Operation Blonde, a comic strip no one ever heard of

   

JACK O’BRIEN. Early this spring I discovered that Sgt. Jack O’Brien, a cartoonist I have admired for a long, long time, drew a comic strip called Operation Blonde for AFPS. These samples appeared in the The Fort Hood Sentinel, a post newspaper published at the army base in Fort Hood, Texas, between May 28, 1953 and July 8, 1960. It lasted a long period of time for a comic strip no one ever heard of. Operation Blonde is a title evocative of the popular spy novels of the 50s-60s. From the army O’Brien went on to draw the Harvey Sad Sack comic books, and freelanced as a slick gag cartoonist for the mildly risqué 25¢ cartoon digests. 

[1] Feb 6, 1959

O’Brien was last heard of in 1970 when his home and a printing shop were raided by New Jersey police and an arrest warrant was issued for the cartoonist on obscenity charges. Police seized 8 truckloads of pornographic literature, printing machines, photographic equipment and mailing lists. The outcome does not seem to have been recorded in newspaper archives. Newspapers at the time referred to him as the artist on the syndicated Sad Sack comic strip although he may have only been assisting Fred Rhoads. 

[2] May 28, 1953

[3] Aug 21, 1958

[4] Dec 10, 1953

[5] Dec 19, 1958

[6] Jan 15, 1960

[7] July 10, 1958

[8] May 29, 1959

[9] May 29, 1959

[10] May 29, 1959

[11] May 29, 1959

[12] May 29, 1959

[13] May 29, 1959

[14] May 29, 1959

[15] May 29, 1959

[16] Aug 11, 1955

[17] July 8, 1960

EARLIER O’BRIEN. I previously posted about this brilliant gag cartoonist who signed himself O’Brien HERE, HERE and HERE. Animation Resources has more on him HERE.

Jack’s Sporting and Literary Society –

 THE NIGHT THEY BUMPED OFF HERMAN ROSENTHAL.

by John Adcock

❦

Boardman Robinson, New York Tribune, July 20, 1912

“We take him to a dago joint down on the east side and let him eat a lot of ravioli and listen to the wops. He always got a kick out of that… then we take him up to the McAlpin and set him up in a window on the top floor where he can look straight up Broadway. He just sits there and looks at the lights and traffic and talks about the old mob up at Jack’s café.” — Ike Dorgan about his brother’s last days, to Westbrook Pegler in ‘Death Claims Tad Dorgan, Phrase Maker’ in the Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1929

THE ROARING FORTIES

The term “roaring forties” designated both a region and a glamorous era in time specific to New York. Geographically they started (roughly) at 40^th Street and extended northward on Broadway to 42 Street and on to 50^th Street. Damon Runyon recalled

Twenty years ago, the era of the Roaring Forties was commencing to pass. It had succeeded the era of the Gay Nineties and the Broadway South of 42^nd street. Some of the Gay Nineties lapped over briefly into the era of the Roaring Forties, as one area always laps over into another for a spell. Lillian Russell, “Diamond Jim” Brady, the Hoffman House, Martin’s, Sherry’s, Delmonico’s, Shanley’s and Mouquin’s still were going concerns and bright memories of Manhattan Island.

The Roaring Forties era brought on the glamor, that was to become tradition, of the Knickerbocker hotel and Enrico Caruso and Jack’s restaurant and the Hippodrome and Murray’s, with the revolving glass dance floor, and the Castle’s and Healy’s and Releenweber’s and the Follies and Churchill's and Rector’s. It was the era of Wilson Mizner and Irving Berlin, and George Cohen and of the Harry Thaw trial and the Herman Rosenthal murder and the old Waldorf. – ‘The Brighter Side of News,’ Damon Runyon, Times-Union, Oct 3, 1939

THE PRINCE OF REPORTERS

O’Malley was known around town simply as “O’Malley of the Sun.” Despite the veil of anonymity — the old Sun did not use “by-lines” — O’Malley became widely known as a reporter and humor columnist. The brilliance of his style identified him to all who commonly read the paper. O’Malley’s reign as the prince of reporters began in 1906 and ran on until 1920, when he resigned to contribute to magazines and publishers.

Frank Ward O’Malley, Tad Dorgan, Hype Igoe, Benjamin DeCassares, Wilson Mizner, “Spanish” Jack O’Brien (cable editor on the old NY Sun), Tom Geraghty, Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon, George Luks the cartoonist, Stuffy Davis, Jim Huneker of the Sun, Vince Barton, and Jack Francis were members, some regular and some on the periphery, of ‘Jack’s Sporting and Literary Society’ who met at Jack’s restaurant with its famed Battling Nelson grill during the Roaring Forties.

