Stripper's Guide

Noted Preacher-Editor's Son Won Success in Cartooning
Burris Jenkins, Jr., Whose Father Edited K. C. Post, Noted for Sports Work, Sees Big Field for Pro and Con Editorial Cartoons

Burris Jenkins, Jr., of the New York Journal-American, who has an enviable reputation as a sports cartoonist and also does outstanding work on news assignments in his serious moments, is one of the few metropolitan newspaper artists who writes as cleverly as he draws.

Son of the one-time preacher-editor of the Kansas City Post who today is the Missouri metropolis' "first citizen," 42-year-old Burris Jenkins, Jr., inherited his father's ability to drive home a point. Dr. Jenkins still is spellbinding the largest congregation in Kansas City every Sunday. In New York, every day except Sunday, his son uses pen and ink to send home to readers his unusual sports ideas with the impact of a baseball against a catcher's mitt.

Literary Sentimentalist

A literary sentimentalist if ever there was one, Mr. Jenkins long ago left the beaten path of sports cartooning and many of his verses turned out with his daily cartoon sparkle with a spontaneity seldom displayed by writing artists.

His wide following among sports readers of the old New York World, where he broke into metropolitan journalism in 1921, and of the New York Journal and the Journal-American since 1931, has grown with a succession of rib-ticklers like one he did last May on the eve of the Kentucky Derby. Entitled "If Wishes Were Horses," it was Jenkins' parody of the current song hit, "Three Little Fishes," illustrated cleverly with Chico, Challedon and Technician in piscatorial roles as the "Three Little Wishes" looking down from the opening bars of the song on the verse and an equine shark named Johnstown. Here's how it ran:

Writes as Spirit Moves Him

A "daily double" like that may wow the sports fans, but it's a little too much to expect any newspaperman to do the trick every day. So his contract with the Journal-American - his fourth signed with the Hearst evening paper - requires Jenkins to do a twin trick at typewriter and drawing board only twice a week. In recent months, however, the artist has done fewer than two articles weekly. Instead of a story or verse he turns in an extra cartoon, under an arrangement with the newspaper. He writes as the spirit moves him, several times a month.

Because his batting average for timely topics is 1.000 and his cartoons with few exceptions pack the punch of a ring champion, it was surprising to hear that this outstanding sports cartoonist seldom attends sporting events. To him every baseball game is the same old story - something he's seen before. He hasn't seen many full baseball games in recent years, and even World Series games fail to interest him after the 7th inning.

Jenkins attends principally the championship fights and the most important races and football games, yet his cartoon always has the dramatic touch of a dyed-in-the-wool devotee of that particular sport.

His own sports cocktail consists of yachting and golf - and frequently he delays work on the next day's cartoon while he pursues the elusive pill and an even more elusive 80 on a golf course near his home in Pelham, N. Y. He has broken 80 but several times in his life and it's a sure bet his copy will arrive late at the Journal-American on the day he thinks he's going to break 80 again.

Deadline a Daily Adventure

Making his deadline is a daily adventure for Jenkins and his secretary, Herbert Storlie. His cartoon is supposed to be at the Journal-American office at 9 each evening, but it seldom arrives earlier than 11 p.m. Sometimes it's the wee small hours of the morning of publication that Storlie dashes into the Journal-American to catch a bit of engravers' hell to be passed on to his boss.

Jenkins has an unusual temperament when it comes to his drawing board. Often he cannot get started until darkness descends on the Hudson River and casts its peculiar spell on the artist fighting his deadline in a thirteenth floor studio on Riverside Drive. His mind works best at night, and the late sunsets now often find him just beginning his next day's cartoon after long pursuit of an idea through the afternoon.

Right now cartoonist Jenkins is trying to "reform" with respect to his unorthodox working hours, and has set 11 a.m. as the time for his arrival at the studio from his home at Pelham, Westchester county. He reports progress but the 9 p.m. deadline is still a daily bugaboo.

Occasionally Mr. Jenkins delves into serious topics. At such times he faces his ever-recurring dilemma- whether to hit heavy subjects daily or to continue skimming the cream off the sports subjects upon which his reputation has been built.

A night of indelible memory for newspapermen and parents, May 12, 1932, when the body of kidnapped Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., was found, brought this cartoonist's pen into swift action. After hearing the radio bulletin in his home, Jenkins poured a father's hatred of the unknown murderer into a dramatic cartoon which he rushed to the Journal for publication the following day. It depicted Uncle Sam holding aloft Old Glory and the battered body of the Lindbergh child above the quotation:

"My Country 'Tis of Thee."

