Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Ink-Slinger Profiles: Wally Wallgren
Abian Anders "Wally" Wallgren was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 4, 1891, according to Find a Grave. The 1900 U.S. Federal Census recorded the Wallgrens in Philadelphia at 1631 Chadwick Street. His birth was recorded as "June 1891" and he was the oldest of three children born to Abian and Hilma, both born in Sweden. His father was a tailor.
The book Swedes in America, 1638-1938 (1969) said, "He entered newspaper work at an early age and was indeed, something of a youthful prodigy in the art department of the old Philadelphia North American, for by the time he was sixteen [1907] he had two Sunday comic strips running; 'Inbad, the Sailor' and 'Ruff and Reddy.' " [Allan's note: the series cited actually began in 1911 and 1910 respectively]
In 1910 the Wallgren family of six remained in Philadelphia, at 1208 52nd Street. He was a newspaper cartoonist. In 1915, for the Philadelphia Record, he produced the strip Sammy and Sue and Slobbery Slam. Find a Grave and Lambiek said he contributed to the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the Washington Post. The U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1940 at Ancestry.com said he enlisted on April 25, 1917, almost two weeks after the U.S. entered World War I. A muster roll from September 1917 summarized his conduct violations:
SD, Sign Painter. Tried by S.C.M. 7th charged with violation of the 61st and 96th Articles of War. Specifications: AWL from 9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on 4th; Drunk in Camp about 7:00 p.m. on 4th; Findings: Guilty. Sentence: To perform hard labor for one month and to forfeit two-thirds of his pay for one month. Sentence approved 8th.
Swedes in America covered his early service career.
…[Wallgren] was among the first to see service in France as a buck private and regimental sign painter, a post which army logic assigned him on his "professional" record. According to his own account for nine months he painted "Latrine" and "Officers Only" signs up and down France, from St. Nazaire, through Menaucourt, to Damblaine in the Vosges. Private Wallgren's light, however, was being kept under a bushel. His great opportunity came when the Stars and Stripes was started as the official newspaper of the AEF [American Expeditionary Forces], and Wally was placed on the staff as cartoonist. In February, 1918, he was transferred to Paris and drew cartoons for this doughboy newspaper throughout the War, until the final issue in June, 1919.
Robert I. Snajdr, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio), wrote a remembrance of Wallgren on March 29, 1948; below, an excerpt about his time on Stars and Stripes:
…Incidentally, Wally's utter indifference to deadlines was a cause of continuous, albeit at times humorous, exasperation to his superiors. As John T. Winterich, another brilliant staff member, put it in his history of the paper, "Squads Write!": "The extraction of a weekly strip from Private Wallgren became one of the more monumental tasks of the war."
Sometimes it was even necessary to assign a detail to the carefree artist to see that he produced a job on time. Once, even, so the story goes, he was confined in a room under watchful eyes of M.P.s with instructions not to let him out until he had completed his weekly stint.
Some of his cartoons can be viewed here. His military career was covered in a Time magazine profile on October 17, 1938. According to a U.S. Marine Corps Muster Roll, Wallgren was on indefinite furlough from July 14, 1919 to January 14, 1920, and was discharged on January 15. He was counted in the 1920 census with his family, now at seven members, at the same 1910 address. His occupation was magazine cartoonist.
In 1930 Wallgren and his wife Florence lived in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania at 837 Concord Avenue. They married when they were 28 years old, which was around 1920. He was a cartoonist. In 1938, Wallgren created the newspaper strip Hoosegow Herman; color samples can be viewed at I Love Comix Archive, [Update: The blog has moved and offers a way to access the archive.] and original art can be viewed at Heritage Auctions.
Sunday page, 12/3/1939, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
Wallgren passed away on March 24, 1948 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. The Lawton Constitution (Oklahoma) published the Associated Press story the following day.
Wally Wallgren, Cartoonist of First World War, Dies
Philadelphia, March 25.—(AP)—Abian A. (Wally) Wallgren, 56, cartoonist for "Stars and Stripes" during the first World War and later with the American Legion monthly, died yesterday after a long illness.