That was a year—1912—notable for many things. So much happened that our great major Broadway sport of all night discussion and tableside debate hit a new high for all time. For one thing newspaper men will tell you that 1912 was the greatest year for news in journalistic history, at least in variety. Early in the year the Titanic went down, one of the very greatest news stories of all time. Then, just before 2 o’clock the morning of July 16 gunmen procured by Police Lieut. Charley Becker murdered Herman Rosenthal thereby beginning a murder yarn that held the front-page attention of readers for months. – ‘Back on Broadway – Golden Era of Indoor Sports,’ Frank Ward O’Malley, Buffalo Evening News, Aug 23, 1930.

Hype Igoe, 1938

Hype Igoe was a cartoonist and sporting columnist on the staff of the San Francisco Examiner. The year following the earthquake he came to New York and worked on the New York American’s art staff for a few years, thence to New York Sun as a writer of boxing, later to the Tribune, and finally a member of the World’s sports staff. Igoe was on the scene of the Rosenthal killing:

THE NIGHT THEY BUMPED OFF HERMAN ROSENTHAL

‘O’Malley Greatest of All, Igoe Tells Bill Corum,’ Albany Times-Union, New York, Nov 30, 1932

Dear Bill Corum: When Frank Ward O’Malley passed on in Paris a few weeks ago, I got me the sinks. Sad, because Time, greatest of all the line buckers, had taken another of the disappearing old guard.

I don’t know that you ever knew him. Not to have been in his company at some time or another in your newspaper career was to have missed a gentle genius of his kind. Our (Arthur) Brisbane always called him “the greatest reporter in the world.” Chronicling was only one of his sidelines. He played at being a human being better than anyone I had ever met. He wrote with tremendous sweeps of English, yet each line seemed leavened with the sweet wit which dominated his soul.

For twenty years or more O’Malley, with Tad (Dorgan), Ben De Casseres, Wilson Mizner, “Spanish” (Jack) O’Brien, Harry Pollock, Vernie Barton, Corse Payton, Jack Francis, Arnold Rothstein, Jack Shaughnessy, Freddie Griesheim, and the bold bad boys of “wire tapping” and “the boats,” made Jack’s eating and drinking shebang our ole swimmin’ hole. That was before the camel prohibition came.

Herman Rosenthal

Bill, the night they bumped off Herman Rosenthal! It was maddening in the whirl of its excitement. Charley Meeghan, the then sports editor of the Morning Telegraph, and myself, had sauntered into George Considine’s New Metropolis, in 43^rd, to gas and read “copy” on Charley’s printed story of a bout we had just seen in old Madison Square Garden.

Charley had wired his story from the ringside and here we were, 20 minutes later, reading it in type that couldn’t have been cold in the printing.

Charley, who is no more, Bill, looked up and said “Great age, Hype, great age. The fight isn’t half an hour old and it–” Charley never finished that sentence.

Bang-bang-, bang, bang, bang!!!

Five shots, Bill, two fast, then three.

“Backfire, Charley?’ I said.

“Backfire, hell,” said our waiter as he did a standing, sitting dive under the table. Before he disappeared, he pointed one long great cloud of powder reeking finger at the big open window. A smoke was floating into the room.

With the five shots came the piercing voice of Artie Hall, a famous blues singer. She was sitting at a table with Billy Atwell and Lieutenant File of the police department. From a rear seat, facing the door, Artie Hall had jumped to her feet and hit high C in a scream which still rings in my ears.

Miss Artie Hall, June 1900

File, in light civvies, his back to the door, whirled around, whipped out a long blue service gun and was through the door like an antelope. They brought him up on charges of negligence afterwards and Charley and I testified on his behalf. We told how he had gone “out in the smoke” not knowing what fate had in store for him.

Charley and I ran to the front door. A figure lay sprawled on the sidewalk, face downward. The fallen man’s right hand was stretched out full length and between the first two fingers, standing straight up, there was a half-consumed cigar. A little ribbon of blue smoke curled upward from it, which through some strange miracle, had not been disclosed from the man’s fingers as he crashed, stone dead, to the sidewalk. The maddening whirl in its beginning!

“Herman. It’s Herman,” whispered big “Judge” Crowley.

“Herman who?” I asked.

And from over my shoulder came the answer- “Herman Rosenthal, by God!”

I whipped around and there stood Frank Ward O’Malley. Always the “greatest reporter.” He had beaten Swope and Hill and the others in from the ole swimmin’ hole. He hadn’t waited for night editor’s orders. He had started with the first crack of the four gunmen’s gats. Indeed, a reporter, Bill.

