Stripper's Guide

Marjorie Organ, one of the first female artists to plant a flag in the world of newspaper funnies, was a gorgeous creature if not an overly gifted cartoonist. When she started producing comics for Hearst's New York Evening Journal in 1902 at the tender age of 16, no doubt the job was easily secured after a little flirting with a swooning editor. Her very first continuing feature was this one, Little Reggie and the Heavenly Twins. It was also her longest-running strip by a long margin, running regularly from October 27 1902 to February 3 1905. The strip was a one-note affair with pathetic little runt Reggie in thrall to a pair of twin beauties who abuse his ardor with cold calculation. One can't help but imagine that Organ was not completely unfamiliar with the concept of leading smitten men around by the, um, nose. It doesn't help Organ's case any that one source, a biography of Robert Henri (we'll get to him in a moment), claims that Marjorie's best friend was Helen Marie Walsh, a similar gorgeous red-head, and that they were quite the madcap pair.

In 1904 Organ began dabbling in other series for the Evening Journal, but they were all short-lived. She left the paper at the end of 1905, and about this time may have enrolled in the New York School of Art. Some say that she met fine artist and ladies' man Robert Henri at the school, others say that she met the influential artist at a dinner following an art exhibition on February 3 1908. The latter story doesn't seem to hold water since the supposed meet-cute had Henri effusing over her wonderful comic strip. Since Organ had been away from the Journal for well over two years, and her only other known credit was a short-lived strip for the New York World that wouldn't start until a week later, the story seems suspect.

In any case, the famed Ash Can School portraitist Robert Henri did indeed meet, paint, woo, and wed the beauteous Marjorie Organ in 1908 and that was the end of her newspaper career. Marjorie Henri did continue to dabble in art after she married but primarily seems to have played entertainment director to Robert's never-ending string of portrait subjects. In 1929 Robert died of cancer, and was followed shortly after in 1930 by Marjorie, struck down by the same disease at age 46.

Labels: Obscurities

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Monday, December 23 1907

Tuesday, December 24 1907

On December 23rd Herriman makes his final plea of the season for the Salvation Army, and then on the 24th gives a play at the Belasco the equivalent of a lump of coal in their stocking.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

(Cartoons magazine, April 1913)

Out in Minot, North Dakota, a little woman is teaching a district school. The teacher is well satisfied with her work, but, when the school day is over and the necessary hours have been given to the task set for her by the district board, this little woman takes up her drawing board and her pencils and sitting alone in her little room looks out across the wide expanse of a snow-covered country and dreams.

The district school house fades away and she is in a newspaper office hard at work on a cartoon that with each stroke of the pen shapes itself into a direct appeal to the women of the new day. Men may not understand it, but the women will, for it is a message from a woman to the women.

It is only a dream now, but Miss Emma M. Gordon, district school teacher in Minot, N. D., is sure that the dream is to come true. School takes up many hours of her day and the planning of future work takes many hours of her evenings, but still she finds time to work at her drawing board training herself for the future.

Already she is a cartoonist, and her drawings are appearing regularly, but she is not satisfied with her work, and so she continues with her school and devotes her spare hours to her cartoons.

Miss Gordon is a socialist, and she believes that when she has had an opportunity to speak to the women through the medium of her cartoons she will have many converts to her cause. She believes that the woman of today is a thinking being, not a stolid household drudge, and she is convinced that women cartoonists alone will be able to appeal to the women.

"Women," she says, "are today entering fields which for centuries have been occupied mainly by men. In many branches women, yea, children, are taking the places formerly held by men. Look at our factories, our mills!

"Can we not in this field show up by cartoons our present industrial system which takes the lives of men, women and children, and grinds them up into so much profit?

"Cannot the cartoon show the CAUSE of the social evil? When we do away with the cause, won't we do away with the social evil? As a socialist, I, of course, believe we can't do away with the social evil until you first change the system that is the direct cause of it. Why not show it from a socialist standpoint? Why not educate women by cartoons how to use their vote properly when they do finally attain their right to vote? When once women understand Socialism Capitalism is doomed.

"Women are home-lovers. Capitalistic newspapers have given them the impression that Socialism will destroy the home. That's an old bogey, used by Capitalism to frighten men and women away from Socialism. The way to treat 'bogeys' is to walk right up to them and investigate them.

"The  pen  of the  cartoonist   is  the  weapon  that  should  be  used  in ripping open these shams and a woman cartoonist working for the cause of Socialism could be able to present the woman's point of view in regards to our industrial, social and political questions.

"Of all the women I have ever talked with about Socialism these four objections—free love, against religion, destroying the home, and "dividing up"—seemed to be the only objections women have to Socialism. Can not some cartoonist—a woman—educate them to a knowledge of Socialism by destroying these bogeys? For they are but bogeys continually brought forward by the enemies of Socialism and bogeys that I could make short work of if space permitted.

"We need these women cartoonists to depict the woman's point of view as well as the world needs the men cartoonists who look at everything from the man's point of view."

Miss Gordon was born in Visnaes, a little town in Norway. When she was still a child her father died and the family removed to Haugesund on the west coast of Norway. There she lived an open air life, learned to love the sea and the mountains and the independent spirit of the natives. She was nine years old when the family left Norway for Minnesota. She lived in Glenville, Minn., until she was eighteen years old, when she accepted a position as teacher in a North Dakota district school.

Her first cartoon to be published appeared in the Minnesota Socialist, the organ of the Minnesota Socialist party, one year ago, and since that time she has contributed many strong picture editorials to that and other papers.