Wallgren was credited by Gen. John J. Pershing with keeping up the morale of thousands of doughboys with his travesties on officers and his humorous illustrations picturing the difficulties and problems of soldiers.
Among Wallgren's creations were "Inbad the Sailor," "Hoosegow Herman," and "The Saluting Demon."
Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles
Monday, March 05, 2007
Obscurity of the Day: Sammy and Sue and Slobbery Slam
Here's a delightful little obscurity from the pages of the
Philadelphia Record.
Sammy and Sue and Slobbery Slam was a wild and fantasmagorical romp through the imagination of the great Wally Wallgren. Wallgren is best known for his trench cartoons of World War I, published in
Stars & Stripes and collected in a few reprint books that I heartily recommend. As a veteran of the Great War, and a favorite among his fellow GIs, Wallgren made a career out of depicting their joys and travails in the pages of the
American Legion magazine. Right before he vanished from the radar he managed to get a strip syndicated, called
Hoosegow Herman, which followed the adventures of an incorrigible doughboy. Wallgren was reportedly having problems with the bottle, and the short-lived feature was his last work of which I'm aware.
Sammy and Sue and Slobbery Slam came at the dawn of his career, before he ended up in France's trenches. It ran on the weekly Sunday humor page of the Record from April 4 through July 4 1915, and it was a revival, of sorts, of an earlier Bud Counihan series titled
Sammy and Sue. Whereas Counihan's feature was an unmemorable kid strip, Wallgren ratcheted up the fantasy element and created a minor (okay, REALLY minor) classic. I only wish I had more of these to show, but the microfilm wasn't feeling cooperative in my photocopying efforts.
Labels: Obscurities
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Ink-Slinger Profiles: Gilbert A. Geist
Gilbert Allan Geist was born in Pennsylvania on January 29, 1879, according to his World War I draft card. In the 1880 U.S. Federal Census, he was the third child of George and Ella. They lived in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. His father was a railroad station agent. The Pennsylvania, Church and Town Records, at Ancestry.com, said he was admitted to the Presbyterian Church of Frankford on December 6, 1895.
The 1900 census recorded the family in Philadelphia at 4659 Penn Street. Geist was the third of five children. His birth was recorded as “January 1881”. In the Milwaukee Sentinel (Wisconsin), April 23, 1944, ‘Bugs’ Baer recounted an incident between Geist and Abian “Wally” Wallgren.
...The incident raises the delicate problem of how far a dramatic critic may go. I quote one from the eminent Abian Wallgren of the West Philadelphia Porch Gazette.
Speaking of the dramatic efforts of the late Gilbert Allen [sic] Geist in the Centennial Tableaux of 1906, Prof. Abian wrote, “Mr. Geist would smell on ice. And if you took him off the ice, then the ice would smell.”
Geist challenged Wallgren to mortal combat. And there was a duel with swords at 30 paces.
Neither man was injured. Or at least not enough. Got Geist lived to become a teacher at Texas A. and M., while Wallgren became the Wally of the Stars and Stripes, circa 1917.
In 1906 Geist produced In Birdsboro for the Philadelphia Press Sunday section. After his work at various Philadelphia newspapers he moved to College Station, Texas. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 29, 1909, published an article on college faculty changes.
Gilbert Allen Geist, whose signature upon much of the art work in the columns of the Public Ledger of Philadelphia is familiar to the readers of that paper, is to be of the teaching force of the A. & M. college of Texas. Prof. F.E. Glesecke, who is at the head of the department of architectural engineering and drawing, has secured Mr. Geist as a teacher of drawing to succeed one of the instructors who closed his engagement with the college in June. Mr. Geist took a two years course in drawing at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, in Philadelphia, and spent almost a year at the Art Students' League in New York. Since finishing his school work he has been connected with the art staff of the Philadelphia North American, the Philadelphia Press and the Public Ledger and has conducted a class in drawing at the Y.M.C.A. in Philadelphia.
The 1910 census recorded him on the Texas Agriculture and Mechanical College campus, where he was a teacher. On September 12, 1918, he signed his World War I draft card. He was a professor at Texas A&M and named his mother as his nearest relative.
