Here is card #14 in the McCutcheon "A Boy In ..." series, which Eddie Campbell tells us totalled 32 different cards. Copyrights on these cards seem to refer to original appearances in newspapers, and this one apparently ran in 1905. The copyright on the reverse is 1906, and since they're all divided-back cards they were likely actually published in 1907 or later.
Hi. This query is irrelevant to your post, I'm afraid. Karen Green sent me - I'm trying to source a good quality pic of Helpful Hanry, a strip cartoon character created by one JP Arnot. Said to be an influence on Oliver Hardy's screen persona, and I'm making a video essay about Laurel & Hardy...
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty rare card. It would seem McCutcheon printed them himself.
ReplyDelete"Helpful Henry" was a Hearst strip (International features) by Arnot of 1922-23.
ReplyDeleteHenry's fat, but he doesn't have much else to do like Oliver Hardy.
If you see Ollie's earliest efforts, going back to the "Plump and Runt" and Billy West comedies in the 1910s, you will see that he had many of his unique mannerisms, like the fussy finger movements and the weary look to the viewer for sympathy even then.
Thanks. Frustratingly, I don't know the source for this Helpful Henry attribution. If it came from Hal Roach I'd probably dismiss it as a fabrication (if you live to be 100 and keep doing interviews I guess you have to keep finding stuff to say). I've seen a couple of the strips and there doesn't seem to be much connection. Still, I'd like to get a good big image...
ReplyDeleteMark, believe it or not, the sleep-indiucing Helpful Henry lasted five years, finally succumbing to death by boredom in 1927.
ReplyDeleteI have answered Mr. Cairns privately.