Stripper's Guide

[Allan's note: Carlos Altgelt is a researcher currently working on an index of the long-running Argentine comic book Patoruzito. When trying to track down some comic strips he found in early issues, which he thought might be from the U.S., our paths crossed. I was able to ID one of the strips as Bela Lanan Court Reporter, but Mr. Altgelt was very curious about the background of the strip. I couldn't help much as I am woefully uninformed about the genesis and creators of this intriguing but quite obscure comic strip. 

Mr. Altgelt was so fascinated with this unusual strip that he went on a mission to uncover its history. Amazingly, he was able to dredge up an impressively complete picture of the strip, its creators, and the story of its creation and end. 

I feel greatly honored that Carlos Altgelt has written up the story of Bela Lanan and consented to having it appear here on the Stripper's Guide blog. Now, finally I'll shut up and let you learn the fascinating tale. Take it away, Carlos ...]

Will the Real Bela Lanan Please Stand Up?

by Carlos A. Altgelt / caltgelt@gmail.com

Patoruzito, the Argentine weekly magazine of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, marked an era in the history of comic books in that Latin American country.  With 32 large format pages (9” x 11½”), it debuted on October 11, 1945.  At the outset, it carried 25 different strips, of which the large majority (15) were of U.S. origin.  What made it such an important addition to the vast number of comic books circulating in Argentina in those days, was that in time, its editor, Dante Quinterno, paved the way for local artists such as José Luis Salinas of Cisco Kid fame, Bruno Premiani and Alberto Breccia to appear in its pages.  By 1952, only four foreign strips remained.  The U.S. strips present in that first issue included such icons as Captain Marvel Jr., Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and the lesser known Miki and You Be the Judge.  And it is this last one which brought me to write the following article.

What happens is that when Toni Torres, owner of “El Club del Cómic” store in Buenos Aires asked me to write the index of Patoruzito, I knew I was in trouble because, at Toni’s suggestion, I had just published a book listing all the comic books edited by the legendary scriptwriter Héctor Germán Oesterheld (El Eternauta, Mort Cinder, Ernie Pike, Sherlock Time).  There were over 400 issues, and I detailed each one of the strips that appeared in each number, the artists and writers, and its origins if foreign, including a color photograph of the covers. But while Oesterheld’s magazines carried an average of 5 strips per issue, Patoruzito boasted four to five times that amount and it ran for 892 issues!

From Patoruzito #1

The challenge was made, however, and I accepted it by first attacking the seemingly impossible to find origin of a strip titled Júzguelo usted. Impossible, that is, until Frank Motler put me in touch with Allan Holtz’s Strippers Guide. He was able to identify the strip as Bela Lanan, Court Reporter.
 

Original US versions of the Bela Lanan story above - note the differing panel order

Bela Lana, Court Reporter (a.k.a. You Be The Judge) was an American newspaper daily comic strip which ran from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s.  It was written by Leopold Allen Heine, drawn by Robert Wathen and syndicated by Carlile Crutcher of Louisville, Kentucky.

In an era dominated by adventure, humorous and family life strips, Bela Lanan was one of the few non-fiction entries, along with strips like Rex Collier’s War On Crime and James Carroll Mansfield’s Highlights of History.

Practically forgotten today, what made it unique was its “hook.”  Every week it presented a court case in six episodes where the reader, acting as judge and jury, was challenged to deduce the outcome.  At the end of each weekly  installment, the actual verdict appeared in a text column on a separate page.

The cases were based on actual legal suits, not only from the United States but from around the world.  The characters’ names were changed, however, to protect the innocent so to speak.  If one was interested, all one had to do was to send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the editor to find the true details of the litigation.

The strip was easily recognizable among the six or seven that appeared on each page in those golden days because the first panel, with a height 2½ times its width, always carried, not a drawing, but the title of the episode. This was preceded by the words “The Strange Case of…” (sometimes “odd” or “tragic” were used instead of “strange”).  At the bottom of this first panel, the reader was reminded that the story was in six episodes and, below it, the number of the daily installment.  With few exceptions, the title of the strip itself was shown at top left with the name of its writer as “L. Allen Heine” on the right.

The story of its inception is just as interesting as any of the cases themselves.  It all began when Carlile Crutcher, recently graduated from Centre College in 1926, became the secretary and personal assistant to powerful judge Robert Worth Bingham, politician, diplomat and newspaper publisher of the progressive Louisville Courier-Journal.  As a publisher, the judge championed women's suffrage, the League of Nations and labor unions.  Soon Crutcher learned the ins and outs of the law as well as the publishing trade.

He developed an interest in copyright law and approached Harry Robertson, editor of the paper, with the idea of publishing a daily short column highlighting, in no more than 20 lines and headed by a single picture panel, the odd proposals granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Robertson accepted the concept and Freak Patents debuted on Monday, April 22, 1935, at the bottom of page 2 of the Courier-Journal.  The texts were written by Crutcher, with line drawings by Thomas Harvey Peake, a local freelance writer and artist.  It was copyrighted under the name Carlile Crutcher.

