the cartoonist to the grave.

However, it is doubtful Runyon was an actual eyewitness to the battle of Carson City. Bob Fitzsimmons and James J. Corbett arrived in Carson City, Nevada, in the middle of February 1897 while Damon Runyon was still a boy, sixteen years old and working on his father’s small newspaper at Pueblo, Colorado. Most likely the story was relayed to him from Jim Corbett, and, as Runyon himself admitted “I think there was always a slight coolness between them.”

1909 [14-16] Black fighter Jack Johnson and white fighter James J. Jeffries sign the contract for next year’s boxing match in Reno, Nevada, and toast on it with a glass of Pommery. A meeting for the press at the Albany Hotel in New York, with Bob Edgren standing tall on the left. 1 Nov.

1910 [17] Jeffries with sparring partner Armstrong.

1910 [18] ‘Writers and Fighters Who Will Describe the Big Battle for The Call.’ With a.o. photographs of Bob Edgren and Rube Goldberg. 27 June.

—

WITNESSED BY TWO. Jim Jeffries also attended the match between Corbett and Fitzsimmons in 1897 but sparred with Corbett behind closed doors. The only two witnesses were Corbett’s trainer and his second. Sportswriter Frank G. Menke wrote that, “Edgren clamoured in vain for admission. When the secret workout was over, none of the parties involved would tell what had transpired.” 

Edgren wrote up a story claiming that sparring partner Jeffries had knocked out the world’s champion in the training camp duel. For thirty years Edgren repeated the story while Corbett denied it. In 1926 Jeffries told Menke “Corbett is right, I never knocked out Corbett in Carson City in any of our sparring battles there, nor did I ever knock him down or make him quit.”

Menke gave a third account of Edgren and Corbett in the ring at Carson City, but did not identify his source for the story. “It’s a story that was told to me by a man in Corbett’s camp in one of Corbett’s later battles.” Menke’s informant said “Bob was a big fellow in those days — weighed over 200 — and was really a great boxer.”

Edgren, made cocky by the showing Corbett let him make, finally began to carry the fight to Jim. He slipped through a couple of punches to the stomach and Jim got Bob in a clinch and told him to go easy. Edgren just sneered some answer reflecting on Jim’s ability to take them in the body and when he got a chance sneaked in another. So Jim grabbed Bob and told him if it happened again he’d have to get a little rough too. Bob, perhaps thinking he had Corbett worried or afraid of him, watched for a chance, and started to sneak through another. But it never landed. For Corbett, watching for just that move, beat Edgren to the punch, drove his fist into Edgren’s body – and Bob went down a crumpled heap before the friends he had brought along to see him show up Corbett. — Sport writer Says Jeffries K.O’D Corbett In Practice – Jim Denies It, by Frank G. Menke, in Evening Tribune-Times, Aug 3, 1926

c.1910 [19] James J. Jeffries, front page of My Life & Battles, edited and illustrated by Bob Edgren.

1913 [20] ‘Jim Thorpe As A Giant.’ Microfilm sample in the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, a newspaper page with large Edgren art. 11 Feb. 

1921 [21] ‘Bob Edgren, Who Will Write For Evening Herald.’ 4 Jan.

—

 E dgren left his post at the World in 1918 when leather goods stocks, a repayment for a friendly loan, made him independently wealthy. He moved to California where he was appointed to the California Boxing commission. During WWI Edgren made a tour of American Army camps organizing boxing and other athletic sports. He followed up with a trip to Mexico and France. He was in great demand as a sporting referee, a task he refused to accept payment for. In his final column for the World he wrote,

There will be no time for column writing for a while. But wherever I go I shall manage to write and illustrate for this page one “feature story” a week, to keep in touch with thousands of friends and with what I believe, after fifteen years of association, to be the finest, cleanest, fairest newspaper published in the wide world. — Edgren Will Go To France, in The Fourth Estate, July 27, 1918

1910s [22] Edgren original boxing art plus pasted in photograph of pugilist Bob Fitzsimmons.

—

THE END. Bob Edgren continued to cover boxing and other sporting events as a freelance up to his death of a heart attack at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club at Del Monte, California on September 10, 1939. He was survived by his wife Helen Maude Edgren, his son Robert Durant Edgren, and three sisters. He was 65 years old.

