WHEN AL CAPP SANG OUT OF TUNE

 

Folk Singer Joan Baez 

(somewhat) immortalized in Li'l Abner

by Rick Marschall

Al Capp and his Li'l Abner character Joanie Phoanie

The year was 1967. The times have been a-changin' -- because those days of protests, riots, free love, folk music, the "sexual revolution," and the drug culture seem like a world away from us today. In fact, those days were a world away from, even, 1963. Yeah, the Sixties, man.

Well, a bit of a personal tale will pop up here. My "mind" raced back in time because last week the iconic folk singer Joan Baez had a birthday. I was in college and to paraphrase a Bible verse, I was in that generation but not of that generation. But the counter-culture, especially its music, was hard to avoid.

Whatever fertile ground there was for a cultural paradigm-shift was suffused by the Vietnam war. One of the leading "protest singers" was Joan Baez. Other singers included her on-again/off-again lover Bob Dylan. Hippies and Yippies would make courtroom-headlines the next year. And drug advocates like Dr Timothy Leary infested campuses and airwaves. 

And, oh yeah, cartoonists. A growing generation of Underground artists congregated in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. But this is a story about the poster girl of the era, so to speak -- the folk singer Joan Baez.

... at least that is how the cartoonist Al Capp perceived her. The creator of Li'l Abner for years had been a noted liberal. He typically upset the apple cart of the Establishment; he aimed at the personalities and policies of the Right; and enjoyed the blowback. In the late 1960s he changed -- although he later told me that he never moved: society changed, and he just kept attacking hypocrisy and absurdity.

Whatever. When the hippies were ascendant, Capp determined that Baez was their muse, and he built storylines in Li'l Abner around her. He depicted hordes of flea-bitten hippies who belonged not to SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) but to SWINE -- Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything. And their heroine was an ugly, haggish, odoriferous folk singer named Joanie Phoanie. 

Subtlety, never a long suit of Capp, had abandoned him. But he was also being asked to run for the US Senate (from Massachusetts, against Ted Kennedy) and he was looking for bludgeons, not rapiers. Was Joanie Phonie a caricature of Joan Baez? TIME magazine reported:

Joan Baez thinks so. In fact, she’s so sure Al Capp’s cartoon character is a take-off on her that she has demanded an apology and the immediate execution of the comic strip abomination. “Either out of ignorance or malice,” she wailed, “he has made being for peace equal to being for Communism, the Viet Cong and narcotics.” Just as captiously, the cartoonist growled that Joanie wasn’t Joan. “She should remember that protest singers don’t own protest. When she protests about others’ rights to protest, she is killing the whole racket.”

 

Racket or not, the character and storylines were frequently in the headlines, beyond the comic pages. Capp's political temptations were derailed by temptations of another sort; allegations of sexual assault -- ironically, of young college girls -- soon subsumed much of his attention. But he remained firmly on the Right, and politics generally permeated the last years of his hillbilly picaresque.

I had connections with Capp at the time that were, ironically, separate from the comics world. I was active in national college youth groups, all political. Swimming upstream, we might say, but instructive and invigorating. Capp was sort of a hero of ours. So I saw him at conferences and speaking events, and helped arrange meetings. Not too many years later I became Comics Editor at his syndicate; and eventually I conducted the last interview he granted. 

At one time John Steinbeck wrote that he thought Al Capp deserved the Nobel Prize and was the greatest satirist since Laurence Sterne. At the end of his career even his unabashed comics fans were rather embarrassed by his comic-strip work. In my interview, however, when I asked what period of his career he thought was the best, he said, "The stuff I did last week." But then, still self-aware, he added, "Every creator has to believe that. If he doesn't, he should quit."

In fact Al Capp did quit, shortly after the interview.

He was morose; he had trouble breathing (yet he chain-smoked); his wooden leg no longer fit properly. His work lives on -- overall, an astonishing body of clever and quality... satire. Magnificent blowin' in the wind, Joanie's friend might say. She lives on too, still singing, at age 84.

A self-caricature Al Capp drew for me when I interviewed him. He was hardly as cheerful as here. He gratefully accepted the encomium "satirist," but I have written where other writers and artists have satirized people and philosophies and movements, Al Capp satirized human nature.

     

'WE WUZ DOGPATCHED!'

 A vignette, a step back in time, regarding a legendary cartoonist, a neglectful studio, and the Golden Age of comics collecting.

More than (gulp!) half a century ago, I was cartoonist, columnist, and editor at the Connecticut Sunday Herald. In college I had been active, during the turbulent '60s, in conservative student publications and campus politics across the country. In that capacity I got to know Al Capp a bit -- the Li'l Abner cartoonist was enjoying his new "home" on the Right (he had been a liberal icon for years) -- with more contacts than through the comics world.