First Freak Patents, 4/22/35

Last Freak Patents, 8/8/36

The feature was readily accepted by the public, but soon Crutcher began toying with another idea based on real life.  While searching for the odd patents, he came across a 62 year-old resident of Louisville, Lawrence S. Leopold and, through him, also met Leopold Allen Heine.

According to Stephen J. Monchak, in an article titled “How A Hobby Became a Feature Is Told” (Editor & Publisher magazine, March 30, 1940):

"[Heine] had in his possession a trunk full of manuscripts dealing with unusual law cases.  The manuscripts were written in longhand by the late William Lanahan, a former Louisville reporter who became an itinerant newspaperman.  Lanahan not only worked on newspapers in this country but abroad.  He made a hobby of collecting tricky court cases.  When he died he willed his possessions, including the manuscripts, to Mr. Heine.  [He] began briefing the Lanahan manuscripts so the cases could be condensed into a six-day picture serial. (…) In order to get fresh material, Mr. Heine reads law cases continually and each 100 cases usually nets one suit that lends itself to dramatization.”

Enthused with this wealth of information, Crutcher convinced Heine to become the writer of a new daily comic strip, You Be The Judge.  Robert Wathen, a local watercolor artist, was to be the illustrator.  His son, Joe Wathen, said in a comment on this blog that his dad “found characters to draw into the strip by visiting bars in downtown Louisville” (August 5, 2009).  Neither Wathen nor Heine had any experience in the comic strip field nor would they have any additional ones in the future.  That, however, didn’t deter Crutcher from marketing it.  To that extent, still employed by the Courier-Journal, he ambitiously launched the Carlile Crutcher Newspaper Feature Syndicate, nominally a news service but mostly dedicated to the distribution of the new comic strip, which made its first appearance on July 6, 1936.  Its first installment was titled “The Burning of the Golden Gate,” not referring to the famous San Francisco Bay bridge, but to the sinking of a steamship of that name bound for Panama. The Wilkes-Barre (PA) Record was one of the few newspapers that carried it that day. Freak Patents continued for another month but on August 8 was published for the last time.

Week 1 of You Be The Judge, 7/6 - 7/11/1936

Week 1 court decision

Shortly after launching You Be The Judge, a Chicago radio station complained that they were using that title in one of their shows.  Rather than argue, Crutcher asked the newspapers that carried the strip to change its title to Bela Lanan, Court Reporter and used this name to solicit further subscriptions.

In the 12th weekly episode, the one starting on September 21 1936, Heine gives a slightly veiled tribute to his mentor, William Lanahan.  In the story he explains the reason behind the odd new name for the strip by narrating the story of Bela Lanan (recall that no real names were used in the strip).  He tells us that Lanan/Lanahan was born in Budapest in 1881. That should explain the origin of the name ‘Bela’ since it was and still is a very common given name in Hungary, and perhaps was William Lanahan's real given name, anglicized when he came to the US. At any rate, ‘Lanan’ is not an anagram as many thought, but a shortening of the Magyar traveling reporter’s family name.

Bela Lanan's biography in You Be The Judge, 9/21 - 9/26/1936

Bela Lanan’s comic strip biography begins with Heine’s affectionate show of gratitude to his friend.  He considers it a duty to tell his story, which was a source of inspiration for his writings.  As told in the third episode, Lanan left Hungary at the age of 20 because, after being accused five years earlier of stealing a purse, he was a marked man.  He tells his mother: “The courtroom has cast its spell upon me.  The judge, the jury, the fiery prosecution, the heroic attempt of the defense.  I can never be a great lawyer.  My voice is weak, but I will be a great reporter.  But never in Budapest! My friends, my arrest, they will not forget.  I am going away!”

And so he does.  He spends five years roaming “the rolling hills of Scotland, the lonely moors of England, the African veldt and the Australian bush” collecting all sorts of bizarre legal suits which were to appear decades later in the strip.  We find him then in Bombay, India, where he has just reported an important case and he is told by the British Mercantile Office to go to Buenos Aires.  The year is 1905 and, while the strip doesn’t mention it, it probably had to do with the Argentine revolution of that year.

He continues tramping the world, always looking for the odd judicial case.  In 1916 he is in Verdun during the First World War.  A piece of shrapnel hits his eye and his optic nerve receives a severe shock.  He is blinded for life.  He then emigrates to the United States, where he dies in California in the early 1930s.

In the words of Heine, he was “a man of strange make-up, odd, eccentric, a world traveler and—before he died—a recluse, alone and almost forgotten.”  But he is quick to add that “he had the courage of his own convictions.  He knew his weakness and he knew his strength—even at the early age of 20—and that’s something that many of us would like to be able to say. (…) His records are all that remain and they will unfold, from week to week, the strange and interesting, but sometimes tragic, revelations that came to this man of mystery.  As Bela Lanan traveled, he collected these true stories, and saved evidence to prove that even the most unusual in his collection are true.”