Labels: News of Yore

There have been quite a few comic series carrying the title of Home Sweet Home, here's one of the more obscure ones from the late-teens. Jack Wilson, who spent a few years at NEA in Cleveland in the mid-teens, was at World Color Printing in 1919 and produced for a very short while a revival of their old Handy Andy strip. It appears that this Home Sweet Home feature was probably produced for them at the same time, though I've never seen these strips with syndicate stamps attached.

Home Sweet Home was a quasi-daily strip. I say quasi-daily because it was obviously sold in batches to subscribing newspapers. In every one of the (few) papers where I've seen it the strip runs ROP on no consistent schedule. Earliest I've seen is in November 1918, the latest in November 1920. However, the latest I've seen it running even semi-consistently is mid-1920, so that was probably shortly after the final batch went out.

Labels: Obscurities

As an artist the shortcomings of Bernhard Gillam were many, but he was a brilliant cartoonist nevertheless, and, despite his artistic failings, he hit the nail on the head, when driving home a cartoon idea, more often than many of his technically clever brothers in the work.

Gillam knew of his failings and he was extremely sensitive to criticism. He resented being told that any of his work was out of drawing. He was once mortally offended by one of his fellow artists on the staff of Puck, who, being a new arrival and unaware of Gillam's feeling on the subject, remarked to the cartoonist, "Gillam, if your salary ever gets as much out of drawing as some of your pictures do, even with the assistance of the cashier, you will never be able to gain anything like a fair idea of how your account stands with Puck."

No hatter in the world would ever be able to secure designs for new models from the hats that Gillam drew, for the pictured hats were impossible, and never appeared to fit the wearer, and very often conveyed the idea that the owner had made the purchase of his headpiece in a place where they sold liquid refreshment and as much as one cared to carry away.

But with Gillam it was not so much the perfect drawing as it was the idea, and he was gifted when it came to selecting the telling picture that would convey a lesson on the subject to be exploited in a cartoon. His pictures were always the drawings of original ideas and his admirers always waited to see how Gillam would handle the next big question.

His "Puck's Dime Museum" might be cited as an instance. In the boom days of the dime museum period one of the greatest of the freak attractions was the "Tattooed Greek." In the tattooed man Gillam found the inspiration for one of his best ideas.

President Arthur's term was drawing to an end and the Republican party was discussing its presidential possibilities. There were many statesmen in the party ready to step forward and accept the nomination. Lightning rods designed to attract the convention's bolt were being insulated in all political camps and the presidential bee buzzed merrily.

John A. Logan, Roscoe Conklin, and James G. Blaine were the leading candidates for the nomination, and, turning the entire collection into a dime museum list of attractions, Gillam turned them into bearded ladies, ossified men, jugglers, and other freaks. He scored his triumph when he hit upon Blaine as the tattooed man.

There were certain scandals brought out when Blaine was pushed forward as a presidential possibility, and Gillam pictured him with the scandals interwoven with the many tattoo marks.

The "Tattooed Man" cartoon scored with its first appearance and became one of the features of the campaign.

Gillam was born in England in 1858. His parents brought him to New York ten years later. He studied for three years in the schools of New York and Brooklyn, and then, though still a child, he decided that he would become a lawyer, and took up the study of Blackstone.

He became interested in drawing about this time and found that art work appealed to him far more than did the study of law, and, as he improved in his art work, he finally decided to abandon the law books and turn to an illustrator's work.

He began by taking up the study of wood engraving, and in a short time was able to secure employment as an illustrator of some of the serial stories being printed in many of the weekly story papers. This work alone did not bring him enough for his support, so he filled in the spare time by making crayon and oil portraits, designing show cards, and doing whatever wood engraving jobs that he was able to pick up.

He found that he was meeting with remarkable success in his portrait work, although his pictures were bringing him but little, and he decided to make the work worth while by devoting his entire attention to it. He sought out an instructor and his improvement soon became marked. A painting of the Rev. Dr. Ward Beecher, the famous Brooklyn minister, brought him local fame as a painter and orders for pictures poured in.

Gillam, however, soon tired of the color tubes and brushes and again turned his attention to newspaper illustrating. He secured a position on the art staff of Leslie's Pictorial, a paper owned by one of Frank Leslie's sons, and here he did general illustrating work. Later he was put to doing caricature and comic work.

His caricatures and his apt illustrations of the humorous stories attracted the attention of other editors and he was offered a position on the Graphic. The inducement was enough to win him from Leslie's Pictorial and he made the change, but he had not been on the Graphic long before Frank Leslie saw a promising cartoonist in young Gillam and secured him for Leslie's Weekly.

On Leslie's Weekly his work steadily improved and his cartoons compelled attention. Nast was the cartoonist for Harper's Weekly at this time, and there was considerable rivalry between the followers of the two men. Gillam's friends always insisted that he was doing work as attractive and effective as that of Nast.

Gillam's work on Leslie's Weekly did not escape the attention of Joseph Keppler, the editor of Puck, who was constantly reaching out and securing new talent for his comic weekly, and overtures were made to Gillam by the publisher of Puck. Gillam finally accepted a flattering offer and in 1881 went from Leslie's to Puck.

On Puck Gillam worked but a few months before he had made a national reputation. He became known as one of the most forcible and, at the same time, mirthful political cartoonists of the country, but at the crest of his success Joseph Keppler died and Gillam's work fell off. Keppler had been his good friend and confidant, and the cartoonist was deeply affected by his death.

About this time James A. Wales and several others organized a company for the purpose of beginning the publication of another comic weekly—Judge—and Gillam was asked to become a member of the company. With Keppler dead, he found nothing to bind him to Puck, so he accepted the invitation and cast his lot with the new publication.

Bernhard Gillam was a gifted man in many ways. He was a great student of Shakespeare and, blessed with a remarkable memory, he was able to read whole plays of the immortal bard.

Gillam died in 1896.

Labels: News of Yore