According to the 1920 census, Geist was a widower and lived on campus. Later that year he married Emily Kurtz Dulaney on June 24, 1920 in Seaford, Delaware. According to their marriage certificate he was living in Philadelphia and she in Seaford. Emily was 13 years his junior.
In the 1930 Census the couple lived in Bryan, Texas on South Washington Avenue. He was still teaching at A. & M. College. Texas Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists (2000) said: “Geist was an instructor in architecture and drawing at Texas A&M College, College Station (1910-33). His distinctive illustrations appeared in student publications of the period.….”
After retiring from Texas A&M, he returned to Philadelphia where he worked as an architect for the federal government. Geist passed away September 12, 1937 in Philadelphia, as reported in the New York Times the following day. He was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Macungie, Pennsylvania according to Roots Web.Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Obscurity of the Day: Inbad the Sailor
Sometimes destiny plays a cruel trick on us. Take the example of Wally Wallgren. If ever there was a fellow who was unfit and undesirous of any connection to the military, it was Wally. He was, to put it charitably, a free-spirit. He did not recognize authority, he was lazy, he was unable to keep a schedule, and he was a compulsive smartass. The one thing he seemed to take really seriously and to pursue with gusto (besides cartooning) was drinking. Let's just say that Wally sure as hell wasn't officer material.
So naturally fate ensured that Wally's entire adult life ended up entwined with the military. When he wasn't in uniform, he was cartooning about military life. And here's where it all started, in 1911, with
Inbad the Sailor. Why Wally chose a sailor for this series I cannot fathom. It's not really germane to the idea, other than providing a pretext for an ever-changing setting. And this was long before the military should have even been on his radar (he was drafted for World War I). But he did, so I get to tell you that this is Wally Wallgren's very first military-themed strip, a portent of the next 30+ years of Wally's life.
Inbad the Sailor, a strip about a tender-hearted tar who gets the snot beat out of him all over the world for trying to do good deeds, ran in the
Philadelphia North American from January 1 to June 18 1911.
Thanks to Cole Johnson for the scans!
Tomorrow: an Ink-Slinger Profile of Wally Wallgren by Alex Jay
Labels: Obscurities
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Obscurity of the Day: Balmy Benny
As far as I can tell Gene Ahern didn't serve in World War I, but that didn't stop him from doing a strip about a doughboy in the trenches.
His screwball NEA strip
Squirrel Food had been running since 1915, often featured a dimwitted nut named Balmy Benny. The strip was retitled in his honor on July 25 1918 when the little fellow and his faithful companion George the dog were inducted into service in Europe. In order to be somewhat respectful of our boys in uniform Benny's lunacy was toned way down for the newly refocused feature, a change that definitely dampened the hilarity. Ahern's writing on this strip is tentative, searching for gags in a war zone of which he had no first-hand knowledge. Real soldiers like Percy Crosby, Wally Wallgren and Bruce Bairnsfather could serve up wartime gallows humor, but Ahern had to content himself with derivative gags, most of which dropped like lead balloons.
Luckily for Ahern the war ended mere months after Benny arrived in the trenches. Our screwball hero got to come back stateside and resume his screwball ways. The strip was renamed back to
Squirrel Food on February 3 1919.
Labels: Obscurities
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Heritage Auction Closing Today
I have a great assortment of items in this week's Heritage Internet Comic Auction, which closes today. There are a lot of great items, some of which have VERY low bids at this point. You may be able to pick up some bargains -- my loss, your gain.
Something for everybody this week, no matter your budget or interests: great original art, gold, silver and bronze age comic books, platinum age comic strip-oriented books, big bargain lots, etc.To view and bid on any of my lots in this week's auction
follow this link.
