Friday, March 11, 2022
Obscurity of the Day: It's Philadelphia
State and local history features have often met with a modicum of success, but you don't find many of them offered space in the Sunday color comics sections. One that did was It's Philadelphia, created by Robert Vance for the Sunday Philadelphia Bulletin.
I know next to nothing about Mr. Vance, but he certainly could draw well, and his ability to dig up interesting and unusual items about his city week after week is impressive. A feature like this about Philly could easily devolve into dry history lessons about Ben Franklin and the Revolutionary War, but Vance consistently mixes up his factoids to keep things quite the box of chocolates for the curious.
The feature began on September 14 1947, initially sporting the unwieldy, not to mention a little bewildering, title of You Never Can Tell ... But It's Philadelphia. Some smart editor wasn't long in taking the red pencil to that, and the title was soon reduced to the far more pithy It's Philadelphia.
The feature ran for an impressive seven years, after which either Vance or the Bulletin decided to call it quits. The last installment ran on October 24 1954.
The one piece of biographical data I have on Vance is that on May 5 1955 he put a revolver to his head and ended his life. His wife seemed unsurprised, saying to a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer that he had lately been despondent. Whether that was due to the cancellation of his newspaper feature or some other cause is unknown to me.
Thanks to Cole Johnson for the sample scans.
Labels: Obscurities
: 3/11/2022 1:43 PM --Allan
