Stripper's Guide

You've gotta give the Chicago Tribune points for thinking outside the box in the early 1970s. They finally dropped some of their old deadwood (I'm looking at you, Smitty, Smilin' Jack and Little Joe) and tried out new features that were definitely new and different (Friday Foster and Ambler immediately pop to mind). 

Another original strip was The Secret Heart, which aimed to bring romance comics to the newspaper. Y'know, I've been trying to think of an earlier example of  romance comics in newspapers and I can't come up with anything. Sure, you've got the old magazine cover series of the 20s and 30s, but those were playing for laughs, and then you've got the panels by Nell Brinkley and her followers, but those really don't attempt to tell ongoing soap opera-style romance stories. Do we count strips like The Girls in Apartment 3-G and On Stage as romance comics? Or Brenda Starr, or Mary Worth? Seems like those strips aim a little wide of the mark -- they are soap operas, granted, but it seems like they want to take in more ground than just romance.

Questions which I guess are pretty academic since The Secret Heart crashed and burned quickly, leaving hardly a trace behind. But 50 internet points to the first commenter who names a 'serious' romance comic strip that resembled this one in the 1980s! (no I don't mean Bears in Love). 

Anyway, I'm wandering. The Secret Heart, which also went by the name of My Story* and Story-A-Week** for awhile, offered exactly that -- a romance story that was told in the period of one week -- six dailies leading up to a Sunday in which the gal would get the guy, or the guy would get the gal, or heartbreak when neither happened. The final panel of the Sunday would introduce the next story, starting next Monday. 

The feature looked like a (better than average) romance comic book. The art was provided by "Jorge Franch", apparently a nome de plume of Jordi Franch Cubells. This Spanish artist is said to have gotten the job on the strip through his friend and mentor Jorge Longaron, who was providing the art on Friday Foster for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. 

The stories were provided by veteran comic strip scripter Jim Lawrence, and they're problematic. In an apparent bid to be hard-hitting and relevant Lawrence sometimes tells tales involving sexual assault,  workplace harrassment and other gritty stuff, subjects that may belong on the front page but maybe not in a romance comic presumably meant to appeal to teenage girls.

The strip debuted on June 18 1973***, but good luck finding papers that ran the strip -- they are exceedingly scarce. Neither the Tribune or New York News felt it was worthy of in-house support, so that wasn't a good precedent. And since the strip required client papers to run both the daily and Sunday, that was a tough sell -- even if features editors really like the strip it can be tough to make room in both the Sunday and daily for a new feature.

The Secret Heart made it only a little more than three months before the syndicate threw in the towel. The feature ended on September 30 1973.

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* Oddly, this title was used on the half-page original art of the Sundays --- but I've never seen a printed example of the Sunday that ran as anything other than a third page. And on the third-page version, the in-strip title was "The Secret Heart".

** This title was used by the Detroit Free Press -- see sample above.

*** Start and end dates from Detroit Free Press.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 5 comments

Here's another Rose O'Neill Kewpie card, issued in the 1920s by the Gibson Art Company of Cincinnati.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

April 4 1910 -- Johnson is so often persecuted by the police that the idea he will be in jail sometime between now and the Fight of the Century is a bet that would not get you long odds. Herriman today suggests that such a visit would be good for his training regime.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Raymond “Dick” Freil was born on June 25, 1893 in Yonkers, New York, according to his World War I draft card which had his middle name as McShea (his mother’s maiden name). However, in earlier census records, his middle initial was R. When Freil passed away his middle initial was A. 

The 1900 U.S. Federal Census said Freil was the oldest of four children born to Richard, a barber, and Mary. His father was born in Pennsylvania and mother in New Jersey. The family lived in Yonkers, New York at 32 Madison Avenue. 

According to the 1905 New York state census, the family of seven resided at 325 Walnut Street in Yonkers. Freil’s father was an insurance agent. 

In the 1910 census, the Freil family had grown to nine members. They remained in Yonkers at a new address, 34 Victor Street. 

The Herald Statesman (Yonkers, New York), May 24, 1939, said Freil attended School Twelve, St. Joseph’s School and Yonkers High School and trained at the Art Student’s League in New York City. He “entered the newspaper cartooning field at an early age and when seventeen was doing a cartoon a week for the old New York Telegram. He was associated with Bert Green in the creation of Green's famous ‘Letters of an Interior Decorator.’” In 1916 Freil produced the newspaper panel feature Days You’ll Never Forget, which was distributed by an unknown syndicate.