And within a couple years, I became Al's editor at the New York News Syndicate. And I conducted what would be the last interview with him. On the basis of that interview I was contacted by Al's nephew Tony (his agent) and Simon and Schuster to write, or ghost-write his biography. That never happened: a story for another column.

But while I was at the Herald, the legendary columnist and my mentor Harry Neigher said that he spotted a classified ad in, I think, Saturday Review of Literature. Someone was selling vintage original artwork, send for info. Li'l Abner and Popeye piqued our interest. Someone named Don Brown offered original daily strips ca 1935 for, if I recall, $35 each -- even then, ridiculous bargains.

The "list" was minimal; no reproductions or specific dates; and the seller was a Don Brown, no phone number listed, at a PO Box number in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I sent a check for all the available cash I had and trusted to fate (there was the feeling that Don Brown was cover, perhaps for someone who knew, or preferred to hide from, Al Capp, whose studio was in Cambridge).

Vintage Popeyes primarily floated my boat. None arrived, but a few Abners did... but short of my blind order. Then followed months of inquiries, complaints, networking with other collectors. Since I knew Al, I threatened to make inquiries... at which point "Don Brown" sent a stack of Li'l Abner Sunday tabloid tearsheets from the mid-1930s. Fine, but nothing rare or special, nor desired by me, not negotiated by the mysterious Brown.

I wrote to Al about the whole affair -- never undertaken with any hint of his involvement: quite the opposite -- and received the note from his secretary. In essence, they frequently cleaned the office, and disposed of such treasures (um, not her characterization of 1930s Segar and Capp originals). A few months later I appeared with Al at a conference... asked him directly about a Don Brown and stacks of Abner and Popeye originals. He was supremely uninterested, and didn't even remember why he had multiple Segar originals.

If "Don Brown" is still alive and out of jail, he might be the only person, even among many swindled collectors of the 1970s, who has more regrets than we do. Those original drawings have increased in value a little bit since the Good Old Days...

         

WHO'S THAT LITTLE CHATTERBOX?... AND WHO IS 100 YEARS OLD!?!

Happy Annie-versary!

We celebrate the fecund year of 1924 as the centennial of seminal comic strips and the period when the “story strip” asserted itself.

Continuity in strips was not unknown previous to 1924; and before the decade ended many fine-tuned categories developed. But a hundred years ago the narrative, sequential, day-to-day (even “cliff-hanger” mode) comic strip became a staple of daily newspapers. The actual centennial is worth noting, because daily strips – “story strips,” as designated by the National Cartoonists Society, and in the public’s perception – are virtually synonymous with the art form itself: “To Be Continued,” or in the French, “À suivre …”

We recognize the legendary comic strip Little Orphan Annie, whose significance of course extended beyond the comics page to broader popular culture, merchandise, movies, Broadway, songs, politics, and influentially, America’s cultural consciousness. No less we praise her remarkable creator Harold Gray.

Prior to 1924, the newspaper comic strip largely was a Sunday product. There had been comics in daily papers, but with some exceptions they generally consisted of random gags, revolving characters, and expanded panel-cartoon formats. Sunday pages almost obligated cartoonists to design episodes rather than continuities; daily strips begged for longer narratives, even if last-panel gags were payoffs. Daily strips also brought readers back to the funny pages every day, surely a commercial imperative. An unwritten role of the colored comic supplement had been to appeal to children, but the black-and-white inner pages of newspapers were instead the domain of adult readers. And it is interesting that only by 1924, humor – let us specify the slapstick humor of comics’ first 25 years – finally shared its spotlight with melodrama, family strips, working-women themes, sports, and other thematic preoccupations.

Heiress to all these developments in 1924 was Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray. The “Who's that little chatterbox? The girl with the auburn locks” gathered, codified, and built upon these trends. She is significant, more than various precursors, before after Annie took America by storm, certain floodgates opened. For instance, only a year later cartoonist George Storm and writer Edwin Alger (whose name evoked Horatio Alger) drew from the well of boys’ weekly papers and dime novels and created Phil Hardy / Bobby Thatcher; other strips soon followed: pastiches of humor, pathos, adventure, mystery, and suspense (and essential appeals to younger readers, at least initially). Little Pathfinder Annie!

Cartoonist Harold Lincoln Gray married twice and never had any children… except for Annie. He was born on his parents’ farm in Kanakee IL in 1894; was graduated from Purdue University in Indiana and served as a bayonet instructor in the Great War; and secured a position with the Chicago Tribune, eventually as an assistant to Sidney Smith on The Gumps. This strip careened between humor and melodrama; it was a family strip with vaudeville gags when humor was the objective; otherwise, human-interest fare. Domestic crises were frequent and of such narrative interest (ghost-written by a Chicago jeweler named Sol Hess) that The Gumps became a sensation, first in the Midwest, then nationwide. 

