Stripper's Guide

Back in the early ’40s, a pleasant young man from Los Angeles blew into town and went to work at the world’s largest syndicate, King Features. His name was Milt Story and I remember him because we had daily wars to see who could wear the noisiest clothes. Freud might have had a name for it, but we had a lot of fun, although I grow pale and shaky now when I remember some of the checks and plaids that decorated us.

Story was an artist and a pretty good one; his aim in life was to draw a successful comic strip. A lot of other talented young men have the same aim. It’s one of the roughest competitive fields in America and when you get KFS to syndicate your cartoons, you have it made. Milt never came up with the King-sized strip.
“So,” he told me today, “I went back to California after five years and, like a brash young man, started my own syndicate, Los Angeles Famous Features Syndicate—or, abbreviated, LAFFS. I guess it was silly, because I had no business sense; all I ever wanted people to do was put me in a corner and let me draw.”

Laffs made out fairly well, but presently Milt got a chance to go east again as art director of a cartoon company. For five years he worked there, but in the back of his mind, of course, was the never-ending dream—a comic strip of his own.

“I didn’t care if, two days after the papers were published, fishmongers were wrapping my strip around three pounds of mackerel,” Milt said. “It was what I wanted.” Next he worked awhile with another cartoonist. He dreamed up a strip which he called Jeepers, dealing comically with life in Merrie Englande. “I put everything I had into it,” he said wistfully, “and I thought it was great. Well, it got into the papers, but it hardly set the world on fire.”

About this time, Story met Reynold Goodman, an Englewood, N. J., manufacturer who deals in plastic acetate. Supermarkets, auto dealers, etc., use millions of Goodman’s glossy, colorful signs. Casually one day, Milt said to Goodman, “Listen, why don’t you produce some sort of dopey, absurd signs, like, THIMK? Never can tell, it might go over in a modest way.”

Well—what I am here to tell you today is that Goodman hired Story as his creative merchandising director. Milt invented something called “Silly Signs,” a cereal firm bought nine million of them to give away as premiums in boxes of cornflakes—and before you could say Blondie, our boy had a tiger by the tail.

“Silly Signs” mushroomed into the biggest manufacturing gadget of the year. Fan mail poured in on Milt from San Diego to Alaska, and soon they were being sold for six for a quarter, Simon and Schuster [sic] put them on 110,000 newsstands. Mitch Miller got Art Carney to record The Silly Signs Song—and Milt Story became a millionaire. Theoretically, anyway; After taxes, he had enough to pay off the mortgage.

“This,” Milt told me, shaking his head, “is something I knocked off virtually on my knee in half an hour. A dozen stupid signs—and whooey, everybody wants them.

"I spend 20 years of my life aiming at becoming a good comic-strip artist—and overnight I become more of a financial success than I probably ever could dream of becoming as a strip artist.
“It couldn’t happen anywhere else than this wonderful country—but tell me this. How does a man adjust to hitting the jackpot—when it’s the wrong jackpot?"

I patted has arm sympathetically and watched him go out the door, sad and dejected. He was on his way to the bank.

Mel Heimer, television editor and columnist for King Features Syndicate, died February 8 at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York City, after a long illness.

Born in West Hoboken, N.J., Heimer began his career as a newspaperman at the age of 14 as a suburban correspondent for the Mount Vernon Daily Argus. He attended New York University on a scholarship and continued his career at the Westchester newspapers. He moved to the New York World-Telegram as a rewrite man and feature writer. After four years there, he joined King Features and in 1947 he began writing his Broadway column, “My New York.” Continuing that, he also took over as television editor in 1967, writing the weekly feature, “TV Cameos.”

Heimer free-lanced as a short story writer. He has written 14 books on a variety of subjects. His last book, “The Cannibal,” will be published this spring.

After four years there, he joined King Features and in 1947 he began writing his Broadway column, "My New York

The California Chamber of Commerce should be very happy. Milt Story, formerly with King Features in New York, has organized his own Los Angeles Famous Feature Syndicate and put it in business with his gag panel, “Sunny Cal.” Cal’s a “strictly from California kid,” says Story, as the state’s life and background provide the gag materials which could be why the panel starts with a list of California papers.

In issue number 70, Story contributed two items: a one-page piece, The Dizz Kids, and a three-page story featuring Tender Foote, which he owned. A 1950 issue of the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office published the following.

Ser. No. 589,520. Milton Story, Orange, N. J. Filed Dec. 17, 1949. 

For Illustrated and Humorous Cartoons Commonly Referred to as Comic Strips.

Claims use since Mar. 18, 1949.

Applicant claims ownership of Registration No. 154,626.

The patent filing revealed Story’s residence in Orange, New Jersey.

According to American Newspaper Comics (2012), Story produced the comic strip, Jeepers, which ran from June 6, 1954 to April 10, 1955, in the New York Herald-Tribune. 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 8:00 AM