Obscurity of the Day, Revisited: Broadway

 

I covered the photo comic strip Broadway way back in 2010, offering dear departed Jay Maeder the bully pulpit since my knowledge of the strip was on a par with a caveman's expertise at operating a microwave. But that was then and this is now. 

Now we have the New York Daily News available in digitized form, so I can give you the actual running dates, which are February 5 1927 to December 15 1936. I can also tell you that Mark Hellinger's "staging" of the strip -- I assume that meant he took the pictures and wrote the gags, or at least wrote down the gags these comedy actors passed along to him -- from the inception through December 28 1929, when he jumped ship to the New York Mirror. 

After Hellinger the strip was never bylined. The style of the strip changed a bit, with drawn backgrounds always now used instead of often staging the photos in front of real backdrops. These drawn backgrounds, very simple line drawings, were also never credited. 

We do, however, have some probable writing credits based on the E&P listings for the strip. In 1930 and 1933 Sidney Skolsky was credited. He was the theatre columnist of the Daily News, as had been Hellinger, so that makes sense. In 1932 the strip was credited to Jack Chapman. Since I'm guessing he's NOT the 11 year old airplane pilot who made headlines that year, I don't know who that might be. In other years the E&P listing for Broadway did not offer a credit. By the way, even though Broadway was available as a syndicated strip, I've never seen it anywhere but the Daily News.

The other reason we're revisiting the strip is that Doug Skinner very kindly sent me the above trove of scans from his paper copies of the Daily News, so we get a darn sight better look at the strip than via the 2010 post's microfilm photocopies. Doug has a very interesting and eclectic blog called The Ullage Group. Go check it out and say hi. Thanks Doug!