Harold Gray’s period on the strip was marked by artwork clumsier than Smith’s own, and bad lettering of the strip’s heavy dialog. Whether it was Gray’s creative urges, or his notice of Smith’s sudden, magnificent income, he became determined to produce his own strip. As legend has it, he drew samples of a strip based on a street gamin named Otto, and showed them to the Tribune’s publisher “Colonel” Robert McCormick (or his cousin, “Captain” Joseph Patterson of the New York Daily News) and was told about Otto, “He looks like a pansy. Put skirts on the kid.” Renamed to evoke James Whitcomb Riley’s poem about Little Orphant Annie, an American icon was born.

If there was a story-strip pioneer that staked a claim before Little Orphan Annie it was The Gumps itself. Historians have not noted the fact that Gray’s initial premise was a loose approximation of Sidney Smith’s strip. It was perhaps not a mistake that Little Orphan Annie loosely was a junior version of the strip on which Gray assisted: self-contained Sunday humor; a loose daily storyline (Annie found herself in the household of characters not meant to carry over to the next episode – a shrewish wife and a rich war profiteer named Warbucks); domestic disputes and resolutions; lectures and prolix monologues.

If this premise and setting doesn’t sound especially grabbing, many readers might have agreed, so adjustments were made. Annie embraced a doll named Emily Marie, to whom she confided – soon to be succeeded by the more attentive dog named Sandy. To the extent that Warbucks was henpecked in his own house, the billionaire and his ward bonded; and he became “Daddy.” Annie eventually ran away from that home, to a next adventure. But as we know, “Daddy” remained as a character and frequent (though never legal) guardian; Mrs Warbucks disappeared from the strip altogether; and month by month Annie began to be adopted, as it were, by the reading public.

Gray’s strip grew in popularity. Through the ‘20s the premises lurched from adventures (haunted houses) to locales (desert islands) to children’s domains (circus settings). Annie was both vulnerable – her inexplicable, and unexplained, lone status guaranteed that – but fiercely independent. She asserted doses of justice for bullied kids, with a strong right hook when needed, and with stern lectures for good measure. By the end of the 1920s there were Orphan Annie dolls, toys, games, reprint books, songs, and all sorts of clothes and merchandise.

By the end of the decade Gray’s art, too, evolved to a passable level of attraction. For a strip that skirted with realism, even hard reality, Little Orphan Annie spent years ensconced in a world of humor-strip architectonics. Details were few; Gray never learned to draw his characters running in realistic fashion, for instance; props and background elements were scarce. And one of his artistic cliches was baked-in from the start: characters with empty ovals instead of eyes. Perhaps Gray was inspired by comics’ other parvenu (like Warbucks) in Bringing Up Father by George McManus. Readers seldom remarked about the eyes of Jiggs, Maggie, and company. In Annie, it became a matter of chatter. Historian Coulton Waugh wondered whether Gray intentionally sublimated the emotion conveyed by eyes so that readers would supply their own feelings.

There was nobody in America who benefited more from the Great Depression that struck in October, 1929, than Harold Gray – or, let us say, Annie herself. With hard times came a transformation in Little Orphan Annie that far outpaced new sets of premises and dramatic opportunities. The vicissitudes of life during the Depression became a virtual character itself – a motif.

Suddenly the poor girl was plausibly poor indeed; and millions of readers identified ever more keenly with her vulnerability. Annie discovered, defended, and assisted the destitute and desperate. Harold Gray revealed himself as a champion of President Hoover’s Rugged Individualism. She preached, through marvelously crafted stories beyond mere perorations and dialog, the virtues of self-reliance and integrity. Annie took on schoolyard bullies, crooked businessmen, corrupt politicians, and odious union leaders. She lectured the lazy and encouraged the dispirited. In story after story she became an inspiration for millions who endured privation during those crushing hard times.

Reflecting (or encouraging) the editorials in her home papers, the Tribune and News, Annie spoke for the “ill-feed, ill-clothed, ill-housed” but resolutely rejected the new occupant of the White House who coined that phrase. Franklin Roosevelt had no bitterer opponents (and perhaps none more effective) than Gray and Annie… which bothered millions of her fans not at all. Little Orphan Annie became a cultural colossus during the Depression, with movie serials, a popular radio show (sponsored by Ovaltine and its iconic decoder-ring promotion) and an ever-expanding plethora of toys, games, books, and licensed items.

