Obscurity of the Day: The Roosevelt Bears

 

 

As a Stripper's Guide reader you no doubt already know that it was Washington Star editorial cartoonist Clifford Berryman who started the whole teddy bear craze. He commented cartoonically on T.R. refusing to shoot a bear cub while hunting, associating him forevermore with a cute little caricature of a bear cub . Why this event stuck in the minds of the public and turned into a multi-billion dollar toy business that continues today well over a century later I don't fully understand. But it did, and it's kinda neat that it all began with a member of the cartooning fraternity. But the connection between T.R., bears, and cartooning didn't end there. 

In 1905 successful author Seymour Eaton was looking to expand his range beyond mostly educational literature. Three years after the original incident it was obvious that the bear cub meme had serious legs to it. He resolved to write a children's adventure starring a couple of bears. And just in case you didn't get the relationship, he made it easy for you to connect the dots by naming his characters the Roosevelt Bears. 

Eaton found himself a fabulous illustrator named V. Floyd Campbell who was at the time producing incredibly detailed illustrations and editorial cartoons for the Philadelphia North American. Between the quite sprightly verses penned by Eaton, and the superb illustrations by Campbell, they probably knew they had a hit on their hands. It was decided that in order to give the soon to be published book a built-in audience that they would first sell the feature as a serial to newspapers. The first episode of The Roosevelt Bears appeared in papers on January 7 1906*. Eaton took the copyright for the feature, but called himself "Paul Piper" for authorship. This might be because he was somewhat well-known as an educator and author of serious texts -- he didn't want readers to come in with preconceptions. 

The feature sold very well, and became somewhat famous as supposedly the only comic strip ever run by the New York Times. This has never really been true on several levels. First, calling The Roosevelt Bears a comic strip is a bit of a stretch, and second, back in those days the Sunday Times was surprisingly open to cartooning, and not just editorially. They offered entertainment cartoons on a semi-regular basis in their Sunday editions; perhaps rarely anything that could be considered a series, but I would lay a considerable bet that we could find a few short series if we got real serious about an indexing project. 

What is an interesting tidbit about the Times is that it appears that they probably syndicated the Eaton page, though they took no credit for it. The Times in their obit for Campbell said that he drew the feature for the Times. We know about the legendary fact checking of their obits, so I think that's a pretty strong case. 

While The Roosevelt Bears were busily making themselves famous all across the country, tragedy struck the creative team. V. Floyd Campbell contracted tuberculosis and died in April 1906. His giant shoes were filled on The Roosevelt Bears by Richard Keith Culver starting with the installment of May 20**.  Culver, of whom I know little, did the seemingly impossible and managed to almost equal Campbell's work. What little he lacked by comparison to Campbell in quality of detailed linework he amply made up for with a fine sense of animation to his work. 

The Roosevelt Bears comic page ended on July 22 1906**, and was issued in book form in November. Both the newspaper feature and book were so well-received that Eaton immediately began work on the further adventures of Teddy-B and Teddy-G***. In total there would be four newspaper series (which we will continue to cover here as time and inventory allow), and at least a half-dozen books in the series.

For more about the interesting life of Seymour Eaton, I recommend this wonderful essay by Philip Jordan that offers up lots of details.

* Source: San Francisco Call.

** Source: Chicago Daily News.

***  According to Eaton's verse, the B and G designations in the character names stood for Black or Brown and Grey or Grizzly.