The Life Of a Legendary Cartoonist

 

The Great Gluyas Williams

On the Happy and Not So Happy

Job of Cartooning

by Rick Marschall

One of cartooning's natural talents, an "artist's artist," the gentle genius Gluyas Williams was asked for an autograph in 1932. He responded to the aspiring cartoonist (named Tom Sanders) with more -- a hand-written letter. 

Mr Williams at the time was a nationally admired cartoonist who recently had switched his prodigious work from Life magazine to The New Yorker; also drew for other publications; produced a daily newspaper panel for John Wheeler's Bell Syndicate (many featuring the urbane character Fred Perley); was illustrating many books, most notably the collections of Harvard classmate Robert Benchley; drew advertising art... and much more. An unending fount of brilliant humor, flawlessly executed, and (as the owner of many Gluyas Williams originals, I can attest) drawn almost always perfectly -- that is, almost never a correction or cross-out. Amazing.

There was joy in his work -- or at least satisfaction. He never showed malice, though he focused (and titled) his series "life's little foibles." His was a happy world, inhabited by petite bourgeoise folks, going about everyday tasks with which his comfy middle-class readers identified. He never aimed for slapstick nor guffaws; rather comic irony and chuckles.

In fact, Gluyas Williams told me (for I became a friend at the end of his life) that very early in The New Yorker's days he actually scolded the magazine's founder Harold Ross who wanted one of his submissions to show more physical humor. Mr Williams returned the artwork unchanged and explained that the best humor was understated. Ross agreed, and this exchange possibly changed the trademark tone of New Yorker humor forevermore. Gluyas Williams was a modest man, and I cannot believe this story was an empty boast. Not even a full boast, just a memory of an exchange.

Quietly (the typical mode) Mr Williams slipped into semi-obscurity later in life. Brian Walker of the Museum of Cartoon Art edited the National Cartoonists Society album in the 1970s, compiling biographies of living and dead cartoonists, and listed Gluyas Williams as "deceased." In a Nietzschean sense, to some I suppose he was. 

On a visit with Gluyas Williams exactly 50 years ago, I took his photograph. (He was then living in a nursing home, not for any disability of his, but to be with his wife who was infirm.) I interviewed him -- versions have appeared in Cartoonist PROfiles, The Comics Journal, and nemo magazine. I asked him to counter-sign a book he had illustrated exactly 50 years before that -- an "association-piece" that was an inscription by the author, the brilliant Robert Benchley to his fellow Life staffer, Robert E Sherwood, later an award-winning playwright and assistant to Franklin Roosevelt.       

Reverting To Mr Williams' fan letter of 1932. "I am very glad to send you my autograph, and I hope that you will realize your ambition of becoming a cartoonist. It's lots of fun (at times) to be one, but there are lots of days when I'd rather be a brick-layer." An urbane reflection of frustration -- perhaps short-lived in Williams World -- not a primal scream but a primal sigh, just as might have been quietly vented by Fred Perley.

It should be noted here that there is no record of a Tom Sanders, whether a young lad or middle-aged aspirant in 1932, afterward being a professional cartoonist. We will check the documents of the brick-laying profession...

  

INSIDE LOOK -- THE BULLPEN OF EARLY HEARST CARTOONISTS - III: George McManus

"Let George Do It!"

And McManus Did, 

Many Times Over

We have visited, via rare archival material from King Features Syndicate archives, legendary cartoonists from the protean days of comic strips. George Herriman, Tom McNamara, and editor Rudolph Block thus far. Photographs, specialty drawings, data; the only deficiency -- out of our control, as it was "out of control" in 1917 -- is the insipid poetry that serves as promotion. But, that is why the book was produced, so we must endure. (And there are some valuable facts that leak through...)

It is interesting, and a well-known aspect of the Birth of the Comics, that commercialism played a major role. Comics were weapons in circulation wars between publishers. They received boosts -- creative freedom, vast publicity, and cartoonists treated like stars -- to assist in their acceptance by the public.

The "wars" also featured cartoonists themselves as weapons, objectives, prizes, and goals. many of the great early artists of the Funny Pages switched employers and venues, sometimes dissatisfied with their employers (we have documented that Block seriously annoyed numerous of his cartoonists to the point of their quitting Hearst)... but usually having their services bid and outbid by hungry publishers.

There is a story -- if not true it virtually encapsulates the truth of the times -- that T E Powers spent an afternoon in a Park Row bar, not working for Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World nor William Randolph Hearst of the Journal, but receiving reports from office boys how his salary was going up and up as the two publishers bid against each other for his services. (Hearst won out.)