Gray’s art took a quantum leap during the 1930s too. It coincided with the addition of his cousin Ed Leffingwell (and later Ed’s brother Robert) as assistant. It might be assumed, because their biographical details are sparse, that Ed was responsible for a remarkable improvement in Annie’s graphic maturity, but a consideration of facts suggest otherwise, except perhaps for improving the strip’s lettering. The excellence in layouts, panel composition, shading, and visual details occurred in Annie before either Leffingwell’s employment; and lasted beyond them. And such qualities existed in Little Joe – a Western strip that remains a mystery in strip history. Well drawn and written, it differed (other than setting and characters) not at all from Little Orphan Annie. Premises, outlines, dialogue, character portrayals, politics, and artwork all surely were by the same hand that produced Annie’s adventures. However… signed “Leffingwell.” Strange, a major cartoonist ghosting a separate, minor, strip; but evidently part of his cousins’ compensation.

Matching the transformed artwork in Annie was a major advancement in character delineations and mature plots. In addition to his stock players of petite bourgeoisie and corrupt bureaucrats, Gray hearkened to the siren-calls of 1930s fantasy themes: “Daddy” Warbucks recruited a cast of allies with mysterious and sometimes supernatural powers. Punjab, a vaguely Sikh giant; the Asp, a deadly Asian; and Mr Am – plausibly a representation of Divinity, a white-bearded man “who had lived forever” and exercised amazing powers – were among little Annie’s new friends.

More than an interesting cast, Harold Gray invested extraordinary literary devices into his plot construction. He named many of his characters by the tool of “personification,” the method used by writers like John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress. Like Dickens also, when he named characters Warbucks, Fred Free, Mr Pinchpenny, and Mrs Bleating-Hart, he was being clear, not bankrupt. In a unique way we find parallels between Little Orphan Annie and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn – Huck’s river, as a nonliteral metaphor, found life in Annie’s omnipresent roads… to the inevitable next town.

Further – in one of comics’ most remarkable feats of creativity – Gray took upon himself, for years, the device of having every day’s strip represent a different day’s action. In Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy, sometimes a brawl extended over a whole week. When I was a syndicate comics editor, I frequently counseled against a writer have one phone conversation in a strip last more than three days of “action” in the daily paper. But Gray managed to have every day in Little Orphan Annie represent a separate day in the narrative. Not easy; try it!

Another technique Gray mastered was seldom attempted by contemporary masters of continuity strips Raymond, Foster, Gould, or Caniff, beyond their occasional use of the universal “Meanwhiles.” In Little Orphan Annie stories, Gray often showed an occurrence that became the crux of a sequence, a mystery to be solved, a secret to be revealed. Largely through soliloquies and exchanged dialogues, he offered readers the multiple viewpoints of multiple characters… not “versions” of the truth, but insights into characters’ motivations. Gray’s stories were layered, rich, complex.

The pervasive mood in Little Orphan Annie was one of solitude if not loneliness. Annie was, essentially, a loner; and her world was filled with empty rooms, deserted streets, and lonely streets. Often at nighttime. Gray made readers aware of corners, dark shadows, and ceilings – almost metaphorically oppressive. Contextually, his figures, as Al Capp once described to me, had “all the vitality of Easter Island statues.” No mistake or shortcoming, however: Gray knew the world he constructed. Substituting narrative for action – there fewer fights in Little Orphan Annie than in almost any other story strip – readers were treated to soliloquies – “internal monologues,” in literary terminology. By this technique Gray identified with Hugo, Pirandello, and, especially when the personalities were sympathetic, Goethe.

The little orphan in the iconic red dress who began her career as a waif vaguely resembling Mary Pickford had become a monumental avatar, an American symbol. When the European war raged in 1939, Gray, like his editors and 80 per cent of Americans, opposed American intervention; and in their view, the despised Franklin Roosevelt was scheming to involve the United States. But when war was declared, Annie “enlisted.” Gray had her form the Junior Commandos, doing volunteer service and war work. He constructed a sequence where a Black kid suffered prejudice but – with Annie’s lecture on tolerance – he was welcomed into the club.

By that point, however, the liberal establishment in American press and politics had grown to despise Annie and her creator. Because the Junior Commandos wore JC armbands in their war-work, critics called Gray a crypto-Nazi. A popular magazine profiled Little Orphan Annie in an article called “Fascism in the Funnies.” The opprobrium of Gray as a right-winger became as common as jokes about her red dress or blank eyes.

Harold Gray and Annie powered on. The cartoonist’s politics, if anything, grew more strident in the post-War years, and when Communists were being exposed by Washington hearings and in the new medium of television. Annie’s “physical” world yet evolved – darker than ever it was: Gray substituted solid blacks for his trademark cross-hatch shading. Until self-conscious graphic-novel artists in our day, Harold Gray drew comics closer to film noire sensibilities than any artist of his time. Alex Raymond was a Romantic (in the glory years of Flash Gordon); Milton Caniff was an Impressionist in Terry; and Chester Gould was comics’ Expressionist in Dick Tracy. Harold Gray? In his last phase, the 1950s and ‘60s (he died on May 9, 1968) he produced comics noire. (I would add that Roy Crane, in his Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy, was master of the swashbuckling picaresque in comics. His strip’s centennial is also this year. We will give Roy Crane, Wash Tubbs, and Captain Easy their due in coming weeks in Yesterday's Papers.)

