VISITING KING FEATURES' ALL-STARS, 1928

 

MAJOR CARTOONISTS GATHER FOR GROUP PHOTO, AND ALMOST SMILE -- 1928

by Rick Marschall

Well, I am being a little sarcastic about America's most prominent fun-makers of the day displaying lassitude, if not boredom. This is a snapshot, and perhaps a moment later they all beamed from ear to ear. Plus, it was while Prohibition still in effect, and newspapermen never "wet their whistles" during the Dry Era.

Seriously, this moment-in-time is interesting glimpse into the people and activities of comics' Golden Age. I have amassed a huge collection of cartoonists' photos -- I mean candids and informal shots; not promotional portraits -- and intend to fashion a History of Comics viewed "behind the drawing board," weaving the growth of the business through anecdotes and private tales. This will unfold in Yesterday's Papers and in NEMO Magazine, maybe into book form. My friends Ivan Briggs and Jim Engel, fellow collectors of this specialized genre, have valuably pledged their help.

The occasion of this jolly gathering was related to the "Just Kids Safety Club," a feel-good promotion built around Ad Carter's eponymous strip. It promoted, obviously, safety -- like encouraging young readers to form clubs and pledge not to walk in front of moving trucks. It promoted, collaterally, the Just Kids comic strip. It lives today, among collectors, by the dozens of character-themed pinbacks that subscribing newspapers distributed to kiddies.

We could run the photo and list the names of the King Features artists and executives; but I will identify the guys, too, by their creations or credentials. Usually I am good at this, but there is one face I cannot place. I will correct in the future when my memory returns. (The photo comes from the collection of my late friend Mary Joe Connolly, daughter of the KFS president.)

I am guessing the photo was taken in 1928. All the guys are wearing Just Kids buttons in their lapels... the "Safety" campaign lasted from 1928 to about 1931... some of these cartoonists were just "hitting" at King Features (Chic Young); some would be leaving (Gene Carr); one was recently hired (Connolly, succeeding Moe Koenigsberg). After 1930, there would have been other faces. 

I will provide the guys' most prominent strip or job, not their full biographies. Left to right, standing: Jimmy Murphy (Toots and Casper); Jack Callahan (Freddy the Sheik); Chic Young (Dumb Dora at the time); Rube Goldberg; Russ Westover (Tillie the Toiler); Harry Hershfield (Abie the Agent); H H Knerr (The Katzenjammer Kids).

In the center, at a slight angle, Ad Carter himself. His role in the promotion included appearances at local newspapers. My own mentor as a cartoonist was Harry Neigher who was on the staff of the Hearst paper in Albany, the Times Union. He told me stories of being assigned the task of shepherding Carter through his appearances and propping him up when asked to draw sketches for the kiddies. (Despite Prohibition, his condition was common among cartoonista and newspapermen of the era.)

Continuing: J T Gortatowski (Hearst executive; head of the Newspaper Feature Service; connected to King Features; later an associate of John Wheeler); then... the manager of the hotel where this event was held (this according to Mary Joe Connolly); Ed Verdier (Little Annie Rooney, which he he drew only into July of 1929, another clue that this photo was taken before then); [unknown to me]; and Joseph V Connolly himself. When Koenigsberg was fired, partly for accepting a medal from the French government, Connolly was hired from the New Haven Register and immediately initiated promotions like the Banshees extravaganzas during American Newspaper Publishers' annual conventions. He guided Blondie through its early years, including the ideas of her marriage to Dagwood and a readers' contest to name their baby. And the Just Kids Safety Club was his brainchild.

Seated, left to right: Guy Viskniskki (Hearst executive, former colleague of John Wheeler as syndication pioneer); Walter Hoban (Jerry On the Job); George McManus (Bringing Up Father); T E Powers (editorial cartoons); Gene Carr (creator of dozens of strips for many newspapers and syndicates since ca. 1902, at the time drawing a daily-strip incarnation of his classic Lady Bountiful).