Charles Becker

The strange death watch we kept in Jack’s that night. Becker was electrocuted for that slaying. O’Malley had gone up to Sing Sing as our and the old Sun’s representative. As the dawn came, we, Mizner, Tad, De Casseres, O’Brien, Payton, Barton, (Arnold) Rothstein, old Jimmy Wakely, Francis, Shaughnessy, (Jack) Dunstan himself, Henry M. T. Beekman, the great barrister, who coined the famous “old age is the death of enthusiasm” line, myself and one or two others, sat around a big table with our watches in the palm of our hands.

Each, in ghastly fashion, was trying to picture what Becker was doing. What his last moments were like. Each trembled in the strange excitement of that weird death vigil. Three minutes to go and it would be 5:30 of the morning, going away time in the big house in those days.

O’Malley came with the story. We clung to his Poe-like tale as ivy to an old oak. Bill, you’ll probably remember that Becker collapsed so pitifully that they asked a Negro companion in death to “wait on Charley.” Charley’s nerve was gone, Bill, and the Negro said he’d “sit it out until Charley had it over with.”

Breathlessly we waited for O’Malley’s return. Mizner got in the first word.

“Well?” he quizzed?

“Bill, the black man showed the “Czar of the Tenderloin” how to die,” said O’Malley.

“Then why the hell didn’t you lead off your story with that line?” stormed the exacting Broadway wit.  One of O’Malley’s better lines, which never got into type until now.

Frank Ward O’Malley! His lute laid aside for all time, Bill. I can see him now, black silk cords hanging from his nose glasses, handsome, kindly, sweet singer of prose! He was the only great reporter of my time who never talked of himself. I often wonder if Frank Ward O’Malley ever knew Frank Ward O’Malley.

Odd thing, Bill, they never put him on a big fight story. How he could have garnished the tragedy of the crushing of the Orchid Man at Boyle’s Thirty Acres or the malleting of the ox-like Willard at Toledo! A reporter!!

Hype Igoe.

Lt. Charles E. Becker, a brutal cop on the take, was convicted of Rosenthal’s murder and electrocuted on July 13, 1915, at Sing Sing prison.

THE BRAIN

Power of the Press, even when the Power was only half a horse. Arnold Rothstein, who came into Jack’s every morning, was one of the most delightful beer companions with whom I have ever sat out a session. He impressed me as being a great executive who simply took the easiest way in a country where craft and graft are all ye need to know. – ‘Jack’s,’ Benjamin De Cassares, American Mercury, Nov 1932

The man who ran the gambling parlor on the second floor of the Metropole at the time of Rosenthal's demise was the gambler Arnold Rothstein. He took over where Rosenthal left off, soon running New York’s drug and gambling rackets. His fate was the same, shot in the abdomen outside the Park Central Hotel on Nov 4, 1928. Rothstein was one of the peripheral members of ‘Jack’s Sporting and Literary Society.’ In a ‘Hollywood Day by Day’ column in New Movie Magazine, by NEMO (O. O. McIntyre), the author wrote.

I had dinner with Jack the other night and he told me what I didn’t know before: that Arnold Rothstein, the murdered gambler, used to join that famous restaurant round table, and that no one around the board had a more razor-like wit.

Damon Runyon called him “The Brain.” Runyon recalled “He was the villain in a Fitzgerald novel. He carried on where Becker left off after Rosenthal’s murder; introduced the modern gangster; served crime as pay off man; taught politician and crook how to work profitably together.”

Arnold Rothstein, financier of the New York Underworld – Lindy’s restaurant on Broadway was his favorite hangout, and it was from there that a telephone call summoned him to his death. Frequently he sat all night in Lindy’s. drinking cup after cup of coffee and swapping gossip and wisecracks with such figures as Damon Runyon, the reporter; T.A. “Tad” Dorgan, the cartoonist; Jack Lait, Con Conrad, and Harry Hershfield. – ‘The Murder of Rothstein,’ Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1940

––To be Continued––

Miss Artie Hall, 1903

Artie Hall was a white "coon-shouter" from Georgia who first appeared on the stage in 1899. She mixed her own brown make-up and at the end of her act she would lower her blouse to show the white skin beneath the cloth. Newspapers hectored her for showing too much torso at the reveal, and for showing her underwear while dancing. By 1912 language had changed, and she was now known as a "blues-singer."

❦

COOL CAT –

by Jack O’Brien

NY Herald Tribune, 1959

Cool Cat, Editor and Publisher, Nov 21, 1959

Cool Cat, Editor and Publisher, Sept 19 1959

More Jack O’Brien HERE

JKA

❦

Jack Johnson and the Cartoonists

   

TEXAS NATIVE Jack Johnson had traveled as far as he could fighting Negro boxers, and the reigning champion in 1903, Jim Jeffries, refused to fight a colored boxer. When Jeffries retired the championship went to Tommy Burns, a tough scrapper born near Hanover, Ontario. For two years Johnson chased Burns round the world by automobile, railroad, and tramp steamer, until the champion agreed to fight him in Sidney, Australia in 1908. 