During the trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, Mr. Jenkins did a notable series of cartoons on courtroom scenes. For here he was in his element - interpreting the drama of a significant news event into a news cartoon with a few pungent captions to give the busy reader the entire situation for the day at a glance. Last year, at the trial of Jimmy Hines, he also found an opportunity to do his unusual reporting in keynote sketches and captions.

Sees Big Field for News Cartoons

Mr. Jenkins believes there is a big field for news cartoons and for pro and con editorial cartoons-giving both sides of a question presented to the reader.

"I couldn't say that cartooning in general needs a renaissance," he said in answer to a question, "but I do think a fresher and more forthright presentation in cartooning would be more convincing to a public educated above the old-fashioned school of cartooning."



Cartooning, he continued, is the "quickest way" of putting over an idea. "The visual reaction can hit you so much quicker than a column of type. A well thought out cartoon can tell the reader the story in a second. One that sticks out in my mind is one Rollin Kirby did after a submarine disaster some years back. It showed a diver tapping on the side of the lost submarine and was titled 'Taps.' One word and a picture, and you've got it all."

By an "educated public," the cartoonist explained, he means "a public, brought up on radio, that is greatly interested in and is familiar with politics." People have a more thorough knowledge of what is going on about them, "so that if you throw the old type of cartoon at them with only one viewpoint presented, they just don't believe it.

"The public's got to believe again that a newspaper can have ideals and a heart. There are two sides to any argument and the side a newspaper has decided is right can be stressed along with a fair presentation of the other side in such a way as not to insult the public's intelligence.

"Cartoonists should be on the level and not hold anything back from the public. Nowadays the readers often think there must be something in it for the paper or it would not be plugging a certain policy."

Two Brothers Are Newspapermen

Burris, Jr., is one of three sons of Dr. Jenkins, who was the Kansas City Star's war correspondent before he became editor and publisher of the Kansas City Post under the Bonfils and Tammens ownership. All three sons have become newspapermen. Burris' younger brothers, Paul A., 40, and Logan, 28, are owner-publisher and city editor, respectively, of the El Centra (Cal.) Imperial Valley Post-Press. Paul worked on the Post and Star in Kansas City before he went to California three years ago. Logan started as a reporter on the Denver Post under Bonfils.

Labels: News of Yore

Lardner, Powers To Do Comic Strip For Bell
by Stephen J. Monchak, 8/19/39

A new sports writer - artist team entered the syndicate field this week with announcement by Bell Syndicate that it has prepared for release Aug. 21 "Buck Hanson of the Badgers," a daily cartoon strip depicting the adventures of a baseball player.

The writer-artist team is made up of John Lardner, North American Newspaper Alliance syndicated sports writer, and Grant Powers, veteran sports cartoonist.

They Know the Game
Friends for years but working together for the first time, both Lardner and Powers bring to their strip a first hand knowledge of the great American pastime gathered during years of covering the major league teams. Their character, who will cavort in the strip the year around, Lardner describes as "a southpaw pitcher with a southpaw brain but a right-handed heart."

Lardner, 28, a newspaperman since he left Harvard in 1929, has established himself as a leading sport columnist in 10 years. He first went to work for the Paris Herald, European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, and got his early newspaper training under Stanley Walker, then Herald Tribune city editor, now editor of the Philadelphia Evening Ledger.

With an unusual style of sports reporting, Lardner has acquired a reputation as a humorist, following, it appears, in the footsteps of his father, the late Ring Lardner, famous American humorist. NANA has distributed young Lardner's column, "From the Press Box," since 1933. He also writes a weekly column, "Sport-Week," for Newsweek magazine. Married, he is the father of one child.

Powers Now Free-Lancing
Starting out to be an architect, Cartoonist Powers' career was sidetracked by the World War and he was assigned to mapping the war's battlefields for the National Museum. During those days, he also was a regular contributor to Stars and Stripes.

He joined the staff of the New York Daily News in 1921, and remained there for 17 years, illustrating the sports columns of Paul Gallico and others and covering sports on assignment.

The Buck Hanson strip (then titled Buck Haney - Allan) appeared for a time in both the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune in 1937. Resigning last year from the News to free-lance, Powers does his work in his cottage at Auburn, Maine.

