Monday, January 11, 2010
News of Yore 1925: Fay King's Recipe for Success -- Pretty Girls and Eating Onions
Oh, Such a Soft Heart Has Fay King!
Not a Bit "Hard Boiled" Is the Creator of "Girls Will Be Girls," for She Will Not Draw an Ugly Girl—So There!
(reproduced from Circulation, February 1925)
(Illustrated by the Author—or Should the Editor Say, Illustrations Annotated by the Artist?)
No doubt all of us have secret ambitions though we may never voice them or reach them.
I had a secret ambition, but I voiced it and have reached it!
I am doing a comic strip!
Many is the time I sat at my desk turning out my regular daily story and little cartoon, looking with longing and envy at the favored folks who do "the funnies."
What must be their joy working each day in those little squares, following the career of the creatures they have created—imaginary folks that have become very real to everyone!
Surely work like that must be fun!
Well, since starting my own strip, which I call "Girls Will Be Girls," I have found the fun is work all right— but I do enjoy doing it!
Being a girl, I decided that girl topics would be more in my line, and that my strip should have lots of girls, and all kinds of girls, and deal with the ambitions, loves, hopes, disappointments, harmless deceits, and daily changing fashions so dear to the heart of every girl, no matter how young or old she may be!
Working girls, society girls, lazy girls, busy girls, and girls of every variety and walk of life I hope to introduce along with their problems, and I think it is going to be great fun!
Blondes, brunettes, bobbed hair and long, tall girls and short girls, fat girls and lean girls—but all PRETTY girls!
My girls are all pretty, because I have not the heart to make them otherwise when a turn of my pen can make their destiny!
They are good dressers and popular!
Their beaux are all nice looking, too; because even if a man is short, or fat, or bald he can be attractive!
This is truly a day in which "girls will be girls" much as we once said "boys will be boys."
I have long harbored the thought that a strip about Girls done by a Girl might be made quite interesting, and that's why I am so interested in doing "Girls Will Be Girls."
[Note from Allan -- Fay King's Girls Will Be Girls ran in Hearst's tabloid New York Mirror -- if there was a syndication attempt it was a failure. According to Jeffrey Lindenblatt the strip ran there from June 24 1924 to March 19 1925 -- in other words it was canceled only a month after this breathlessly positive article ran in Circulation.]
Labels: News of Yore
Comments:
I'm ignorant about Fay King, and when I Googled her the internet seemed largely ignorant as well. The art example on Lambiek looks much nicer than these.
I'm most taken by the autobiographical spin they say her strips took. This is a very contemporary idea, I don't know about much "indy comics" stuff happening in the 20s.
But the article sounds positively fannish
I'm most taken by the autobiographical spin they say her strips took. This is a very contemporary idea, I don't know about much "indy comics" stuff happening in the 20s.
But the article sounds positively fannish
Hi Smurf --
Fay King gets little coverage mainly because her work straddles two genres. Her cartoon-illustrated column, which she did for many years, was no great work of literature, nor were her cartoons much better than amateur work. However, the combination of the two had an undeniable charm. Her prose was always breathless, like the above, but she was so personable in her writings that I'm sure folks of the day felt a kinship to her. She was also very up front about her personal life. She certainly kept no secrets about her stormy and at times violent relationship with Battling Nelson for instance. That sort of thing certainly kept the housewives fascinated when they sat down to read the Mirror.
--Allan
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Fay King gets little coverage mainly because her work straddles two genres. Her cartoon-illustrated column, which she did for many years, was no great work of literature, nor were her cartoons much better than amateur work. However, the combination of the two had an undeniable charm. Her prose was always breathless, like the above, but she was so personable in her writings that I'm sure folks of the day felt a kinship to her. She was also very up front about her personal life. She certainly kept no secrets about her stormy and at times violent relationship with Battling Nelson for instance. That sort of thing certainly kept the housewives fascinated when they sat down to read the Mirror.
--Allan
