Potrzebie
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Wood Chips #38: The comic strip Christmas party and the real-life Andy Gump
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Wally Wood documented "The Comic Strip Characters Christmas Party" in Mad #68 (January 1962). Rex Morgan M.D. tells Dick Tracy about surgery on chinless Andy Gump. Morgan refers to the entire Gump family, a curious gag line since the others, apart from Andy, did have chins.
Ironically, there was a real-life Andy Gump who had surgery. This was Andy Wheat, born in 1890 in Bay St, Louis, Mississippi. He had an infected tooth that led to the removal of his entire lower jaw. After cartoonist Sidney Smith met Wheat through his brother, Dr. Thomas Smith, a dentist in Bloomington, Illinois, he decided to use Wheat as the basis for a comic strip character. Wheat was 27 when The Gumps debuted in newspapers in 1917. Later, he legally changed his name to Andy Gump. Note that he is dressed like Andy Gump in the photo below.
The word "gump" was introduced by James Russell Lowell in The Biglow Papers (1848).
Wally Wood documented "The Comic Strip Characters Christmas Party" in Mad #68 (January 1962). Rex Morgan M.D. tells Dick Tracy about surgery on chinless Andy Gump. Morgan refers to the entire Gump family, a curious gag line since the others, apart from Andy, did have chins.
Ironically, there was a real-life Andy Gump who had surgery. This was Andy Wheat, born in 1890 in Bay St, Louis, Mississippi. He had an infected tooth that led to the removal of his entire lower jaw. After cartoonist Sidney Smith met Wheat through his brother, Dr. Thomas Smith, a dentist in Bloomington, Illinois, he decided to use Wheat as the basis for a comic strip character. Wheat was 27 when The Gumps debuted in newspapers in 1917. Later, he legally changed his name to Andy Gump. Note that he is dressed like Andy Gump in the photo below.
The word "gump" was introduced by James Russell Lowell in The Biglow Papers (1848).
February 12, 1917
May 31, 1924
Labels: gumps, wood, wood chips
¶ 8:08 AM 1 comments
Thursday, August 18, 2011
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In the world of Gus Edson's The Gumps, people could actually read The Gumps, as evident in the first panel when seen enlarged. But it raises a few questions. Had Min, week after week, read her own life story?
In the next to last panel, Edson curiously confused the gag. He could have moved the characters to the left so that the sign would not have been in Andy's sightline. If he could so easily read the sign, then no need for him to run to the optometrist.
This Sunday strip is from January 23, 1955. For a few earlier Gumps, click on the labels at bottom. All 20th century radio-TV situation comedies can be traced back to The Gumps. It was the basis for the radio series Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll developed as Amos 'n' Andy, such a success that it became the prototype for radio comedies and soap operas. Elizabeth McLeod has written extensively on this strip-to-radio evolution which can be read here. (Wait for page to load.)
Created by Sidney Smith, The Gumps began February 12, 1917. Here's how it looked on March 8, 1925. In 1922, when he signed a new contract with the Chicago Tribune, he was given a Rolls Royce (see ad below). Smith died October 20, 1935, in a head-on collision.
¶ 11:11 AM 3 comments
In the world of Gus Edson's The Gumps, people could actually read The Gumps, as evident in the first panel when seen enlarged. But it raises a few questions. Had Min, week after week, read her own life story?
This Sunday strip is from January 23, 1955. For a few earlier Gumps, click on the labels at bottom. All 20th century radio-TV situation comedies can be traced back to The Gumps. It was the basis for the radio series Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll developed as Amos 'n' Andy, such a success that it became the prototype for radio comedies and soap operas. Elizabeth McLeod has written extensively on this strip-to-radio evolution which can be read here. (Wait for page to load.)
Created by Sidney Smith, The Gumps began February 12, 1917. Here's how it looked on March 8, 1925. In 1922, when he signed a new contract with the Chicago Tribune, he was given a Rolls Royce (see ad below). Smith died October 20, 1935, in a head-on collision.
¶ 11:11 AM 3 comments
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Martin Landau, cartoonist
It's well known that Martin Landau was a cartoonist in the late 1940s for the Daily News. He was studying art at Pratt Institute at the same time, but he left the Daily News in 1951 to begin as an actor.
However, I don't recall ever seeing any of his artwork, so I went in search. I failed to find his illustrations for Billy Rose's column, "Pitching Horseshoes". I did learn that Rose's column was ghostwritten by novelist Bernard Wolfe, later author of the acclaimed dystopian sf classic Limbo (1952). Some readers were surprised to find that a supposedly true incident described in one Rose column was identical to the plot of the 1936 Evelyn Waugh short story, "Bella Fleace Gave a Party". Rose, who was probably equally surprised, claimed, "It's one of those stinking, unbelievable coincidences." Sounds like Rose couldn't wait to fire the writer who had put him on the hot seat. One of Rose's "Pitching Horseshoes" research assistants was Milton Subotsky, later the producer of Tales from the Crypt and other horror-fantasy films.