After 14 grueling rounds, on 26 December, the police reluctantly ended the fight to avoid Burns being beaten to death. Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Johnson was no obsequious champion, he considered himself the equal of any white man in the world, and he rubbed their noses in it every time he opened his mouth. He dressed like a king, flaunted his white girlfriends, and drove all over the country in expensive automobiles. He was a godsend to the cartoonists from the day he began coveting the hitherto all-white championship of the world.

On 5 May 1929 cartoonist Tad Dorgan was escorted to his grave by about 40 people, mostly from the newspaper profession. Also accompanying him were Duck and Spensi, his two adopted Chinese boys, Jack Doyle, head of the National Billiard Association, Gene Buck, songwriter, Philadelphia Jack O’Brien, a boxer, and ex-champion Jack Johnson. This was so unusual for the time that Johnson’s presence topped Dorgan’s name in many of the headlines over accounts of the funeral.

26 Dec 1908 by unknown cartoonist

26 Dec 1908 by Bob Edgren

31 Jan 1909 Bow

13 Mar 1909 Fitzmaurice

March 1909 Leet

1 July 1910 Condo

12 Nov 1912 Cory

See also 

Jack Johnson Remembers HERE 

and  

The Fight of the Century HERE.

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

TAD Dorgan and Friends in San Francisco

         

 1   Tad.

The game is aptly described as a “racket” and if ever there was one the prize fighting business has a mortgage on it. Long before the recent epidemic of fouls the more or less manly art was the pawn of chisellers and cold-blooded manipulators. The fault can’t be laid wholly to the fighters, it is how the business is controlled by a gang who should have never found a place in the realm of alleged sport. It was poor Tad Dorgan who once said that “there was more larceny in the prize fight game than there was in Sing Sing.” Tad knew the rabble that was mixed up in the beak-busting business as he “covered” the racket for more than a quarter of a century. — Liam O’Shea, ‘On The Line,’ in the Irish Advocate, July 5, 1930 

The most famous retort next to “That was no lady, that was my wife” originated in this manner: A publisher, querying how many cartoonists there were in America, was told, “If you took all the cartoonists and laid them end to end, it wouldn’t be a bad idea.” — Walter Winchell, ‘The Imps of Journalism,’ in his On Broadway column, 1935
        

by John Adcock

     

SOUTH OF THE SLOT. The most popular sporting cartoonist of all time was Thomas Aloysius Dorgan [1877-1929], known as “TAD,” or “Tad,” take your pick. Nicknames were de rigueur in the sporting world, TAD was suggested from Dorgan’s three initials. The word also stood for a small kid at the time. 

Fremont Older, since 1895 managing editor of The Bulletin in San Francisco, California, claimed to have discovered Tad in a drawing class for school boys. Older also “discovered” Hype Igoe (1877-1945), Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), and Bud Fisher (1885-1954), all of them celebrated sporting cartoonists. A more likely story was told by Harry B. Smith; that “somebody or other introduced him to Hy Baggerly, sports editor of the Old Bulletin. [Who] will even now take time out from his job as Coast League president to speak with pleasure of his protégé of ye olden days.”
§

 2   March 22, 1903.

 3   July 31, 1904.

THOMAS ALOYSIUS DORGAN, Dorgan’s father, named Thomas also, was a laundryman in San Francisco at the time Tad was born. The 1910 census gave his occupation as a teamster. Thomas senior was of Irish parentage but was born in England himself. Tad’s mother’s name was Anna. Anna’s parents were from New York and she was born in Pennsylvania. Thomas Aloysius junior was born on April 29, 1877 and his brother John came two years later. John L. Dorgan, better known as Ike, a childhood nickname fostered on him by Tad, later founded The Ring Magazine with Nat Fleischer and Tex Rickard, and worked as a scribe with Hearst’s New York Evening Journal. 

By 1900 the Dorgan family had expanded. Joining Thomas and John were Mary H., Charles, Edwin, Annie, Irene, Richard, Joseph and Alice. Richard Dorgan (b. Sept 1892) would become a cartoonist like his older brother, signing his work ‘Dick Dorgan.’ Dick Dorgan drew two comic strips, You Know Me Al, also known as Jack Keefe or Kid Dugan, scripted by Ring Lardner, and the strip Mr. Gilfeather (later to be drawn by none other than Al Capp). Cartoonist Al Capp once described Dick Dorgan to comic art historian Rick Marschall as a “blind, crippled TAD.”
§

 4   Brothers Tad & Dick & Ike Dorgan.

ALL FINGERS. On his World War I draft registration card dated September 12, 1918 Tad wrote “all fingers except thumb off of right hand.” There were dozens of different stories told of the accident but only columnist O.O. McIntyre’s story is in accord with the draft registration.