The 1911 Yonkers city directory listed Freil as an artist at 34 Victor Street. He was an artist at 177 Elm Street in 1913 through 1916 directories. In 1917 Friel’s Yonkers residence was 11 Terrace Place. 

The New York, New York Marriage License Index, at Ancestry.com, said Freil and Ruth R. Walker obtained a Manhattan license on December 8, 1916.

Freil signed his World War I draft card on June 5, 1917. Freil, his wife and child lived at 12 Terrace Place in Yonkers. He was employed at the Cameragraph Film Co., 144 West 44th Street, in Manhattan. His description was slender build, medium height, with black hair and hazel eyes. 

In 1918 the Yonkers directory listed Freil at 402 East 242nd Street which was in the Bronx. Freil may have been involved with an animation studio. Raoul Barré formed his animation studio in the Bronx. With Thomas Bowers, they founded the Barré-Bowers Studio which produced the Mutt and Jeff animated cartoons in 1916. Under duress, Barré quit in 1918. Freil was under contract to the Bud Fisher Films Corporation, beginning April 1, 1919, to continue work on the series. Freil’s contract was transferred to the Jefferson Film Corporation.

The 1920 census said Freil, his wife and son were Bronx residents at 2565 Grand Concourse. Freil was an animation cartoonist. Who’s Who in Animated Cartoons (2006) said the Mutt and Jeff series, in 1921, continued with the Jefferson Film Corporation. 

The February 12, 1921 issues of Motion Picture News and Moving Picture World said Freil was joining the scenario staff of Coast Studio. 

The Story of British Animation (2021) said “... It was with the arrival in 1924 of another American animator, Dick Friel [sic], that the British industry switched to the ‘Bray-Hurd process’ that was used into the 1910s ...” The Herald-Statesman said Freil animated cartoons for United Artists in England. 

Freil was not found in the 1925 New York state census. He was listed as a writer in the 1927 Yonkers directory at 43 Ravine Avenue. In the 1928 and 1929 directories he was a cartoonist with the Yonkers Record newspaper. 

Freil’s wife and son were staying with his in-laws at the same address in Yonkers. Freil’s whereabout is not known. He was listed at the same address in the 1931 Yonkers directory. 

Freil’s 1935 patent application for a “Method for Producing Animated Pictures” was granted on August 24, 1937 and published in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office. 

Some time after 1935 Freil moved West to work at the Walt Disney studio. He was mentioned in the 1991 book, Disney’s Art of Animation #1: From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast, “Another artist, Dick Friel [sic], created a beautiful water splash in forty or fifty frames instead of the usual eight.” 

Around May 1938 Freil had a heart ailment and returned to Yonkers in the summer. 

Freil passed away on May 24, 1939 in Yonkers. An obituary appeared in Motion Picture Herald, June 3, 1939. 

Raymond Freil Dies of Heart Ailment

Raymond A. Freil, cartoonist, scenario writer and former motion picture director, died May 24th in Yonkers, N. Y., of a heart ailment. He used the name Dick Freil in writing and drawing. He was 45.

Mr. Freil drew for Bud Fisher and Walt Disney in the early days of the animated cartoon. He wrote scenarios, played in Mack Sennett comedies and had directed Richard Dix and Johnny Hines in pictures. Mr. Freil also had been connected with Fox Film Company, Famous Players and Paramount.

IMDB incorrectly lists all of Raymond Freil's credits under then name Richard Friel.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Some marketing makes you scratch your head and wonder just what the heck they were thinking. Now this ad above might not reach a sublime level of irony of, say, Richard Nixon promoting tape recorders, but you really have to wonder why the brainiacs at Kraft Foods thought that it was worth paying good money to license Dick Tracy for this one-off 1959 Life magazine ad for their caramels. Okay, they wanted the motif of a Wanted poster with a Kraft caramel on it. So do that. Everyone knows what a Wanted poster (supposedly) looks like. You can get that across without lining the pockets of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. Go to Johnstone & Cushing and tell them you need a cartoon of a police detective type, if that's so near and dear to your hearts. Sheesh.

Sorry about the crease line!