Frederick Burr Opper drew for the New York Herald (and Puck Magazine) until purloined by Hearst. Rudolph Dirks was hired away from Hearst by Pulitzer; so was Bud Fisher with the assistance of syndicate pioneer John Wheeler. Winsor McCay drew for James Gordon Bennett's two newspapers before Hearst hired him away. George Herriman drew for the World but eventually settled in the Hearst stable. R F Outcault, whose Yellow Kid can be cited for inaugurating this crazy transmigration, worked for Pulitzer, then Hearst, then Pulitzer again, then the Herald, then Hearst until his retirement.

In the eyes of the voracious publishers (benign godfathers they were, when all is said and done; or wet-nurses) there was no bigger star in their constellations than George McManus. He had attracted the attention of Pulitzer in their original working environs of St Louis; then McManus drew for Pulitzer's New York World.

McManus the cartoonist had a short gestation as a struggling stylist; soon his artwork was polished, handsome, mannered... and funny. As a creator, he created multiple strips starring in multiple titles. His premises were funny, and his narratives flowed like stage-plays. In fact his several creations did become Broadway musicals. And his characters appeared on the market as toys and in games.

Probably the most popular of his strips was The Newlyweds, a one-premise strip (as most early comics were) about an obstreperous baby. When McManus switched to Hearst he continued the strip but renamed it Their Only Child!, finessing a sticking-point of other mutinies like Mutt and Jeff and The Katzenjammer Kids whose titles became bones of contention.

McManus created another strip for Hearst, a Sunday page called The Whole Bloomin' Family. It is curious to note that Bringing Up Father, which commenced full-term as a Hearst feature in 1913, never was a Sunday page until six years later. After that it became the major strip among Hearst and King Features' properties for years. It owned the front pages of the Hearst chain's Sunday comic sections until supplanted by Blondie in the early 1950s.

In the 1917 promotion book, McManus was allowed to illustrate the stars in his galaxy including characters he had created, and left, at Pulitzer's shop. We see the eponymous star of Let George Do It; Rosie and her Beau; and Panhandle Pete. In addition, Snookums Newlywed and his parents; the Whole Bloomin' Family; and Jiggs and Maggie of Bringing Up Father. 

 

By the way, and speaking of the Newlyweds and their only child (italics aside), we have a reprint book of daily strips from the New York World. It is from 1907. The strips appeared earlier in the year in the newspaper, not to mention the book collection -- which challenges the convention histories citing Mr A Mutt as the medium first daily strip (November 1907). More to follow in Yesterday's Papers and in the revival of nemo magazine...

AT THE INTERSECTION OF FUNNY AND FUNNY -- CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND BUD FISHER

 AMERICA'S FAVORITE

FUNNY-MAKERS OF THE 1910s MEET

by Rick Marschall

If a poll had been conducted in the early 'teens in America -- and there might indeed have been such surveys -- despite the heavy competition, it is certain that the nation's favorite comedian was Charlie Chaplin; and the nation's favorite comic strip was Mutt and Jeff.

Chaplin burst on the scene in 1914, and was an immediate hit. His tramp character evoked sympathy, affection, a bit of derision, and even identification, all at once. Seemingly overnight he was a major star of the nascent "movies"; there were Chaplin dolls and toys; and there would be two comic strip featuring him as a character (one would be drawn by the newcomer E C Segar, years before Popeye). In 1915 he was writing, producing, and starring in a series of shorts for Keystone; Mutual, Essanay, and United Artists in his lucrative future.

In newspaper comics, Bud Fisher was the virtual father of the daily strip, certainly the first successful one. After Mr A Mutt wowed readers in San Francisco, Fisher moved to New York, was hired by William Randolph Hearst, introduced a second-banana, Jeff; and -- where have we heard this before? -- had a national sensation on his hands. Toys, dolls, sculptures (!), lapel pins, and comics' earliest successful daily-strip reprint books flooded the nation. A coupon-clipping promotion of a Boston newspaper proved that the public would be interested in comic-strip compilations, and the Ball Publishing Company produced five reprint books during the 1910s. 

Here is the cover of Volume 4, published in 1915, the year Chaplin hit it "biggest" in moving-picture theaters... and the year that Mutt and Jeff was so popular that (thanks in part to the legerdemain of syndication pioneer John Wheeler) Bud Fisher slipped away from Hearst and drew his strip for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

In a "meeting of the mirths," we see in my copy of this book that the funnyman Bud Fisher inscribed it to his cinematic counterpart, Charlie Chaplin. (Even though he spelled Charlie's name wring. So, he didn't win any spelling bees...) And the book has Charlie's bookplate! This is how he saw himself at the beginning of his career -- the drawing (alas, unsigned) show the Tramp, rather more bedraggled than usual, as a new arrival in the Big City.

Chaplin recently had arrived in America from England as a member of Fred Karno's music-hall troupe (Stan Laurel, his young understudy) and this indeed might have represented his very first impressions of America. 

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.