Speaking personally, among the carr-toonists shown here I have a couple connections. A classmate in first grade was a granddaughter of Gene Carr, and one day her mother brought a scrapbook of his work to class (the cartoonist recently had died). I met John Wheeler, mentioned here, as well as Joe Connolly; I acquired archival material from the widow and daughter, respectively, of these giants of journalism. And I many times met with Rube Goldberg and, especially, Harry Hershfield, when I was young.

A few of the pinbacks issued as promotions in the Just Kids Safety Club campaign. Children actually were encouraged, through local newspapers, to form clubs for which membership certificates and rules sheets were printed. In the strip itself, a storyline featured the character Mush Stebbins almost being injured on a city street.

A Crowded Life in Comics – National Cartoonists Society

Rick Marschall

My One Evening As the NCS Attorney

CARTOONIST SKETCHES - NCS poster for RM 1961

::

            Another anniversary just passed. For me, anyway; my personal Crowded Life. October 25 was my parents’ birthday and will always be tattooed on my “brain.” This year I flew to New York City on Oct 25 to deliver a speech to the Theodore Roosevelt Association’s annual symposium. The next evening, on TR’s birthday, the keynote banquet speaker was Conan O’Brien, Harvard history grad and enthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt acolyte – a true Ted-Head – whom I had been helping over the past couple months with research and images. For this little work he called me “the brilliant Rick Marschall” in his speech.

Rick Marschall & Conan O'Brien, TRA Symposium

We all know that comedians like Conan are always kidding, and historians like me are always desperate for attention, hence this shameless self-promotion. I returned from New York with a deadly head cold, but actually I think it was a swelled head. Hashtag-Confession-Is-Good-For-The-Soul.

Back to the past. October 25 will always be preeminent in my mind because it was the date, in 1961, of the first National Cartoonists Society meeting I attended. I was 12, and Al Smith invited me. He was the artist of Mutt and Jeff, lived in Demarest NJ, the next town from ours, and briefly attended our Lutheran church. I always suspected that he was chased away by the pastor’s requests for drawings for church publications and posters, but anyways he introduced the young cartooning nut, me, to the legendary cartoonist in the fullness of time.

I subsequently visited Al enough times, seeking drawing tips and peppering him with questions about comics history, that he was convinced I was some sort of true-blue aspirant, or little freak, or something in-between, safe enough to be exposed to the pros. Or vice-versa.

He picked me up early in the afternoon because, as NCS Treasurer, his attendance was required at the Board meeting before drinks and dinner. The monthly meeting was as big as any other chapters’ around the country, because New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island was still the nexus of American cartooning. The meetings were held in the Lambs Club, ancient and old-world elegant clubhouse of the legendary actors’ association. Wood-paneled rooms, overstuffed leather chairs, and cigar smoke presented me a picture of Heaven; several old actors (I believe I spotted Brian Aherne) snoozed in easy chairs and corner sofas.

Al Hirschfeld, Algonquin Round Table

The Lambs dignified clubhouse is on East 44^th Street – and in a pleasant coincidence, the Harvard Club is on the same block, and that where the Theodore Roosevelt Association met, and I delivered my speech almost exactly 57 (gulp) years later. The Algonquin Hotel and Restaurant – home to many celebrities in ages past, and bon mots first uttered at the Round Table – and I lunched there last week too, a matter of obeisance. Holy ground, West 44^th Street.

Al Smith took me up to a meeting room in an otherwise dark upper floor, and one by one Board members filtered in. Emerging from the darkness was a white head with absurdly large ears and a large cigar to match. I knew it was Rube Goldberg and I felt in the presence of royalty. He was kind enough to engage me in conversation, and spontaneously invited me to visit his studio off Central Park, when and if (as if not!) I could make it back to Manhattan. Before the evening was over, he asked for my address, if (as if not!) I would like an original drawing. Before the week was out I received an inscribed Inventions and Mike and Ike from the ‘teens.

One of the agenda items for the Board meeting was to meet, or vet, a new legal representative for the NCS. He never showed, so for the remainder of the Board meeting, and the entire dinner and program downstairs, I repeatedly was introduced as the New Lawyer. I sat on the dais for the dinner, between Al Smith and Dik Browne. I watched Dik, later a great friend who attended my wedding, for clues on dinner etiquette… but eventually noticed he didn’t touch his food. I gobbled my salad, and don’t remember whether he actually ate or not.