Labels: Marketing Madness

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 6 comments

When you read Dilbert have you ever wondered what the strip might be like if it was written from the perspective of the company's CEO? Well, wonder no longer, because Stockworth provided just such a strip, and did it almost a decade before Dilbert became the phenomenon of the 1990s. 

Stockworth was a strip about the CEO of a non-specific corporation, and he deals with fools, pests and irritants all the way up and down the org-chart, not to mention stockholders, journalists and customers. The strip is a little more genteel and grounded in reality than Dilbert, as befits the view from the top down instead of the bottom up. But when the strip hit its marks it was just like Dilbert -- not just funny, but very insightful about the corporate world. 

You would think that a strip about big business would be distributed through the corporate syndication channel, but Stockworth came into being as a self-syndicated strip. It was created by two business consultants, Hinda Sterling (art) and Herb L. Selesnick (writing), and was initially sold as a feature for the Boston Globe, debuting there August 2 1982. A year later the creators signed up for distribution through the New York Times Syndication Sales company, basically a black hole from whence no comic strip can ever become a success. After being distributed by that company from August 29 1983* to October 13 1984** with little to show for it, Sterling and Selesnick returned to the realm of self-syndication. They stuck with the do-it-yourself route for at least another year and a half until March 18 1986** before throwing in the towel, or at least losing the last paper I can find running it. 

The strip was collected in book form three years later, as Stockworth: An American CEO, once again self-published. If you have an interest in business humor from the perspective of the head honcho, I highly recommend it.

* Source: Boston Globe

** Source: Belleville News-Democrat

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

John Stanley barely qualifies for appearing here on Stripper's Guide, but he sneaks in by having ghosted the Little Lulu newspaper comic strip for awhile in 1969. This card is not signed, but I can't imagine anyone but John Stanley having drawn a face like that. 

This card was issued by Colourpicture of Boston Massachusetts as part of their Plastichrome line; this card is coded as P6515. The card is undated and unused, but I'm guessing 1950s or 60s?

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

April 3 1910 -- Such is the public's insatiable interest in the upcoming Fight of the Century that Herriman posits a man letting his house burn down in order to goggle at Jeffries eating a meal.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Hal Coffman put most of his efforts at Hearst into producing editorial cartoons for the Arthur Brisbane editorials, but he was also sometimes tapped early on to contribute a strip here and there. 

In the case of Look Out for the Jinx, though, it appears not to have run in the Hearst flagship papers, and so was not caught by my Hearst indexers who worked off of the New York American and Journal. For some reason I can only find this strip running in the Washington Evening Star, not part of the Hearst chain, where it appeared sporadically from June to September 1911. It was definitely syndicated by Hearst, though, as a few examples show a copyright to National News Association, one of the many Hearst sub-companies. 

The strip is good fun. A little imp called The Jinx is the personification of trouble, and he causes, or at least appears as an eyewitness, to all sorts of bad outcomes. The only problem with the strip is that it is basically a rehash of Jonah, A Whale for Trouble, which Frank King penned a year before for the Chicago Tribune.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 7:49 AM 1 comments

It's quite ironic that the Associated Press decided to get into the comic strip syndicate game. They put together a fine roster of features but then were too embarrassed to admit that their serious news agency was now in the business of distributing lighthearted fun, so they practically made the whole division a corporate secret.  

Julian Ollendorff's Gloria was on the original roster of features when the syndicate debuted on March 17 1930. Ollendorff's fast-paced, bubbly tale of a beautiful girl was the newspaper page equivalent of the popular movies of the day. Lots of snarky, sophisticated dialogue, jet-setting locales, attractive high society people -- it was just what the doctor ordered for a country learning what it means to be in a Great Depression. 

Unfortunately, Ollendorff's Gloria was not to last very long. The strip ended after a one-year contract on March 16 1931; evidently either the syndicate was unhappy with it or Ollendorff was ready for greener pastures. The syndicate replaced it with Oh Diana* by Don Flowers, another pretty girl strip with a similar but softer tone. Flowers produced a very fine strip, but  I have to give Gloria the nod for having a little more chutzpah to it.

* Originally titled Diana Dane when it debuted.

Labels: Obscurities

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Buzzy was the topper to Ferd Johnson's Texas Slim, a strip that I think basically existed as a reward to Ferd for his service assisting on Moon Mullins. I am not a fan of  Texas Slim, in which EVRBUDDY YACKS LAK DIS TIL MAH CONSARNED HAID IS PERT' NEAR SPLODIN'. It is also a strip in which fistfights and other physical humour are often supposed to function as the point, because there certainly isn't much else there to laugh at very often. 