Bob Edgren, who will be laid to rest tomorrow, is bracketed with Tad Dorgan as the greatest of sports cartoonists and writers. Nobody like ’em has been developed since, with due consideration to the talents of our present-day crop (…) Edgren is the cartoonist who developed those incongruous freckles which were dotted on Bob Fitzsimmons, and artists the world over have been copying them since (…) He did a cartoon and a column daily for twenty years. — Harold Conrad, in Brooklyn Eagle, Sept 12, 1939

Special Thanks to Melinda McIntosh.

Eddie Campbell’s The Goat Getters

     

“Goat getting” long has been a favorite stunt of many great ring-men. But I’ve never practiced the art. I’ve never tried by one ruse or another, by trickery or subterfuge, to take the nerve or the confidence out of my opponent. I felt it wasn’t necessary … This “goat getting” is supposed to get a man so excited and so frothy that he loses control of his poise and his calmness, and in his own furious anger swings wildly, and is always off balance because of frantic eagerness to deliver a killing punch. — Gene Tunney, heavyweight boxing champion,  March 10, 1927

     
by John Adcock

MAJOR THESIS. Comic artist Eddie Campbell’s latest book — elaborately titled inside as, THE GOAT GETTERS: A new angle on the beginnings of comics casting a bright spotlight on THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY. And Reserving a Few Mellow Sidelights for The San Francisco Graft Trials, Harry Thaw’s Murderous Crime Of Passion, The Story of the Lemon. ARTISTS: JIMMY SWINNERTON!! TAD DORGAN!! ROBERT EDGREN!! BUD FISHER!! RUBE GOLDBERG!! GEORGE HERRIMAN!! written and designed by Eddie Campbell — is not yet available but already causing some conversation over its major thesis; that the early sporting cartoon, as practiced by men like Tad Dorgan, George Herriman and Rube Goldberg, is the “missing link” in histories detailing the origin of the daily black & white newspaper comic strip.

BIRTHPLACE SAN FRANCISCO. The Amazon blurb (where the reader can sample a chapter or two) in similar fashion presents the book as “a new take on the origin of the comic strip,” while Eddie Campbell claims that the sporting page was the venue for the invention of the daily comic strip, and that San Francisco was its birthplace. Is it a coincidence that the best of these cartoonists, Tad Dorgan, George Herriman, Rube Goldberg, and Milt Gross (once Tad’s office-boy) carried their slang-heavy verbal and artistic slapstick into the most successful of the daily newspaper comic strips? I think not — and each and all of them drew their verbal inspiration from Tad Dorgan.

SPORTING LANGUAGE. Critics like myself do not have to agree with Campbell’s conclusions to enjoy this splendid book, a sprawling epic which aims and succeeds in providing “a reconstruction of the whole picture,” with a focus on boxing, counting the days when the sporting pages — modeled on the British sporting newspapers like Pierce Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide (1824) and Bell’s Life in London (1827) — gave several sporting cartoonists ample column space to experiment with vivid language and pictures. The language was the language of the sporting underworld; rich in slang, celebrating the gambler, the pug, the bum, the gangster, and the rube. This was during a period when boxing was illegal in most states and fights were staged on barges, in farmer’s fields, and in sweltering boomtowns in the desert. Ears were torn, eyes were gouged, and tons of blood were spilled. Most of the sporting cartoonists of this era (approximately 1894-1913) not only celebrated this preoccupation with the lag’s life — they lived it. To them it was the most significant and fondly remembered time of their lives.

FIRST TIME. The Goat Getters is the first time an author has attempted to chronicle the entire early days of the sporting cartoon and my hat is off to Eddie Campbell for his superb work in hunting down, cleaning up, and collecting together over 500 illustrations from those far off golden days. Campbell is a marvelous writer too. He brings the natural insight of a cartoonist and a humorist to his observations. Among the many artists covered are Homer Davenport, Jimmy Swinnerton, Tad Dorgan, Robert Edgren, Bud Fisher, Harry Warren, Rube Goldberg, George Herriman, Kate Carew, Fay King, Clare Briggs, Harry Hershfield, A.D. Condo, Nell Brinkley, Dan Leno, Hype Igoe, Robert Ripley, Sid Smith, Pete Llanuza, and a large number of other comickers both famed and forgotten. And oh yes, there are goats, plenty of goats — fifty on the last 4 pages alone.