Little Orphan Annie was not created on an ivory tower. Harold Gray loved the people he depicted and defended. He and his wife Winifred drove round-trip every year between their homes in Westport CT and La Jolla CA. He talked to people and took notes (I curated an exhibition related to the debut of the Annie movie, for which I was obliged to research Gray’s archives in the Mugar Library at Boston University. The amazing Gray had retained virtually every original, and all notes, maybe even random receipts, from his long career).

It was rumored at when Harold Gray died, he intended that Little Orphan Annie die with him; perhaps Warbucks himself was meant to die. Despite the fact that the strip had slipped in circulation during the turbulent 1960s, it was a valuable property the syndicate would not allow to die. As syndicates often do, the Tribune-News Syndicate shamefully botched Annie’s afterlife. A succession of amateurs and miscast professional cartoonists abused her (even I auditioned at one point, trying my best to evoke Gray’s 1930s look, and revive his worldview; mercifully my work was declined). Evenetually and ironically I became Comics Editor of the syndicate, by which time they had accepted my advice, and re-ran sequences from the real 1930s.

All to no avail, commercially. When the “property” was licensed for a Broadway musical, an unconscious parody found favor with a 1970s public. Harold Gray might have spun in his grave into low-earth orbit, however. At that point the great Leonard Starr, whose On Stage had run its course, was hired to produce the Annie strip. Starring characters that resembled the originals (can I say “50 shades of Gray?), he produced a fine strip that was, however, Annie; not Little Orphan Annie. Despite the fact that they had lived only miles apart in Westport, my friend Leonard ironically had never met Harold Gray.

It is a shame that many Americans have not met Harold Gray, so to speak, or his iconic masterpiece Little Orphan Annie. I devoted an issue of my old NEMO Magazine to the strip, and I kicked off a reprint series for Fantagraphics. Arlington House and IDW are publishers that similarly assembled anthologies. The viewpoints of Harold Gray – personal and political – and the immense craft he brought to Little Orphan Annie, are irretrievably bonded. In this Centennial year, it is just that they properly find their places with the greatest of American creators and creations in any genre.

This essay, in somewhat different form, appeared in this year's digital-only Program Book of the San Diego Comic-Con International.

MUG SHOTS

Caricature is a special category of art. It is midway between portrait and parody; reality and exaggeration; truth and...

Well, it usually can be closer to Truth, in its special manner, than a photograph. Caricaturists focus on more than likenesses, but seek to capture the essence of their subjects -- what is "beneath the surface," character traits displayed through a single image, and (more than in paintings or even photographs) the personality of the victim.

Among the first caricatures studied as such are sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. He presumably was interested in drawing some people's faces because of their bizarre or exaggerated features -- huge noses, malocclusions, warts and all. Yet Leonardo exaggerated even more than nature graced (or cursed) these people who faced the world. So to speak.

Many caricaturists are serious artists and painters. But very few artists -- not even all cartoonists -- have the gift of caricature. One needs the special talent of a discerning eye (and, some might say, a venomous spirit) to be appreciated as a caricaturist. In a further anomaly, if it be such, not every cartoonist or caricaturist can succeed in auto-portraiture -- self-caricature. Milton Caniff, for instance, could depict anything under the sun, even exaggerated drawings of others. But when he attempted a humorous self-caricature, he routinely looked more like Lou Costello. Fred Lasswell finally drew a dashing matinee idol when asked to sketch himself.

Can I go a step further? The biggest challenge of a caricaturist is choosing to draw a profile. If you are drawing someone and want to amuse his or her friends, draw a profile, but if you want to please (or be paid by) an actual victim... avoid a profile. Most of humanity never sees themselves in profile, except when being fitted by a tailor in a clothes store's multi-mirrored platform; or in the occasional photo snapped at an event. (Or when booked by the cops...)

The legendary humorist and monologist Jean Shepherd was a talented cartoonist. I once drew a caricature of him in the days when he sported a goatee (he said I made him look like "a cross between Lincoln, Lenin, and Castro...") and he gave me a valuable tip seldom expressed elsewhere. He advised me to study and depict the neck of the subject; the size, shape, tilt of the head would follow, thus to capture of attitude as well as the likeness. But he agreed: avoid profiles!

And most difficult of all, challenge upon challenge therefore, is for the cartoonist to draw his or her own caricature in profile. You cannot pose or study oneself and draw at the same time. Yet... it is not impossible. I will offer here some self-caricatures in profile -- drawings that I think have succeeded.