When he was 8 he was fooling around a house moving job and attempted to ride a shovel on a rope that was propelled by a big pulley. He turned his head for a second and his right hand was caught in a pulley, crushing off four fingers of that right hand, which was reduced to a thumb and a piece of knuckle. He turned ‘lefty’ and surmounted the obstacle. — O.O. McIntyre, ‘Tad — a Close-up of a Man Who Amuses the World,’ in New York Journal, 1927

§

 5   TAD’s draft card after WWI, Sep 12, 1918.

 6   September 21, 1904.

 7   April 5, 1903.

TAD Dorgan, was “born South of Market Street,” or “South of the Slot,” as it was known to the inhabitants. Edgar T. “Scoop” Gleeson remembered that Tad “lived variously in San Francisco at Mission and Twelfth Streets and in Hayes Valley. In the latter district, which he always termed home, he made the acquaintance of James J. Corbett.” Tad’s first job was selling newspapers, followed by employment at J.J. O’Brien’s dry goods store. Tad’s father was operating a stationary store on Hayes Street, where his son also helped out. The area was home to a mixture of Jewish and Irish, mostly Democrats. Tad’s best friend was Bert Igoe, who lived on Ringold Street, overlooking Recreation Park. Across the street from the park was an icehouse lot where the boys played baseball. Tad was “a sandlot player — a rather tough kid,” and a southpaw pitcher. He “never lost a game, ball or pinochle.” Igoe recalled the Ringold house as the “house in which Tad and I pooled together two bits, he 15 and me 10 cents, to buy our first bottle of drawing ink, thirty-five years ago.”
§

 8   Bert Igoe, who signed ‘Hype Igoe,’ 1909.

HERBERT ANTHONY IGOE, sporting cartoonist, and according to Damon Runyon “probably the best informed writer on boxing that ever lived,” was born in Santa Cruz, California on June 13, 1877 to John and Mary Igoe. His father was a pipefitter. In his boyhood, and as late as 1916, he was known as Bert Igoe. He attended district school at Felton, California until the age of ten, when his family moved to San Francisco, where he attended school with Jimmy Britt, later one of California’s most colourful pugilists, as well as Ike and Tad Dorgan. Igoe graduated from the city’s Franklin Grammar School; and the group of friends moved on to Polytechnic High School. The English teacher, Mrs. Kahn, was the local Congress-woman. Bert Igoe attended Polytechnic High School for two terms then joined the staff of the San Francisco Examiner in 1896, as an office boy. Hype Igoe was his penname and his first major work was drawing cartoons of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight in 1897. Cartoonist Charles H. Owens recalled that Igoe “knew even as a kid that he would get to the top. And he has. Hype, when I first met him, looked like the walking delegate for a tailor. Darkly attractive, he was like electricity — never still. He had more ideas about how to display news than any man I know.”
§

 9   Cartoon by Hype Igoe in the Denver Post, Dec 15, 1904.

 10   Cartoon by Hype Igoe, Jan 7, 1905.

—

BEFORE the fire (following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a disaster all newspaper reporters who went through it referred to as “the fire”) — South of the Slot was occupied mostly by cottages, flats, saloons, and a few stores for groceries. Boxer Jimmy Britt described the area as “a rather contradictory neighborhood, it was at the same time a friendly and a fighting neighborhood. In fact you sometimes had to fight a fellow several times before you became friendly with him.” Hype Igoe said of his friend Jimmy Britt that “When we were kids, south of the slot, he used to fight other boys with one hand tied behind him.” 

Of course, living in a fighting neighborhood it was a case of fight or stay in the house. In our neighborhood, instead of giving a child a rattle to play with, they handed him a boxing glove and a bakery wagon key. In those days all bakers’ wagons had a door in the back (…) Our principal outdoor sport was chasing Chinamen, and as we grew older and more experienced, we substituted policemen for the Chinese. — Jimmy Britt, ‘Reminiscences of Old South of Market,’ in South of Market Journal, Jan 1929, p.10  

§    

 11   Real photo of friends Tad Dorgan & James J. Corbett. (See above what dry-copying and microfilm made of it, a page from Circulation, No 9, Sep 1922.)