Bell this week also announced Sept. 18 as the release date for "Old Timer", a daily panel drawn by Ed Wheelan, creator of the comic "Minute Movies" for King Features Syndicate, believed to be the first comic strip to introduce serious continuity and straight drawings.

Wheelan, veteran penman, after leaving behind the art editor's post on the Cornell Widow, college monthly humor publication, drew cartooons for the old Brooklyn Standard-Union. He subsequently worked for the New York Journal, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Call, and the New York American. It was on the latter paper that his "Minute Movies" strip was created.

Note from Allan - has anyone seen "Old Timer"? I've never found a sample.

Labels: News of Yore

T. E. Powers, 69, Retired Hearst Cartoonist, Dies
Favorite of Presidents, His Political Cartoons Were Nationally Known

Thomas E. Powers, 69, political and satirical cartoonist for the Hearst newspapers for nearly 40 years until his retirement in 1937, died Aug. 14 at his home in Long Beach, Long Island, N. Y., after a long illness. His wife, Mrs. Louise H. Powers, two brothers and a sister survive.

Mr. Powers' political cartoons had a wide following and two elflike characters, "Joy" and "Gloom," with which he enlivened his drawings-always signed "T. E. Powers"-became one of the trademarks of his work during a career which made him one of the country's best known and most successful cartoonists.

Favorite of Presidents

A favorite cartoonist of the late President Theodore Roosevelt, his work attracted the attention of other Presidents, and the late Calvin Coolidge was so amused by one caricature of himself that he asked the cartoonist for the original. That letter, on White House stationery, was one of Mr. Powers' most cherished mementos.

Mr. Powers first attracted the attention of Theodore Roosevelt when he pictured the President threatening tall, silk-hatted figures labeled "The Trusts" with the then famous "big stick." His satirical thrusts at "grafting politicians" or others whose right to public office he challenged, however, usually were tempered with broad humor.

The veteran penman's cartoon series, syndicated to Hearst papers in many states, included "Mrs. Trubble," "Never Again," "The Down-and-Out Club," "Sam the Drummer," "Married Life From the Inside" and "Charlie and George."

The veteran cartoonist retired two years ago because of illness, though up until last September he turned out an occasional drawing at home. Since early this year he had been confined to bed or a wheel chair. On Saturday he took a turn for the worse. His butler found him dead early Monday.

Using a relatively simple line drawing technique, which looked easy to duplicate but was not, Mr. Powers had a gift for caricature. His pungent comment in pen and ink drawings on the fads and foibles of the day enlivened the editorial pages of Hearst newspapers from coast-to-coast. Possessor of a keen wit and a sage philosophy, he had the ability to transfer these qualities into a biting picture editorial with a few sure, quick strokes of the pen.

Mr. Powers was born in Milwaukee on July 4, 1870. He moved to Kansas City, where he was educated in public schools and got his start working for a lithographer at $2 a week. In 1906, after his cartoons had attracted nation-wide notice, he gave an Editor & Publisher interviewer the following account of his youth:

"I was born in Milwaukee . . . but before I was old enough to appreciate the product on which the 'fame' of that fair city rests, my 'cruel' parents dragged me away to Kansas City. I had to stay in the latter place until I could earn enough money to make a 'get away.'

"I began to draw pictures at a very early age. One of my first efforts was a portrait of my teacher sketched on the schoolroom blackboard. I was too modest to sign the picture but the teacher discovered its author and I received my reward.

"When I was about 17 years of age I went to work for a lithographer who estimated that I was well worth $2 a week. I also received a goodly amount of advice on the subject of saving money. But, in spite of all he said, I squandered my money, with carelessness, recklessness, and negligence.

"My employer said that I would never be able to draw. I was offended and resigned. My first newspaper work was in Chicago on Victor Lawson's Daily News. I brought in some sketches and submitted them to Lawson, who accepted them and offered me a permanent position."

Mr. Powers later worked for the old Chicago Herald and in 1894 was offered a job in New York with the Evening World, after the late Arthur Brisbane had seen and liked his work. When Mr. Brisbane entered the Hearst service in 1896, Mr. Powers transferred with him to the old New York Evening Journal.

The characters "Joy" and "Gloom" which he used so often, cavorted in the corners of his cartoon. If optimism was in order, "Joy" chased "Gloom," and vice versa. "Gloom" was a mournful imp with a black beard, and "Joy" wore an eternal grin.

Mr. Powers also drew "John Q. Taxpayer," stripped down to a barrel.