The upcoming revival of NEMO Magazine, with which Yesterday's Papers will connect as a web-arm, will have a running feature, "About Face!" sharing great caricatures and caricaturists. You might see some of these people in days to come: 

Peggy Bacon. If you think she might have been hard on herself, here is her word-description of herself: "Pin-head, parsimoniously covered with thin dark hair, on a short, dumpy body. Small features, prominent nose, chipmunk teeth and no chin, conveying the sharp, weak look of a little rodent. Absent-minded eyes with a half-glimmer of observation. Prim, critical mouth and faint coloring. Personality lifeless, retiring, snippy, quietly egotistical. Lacks vigor and sparkle."

At the other extreme, kinder to himself and possibly to humanity at large, was the great German cartoonist Wilhelm Schulz. He drew for the legendary Simplicissimus magazine from the 1920s till the '50s, was also a poet and a book illustrator.

The great political cartoonist Homer Davenport spared no invective when he caricatured Washington's movers and shakers. He was no less flattering to himself.

I watched Al Capp draw this for me, and he used no three-way mirrors, honest. He was not as jolly as pictured, however. It was near the end of his life. His wooden leg no longer fit well, and he was dying of emphysema. Yes, he chain-smoked all afternoon. "I can do one of two things," he said. "Quit smoking or stop breathing," as he lit another cigarette.

An easy formula -- bald head, bow tie, broad smile? Not automatic. But longtime political cartoonist Cy Hungerford was exactly as advertised -- jolly, outgoing, enthusiastic.

Similar angle to Cy's was Harry Hershfield. Some people believed he looked like his character Abie the Agent, but this disproves it...

The great ZIM -- Eugene Zimmerman -- drew many self-caricatures through the years, 1880s to 1920s, but few in profile and few as fun as himself at the lithographic stone, at work.

 

           

A Crowded Life in Comics –

Associations.

By Rick Marschall

It is the hardest thing in the world these days, especially for a writer and former political cartoonist like me, not to spot an association or make a reference to the turbulent events in the news these days. Even when I thank the mailman I want to voice my opinions on current headlines; if I sign a receipt I want to add a comment and a caricature or two.

So. I will randomly address, here, random cartoon-related items of random moments of my Crowded Life in the comics world. “Associations”… because everyday lately logic is losing its association with… Whoops. Keep your hands on the wheel.

In the rare-book and collectibles games, “associations” are when an item has two interesting, often unexpected, and usually significant aspects. An “association copy” of a biography, for instance, might have the author’s inscription to the subject. I will share a few serendipitous “finds” I happened upon as a collector or as a friend of cartoonists. Fun surprises.

The first “association” is obvious – one famous cartoonist’s letter to another famous cartoonist. What increases its interest is the content, complaining about the comics business of the day, and the increasing headaches of producing a strip. By the contents we can see that Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie) and Al Capp (Li’l Abner) already have exchanged notes of mutual admiration – a surprise to cartoon historians, because at the time Gray was probably the most right-wing of strip cartoonists; and Al Capp – then – was an iconic left-winger. But, Leapin’ Lizards, in 1952 they were brothers under the skin.

Then we’ll have a couple lessons in browsing second-hand book shops and used-book sales: what not to do, mostly. As a bibliomaniac, when I have the time – and even when I really don’t – I try to take extra time to look at books that barely interest me or would be a duplicate; or presents itself as a downgrade from a book back home. For instance, years ago at a neighborhood book sale I saw a copy of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood. I had a copy, another first edition (it was a best-seller so is relatively easy to find), and in better condition, in my library. But… worth a look. Yes, it was. There was a bookplate, hand-drawn, by a previous owner: Norman Rockwell. The 30-second browse was a good investment. Especially at a neighborhood sale, where the bookplate went inexplicably unnoticed.

At a top-drawer New York City bookstore, in its rare-book room, I found a terrific copy of Chats et Autres Betes (Cats and Other Beasts), a deluxe, thick, heavy volume of drawings, paintings, studies, and lithographs of cats by the incomparable Theodise-Alexandre Steinlen. Steinlen during La Belle Epoque was known for cartoons, posters, social protest, calendar art… and cat drawings, maybe his favorite preoccupation and ultimately perhaps his great legacy. The volume is printed on heavy laid paper; its prints tipped in and covered with tissue guards – number 174 of a limitation of 500. It was heavy in more ways than one. When I arrived home I felt like I found a bargain. Not on the free endpaper but on a front interior page was the name and two addresses in her script of the previous owner… Edwina.

Edwina Dumm was the wonderful creator of the classic boy-and-his-dog strip, Cap Stubbs and Tippie. Edwina was a good friend, delightful hostess to my children whenever we visited her; and in fact years earlier she had shown me that very book, and said how special it was to her. As Tippie advanced through the years, the strip eventually co-starred Jaspurr, a… cat! And Edwina researched when she could, where she could.