In Nik Fackler's Lovely, Still (2008), Robert Malone (Landau) is shown drawing early in the film. See screen shots above and below. According to Landau, he did not paint the self-portrait he works on later in the film: "The paintings were created by an artist from Omaha—where the movie was shot. He completely captured the feeling of my character, and the film." The painting is by Daniel Boylan, and some of his other expressionistic paintings are seen around Malone's house. For more Boylan, go here.
Landau's job at the Daily News led to work as an assistant to cartoonist Gus Edson on The Gumps. Edson also went to Pratt, so perhaps that was their connection. Interviewed by Mark Evanier, Landau recalled, "I started working at the News in New York doing illustrations in '47... or maybe it was '46. I was working for them while I was still in high school. Gus had a fellow working with him before me named Sam Hale. He was an old United Features cartoonist and he left. So after I'd been at the News for a few years, I became Gus' assistant. I started off lettering and doing backgrounds, and in just a few months, I was drawing whole strips by myself, usually the Sunday page. Gus had a continuity on Monday through Saturday but the Sunday page was an entity unto itself, and he eased me into doing it. At first, he'd write it and maybe rough it out, but pretty soon, I was doing the whole thing. I did it for about a year, maybe a little longer."
So if "a few years" means 1948 or 1949, then we can speculate that the Sunday strip for April 24, 1949 (below) is by Landau. If I've guessed wrong, I'm sure someone will surface to correct. The problem with calculating this is that Landau says he began at the Daily News when he was 17, yet some sources say he was born in 1928 and others say 1931. (See comments for Alex Jay's research confirming 1928 as correct.)
At any rate, a comparison with Edson's daily for December 8, 1952 (at bottom) shows distinctly different art styles.
On NPR, interviewed by Neal Conan, Landau remembered, "I started on the New York Daily News as a kid when I was 17 years old, as a cartoonist and illustrator, and I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit... It was a great job, actually. I'd go to opening nights, and the PR people would give me 8x10s of the dress rehearsal. I would go home, actually - I didn't have to go to the news building - and do a drawing of the cast, which would appear in a Sunday paper. If there were two openings that week, two drawings. The old fellow, Horace Knight, was an old English fellow who had that job was retiring. I had the ability to do that, but I knew I wanted to go into the theater. I mean, I wanted to act. And I knew if I got that job - which was, again, a cushy job and very well-paying job. My style was sort of an art nouveau style, an art deco style, as opposed Hirschfeld's, who had a very flowing line... And it was a different look, but it had a look."
Also see Film Threat and Mike Lynch Cartoons.
It's well known that Martin Landau was a cartoonist in the late 1940s for the Daily News. He was studying art at Pratt Institute at the same time, but he left the Daily News in 1951 to begin as an actor.
However, I don't recall ever seeing any of his artwork, so I went in search. I failed to find his illustrations for Billy Rose's column, "Pitching Horseshoes". I did learn that Rose's column was ghostwritten by novelist Bernard Wolfe, later author of the acclaimed dystopian sf classic Limbo (1952). Some readers were surprised to find that a supposedly true incident described in one Rose column was identical to the plot of the 1936 Evelyn Waugh short story, "Bella Fleace Gave a Party". Rose, who was probably equally surprised, claimed, "It's one of those stinking, unbelievable coincidences." Sounds like Rose couldn't wait to fire the writer who had put him on the hot seat. One of Rose's "Pitching Horseshoes" research assistants was Milton Subotsky, later the producer of Tales from the Crypt and other horror-fantasy films.
Landau's job at the Daily News led to work as an assistant to cartoonist Gus Edson on The Gumps. Edson also went to Pratt, so perhaps that was their connection. Interviewed by Mark Evanier, Landau recalled, "I started working at the News in New York doing illustrations in '47... or maybe it was '46. I was working for them while I was still in high school. Gus had a fellow working with him before me named Sam Hale. He was an old United Features cartoonist and he left. So after I'd been at the News for a few years, I became Gus' assistant. I started off lettering and doing backgrounds, and in just a few months, I was drawing whole strips by myself, usually the Sunday page. Gus had a continuity on Monday through Saturday but the Sunday page was an entity unto itself, and he eased me into doing it. At first, he'd write it and maybe rough it out, but pretty soon, I was doing the whole thing. I did it for about a year, maybe a little longer."
So if "a few years" means 1948 or 1949, then we can speculate that the Sunday strip for April 24, 1949 (below) is by Landau. If I've guessed wrong, I'm sure someone will surface to correct. The problem with calculating this is that Landau says he began at the Daily News when he was 17, yet some sources say he was born in 1928 and others say 1931. (See comments for Alex Jay's research confirming 1928 as correct.)