For many years Mr. Powers had owned a farm near Norwalk, Conn., but since his illness became serious, he had not visited the place. He once wrote: "My favorite recreation is farming."

Note from Allan: not mentioned in this obit is Powers' distinction as the first American to draw a newspaper color comic strip.

Labels: News of Yore

Holman Renews Contract; To Do New Daily Panel
by Walter E. Schneider
Editor & Publisher, 7/8/39

Holmania, a virulent but harmless form of in(s)anity rampant in recent years in "Foo Clubs" of adolescents and detected in the high school generation’s jargon expressing the comic page “foo-losophy” of cartoonist Bill Holman, seems to be spreading. The Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News Syndicate July 1 renewed the Holman contract for two years and this week added to "Smokey Stover" and "Spooky," the Sunday half-page comic strip vehicles for the cartoonist's "foosayings," a new daily panel named "Nuts and Jolts."

The new comic, two and three columns in size, will consist of Holman gags and his inexhaustible supply of "fool-osophic" mottoes. "Zipper," a nondescript dog with a curiosity complex who has cut capers heretofore in one of Mr. Holman's numerous daily comic strips, will appear Thursday as a panel under its own name.

"Nuts and Jolts" Included

The syndicate, Mr. Holman explained, is concentrating his cartooning efforts in the daily field under the titles "Nuts and Jolts" and "Zipper" because the numerous titles used previously were "somewhat confusing." These included "Problems Made Easy," "It's All in Fun," "There's One in Every Family," "Something Ought to Be Done About This," among others.

To look at Mr. Holman you'd never suspect that he's the man behind all this zany humor appearing now on the comic pages of some 90 daily and Sunday newspapers. Thirty-six, and a bachelor with his eye on the right girl, he grins quite innocently all the way up to his bald spot above his forehead, as he confesses he "thinks so much about this foo stuff that I'm beginning to lose my own identity."

During the interview Mr. Holman let us in on his secret - the origin of the word "foo" which tickles juvenile funnybones when it appears in such mottoes as "Fifty-four Forty or Foo," to use one of his fooier (fooey, he's got us doing it) tomfooleries.

"It's just a silly word that doesn't mean anything," the cartoonist confided. "About ten years ago when I was doing a panel for Collier's I needed a name for a car and used 'Foo.' It tickled me and I started using it often on badges or license plates or wherever a space filler was needed."

It's a Mania

The word insinuated itself into every Holman cartoon. It became a sort of mania with him and by the time he signed his first contract with the Tribune-News Syndicate in 1935 to do "Smokey Stover," his "foosayings" were decorating the walls of every drawing in that strip. With the dog with the gloved tail and all manner of mice and men carrying signs inscribed with his nonsensical mottoes, the comic with a firehouse background went like a house afire with the younger generation.

Within the last foo years scores of Foo Clubs have been organized independently by high school and college boys whose first official act is to elect cartoonist Holman "honorary foo" or honorary president. Fraternity dances often take on a foo motif with Holmanisms plastered all over the walls and at one of these hops recently a huge cardboard "Spooky" was made the vehicle for announcing dance numbers and amusing the dancers with Holman "foo-losophies." To wit:

"A critic says a sharp nose indicates curiosity. A flattened nose indicates too much curiosity."

The Holman brand of humor is strictly slapsick, of the "Hellza-poppin" variety. Anything goes, so long as it is considered funny. It reminds one of the custard pie throwing of early film comedians.

Foo Fans, Foo Pipes

According to Mr. Holman, more than 100,000 copies of 10 cent "Big Little Books" on Smokey and his firehouse chief, "Cash U. Nutt," who smokes a double pipe, have been sold. Nickel and penny books also have appeared with these and other Holman characters. Foo has made such an impression on blase New Yorkers that a metropolitan tobacco shop makes up to order the fire chief's familiar foo pipe and a number have been sold at $2.50 each to foo fans. And speaking of foo fans, an Indiana admirer of the strip turned out last fall a silly symphony called "What This Country Needs Is Foo."

Considering the fact that Holman started from scratch four years ago as a syndicate cartoonist and today is earning in the neighborhood of $1,500 a month, his career might be called successful. It began at birth, Holman insists, and in his typical cartoon screwballese here's his autobiography:

"To make a long Foo short, here is the dope, and I do mean me. I was born in the state of frenzy, but for present purposes let's make it Indiana. At an early age my father died and I was sent out into the world to make a living for my mother, one cat with a sore tail, and no kitten. This all happened in Napanee, Indiana.