Front cover title: 

★ THE GOAT GETTERS. Jack Johnson, the FIGHT of the CENTURY, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics, by Eddie Campbell, IDW Publishing/Ohio State University Press (The Library of American Comics), Hardcover, 320 pp., ISBN 978-1684051380 — available May 1, 2018

Leo “The Lion” – Cartoonist O’Mealia

1913 [1] Odd Facts About Stars of Prize Ring, in The San Francisco Call, Sep 15. “…“Jack” Johnson always laughs when in the ring…”

“What did Leo do today?” was the question from the steady Daily News readers of his time. A sports cartoonist like no other I’ve seen doing this work, Leo had a style all his own. It was pen and ink painstakingly applied — line by line — by his talented hand, adding to it a whimsical sense of humor. He signed his name “By Leo” and put his trademark small lion in every drawing. The lion was a lovable little squirt of an animal who sometimes would run around the edges of the cartoon delivering a message. A cartoon without that lion was not a genuine Leo. — sporting cartoonist Bill Gallo, 1960

1913 [2] Lion plus Leo signature.

by John Adcock

Leo Edward O’Mealia was born in Le Roy, New York, March 31, 1884. The family moved when he was fourteen and he grew up in Rochester New York where he “played baseball in the Caledonian Avenue vacant lots that back up to the Pennsylvania Railroad yards, and he was a pupil in Immaculate Conception school.” O’Mealia’s first job as a cartoonist was on the old Rochester Herald under John Scott Clubb where “I was put on sports … they made an artist out of me.” His most popular creation was called Sod Bug, about an insect who commented on local baseball games. From the Herald he moved to the Rochester Times, still drawing sporting cartoons, and compiling a collection of his newspaper cartoons titled Mut and Flea Brain Leaks. He sold over 1000 copies in advance of publication.
   

1913 [3] Three Men in a Tub, in The Evening Herald, July 29. “…I thought it was very dangerous, but it’s nothing but cheese!…”

Mr. O’Mealia worked on the New York Journal under the late Winsor McCay, once one of the best-known cartoonists in the country, and was assistant to the famous “Tad” Dorgan, the sports cartoonist of the daily paper. When Tad’s heart, which he always said was one of those “dime-a-dozen tickers,” gave out, Leo subbed and later succeeded the renowned Dorgan. — Comic Strip Artist Visiting Old Home Town, in Rochester Democrat Chronicle, Aug 3, 1935

Winsor McCay was drawing political cartoons for Hearst at the time and touring the vaudeville circuit with the animated Gertie the Dinosaur. The company made a stop in Rochester and played the Temple theatre. John (Mickey) Finny, the Temple’s manager, introduced McCay to O’Mealia over a poker game. Through McCay’s intercession he was given a job as cartoonist on the “sporting side” of the New York Evening Journal. There he was given into the charge of sporting cartoonists/columnists Tad Dorgan and Hype Igoe.

   

1913 [4] The History of a White Hope No. 1, in The San Francisco Call, Sep 2. “…He “threw” all the strong men…”

On the journal he was doing small fill in bits when Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s great editor, stopped at the young man’s drawing board, admired his work, and advanced him to a full-fledged sports cartoonist. At that time, he adopted the slogan “Leo the Lion,” which has identified his sports cartoons ever since. — Seen and Heard, Henry W. Clune, Democrat Chronicle, June 13, 1957

1913 [5] The History of a White Hope, in The San Francisco Call, Oct 15. “…Moran walked all around the ring…”

The Great White Hope era began on Dec 27, 1908 when Negro boxer Jack Johnson defeated the Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia. Jack London, journalist, called for retired champion James Jeffries to return to the ring to “remove the smile from Johnson’s face.” The period ended April 5, 1915 when Jack Johnson lost the Heavyweight Championship to Jess Willard at Havana, Cuba.