 12   Oct 19, 1904.

FOUR YOUNGSTERS. Columnist John Brannigan recalled that “Many years ago, in the Mission section of San Francisco, there were four youngsters who were to become famous in the sporting world. Odd also that in later years they should all settle in little old New York, and maintain their friendship to their graves.”

These were [1] James J. Corbett, first world’s heavyweight champion under the Marquis of Queensberry Rules. It was Corbett who soundly licked the great John L. Sullivan. Corbett, an Irishman himself, was never to this day forgiven by the Irish for having licked the great John L. [2] Hype Igoe, who became a great sportswriter and cartoonist on the New York Journal. [3] Tad Dorgan, a great American cartoonist sportswriter and his brother [4] Ike Dorgan. Ike became Tex Rickard’s press agent and later he started The Ring magazine with Nat Fleischer, who now owns it. Ike also managed in the early ’20s some of the greatest fighters of that era, including Charley White and Gunboat Smith… — ‘Rambling Along with John Brannigan,’ in Sullivan County Record, Nov 14, 1963

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 13   May 17, 1904.

 14   June 19, 1904.

JAMES J. CORBETT, a “product of the old sand lots,” was born at San Francisco on September 1, 1866, which made him eleven years older than Tad Dorgan or Bert Igoe. He fought John L. Sullivan on September 7, 1892, to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and lost to Bob Fitzsimmons on March 17, 1897. About 1886 Tad was a frequent visitor to the Hayes street stables of Pat Corbett, “Gentleman Jim’s” father, where James had set up an improvised gymnasium. Here Tad was a wide-eyed witness to his hero’s daily sparring with the neighborhood kids. He and his closest friends, Bert and Ike, rigged up their own cheap punching bag in the stable. Tad later recalled “I want to be a scientific boxer like Jim Corbett.” His other interest was drawing. He covered the walls of warehouses and livery-stables with portraits of bloodied boxers and their battles. Tad walked with a sandwich board attached to his shoulders to earn money for fight-seats and minstrel shows.

Probably the biggest pugilistic event in Tad’s boyhood was the epic “battle of the barge,” a broiling grudge affair between Corbett and Choynski. The fight had twice been stopped by California police, but was at last fought to a finish on a barge floating in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Tad, barely fourteen years old, was probably the youngest of the spectators. He played hooky from school, rowed out to the barge in the gray dawn and hid under a coil of rope until the fight began at high noon. After twenty-eight rounds of what amounted to bareknuckle fighting, during which Corbett broke his left hand, Choynski took a smashing “left hook on the jaw” and fell to the deck. Many of the spectators were so excited that they toppled off the barge. Among these was young Tommy Dorgan, who was fished out of the water still yelling for Corbett. This battle made such an impression on him that he could describe it thirty years later blow for blow, and he always regarded it as the most dramatic fight he had ever seen. — Henry Morton Robinson, ‘Tad for Short, Cartoonist and Phrase-Maker, a Victim of Circumstance,’ in Century, Autumn 1929

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 15   Aug 7, 1904. Jack O’Brien & Bob Fitzsimmons in Philadelphia.

 16   June 12, 1904.

GENTLEMAN JIM CORBETT told a crowd at Tad Dorgan’s Memorial at Madison Square Garden in 1929, “You know, Tad was a little cadger when I was a big fellow in San Francisco. When I came east to fight Sullivan, he was among the kids of the neighborhood to be there to wish me well. And he told me that when there was a big parade in Frisco that night to celebrate my victory, he carried a torchlight in the parade. That’s how long I knew him.”

WHEN I was a kid I followed John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett along the streets of San Francisco, full of admiration and wishing that someday I could lamp a real fight. Later I knew them both — Corbett is my neighbor now — and I spent many years writing about pugs from the ringside seats. Then I used to follow Jimmy Swinnerton along Market street in that same town when Jimmy wore a flat derby and a canary colored overcoat with pearl buttons. I longed to be an artist, and there I was with that nub of a mitt. But I kept on wishing, and 22 years ago Jimmy and I were working side by side in the same art room of a newspaper. — TAD speaking, in ‘What a Guy This Fellow Tad,’ in Syracuse Journal, 1927

The offices of the three local morning papers, the Chronicle (owned by De Young), the Call (owned by Spreckels), and the Examiner (owned by Hearst), were since 1898 located within 100 feet of each other. The Chronicle was situated at the corner of Market and Kearney streets in a 10-story steel-frame building. The Call’s business office was housed in the 16-story high Claus Spreckels building, or Call tower; a 3-story annex to the rear housed its editorial, composing and press rooms in Third Street. Just across Third was the 7-story home to Hearst’s Examiner. Publisher’s statements showed that in 1906 the Examiner led in circulation with 98,000 copies, the conservative Chronicle, 80,000, the Call, 62,000 and the Bulletin 58,000.
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 17   March 16, 1904.