His Autobiography

"My first job was running a popcorn machine for the local dime store. This is considered excellent training for a comic artist and no doubt accounts for a certain corny touch which so many of my gags seem to have. At 16 I was working in the art department of the Chicago Tribune. Having lost my eraser, I realized I could afford to make no more mistakes so Scripps-Howard made the next one and hired me. For the next two years I drew no crowds but plenty of drawings. My strip act laid an egg, the art editor threw it at me and I was on my way to New York.

"After seven years of itch and drawing a kid comic for the New York Herald Tribune I entered the magazine field. The following five free lance years were happy and profitable. Hundreds of my drawings infested the pages of Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Life, Judge and Everybody's Weekly of London. This work drew the attention of the Tribune-News Syndicate and I was asked to submit a Sunday feature. The outcome was "Smokey Stover,' 'Spooky,' the cat, seven daily cartoons and Foo.

"I have always liked firemen. And now that I'm being paid to draw about their adventures, I can tell you I'm just crazy about them."

Note from Allan: the 'new' panel Nuts And Jolts mentioned here was the one Holman took over from Gaar Williams on his death. Holman took over the panel in July 1935, and, as described here, originally used a number of different titles. The panel did indeed settle down to be called Nuts And Jolts on July 3 1939.

Labels: News of Yore

Today I'm going to start on a new series of posts relating news stories from Editor & Publisher from 1939. Here's the announcement of the new military adventure strip Navy Bob Steele. Interesting to me was that they seemed to want editors to think of the new strip as a complement to Superman. Considering the great syndication success of the superhero strip, I suppose I can understand McClure hoping that another adventure strip could ride its coattails.


Half-Pages by McClure (9/23/39)

"Navy Bob Steele," a half page Sunday strip in full color, by Lieut. Wilson Starbuck, U.S.N.R., is being offered by McClure Newspaper Syndicate. Its introduction will come in mid-November, the syndicate said, at the same time that "Superman," now a daily strip distributed by McClure, appears in Sunday half page size. The latter comic, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, of Cleveland, was introduced last January.

The Bob Steele strip, which will be sold separately or with "Superman," will be "the inside story of the United States Navy," according to the announcement. Many of the incidents were inspired by active service experiences of Lieut. Starbuck, who at the age of 19 won a commission and was placed in command of U.S. submarine chaser No. 20 at New York in 1917. During the war he also served on the U.S.S. Shawmut and engaged in mine laying in the North Sea. After the armistice he was transferred to the air detachment of the Atlantic Fleet, where he learned to fly. He is now a senior grade lieutenant in the Naval Reserve.

"Superman"’s debut in the fall as a Sunday strip will bring new laurels to two youths in their early twenties who conceived the idea for their strip during their days in Cleveland high school. The strip deals with the adventures of the sole survivor of a cataclysm on a distant planet, sent to earth as a baby on a small rocket ship. In manhood "Superman" becomes a reporter and uses his gifts of strength and super-intelligence to combat evil-doers. Shuster is the artist and Siegel does continuity on the strip.

Labels: News of Yore

Here's one last Philadelphia Record strip before we change the subject. Heine Himmelbleu is just another in a practically infinite series of strips ridiculing Germans. This one portrays accents so thick that the reader has to decode the dialogue almost like a puzzle. In this case the work is worth it as the gag is well and skillfully told.

The strip ran on the Record's Sunday humor page 1/28 to 5/19/1912, and was penned by a fellow who signed himself R.Pechner (when he bothered to sign at all). Pechner's only other known comic strip credit was Highbrow McAllister, a short-lived feature that ran in the New York Evening World in 1909.

Labels: Obscurities

Continuing with our Philadelphia Record strips, here's an interesting one. As we discussed way back when, Willie Green was the Record's marquee strip - it ran for at least two decades starting in 1907. However, back in the days when cartoonists were allowed vacations, Willie Green cartoonist Harris Brown began occasionally taking time off in 1911. In place of the vacationing Willie Green strip came this strip, Cousin Sammy Green.

Apparently the Record considered Willie Green to be a big draw for their Sunday edition, so the replacement strip, by John F. Hart, was designed to be its doppelganger. The premise was that Willie had a cousin, Sammy, who engaged in the same sort of adventures as did Willie. Sammy would relate his escapades in the form of letters to Willie.

Cousin Willie Green debuted on December 10 1911, and would continue to spell Brown's strip on a regular basis through at least 1916 (the extent of my research thus far).

Labels: Obscurities