At any rate, a comparison with Edson's daily for December 8, 1952 (at bottom) shows distinctly different art styles.
On NPR, interviewed by Neal Conan, Landau remembered, "I started on the New York Daily News as a kid when I was 17 years old, as a cartoonist and illustrator, and I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit... It was a great job, actually. I'd go to opening nights, and the PR people would give me 8x10s of the dress rehearsal. I would go home, actually - I didn't have to go to the news building - and do a drawing of the cast, which would appear in a Sunday paper. If there were two openings that week, two drawings. The old fellow, Horace Knight, was an old English fellow who had that job was retiring. I had the ability to do that, but I knew I wanted to go into the theater. I mean, I wanted to act. And I knew if I got that job - which was, again, a cushy job and very well-paying job. My style was sort of an art nouveau style, an art deco style, as opposed Hirschfeld's, who had a very flowing line... And it was a different look, but it had a look."
Also see Film Threat and Mike Lynch Cartoons.
Plaque at Gus Edson Park in Stamford, Connecticut
shows Edson with his character Dondi.
Martin Landau and writer-director Nik Fackler.
shows Edson with his character Dondi.
Labels: fackler, gumps, gus edson, mark evanier, martin landau, pratt
¶ 3:53 PM 5 comments
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Death of Newspapers #7: Chicago Tribune cartoonists
This promotional film shows Chicago Tribune cartoonists at work: Walter Berndt (Smitty), Martin Branner (Winnie Winkle), Carl Ed (Harold Teen), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), W.E. Hill, Frank King (Gasoline Alley), John T. McCutcheon, Carey Orr, Sidney Smith (The Gumps), Frank Willard (Moon Mullins) and Gaar Williams.
January 5, 1936
January 12, 1936
May 16, 1948
November 4, 1928
This promotional film shows Chicago Tribune cartoonists at work: Walter Berndt (Smitty), Martin Branner (Winnie Winkle), Carl Ed (Harold Teen), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), W.E. Hill, Frank King (Gasoline Alley), John T. McCutcheon, Carey Orr, Sidney Smith (The Gumps), Frank Willard (Moon Mullins) and Gaar Williams.
April 25, 1926
November 2, 1924
First Little Orphan Annie Sunday page
July 4, 1926
May 9, 1921
Gaar Williams' The Artist
John T. McCutcheon's Injun Summer
Labels: death of newspapers, frank king, frank willard, gasoline alley, gumps, harold gray, little orphan annie, martin branner, moon mullins, sidney smith, smitty, walter berndt, winnie winkle
¶ 1:43 PM 0 comments
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Death of Newspapers #2: American Newspaper Repository
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To see RealPlayer video on the American Newspaper Repository at Duke University, use control-click on the heading above and then go to full screen.
This page on O. Henry as an illustrator and cartoonist ran in the New York World on May 24, 1912. Al Frueh's Barrymore caricature appeared in the World on December 9, 1923.
In 1999, author Nicholson Baker founded the American Newspaper Repository. The collection contains the only surviving long runs of the New York World, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. When Duke acquired this collection from author Baker a few years ago, Baker continued to maintain a website with full-color images from newspapers in the collection. I suddenly found a dead link to that site. Hence, this post. Link restored; see at top. The video above tours the huge facility needed to store the collection and also shows bound volumes opened on pages of illustrations and comics (Mutt and Jeff). Since neither site had the images Baker originally displayed, I made some of them available here. But now the link is restored; see at top.
Nicholson Baker wrote Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper to explain how the use of microfilm by libraries resulted in the trashing of books and newspapers, as outlined on the book's back cover blurb:
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Here is the correct link for the American Newspaper Repository.March 10, 1912
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To see RealPlayer video on the American Newspaper Repository at Duke University, use control-click on the heading above and then go to full screen.
This page on O. Henry as an illustrator and cartoonist ran in the New York World on May 24, 1912. Al Frueh's Barrymore caricature appeared in the World on December 9, 1923.
In 1999, author Nicholson Baker founded the American Newspaper Repository. The collection contains the only surviving long runs of the New York World, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. When Duke acquired this collection from author Baker a few years ago, Baker continued to maintain a website with full-color images from newspapers in the collection. I suddenly found a dead link to that site. Hence, this post. Link restored; see at top. The video above tours the huge facility needed to store the collection and also shows bound volumes opened on pages of illustrations and comics (Mutt and Jeff). Since neither site had the images Baker originally displayed, I made some of them available here. But now the link is restored; see at top.
Nicholson Baker wrote Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper to explain how the use of microfilm by libraries resulted in the trashing of books and newspapers, as outlined on the book's back cover blurb:
Since the 1950s, our country’s libraries have followed a policy of “destroying to preserve”: They have methodically dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers, cut up hundreds of thousands of so-called brittle books, and replaced them with microfilmed copies — copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. Half a century on, the results of this policy are jarringly apparent: There are no longer any complete editions remaining of most of America’s great newspapers. The loss to historians and future generations is inestimable.
