INSIDE LOOK -- THE BULLPEN OF EARLY HEARST CARTOONISTS - II: Herriman

 ... And Vintage Promotional Art, Bio, Photos
of George Herriman

by Rick Marschall 

Recent posts commenced two threads: material from a rare 1917 promotion book for William Randolph Hearst's International Feature Service, one of several syndicate operations under the umbrella of the newly organized King Features. We shared photos and bios of Tom McNamara ("Us Boys"), the cartoonist whose copy we worked from; and of Rudolph Block (Bruno Lessing), the guiding force -- eminence grise, by much evidence -- behind the first 20 years of Hearst's Sunday funnies. 

In this post, Yesterday's Papers will share the book's pages devoted to George Herriman. A photograph of the pensive cartoonist, and special art created for the book. He is credited in the text as the creator of Baron Bean, the daily strip that was separate from Krazy Kat -- starring human characters; never a crossover; never appearing in color supplements. It was a wonderful strip, as most of Herriman's creations were, of course, about a latter-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza pair: delusional fellows drifting in, and further in, to absurd situations. As with all of Herriman's creations, comic obsessions fueled the premises of the daily strip. 

I offer apologies -- not that I had anything to do with it -- for the promotional copy the accompanied the artwork. It is more insipid than third-rate public-relations blather. And worse yet, the Hearst writer (perhaps John P Medbury, or K C Beaton, or Jack Lait, or a lesser light) fashioned the inanities in rhyme. Little that would have informed a student of the day... and certainly not scholars of our day.

The other piece is from 11 years later, from a elegantly designed and produced book touting the impressive stable of talent that could be accessed by subscriptions to the New York Journal. The "chief" it highlights is not Block but the Journal's editor William A Curley (who, as an editor in Chicago, had inspired characters in The Front Page) and Hearst's principal editorial writer Arthur Brisbane. The book appears to be a bragging-piece, perhaps issued for distribution at the annual American Newspaper Editors Association (ANPA) convention in New York. "The Journal has twice the circulation of its nearest evening-paper competitor..."; etc.

It is to be noticed that in each photograph of George Herriman he wore his iconic hat. It was once supposed, after his death, that he was embarrassed by kinky hair, leading to a belief that he was partly Black. Some years ago I shared with the comic community a piece of "news" debunking that assumption. The political cartoonist Karl Hubenthal, who knew Herriman, was surprised at that idea, and laughed as he told me that Herriman neither said nor hinted at such a thing, but was rather concerned to conceal, when he could, a wen -- a growth or sebacious cyst on his head that he could not have removed. (And in fact I own several photo portraits of Herriman without a hat.)

I love the fact that as early as 1928, Krazy Kat was already being referred to as "immortal." Surely it is. 

. 

GEORGE HERRIMAN DISCUSSED ANIMALS IN COMICS

 

... and shows how he drew his characters.

by Rick Marschall

Some people are shy; some are "reserved"; some are introverted. They are all different personality traits. The other end of the spectrum has as many variations. It is said that actors -- superficially the most outgoing of people -- tend to be very private folks, quiet and even withdrawn in their moments away from cameras and stage lights. They hide behind their characters.

Cartoonists often occupy similar cubby-holes. Dik Browne once observed to me the dichotomy: These creators who might entertain millions, making many of them laugh or be thrilled, or otherwise be interested in their creative efforts and views of life... do not live in the limelight, except vicariously. "For the most part, we are hermits, seldom even meeting the people who read what we create." Dik at the time had a studio in his basement, near the laundry machines, with clotheslines crisscrossed over his head.

One of cartooning's most famous recluses, relatively successful at anonymity, was George Herriman. That his classic Krazy Kat was notoriously enigmatic added to the interest in his essential talent, inspiration, muses. The desert opus was either psychologically deep and comprised of nuances, or simple nonsense unconcerned with discernment of logic or illogic (I am reminded of Mark Twain's epigraph in Huckleberry Finn: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.) 

Well, we don't really know (as if should make a difference to us: Herriman surely meant to amuse, not to befuddle) and he was not a congenital obscurantist. The majority of his creations were of homely domestic themes (Us Husbands; Alexander the Cat) or of his lifelong specialty, humorous obsessions (Major Ozone the Fresh-Air Fiend; Musical Mose). I proposed an examination -- not a psychoanalysis -- of these "fingerprints" of Herriman as elements of a biography of Herriman I proposed (along with the complete Kat) to to publishers before a major biography and several compilations actually were published, in some instances by the same publishers. But the themes remain, surprisingly, unexplored. In other books I have published and in numerous articles (including, very superficially, here) I have scratched the surface of the best-known anonymous cartoonist, George Herriman.

One speed-bump is the work of publicists of the past. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, Herriman was in the continuous employ of William Randolph Hearst. Hosannas are due the virtual godfather of the American Comic Strip, and his treatment of George Herriman is a prime reason: benign neglect... a latter-day patronage much like the Medicis treated Michelangelo or Prince Esterhazy was  patron of the composer Haydn. After the 1920s almost no paper outside the Hearst chain ran Krazy Kat. Herriman participated in the Jazz Ballet of 1924, and illustrated Don Marquis's archy and mehitabel, but otherwise he lost money for Hearst... and created timeless works of comic art at the highest level.

But we still want to lift the veil. And there were those darn public-relations writers and publicity departments. How much of what they told us -- little enough anyway -- was true? 

I have discovered a publicity series cooked up by the King Features (Hearst) publicity gnomes in the early 1930s. They are articles "by" cartoonists like Herriman and Elzie Segar (Popeye) explaining their strips, their characters, their inspirations and views of their art. Additionally these articles present sketches including a few "how to draw" examples of their working methods.