TAD REMEMBERED “I broke into the art game in San Francisco, where I was born; always wanted to be Gibson’s only rival and practiced at all times.” Tad Dorgan joined the staff of the San Francisco Bulletin as a “fashion artist and errand boy” doing odd jobs at $3 a week in 1896. He “helped the etcher, blocked cuts, ran copy, etc.,” until he failed an assignment and was fired. He was determined to get his job back and showed up for work every day as though he belonged there. “Worked six months for nothing.” He was finally rehired in 1897 at the same rate of pay — $3 a week, but “finally rolled up income to fifty iron men per week.” Tad recalled that he “stayed there 8 years drawing sporting pictures.” It was while employed on the Bulletin that he gained the nickname “TAD” after his initials.

The big draw on the fight scene at the time was between Gentleman Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons on March 17, 1897, at Carson City, Nevada. The Examiner chartered a railroad car they dubbed the Examiner Lightning Special, loaded with writing desks and drawing boards, and sent fourteen writers and artists ringside. Among the great sporting men on board the special were W.W. Naughton, John L. Sullivan, William Muldoon, Jim Corbett, Homer Davenport and Jimmy Swinnerton.

Charles H. Owens, San Francisco cartoonist, “knew Tad as a kid but hadn’t seen him for years until he showed up at the Bulletin for a job.”

Tall, skinny almost to hat-rack proportions, nervous, he was the greatest gag man newspapers have ever had. I can still see his bulgy nose twitch as he started a cartoon. He didn’t have much faith in himself; in fact, when he first went to New York he confided to several of us that he didn’t think he could cut it. — Charles H. Owens, ‘Ink Slingers,’ in Los Angeles Times, Oct 3, 1937

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 18   Aug 10, 1904.

The Bulletin’s sporting editor, Hyland L. (Hy) Baggerly, Fremont Older’s brother-in-law, was known as the first to feature cartoons and large picture layouts on the sports page on the old San Francisco Call. At different times he supervised cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Rube Goldberg, Herb Roth, Robert L. Ripley, and Pete Llanuza.

In the old days he [Baggerly] was known far and wide as sporting editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. Not “sports editor” — perish the term! But sporting editor. Baggerly specialized on fights and baseball. “Sports editor” is one of those newfangled names the boys have dug up for themselves or had wished on them, like “journalist.” And almost equally distasteful. I’ll bet no one could have called Hy Baggerly either a “sports editor” or a “journalist” when he was on the Bulletin and left his office alive. — ‘Gregory’s Sports Gossip,’ in The Morning Oregonian, Nov 4, 1931

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 19   Aug 7, 1904.

ONCE Tad was sparring with Terrible Terry McGovern at the Terminal Hotel near Golden Gate Park, unaware that he had been set up as a joke. McGovern knocked Tad out of the ring. The next day the headline over Tad’s regular column read HOW IT FEELS TO BE KNOCKED OUT BY A CHAMPION. Tad’s sporting cartoons and columns caught the fancy of sporting page readers and he became a celebrity, hanger on at “The Tip,” a sporting saloon on Powell and Ellis run by Tim McGrath, boxing manager, trainer, and wit.

“The Tip,” let me explain, was the saloon I used to run at Powell and Ellis streets, in San Francisco. It was the rendezvous of famous sportsmen, celebrities, actors and writers., with “Tad” Dorgan, famous cartoonist: Jack London, David Warfield, Eddie Foy, Bill McGeehan, Harry Cashman, Bob Edgren and scores of others of like note among the patrons. The name “The Tip” was suggested by Jack London. “If you can’t give them a tip on the fight, you can give them a tip on the chin,” was his explanation. Jeff (James J. Jeffries) was always a big card for any saloon. Jeff frequently visited my “Tip,” as did Corbett and John L. Sullivan. — ‘An Old-Timer’s Scrapbook by Tim McGrath,’ in Niagara Falls Gazette, Jan 20, 1930

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 20   TAD’s photo switched unnoticed with that of Tom Powers, 1911. Hearst advertising page in syndicated newspapers.

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IN EARLY 1904 Tad’s old friend, boxing promoter “Sunshine” Jim Coffroth, told him he knew someone in New York and suggested Tad contact them about a cartoonist job.