To read the beginning of Double Fold, go here.
Double Fold came about after Baker was contacted by comics historian Bill Blackbeard. In the introduction to Double Fold, he explains how Blackbeard tipped him off to how libraries began to destroy books and newspapers after they were microfilmed:
Blackbeard's collection of newspaper comic strips went to the Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State, while Baker's collection went to Duke. The following is excerpted from Duke's "descriptive summary" of that collection:
The Gumps, Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1923
A man named Blackbeard told a reporter that he had a story for me... Blackbeard had a formal, slightly breathless way of talking; he was obviously intelligent, perhaps a little Ancient Marinerian in the way that lifelong collectors can be... Some of what Blackbeard told me I couldn't quite comprehend: that the Library of Congress, the purported library of last resort, had replaced most of its enormous collection of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century newspapers with microfilm, and that research libraries were relying on what he called "fraudulent" scientific studies when they justified the discarding of books and newspapers on the basis of diagnosed states of acidity and embrittlement... In 1967, filled with an ambition to write a history of the American comic strip, he'd discovered that libraries were getting rid of their newspaper collections... Unfortunately he was a private citizen--the library's charter permitted the transfer of material only to a non-profit organization. "I became a non-profit organization so fast you couldn't believe it," Blackbeard told me... He went around the country picking up newspaper volumes.
Blackbeard's collection of newspaper comic strips went to the Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State, while Baker's collection went to Duke. The following is excerpted from Duke's "descriptive summary" of that collection:
The American Newspaper Repository was founded in 1999 as a non-profit corporation in order to save a unique collection of original newspapers that would otherwise have been destroyed or dispersed, and to preserve and make available these landmarks of American publishing. Nicholson Baker, author of numerous fiction and nonfiction works, including writings on libraries, founded and served as director of the Repository in conjunction with research for his 2001 release, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper.
The American Newspaper Repository Collection dates from 1852 through 2004 and consists of approximately six thousand bound newspaper volumes and more than 11,000 unbound newspaper items, most of which came, directly or indirectly, from the British Library. Notable long runs include the World, the New York Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. There are also runs of foreign language and immigrant papers, such as the Yiddish Forward, the Irish World, the Greek Atlantis, trade journals, Communist papers such as the Daily Worker, and other political papers. Many of these runs apparently exist nowhere else in the original format...
American newspapers published some of the great writers and historical figures of the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The Repository's collection contains "first editions" and original copies of work by H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E.B. White, Joseph Mitchell, James M. Cain, Zona Gale, Israel Zangwill, Alexander Woollcott, Deems Taylor, Leo Tolstoy, Walter Lippman, P.G. Wodehouse, Frances Hodgsen Burnett, Joel Chandler Harris, Ida Tarbell, Grover Cleveland, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, Gertrude Atherton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.G. Wells, E.F. Benson, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, William Jennings Bryan, Heywood Broun, Rebecca West, Don Marquis, and Robert Frost. O. Henry was a staff writer for the World; almost all of his stories were first published there, often with illustrations. Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle was published in the Magazine and Story Section of the New York Tribune with Lofting's illustrations. Stephen Crane was a crime reporter for the New York Tribune; Ring Lardner was a columnist and sports reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Theodore Dreiser wrote a column called "Heard in the Corridors" for the St. Louis Globe Democrat...
The Repository is also in effect an archive of rotogravure printing. There are thousands upon thousands of photographs of minor and major historical figures--scenes of war, childhood, architecture, celebration, crime, and fashion--printed with a tonal depth that modern printing methods seldom equal. The Yiddish Forward, The New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune are particularly rich sources of rotogravure images.
The Repository collection is also rich in other formats. The World published the first crossword puzzles, in a little insert called "Fun." There are needlepoint patterns, Easter egg transfers, a profusion of children's games and activities, and sheet music by composers such as George M. Cohan. The newspaper hired illustrators from around the world to draw scenes of New York life. At the turn of the century the paper regularly published the work of cartoonists such as Richard Felton Outcault, creator of "The Yellow Kid" , Charles Green Bush, George Herriman, and Fanny Cory; the twenties caricatures of Al Frueh exist here in their original published form. The full color reproductions of paintings that appeared in the New York Tribune provide a visual history of the artistic taste of the early twentieth century.
Fanny Cory drew "No Trust" for the New York World (April 16, 1899)
September 30, 1923
July 23, 1901
Labels: barrymore, bill blackbeard, death of newspapers, double fold, duke, fanny cory, frueh, gumps, newspapers, nicholson baker, o. henry
¶ 8:50 AM 2 comments