Was this for regular newspaper readers, or solely for children? or both? Were they written by the artists themselves? (I suspect not) Were the drawings by the identified cartoonists, in this case Herriman? (I suspect so) It is possible that the cartoonists Herriman and Segar at least approved the texts... and, of course, that they did write the articles.

In any case, this is an unpublished and interesting insight into Krazy Kat's kreation, and at least how the public might have perceived the character and strip apart from the funny section.

+   +   +        

Speaking of publicity departments, in the next installment of Yesterday's Papers I will continue the publication of behind-the-scenes bios and special art circa 1917, begun with treatment of Rudolph Block and Tom McNamara. The next installment will be the focus in that material on... George Herriman.

        

That Conference – by Raemaekers

Louis Raemaekers

 ОО

Chicago Examiner, September 27, 1917

ОО

Sunday with George Herriman

George Herriman

 Krazy Kat,

Chicago Examiner,

Feb 24,1918

★★★

HERRIMAN JAILED IN MADRID

   

 LAST WEEK  an exhibition of George Herriman’s comic art opened in Madrid, Spain, in the Reina Sofia Museum, Sabatini Building, Floor 3 — curated by Rafael García & Brian Walker, and titled George Herriman; Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat is Krazy Kat — which will run from Oct 18, 2017, until Feb 26, 2018, with about 160 items on display, most original art, some of it printed. 

A quantity of original art never shown together before. Brian encourages you to go to Madrid and see it.

[a] is for adorable Herr.

[b] is for beautiful brick.

[c] is for cold and wet.

    

See the museum’s introduction HERE.

See the 2.37 min. YouTube intro in Spanish HERE.

See the 3.17 min. YouTube intro in English HERE.

See 50 photos of the preparations and opening HERE.

[the samples a and b are not on display in the show]

The 184-page catalogue.

Reina Sofia Museo, Madrid.

KRAZY – A Life of HERRIMAN in Black and White

   

‘The Clocks of The Universe Are Chiming The Hour of “Now” — And Joe Stork, who Dwells on The Topside of The “Enchanted Mesa” in The “Desierto Pintado” — And Who Pilots Princes, And Paupers, Poets And Peasants, Puppies, And Pussy-Cats, Across The River Without Any Other-Side To The Shore of Here, is Telling “Krazy Kat” a Tale Which Must Never Be Told, and Yet Which Every One Knows.’ — opening frame of Krazy Kat Sunday by George Herriman, in Los Angeles Examiner, February 11, 1917

     

‘Wundafil Mr. Stork. 

Just simpfully Wundafil.’ 

GEORGE Joseph Herriman (1880-1944) was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Krazy Kat. Now there is a first biography, published this week — titled KRAZY; George Herriman, A Life in Black and White. Impeccably researched by New Orleans author Michael Tisserand. A book that draws back the curtain on the shadowed life of the renowned comic strip artist, and the secret he kept up to the day of his death, that he was a Creole man, born in New Orleans, passing for white in Jim Crow’s dangerous America. 

CONTRADICTIONS filled his life. As a sporting cartoonist during the Great White Hope era of boxing, to a soundtrack of ragtime, coon songs and jazz, Herriman drew numerous racial cartoons that were indistinguishable from the stereotypical creations of his contemporaries, Tad Dorgan, Rube Goldberg, Harry Hershfield and Bud Fisher. Like his close friend, Jimmy Swinnerton, and much of black and white America, he once participated in a minstrel sketch in blackface.

[1] George Herriman, photo of Dec 1, 1912

HERRIMAN lied about his birthplace and ancestry, avoided photographers as much as possible, and parried questions from interviewers with self-effacing good humor. Herriman’s bottled-up double life was relaxed in one instance, in the Krazy Kat comic strip, where he used dream and fantasy to explore race, color-line, and gender. There are so many instances of kat and mouse changing color from black to white that it is indisputable that the deeply ambiguous verbal poesy hid painful autobiographical truth. Several puzzles are illuminated but for readers several mysteries remain. Numerous anecdotes show that Herriman’s fellow ink-slingers, who followed his work, spent an inordinate amount of time ribbing him about his ancestry and his curly hair. Were they aware of the “tale which must never be told, and yet which every one knows?” That’s a question that will never be answered; Michael Tisserand, unraveling the puzzles like a string from a ball of twine, keeps such speculations to a minimum in favor of facts.

[2] Krazy Kat, Jan 16, 1914 (not in book; found vertically published)

KRAZY’s illustrations are slight but well-chosen. It has nice photographs and image-pages. My daughter came down and looked at me in the armchair with the just arrived book and said incredulously, ‘You finished that already?’ It stirs my imagination. Tisserand in ten years of research did a magnificent job digging up unknown stories of Herriman, Tad and what he calls the ‘Sports,’ I would have used ‘sporting cartoonists’ but that’s a minor quibble. It is a book, to use a cliche, that is difficult to put down. In the words of Krazy Kat: ‘Wundafil Mr. Stork. Just simpfully Wundafil.’

[3] Krazy Kat, June 11, 1916 (not in book)

BRILLIANT and knowledgeable as KRAZY is, it is the best kind of biography, illuminating the revolutionary life of a comic artist while providing a perfect pen-picture of the racially-charged times he and his fellow Hearst cartoonists lived through. Herriman’s cartoons influenced such disparate literary giants as P.G. Wodehouse, E.E. Cummings and Jack Kerouac. His Krazy Kat comic strips, all in print to date, will, from this day forward, be parsed for meaning with as much passion as Dylanologists expend on deciphering the lyrics of Bob Dylan — and all this just in time for a joyful Christmas!

★ KRAZY; George Herriman, A Life in Black and White, by Michael Tisserand, illustrated, over 500 pp., US release date, Dec 6, 2016; UK release date, Jan 12, 2017.

 Ò¡Ó