Stripper's Guide

A love of drawing, first fulfilled with strips of charcoal from burnt stumps, won him his first cartoon publication at the age of 11 in St. Ignace newspapers. He amazed lumberjacks and took a place among them as mascot by illustrating their stories as they told them. But there were rude shocks in store for him before The Mighty Bunyan took life on the pages of daily newspapers.

At 16 he took a job in the slab-wood yard and put his first earnings into a correspondence course in cartooning.

Opportunity knocked early—he thought. A Fond du Lac, Wis., candy company offered a $200 prize for the best cartoon. He tucked his drawing under his arm and went to the candy company to collect the prize.

He ‘Lost Face’

The company accepted a number of the drawings, and Yeadon went home to wait for his prize. It came about a month later in the mail—a check for one dollar. The major prize went to Pat Sullivan, creator of “Felix the Cat.”

Yeadon felt he had lost face in his hometown. Joined a carnival and was soon made into a chalk-talk artist. When the ventriloquist quit the sideshow, Yeadon manufactured a dummy out of beaver board and took over.

The show went broke and Yeadon was stranded.

Back home in Michigan he tried again and again with his drawings. Rejection slips were the result. Then his mother died and Clyde, youngest of 14—eight lumberjacks and five sisters—took his father to his home at Iron Mountain.

It was not until 1936 that Clyde was able to attend art school in Chicago. Meantime, he had acquired other responsibilities, a wife and eventually as many daughters as Eddie Cantor.

After the second year of training Yeadon sold “Stubby [sic] and Trinket" to a New York comic book publisher. [Stubbie and Trinket were separate features. According to Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928–1999, the characters were together in 1940s Dell comic books.] He drew this feature for 18 months. The firm disintegrated and Yeadon lost several months’ pay, but was not discouraged. He felt the publisher had given him his first real break.

His daughter illustrated a Bunyan lecture at school with her father's drawings and reopened his eyes to the possibility of “The Mighty Bunyan.’

He started drawing again. His attorneys said he could never get a trade mark because Bunyan was a legendary figure. But after the panel ran in series for a year in 40-odd papers, he got the trade mark and Bell Syndicate got the material.

To Dot Yeadon, his wife, he owes something for his start. Yeadon had earned his living for several years as a sign painter. Mrs. Yeadon led with her chin. She ran the Yeadon Sign Shop and told her husband to go ahead with his dream. “This,” she told him, “is what you've always wanted. From now on I’ll take over the sign shop.”

Mostly, his drawings gathered dust in his Iron Mountain workshop, where he produces the polished continuity of today.

Followed Hodad Tracks

He needed publicity. So he discovered the Paul Bunyan Diar-ee. It was found in Iron Mountain after weeks of search. Yeadon finally came upon it by following hodad tracks into a cave. It required 45 lumberjacks and boom and tackle to open the cover. Disappointment was supreme. The diary was written in oomph-phang, a sort of baby-babble.

It was at this juncture that newspaper stories on the diary led Les Kangas, then a University of Michigan student and now a public relations whiz, to Yeadon. Kangas could translate. Kangas could read oomph-phang. The combination is terrific, and The Mighty Bunyan received its final necessary accretion.

Specialty drawing printed in Winnipeg Tribune, November 10 1948

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 8:00 AM