Finally, I can remember this next little event like it was yesterday. I was in high school (so, it was not yesterday!) and went to a book sale on the lawn of a Methodist church in Englewood NJ. Already I had a homing instinct for these things. By the way, this is not a mystery, but places I have lived, or lived near, if they are “toney” towns – Greenwich, Westport, Bryn Mawr, Evanston, La Jolla, Abington – you are more apt to find better books, first editions, autographs, notable former owners’ tags, and association copies.

Anyway, on that afternoon in Englewood an attractive, decorative spine caught my eye. Very Art Nouveau. Nice binding. Hey, the author – and illustrator! – was Rose O’Neill. I then knew of her only as creator of the cute Kewpie dolls. Of course, and as shown by this book, she also was a writer and illustrator (often steamy romances), a poet, a sculptor (often erotic subjects), and an active and successful entrepreneur. The revival of Nemo Magazine will have a major profile and portfolio of her work, followed, I hope, by a major book.

It is obvious that I was happy enough with this “find,” but on the free front endpaper was a (beautiful, typically elegant) inscription by Rose… to the “dear” McManuses. A note inside confirmed that it was to Mr and Mrs George McManus, despite her misspelling of the Bringing Up Father cartoonist’s name. Maybe that’s why it was priced at only a quarter.

It sounds like I might be as happy with bargains as the “associations.” Not so, but they don’t hurt. I associate with bargains too.

♠—83—♠

A Crowded Life in Comics –

 Al Capp’s Own Crowded Life and Family 

 by Rick Marschall 

I knew Al Capp better through the conservative movement, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, than through cartooning. Nevertheless this Crowded Life I chronicle led me to interact in several ways and various times with him.

I also knew his brother Elliot Caplin, about whom not enough has been written in comics histories. Elliot was quiet, taciturn to the extreme; seldom registering emotion, forever with a pipe clenched between his teeth. He let his writing do the talking – Elliot, always anonymously, scripted a dozen or so strips through the decades.

… maybe more; some he co-created; some he scripted; some (like Broom-Hilda) he lived in a zone between plating a seed and “packaging” a syndicate presentation. Among the strips with his plots and dialog, or with various aspects of his fingerprints: Dr. Bobbs; Peter Scratch; Adam Ames; The Heart of Juliet Jones; Big Ben Bolt; Abbie an’ Slats; Long Sam; On Stage; Encyclopedia Brown; Best Seller Showcase; Dark Shadows; Buz Sawyer; post-Gray Little Orphan Annie; and others. More than Allen Saunders and Nick Dallis combined.

There was a third Capp brother, Jerry. For a while he handled business affairs for Al, but the L’il Abner creator largely considered Jerry a hanger-on, and for most of his career he hung around Elliot. Elliot himself was the quiet center of an active business career beyond his writing. He was on the staff of Judge magazine (“I put them to bed for good,” he dead-panned) and then was an editor of Parent’s Magazine. He parlayed his experience and Al’s success into Toby Press, named for his third child. It was a comic-book publisher mostly handling Li’l Abner titles.

A fourth Capp I knew, also. When I joined the staff of the Connecticut Herald out of college, as cartoonist and editor, there was an old fellow who shuffled through all the rooms every morning, dispensing lollipops to every desk. He had been with the paper since forever, I was told; probably since the 1930s in its glory days as The Bridgeport Herald. He was a pleasant old relic of the sales staff, and when, after a week or two, I became a recipient of Harry Resnick’s morning lollipops, I knew I had arrived.

Hesch Resnick had served as Al Capp’s agent when, as Alfred G Caplin, he proposed the L’il Abner strip to syndicates. It was Resnick’s advice to reject King Features’ meddling in the strip’s premise, and accept an offer from the smaller United Feature Syndicate.

It is not generally known that Elliot’s birth name was Elia Abner Caplin; so Li’l Abner was an in-joke from its inception. Al would refer to Eliot – never without his trademark wheezy laugh – as “that lovable idiot Elliot,” but affectionately. The pair had supreme admiration for each other. (Jerry became a Capp, legally.)

As I said, I knew Al Capp during the period when he multi-tasked, diverting attention from his strip to politics. Claiming he never changed his famously liberal stances that infused Abner for years, it was the leftward stampede in American politics that made him seem like a conservative.

Whatever. Almost overnight, as he lampooned hippies and limousine liberals in his strip, he found himself a favorite of William F Buckley; a guest on Firing Line and late-night talk shows; a newspaper columnist; and a speaker on the college circuit. Like Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro of our day, he was picketed and the object of protests. Allegations that he propositioned “co-eds,” as female students were then called, severely damaged his celebrity.