Here are photos and my thoughts on this week's auction items:
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| Great Room and Board Sunday by Gene Ahern -- very Munchausean |
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| Incredibly rare -- masthead art for the NY American Sunday comics section, by 'Bunny' Schultze |
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| Delightful E. Simms Campbell Cuties panel |
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| Beyond rare -- a Little Bobby Bowser original and proof sheet by Bert Cobb -- gorgeous art |
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| Early Stan Drake Heart of Juliet Jones daily |
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| Top tier from 1959 Heart of Juliet Jones Sunday |
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| One of my very favorite pieces -- classic Clare Briggs When a Feller Needs a Friend -- this was tough to let go |
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| Super-sexy Flamingo daily -- and price should be reasonable since its by Thornton, not Matt Baker |
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| Ozark Ike wins the 1948 World Series! Oh my, Dinah is in that striped sweater. |
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| Mel Graff Secret Agent X-9 daily -- no main characters so probably will go very cheap (oops, I mean undervalued!) |
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| Super Sidney Smith Gumps daily from Andy's presidential campaign -- very timely subject matter |
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| Here's a real treasure -- Burris Jenkins anti-comic book editorial cartoon from 1946 |
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| Man that John Lehti sure could draw, couldn't he? Should have taken over Prince Valiant IMHO |
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| Delightful Lichty Grin and Bear It daily panel |
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| Superb Bobby London Thimble Theatre daily with three main characters! |
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| The sleeper of the auction, literally! Amazing and HUGE J. Norman Lynd Sunday about dreams! |
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| Very rare item -- a Sugar and Spike single-page gag by the great Sheldon Mayer |
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| The earliest Fred Opper cartoon you're ever likely to find -- 1880!! |
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| Sweetly drawn C.F. Peters gag cartoon about the stock market. Check out the nice framing on this one! |
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| Oh man, the fine linework of Paul Robinson just blows me away -- Just Among Us Girls panel |
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| Snookums topper -- not really by McManus of course, this would be the great Zeke Zekely ghosting,. Pantomime gag! |
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| Terry and the Pirates by Wunder -- fabulous drawing, and no face-front stars to make the bidding go overboard |
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| Denny O'Neil comic book script with probably Michael Kaluta sketches! |
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| A group of 16 different issues of 4Most -- I used to really get a kick out of reading these, and they're very inexpensive |
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| Group of 9 Airboys and Air Fighters -- lot of really nice condition copies thrown into this lot! |
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| Group of 15 nice silver age Batman and Detective issues |
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| Group of 34 silver and early bronze age Batman, Detective, Man-Bat -- what a deal! |
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| 1933 Kellogg's Buck Rogers giveaway booklet in nice condition |
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| Very scarce Bringing Up Father Big Book in really sharp condition |
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| Lot of 8 Bringing Up Father Cupples and Leon books in lesser condtion -- lotta cheap reading! |
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| The whole series of Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers books -- I hate to think what I paid for these, and they threw them into one lot! Ouch! Mostly beautiful condition for these fragile items. |
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| 2 different delightful Foxy Grandpa books by Bunny |
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| Quite rare 1918 Landfield-Kupfer Gumps book |
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| Two really nice early Iron Man issues -- I think they under-graded these frankly. |
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| OMG! They threw all my DC Kirby's into one enormous box lot. Huge lot and plenty of high grade issues in there. Gosh I loved these series as a young 'un. |
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| Ultra-rare Mammoth Comics, poor condition but find another! |
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| Lovely copy of the Cupples & Leon Mutt and Jeff Big Book |
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| 4 Cupples and Leon Mutt and Jeff books in lesser condition. Bargain reading material! |
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| Ultra-rare New York American Mutt and Jeff Joke Book -- only one I have ever found from this series! |
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| Rare Saalfield color interior Popeye Cartoon Book in reasonably nice shape |
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| Group of 36 (!) Target Comics. What a treasure-trove of great 1940s reading, probably at a bargain price. |
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| 7 wonderful reprint books in nice shape. Sorta weird grouping, so will probably go cheap! |
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| Great group of Eisner, Kurtzman and other reprint books. Wally Wood and R.C. Harvey are adults-only btw. |
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| Set of 42 proof books for King Features' North America Syndicate. Mostly July-December 2001, plus more from 1996-97 |
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| Relive your military days in these three scarce books. Two slightly risque WWII digests up top, plus the incomparable Wally Wallgren's WWI Stars & Stripes strips. |
: 3/24/2007 7:10 PM 
As far as I can tell Gene Ahern didn't serve in World War I, but that didn't stop him from doing a strip about a doughboy in the trenches. 