Bill Holman

          Bill Holman was president, or anyway presided, as only he could – yes, everything you would imagine from him was delivered. He actually asked me to the microphone; I answered some questions; and I demurred when invited to say something on my own. Believe it or not I had anticipated this crazy eventuality, and prepared some lame joke about a missing cocktail at the bar, and guessing that “Bob Dunn it,” and I thank God that my tongue hath cleaveth to the roof of my mouth in such moments.

Meetings in those days – I wound up attending a fair number of meetings till I went off to college, the guest of Al, again, and Harry Hershfield, Vern Greene, and others – featured “Shop Talks,” which were panel discussions rather sophisticated. Business and tax topics, cartoon history, interviews, were fodder of the excellent sessions. I think Jerry Robinson conducted them; and I think Stan Lynde was the guest that evening.

Many cartoonists were stewed to the gills, a rite of passage in those days. I somehow knew that would be the case (hence my prepared Bob Dunn pun). I was unable to have a rational conversation with Walt Kelly, for instance, despite hopes to engage him about T S Sullivant (what a ridiculous scene, actually); on the other hand I was an impromptu audience for one of the funniest men I ever met, Al Kilgore.

I met Mell Lazarus and Mort Walker and Jay Irving and Irwin Hasen and Allen Saunders and legends like Frank Fogarty and editorial and sports cartoonists I admired. And – as much of a legend as Rube – the iconic cartoonist, illustrator, designer, muralist Russell Patterson. Like a face from Mount Rushmore, with longish silver hair (then marking men as actors or artists) and clipped moustache.

 

Al Smith, flanked by Mac Miller and Fred Waring, holding the NCS self-caricature jam.

After dinner Al Smith unrolled a large sheet of Strathmore. Back in his studio he had inscribed greetings to “the Richard Marshall Comics Club,” a weekly gathering of my friends who liked to draw. And at the bottom he drew Mutt and Jeff saying “Carry on, m’lads! The future of NCS may one day rest in your hands!” Among the cartoonists who signed and drew their characters (or caricatures of me) were Holman, Greene, Patterson, Saunders, Fogarty, Irving, Hasen, Lynde, Mell, and Dunn; and Jack Tippit, Bill Lignante, Bill Crawford, John Pierotti, Al Liederman, Jack Rosen, John Lehti, Matt Murphy, Mac Miller, Irma Selz, and Tom Gill.

I could have floated home, but Al Smith drove me through the late night out of Manhattan, over the George Washington Bridge, and along Route 9W to my house. My parents had waited up, of course; and I think their best anniversary present ever was seeing that poster and hearing my stories. My father was a lifelong comics fan, and he ate up the stories about some of his own favorite names.

Eventually many of these cartoonists became better friends; others besides Dik attending my wedding; and I became Comics Editor to more than a few at three syndicates several years later. In a “crowded life” in comics… that October 25^th was one crowded evening.
  

::

14

The Art of Rube Goldberg Exhibit in San Francisco

The Art of Rube Goldberg 

is currently on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 

San Francisco, California, through July 8, 2018.

Y

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

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).

❦

Mr. Goldberg, How Did You Put It Over?

“MY FIRST REAL CHANCE came when Tad Dorgan left the San Francisco “Bulletin” to go East. I made such a pest of myself asking for the position that they gave it to me in self-defense. […] The paper devoted a great deal of attention to sports. So they gave me the chance to draw fight pictures, and asked me to write something — to explain what they were, probably. One of my secret ambitions, which I never had dared confess, was to learn to write — which I never had 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.” — RUBE GOLDBERG, 1922

★

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

 Rube Goldberg (1883-1973)
Tad Dorgan (1877-1929)

 

 Woof! Woof! We’re Going to the Dogs, April 1, 1922, Exhibitors Herald

  

My Answer To The Question:
How Did You Put It Over?
by Reuben L. Goldberg
American Magazine
March 1922
pp. 37-39
& 64
•

How Did You Put It Over?

 From The American Magazine, 
March 1922, pp.36-39 & 64,
by Rube Goldberg