I had a letter from a man by the name of Brisbane. He said if I would come to New York he would pay me $75 a week. I showed the letter to the boss’s secretary, a young lady wise in the business. “Forget it,” she said, “the boys are kidding you.” I remember the gang held a heavy conference to decide whether the letter was a cheater or on the level. They came to the conclusion that there wasn’t that much money. I wrote to this Mr. Brisbane to find out what made him think he was one of the Morgans. Back came a note repeating the offer. My getaway broke all speed records in a town where traveling was never anything but the fastest. In New York I went to the address given in the letter and met Mr. Brisbane, a power on the New York American. He offered to sign me for a year at the given figure. If he would only have made it a hundred years I would probably have choked to death in my haste to yell “Let’s Go!” — TAD speaking, in ‘Seven Men Who Draw Funny pictures — And Large Salaries,’ in Literary Digest, Aug 14, 1920

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 21   Aug 19, 1904.

 22   May 23, 1906.

TAD LEFT the San Francisco Bulletin for New York on March 31, 1904, to drew cartoons and write sporting columns for Hearst’ New York Evening Journal under editor Arthur Brisbane — and to ‘work side by side in the same art room’ as Jimmy Swinnerton. 

Gene Fowler recalled that “the cocksure Tad Dorgan wanted to go back to San Francisco after his first day in town. Hoodlums chased him across City Hall park, seized his straw hat, and broke it to bits. Mr. Dorgan did not know that after Labor Day a straw hat was fair game for metropolitan roughnecks.”
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 23   The San Francisco Call tower at Market and Third, on fire after the earthquake of April 1906. Hearst Examiner building on the left (faked shock postcard).

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EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE. Two years later, April 18, 1906, at 5:15 o’clock, the first shock from an earthquake hit the city of San Francisco. C.E. Presson, a railway clerk was on a street car at Sixteenth and Mission streets. He remembered “one great detonating roar, a succession of frightful crashes, and then came the flames, breaking out everywhere.” The panicking passengers got off the car but found it hard walking while the shock lasted. “It seemed to come from east to west, and then from north to south, and there was always a vertical motion (…) the first shock, I should say, lasted about two minutes. When the shock came there was a noise as though a cannon had exploded. This was made by falling walls and houses. We also heard the crashing of glass as it was hurled from the windows to the pavement.”

We started to walk down Mission Street (…) As I walked on women were in the street clad only in their nightclothes and calling for their little ones amidst their tears. Men were rushing through half-fallen buildings and throwing clothing to the women in the streets from the upper windows. It was a terrible sight.” — C.E. Presson, railway clerk

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 24   Third Street seen from Market Street during the ongoing fire, April 1906. Hearst Examiner building on the left, Call tower and the annex behind it on the right.

 25   Market Street during the fire, seen from the Ferry Building, April 1906.

As Presson walked down Market Street, full of brick and stone debris and conveyances loaded with the dead and injured he noticed “the Call building was twisted slightly. The rear end of the Examiner building, toward the Palace Hotel, had partially fallen in (…) the new portion of the Chronicle building had fallen in (…) but the old portion was still standing.” The Chronicle escaped the earthquake but its interior was destroyed by flames. The Call tower survived, but its 3-story annex, directly behind it in Third Street was gone. The Hearst Examiner building still stood after the earthquake, but was destroyed by fire.
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 26   Spectators of San Francisco’s raging fires, April 1906.

AFTER THE FIRE the newspapers published across the bay in Oakland. The Examiner teamed up with the Oakland Tribune, the Chronicle and the Bulletin went to the Oakland Herald, the Call and the News were printed at the Oakland Enquirer’s plant.

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 27   Prizefighter James J. Jeffries selling oranges ‘for the benefit of San Francisco sufferers.’

The year following the earthquake Hype Igoe also moved to New York. “I had left San Francisco — in ruins.” From 1907 on he worked on Hearst’s New York American art staff for a few years, then transferred to the New York Sun as a boxing columnist, later to the Tribune, and finally as a member of the World’s sports staff. Eventually Igoe would give up drawing cartoons for full-time employment as a sporting columnist.

      

 28   San Francisco’s daily life goes on after quake and fire.

 29   Ruins on Market Street.

…Nights when the snow is piled up outside, Corbett and I get together, light a couple of stogies and cry over the old photographs of San Francisco friends and places… — TAD Dorgan, quoted in South of Market Journal, May 1929 

 30   ‘The famous TAD’ in a future ad, Feb 8, 1919.

THANKS to Matthew O’Brien for the opening photograph!

COMING SOON, PART II 
TAD Dorgan and Friends in New York.

Most TAD work shown here is from the Denver Post.
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March 2018, Eddie Campbell has a new big book out on Tad, Swinnerton, and other cartoonists: The GOAT GETTERS; Jack Johnson, the FIGHT of the CENTURY, and How a Bunch of Raucous Cartoonists Reinvented Comics — see HERE.