Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Firsts and Lasts: Mrs. Fitz's Flats is Condemned
To look at the strip, you'd be forgiven if you assumed it was by Mort Walker. And you'd be partly right. Frank Roberge, the superintendent of Mrs. Fitz's Flats, was an assistant to Walker in the 1950s. Walker came up with the idea of an apartment building full of weirdos, presided over by a widow lady landlord. He got approval from King Features to run with the concept and he handed the reins over to Roberge, already well-proven to be able to draw in the Walker style. The daily-only strip debuted on January 7 1957. It was long assumed that the Walker shop wrote the strip from beginning to end, but Mort Walker says that he handed off the writing to Roberge after a relatively short time*.
The strip was attractive and the gags, spread out among a host of regulars, were strong enough if a little staid. So why didn't the strip catch on? Author Maurice Horn believes it is because the cast was too big and readers never felt intimate with the characters, while King Features archivist Mark Johnson feels that the setting, which is almost boarding house-like, was too old fashioned. I think they're both right.
Roberge tried to revive the strip by having Mrs. Fitz marry the superintendant and move to a retirement community in Florida. After a few years of that with no better subscription numbers, back went Mrs. Fitz to the apartment building. Near the end of the strip's life, Roberge even modified his art style to try to differentiate it from the other omnipresent Walker strips. That didn't help either, and the strip came to an abrupt end on October 28 1972. As you can see above, the final week offers no hint that the strip was ending.
According to Mark Johnson, this is because Roberge died unexpectedly while golfing, and so the strip was cancelled after his last submission was run. However, Lambiek Comiclopedia disagrees with that, saying that Roberge died in 1976. As Wimpy would say, "let's you and him fight."
Thanks to Mark Johnson, who supplied the syndicate proof shown above.
* Source: "Mort Walker: Conversations".
Labels: Firsts and Lasts
Johnn Sajem told me similar with "The Evermores". According to him, Walker came up with the idea (called "The History of Mr. and Mrs."), and with the initial 24-strip submission, Walker wrote half while Sajem wrote the rest. After King accepted the strip, Sajem did both writing and drawing for the rest of the run. Presumably, though, King marketed the strip with Walker's name to get the initial list of papers.
Thanks for the link to my old blog, I worked hard on it. My mea culpa for the wrong date of Robergé's death is, well, information supplied by those that actually knew and worked with him. Can't trust nobody no more.
This indicates that The strip was cancelled because it was simply not paying off.
One might think, at first look, that it would be a well-thought out idea; a cast of disparate characters that would all have their own little worlds to interact with. It worked in radio shows, Fred Allen did well with it; it can work in comic strips, look at Mort's own "Boner's Ark". But maybe Mrs. Fitz just seemed somewhat artificial, pre-packaged, generic sitcom stuff using rather timeworn archtypical characters from old books, movies and vaudeville. The gags weren't bad, but the setting and inhabitants were not interesting. No fan base appeared. There's no comic books or licencing, for instance.
There's only so many desperate sea-changes a series will take before you have to conclude that it's ebbing client list was an irreversible slide.
: 3/31/2023 3:03 PM Re:EOCostello's obit saying the strip was still being syndicated in 1976
Is it safe to assume that King was syndicating the strip in reprints at that point, or could it actually have been new material? Or was the obit writer totally out in left field?
--Allan
: 4/01/2023 1:13 AM 