1913 [6] Here’s a Regular Hard Luck Story, in The San Francisco Call, Oct 27. “…He holds the stakes…”

One of O’Mealia’s one-panel serials on the sports page was about a boxer named George “Sledge” Seiger, titled The History of a White Hope. O’Mealia left after two years to draw comic strips for Associated Newspapers syndicate. For the next seventeen years he drew comic strips. Among them were Little Pal, Freddie’s Film, Jungle Definitions and Wedlocked. In 1929 he began drawing an adventure strip called Sherlock Holmes (he was reportedly also illustrating reissues of Conan Doyle novels at the time) followed by another comic strip, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu.

1930 [7] Sherlock Holmes – The Musgrave Ritual; A New Adventure, Leo O’Maelia comic strip after Conan Doyle.

The busy cartoonist was reported to have assisted Percy Crosby on Skippy and Robert Ripley on Believe It or Not. He gave up comic strips in the early 30s to work as a free-lance illustrator and as a comic book artist at National periodicals drawing for More Fun, Action, Adventure and Detective Comics. He was one of the cartoonists Jerry Siegel considered for the drawing of Superman.

1950s [8] “I’ll string along.” Opening of the Baseball Season — with the  Pirates, Reds, Orioles, Senators, and a Dodger fan.

1950s [9] Photo of Leo O’Mealia.

In 1939 O’Mealia signed on with the New York Daily News. His first assignment was illustrating Jimmy Powers sporting column. Leo (“The Lion”) Edward O’Mealia died on May 7, 1960, at Brooklyn, New York.

1955 [10] Who’s a Bum! Leo O’Mealia’s classic victory cover outsold every other paper that October Wednesday when the Dodgers beat the Yankees — read Bill Gallo’s background story in our Further Reading link to the Daily Mail.

     

Other cartoonists signing with ‘Leo’ were the American Leo Hershfield, the Dutch Leo Debudt, and the Dutch Alfred Leonardus Mazure or Maz.

FURTHER READING. Genuine Leo – Gallo Remembers Leo O’Mealia, by sporting cartoonist Bill Gallo in the New York Daily News, May 8, 1960 HERE.

❦

Rube Goldberg — Sporting Days in San Francisco

             

1910s  1  Cartoonists Rube Goldberg (right) & Harry Hershfield (left).

“Reuben L. Goldberg draws pictures with his funny bone and can write as freshly as he draws. He is now in Reno, and will write and draw of the great fight today for The Call.” — The San Francisco Call, July 4, 1910

            

by John Adcock

            

RUBE. Reuben Lucius Goldberg, previously sporting cartoonist on the Chronicle in San Francisco, where he had started at $8 per week in 1904, was hired to replace Tad Dorgan as the Bulletin’s sporting cartoonist. (Tad had left the San Francisco Bulletin for New York on March 31, 1904, to drew cartoons and write sporting columns for Hearst.) “One of my secret ambitions, which I never had dared confess,” Goldberg recalled, “was to learn to write — which I had never attempted. Now I commenced to write in the vein of the pictures; a sort of mild, semi-sarcastic ridicule, not of individuals but of situations and action.” At the Bulletin he was often teamed up with writer Bill McGeehan, who once described boxing as “the cauliflower industry.”

1907  2  ‘Fitz In Role Of Sculptor’s Model.’ Denver Post, Sep 24.

            
TEX. George Lewis “Tex” Rickard, following a career in the Klondike as a prospector, gambler and dancehall king pulled up stakes and headed to a new boom town at Goldfield, Nevada where he got in to the boxing promotion business. There he convinced the town big shots that a championship boxing event would put the place on the map. Pugilists Oscar “Battling Nelson” (34) and African-American Joe Gans (24) took him up on the offer. The prize of $30,000 in twenty-dollar gold coins was put on view in a shop window.
             

1909  3  ‘Many Forces At Work To Arouse Jeffries To Action.’ Denver Daily News, Jan 15.

—

“I had no idea that the big newspapers of the country would pay any attention to us. I knew it would attract sportsmen, and that we might have a chance to break even. But we weren’t concerned about profit and loss. We figured to lose. I got my first big shock when two young fellers came up to me and said they represented the San Francisco Bulletin. They looked so young that I thought that somebody had sent them in to kid me. But when young Bill McGeehan and Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist, showed me their credentials, I nearly fell down. And I got shock number two when they hired a hole-in-the-wall on the main street and stretched a banner across the street announcing to the world that here was the San Francisco Bulletin’s headquarters for the great $30,000 ‘Battle of the Century’” — Tex Rickard quoted in ‘Yes, “Tex” Gave Them a Great Show Until the End,’ in the Literary Digest, Jan 26, 1929

—

1910  4  ‘Anything To Help The Big Fight Along.’ Rube Goldberg sporting cartoons in the Denver Daily News, April 5.