The recent issue of Hogan’s Alley has a first-person account of Capp’s lecherous advances (“amorous” is finally an inappropriate term in these cases); and there were other similar claims, most famously by Goldie Hawn from days before her own celebrity. Capp’s celebrity, but more importantly his credibility, was damaged.

The article has a sidebar reproducing a column by Jack Anderson, a prominent political writer of the day, about Capp’s peccadillo described by the writer. Another serendipitous connection (a "Crowded life," after all). I was Anderson’s editor for a while, believe it or not. Personal and political animosity fueled many of his “scoops.” His former boss, then partner, on the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column was Drew Pearson, who observed, and skewered, everything from his far-left perch.

Capp mercilessly lambasted Pearson (for many years a fellow liberal) in Li’l Abner. One time I asked Pearson about the bad feelings, and he would not confirm that when Pearson himself created (and thereafter "edited," but credited as a writer) the newspaper-reporter strip Hap Hooper for Capp's own syndicate, United, its hero was spoken of internally as a serious-world Li'l Abner type. A hillbilly who stumbled into situations. Capp was livid, even after the premise was somewhat revised – and the incident became one on a list of grievances Capp held against his syndicate for years.

It would not have been above, or beneath, Jack Anderson to be joyful in “exposing” the claims against Capp for his own “exposing” events. By the way, one of Anderson’s legmen in those days was Brit Hume, before ABC News’ White House beat, and as Fox News Channel’s Senior Analyst. Times have changed.

[Speaking of exposing, I have received many inquiries about me and Hogan’s Alley, prompted by my essays for Yesterday’s Papers and the announcement of Nemo Magazine’s imminent revival. Formally, I have not left Hogan’s Alley and in fact am on track to deliver an article for publication. I founded, or co-founded, the magazine, named it, invited the Art Director David Folkman to join the team; and I retain an equal-ownership position with Editor Tom Heintjes. Nevertheless this latest issue sees my name dropped from every category in the staff boxes. When Dorothy McGreal invited me to write for her excellent World of Comic Art, she specified that I should feel free to write elsewhere. After writing several articles for Cartoonist PROfiles, Editor Jud Hurd kindly blessed my writing elsewhere, and said his door was always open. The foregoing might answer the questions of some people, even if not mine.]

Back to Capp: Previous to the assault allegations, he had been discussed as a candidate against Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy… but all that collapsed.

So did his health and his leg. As a boy in New Haven, Al Capp was run over by a street car, and forever limped noticeably and bravely, and a bit awkwardly, on a wooden prosthesis for the rest of his life. In rare appearances toward the end, even at cartoonists’ events, he was “handled” by Eliot, helping Al walk and deflecting conversations, even from well-wishers.   

Back in cartooning’s turf, I acquired items from his crowded studio (organizational chaos must have run in the family: Elliot’s office in Manhattan was smaller than most people’s utility closets – but he never could lay his hands on proof sheets of his collaborations with, say, Lou Fine, Ken Bald, and Neal Adams – he knew how to pick ‘em!) and I conducted Al Capp’s last interview.

Some day, here, I will tell more of my interview, conducted after he very publicly retired Li’l Abner (“It simply is time for a fresh, new talent, to take my space”). Al was miserable. He had difficultly reaching the living room and settling in an easy chair; he complained of his emphysema – but chain-smoked (“It’s simple; I can give these up or stop breathing,” between drags). He complained, I tentatively recall, of diabetes. A joy for him, during that afternoon, was the presence of his granddaughter, a reporter for the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger. Tragically the following week she was killed by a car when she crossed a street.

He shared a lot with me that day. As I said, we’ll dive deeper in A Crowded Life, but I remember that he disputed the length of time Frank Frazetta assisted on Abner. And the wonderful answer to my question about the greatest humorists: he said the great American comic writers were all named Sol and Nat, representative of the anonymous radio-show staffers of the 1930s. He drew a terrific self-caricature for me that afternoon in Cambridge, looking as jolly as, sadly, he was not.

Al and Elliot liked the interview I conducted (published first in Cartoonist PROfiles) and wanted me to ghost-write Al Capp’s autobiography. So did Don Hudder, a friend who was Editor of Simon and Schuster. Tony Gardner, Al’s nephew and then agent, got involved, and eventually my modest fee was too high, and the book was published, “by” Al Capp. It was, frankly, a pastiche of my annotated interview in many places; and four-fifths strip reprints… from the recent past. The Best of Li’l Abner, which it was not; and scarcely claiming to be an autobiography. I still have Hudder’s letter apologizing for the slight and affirming that I could have made a good treatment even better.

I the meantime, it was, of course, a privilege to know and work with Al Capp – in two spheres of Crowded Lives, his and mine.

 👀 

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