Anyhow, if Texas Slim doesn't rate a place in my own personal hall of fame, the topper Buzzy is just so utterly lackluster that I can't even manage to form an opinion. It stars a rough and tumble sort of kid, and the gags are often about his interactions with his mom. In the sample above, emblematic of the series, you can see the level of sparkling wit that was generally on display. At least, thank goodness, they don't talk in the annoying patois of the main strip.

Buzzy debuted on October 10 1943* when Texas Slim was demoted from a half-pager to a third in the broadsheet format. Buzzy was also added to the tab and half-tab formats. Since very few papers took the strip outside of the Chicago Tribune family of papers, and Buzzy was usually thrown out by them, the strip can be hard to track. The latest I can find the topper running is September 6 1953**, but it could have and probably did run longer than that. Anyone know of later appearances?

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* Source: Chicago Tribune

** Source: New York Daily News

Labels: Topper Features

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Here's a Gibson card issued by Henderson & Sons of England. This one is #91 from their Pictorial Comedy series. 

I confess I am not familiar with these caps as being somehow emblematic of Yankees. But I can say for sure that Googling "historical Yankee caps" will definitely not get anyone closer to answers in this regard.

Labels: Wish You Were Here

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 2 comments

April 2 1910 -- Herriman is called upon to make almost daily strips about the upcoming Fight of the Century. Naturally (I suppose) this devolves mostly into jibes against Johnson, in the spirit of giving mostly white newspaper readers what they want. 

This strip, in which Johnson sets out to outdo Jeffries on various counts, includes a doubled speeding ticket in the final panel. There is a story often told of the champ that he was once pulled over for speeding and that the fine, to be paid directly to the officer, was $50. The champ supposedly hands him a $100 bill, and the cop says he can't make change for the big bill. Johnson tells him not to worry, keep the extra $50 as he has every intention of driving just as fast on his return trip later. 

I don't know if this story was already in circulation by April 1910, but I have to guess it was; otherwise Herriman is exhibiting quite an amazing ability to foretell the future.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

John R. Bray is remembered today as a pioneer in the field of animation, but he also had an earlier career in newspaper comics. Most of his work was for the McClure Syndicate, but he was not so greatly in demand that he wouldn't jump on other offers of work. 

That would be the case with The Quality Kid, a feature he created for the short-lived Publishers Press Syndicate. We've discussed that syndicate before in connection with Harrison Cady's Jolly Jumpers. Bray came late to the party, when Publishers Press was close to gasping its last. The Quality Kid debuted on June 1 1913, and it went down the tubes with the comics section itself on September 7 1913*. 

The Quality Kid concerns itself with a rich kid and two ragamuffin street urchins. Most comics that put together rich and poor kids have the poor ones outsmarting or just plain bullying the 'quality' kid, but in Bray's strip the kids are partners-in-crime, with all the kids out to pull pranks, sometimes on others, sometimes on each other. A running gag is that the butler, James, is not the intended butt of these goings-on, but often gets caught up in the tide much to his detriment.

The series was attractive but quite repetitive, but it probably mattered very little to Bray. He was busy forming his new animation studio at essentially the same time as The Quality Kid was hitting the few remaining client papers of Publishers Press. Bray's first cartoon short, The Artist's Dream, was released in July 1913. 

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* Sources: Running dates from Atlanta Constitution and St. Paul Pioneer Press.

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 1 comments

 I stalled out on this series with letter 'R' in 2013, but here are the 'S'es and all it took was slightly less than a decade! 

Okay, here's how this works, for those who haven't been keeping up with the whirlwind pace. The Editor & Publisher Syndicate Yearbooks, published from 1924 until 2010, listed theoretically all the available syndicated features, including comic strips and panels. Those listings often included features that I've never been able to locate. Some of them, no doubt, never appeared anywhere and were just wishful thinking. But if you look at previous letters, and the later exclamations of discovery from myself and others, some of these features can and do let themselves be found by the most intrepid researchers.

Therefore your task, if you wish to accept it, is to go forth on a hard target search of every research library, online digital newspaper archive and the material in your own collection, and report back to Stripper's Guide Central with your discoveries. 

Labels: Mystery Strips

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM 6 comments