1910  5  DRAMATIC PHOTOGRAPH. This week’s front page of The San Francisco Dramatic Review — ‘A Group of Notables Who are Interested in Theatricals and Well Known in Business Circles’ — presents Jack Kipper, Walter Kelly, Hector D. McKenzie, Nat C. Goodwin, James J. Jeffries, Sam Berger, and Tex Rickard. March 12.

            
WINNER JOE GANS. The fight took place on Sept 3, 1906 and was filmed. Battling Nelson lost on a foul, disqualified for low hitting in the forty-second round. It was America’s first national boxing spectacle.
—

“Bill McGeehan and Rube Goldberg received a wire from their editor instructing them to meet a lady reporter at the train. They looked anxiously for her all night. Between waits they bathed their patience at Tex Rickard’s bar. The lady writer arrived at 7 A.M. and got a very incoherent welcome from two wobbly young men. Bill and Rube sat down to write their stories for the paper. Rube’s hands floundered over the typewriter keys, his eyes became glassy, and darkness closed in around him. He fell forward, dead to the world, using the exclamation mark as a pillow. McGeehan deposited him in a convenient waste basket, re-wrote Rube’s entire story and sent it to the paper signing Rube’s name. when Rube woke up, he was handed the following telegram: ‘Best story you ever wrote. Send us more of the same stuff. Fremont Older, Editor.’” — ‘In One Ear,’ in Collier’s, Dec 22, 1928

—

1910  6  ‘In The City Of Sagebrush And Divorce.’ The San Francisco Call. June 24.

            
BULLETIN. Goldberg worked for the San Francisco Bulletin as both cartoonist and sporting columnist until 1907.
—

“From the Chronicle, I went to the Bulletin, where the cartoonist was given a better show. Here I developed a New York bug. The editor offered me $50 a week to stay put, but it was the big town or nothing. Arrived in the city of my dreams, I peddled my drawings to every paper. I ended with the Mail and there I landed. That was thirteen years ago (1907). I’ve been on the Mail the entire stretch.” — ‘Seven Men Who Draw Funny Pictures — and Large Salaries,’ in the Literary Digest, Aug 14, 1920

—

1910  7  ‘Reno Is As Reno Does.’ The San Francisco Call. June 25.

            
WINNER JACK JOHNSON. Goldberg took a train to New York in 1907 and hit every newspaper office in the city before landing a job on the New York Evening Mail. In 1910 he took a vacation from the Evening Mail to cover the fight between Johnson and Jeffries at Reno, Nevada. His coverage of the match appeared in the San Francisco Call. On July 3, one day before the match Goldberg wrote that “asking a man to pick a winner in the Jeffries-Johnson battle is like requesting a condemned felon to choose between the electric chair and the gallows.” Nonetheless, based on a week of studying the two fighters in the training camps, Goldberg took “the fatal Brodie” and chose the Negro boxer to win.
            

1910  8  ‘Writers and Fighters Who Will Describe the Big Battle for The Call,’ full sporting news page in The San Francisco Call with mugshots of the 11 men-strong crew. Writer and cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Writers Fred R. Bechdolt, Edward F. Cahill, Robert Edgren, Joe Murphy, Ashleigh Simpson, William J. Slattery, and James W. Coffroth. Prize fighters Bob Fitzsimmons, Battling Nelson, and Tommy Burns. July 4.

—

“I drew and wrote sports until around 1914, when I was working on the New York Evening Mail. I created Boob McNutt, my principal character, in 1915, and continued a human-interest daily cartoon, both of which I am still doing for the Hearst papers and others round the country.” — Rube Goldberg, looking back in 1933, in the Literary Digest.

—

1910  9  ‘The Last Page Of The Johnson-Jeffries Story.’ The San Francisco Call. July 6.

Picture [1] photo source: Harry Hershfield Collection (Billy Ireland Museum).

❦