The week after this dramatic introduction to the public, on October 5 1936, Crutcher applied for a trademark which was properly granted on April 13 the following year.   By the end of 1936, six months after its debut, Bela Lanan was carried by 40 domestic newspapers.

Three years later, Crutcher changed his mind regarding the name of the strip and advised his local and overseas subscribers to use the name You Be The Judge again.  The Wilkes-Barre Record reverted to the original name on April 24, 1939.

Then in May of 1942 Crutcher entered the United States Army Air Force and, in his own words, “thereafter found it impossible to manage the sale and distribution” of the strip.  According to a 1956 legal transcript, the last distribution was furnished to domestic subscribers on September 4, 1942 (a questionable date since this is a Friday, and such dates are normally given as Mondays or Saturdays). Crutcher apparently never used the name or produced the strip beyond that time. In all 322 weekly stories would have appeared in the United States by that time.  According to Crutcher, by that time only five domestic subscribers were carrying the strip and he didn’t publicly identify which ones they were. That makes it difficult to know the last time Bela Lanan, Court Reporter was published in the U.S.  However, on the basis of the episodes that appeared abroad, specifically the Argentine magazine Patoruzito, which carried strips that most probably never appeared in the U.S., I estimate that the total number would have been 337, enough material to last until December 19 1942. I have been able to document the first 295 stories in U.S. newspapers (last appearance on March 1 1942 in the Longview (TX) News-Journal).

    By the end of its run, 71 domestic newspapers—among them the Wilkes-Barre Record, Brooklyn Eagle, Abilene (TX) Reporter-News and Longview (TX) Daily News—and 21 abroad (one being the Lethbridge Herald of Alberta, Canada), had purchased the feature.  Curiously, the Louisville Courier-Journal, professional home of Carlile Crutcher, never carried the strip.
 
     Once World War II ended, Crutcher was released from the Air Force in January 1946.  He soon found out that because of shortages of newsprint, newspaper publishers were a tough market for selling new strips.

Samples of the Saturday Evening Post version of You Be The Judge, 1951-52

In 1948, the Curtis Publishing Company began, in its weekly magazine The Saturday Evening Post, a one panel drawing titled You Be the Judge with a short statement of facts inviting the readers to solve the case.  This brought in 1950 a lawsuit by Crutcher for infringement of his trademark.  He lost the case because in the opinion of the court, “the plaintiff has failed to establish a right to the exclusive use of the name. (…) ‘You be the judge’ is an expression in common use, containing no element of novelty or fancy, and is by no means unique.  For a name which is merely descriptive to have the protection of the law, it must be established that the name has acquired a secondary meaning identifying it with the goods.” An ideal case for a Bela Lanan series! 

Carlile Crutcher was born in Jefferson Kentucky on November 9, 1906 and died on April 19, 1966 in Louisville.  

Sources: Crutcher’s obituary from the Louisville Courier Journal (April 20, 1966, page 40); newspaper accounts and strips of that era; Allan Holtz’s online Stripper’s Guide articles; Argentine Patoruzito comic book (1945-1950); Lawrence S. Leopold family information from the1940 US Census; Crutcher v. Curtis Publishing Company legal suit (January 11, 1956); Trademark application #353,497 (October 5, 1936).

Personal notes: I wish to express my gratitude to Mr. Allan Holtz for his help in finding the original source of “Júzguelo usted” and his encouragement to write the preceding article.

I have compiled an Excel spreadsheet  listing all the story titles for Bela Lanan, their running dates, and the newspaper sources in which I found them. Researchers wishing to get a copy of this list are invited to email me at caltgelt@gmail.com

"REVERSED!" -- Sally Matson, self-confessed violator of the prohibition law that existed at that time was freed of the charge and released from custody. It was a startling reversal of the lower court's decree, and one that created much comment, both pro and con.

Mrs. Matson's only plea was that she was entrapped into selling the liquor to the soldiers through the instigation of the government's agents. She further claimed and proved that they came to her place for the sole purpose of trapping her into the commission of the offense.

Mrs. Matson was guilty and yet, strange to say, she went free, and here's the reason! The court said: "The government of this country is not engaged in the manufacture of criminals, and when one of our officers persuades a law-abiding citizen to commit a crime, we find it abhorrent to our sense of decent administration of the law. In cases of this kind, the courts have always been inclined to say that a crime thus induced does not support a conviction."

This is a true case. Reference of citation may be had by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to "Bela Lanan, Court Reporter."


Despite the odd name and the tiny syndicate that offered it, Bela Lanan Court Reporter appeared in a quite respectable number of papers. The strip was syndicated by the Carlile Crutcher Syndicate, which was the distribution company for the Louisville Courier-Journal (Crutcher was an editor of the paper).

The strip was originally titled You Be The Judge when it first appeared on July 6 1936, but apparently someone else had that name tied up, so it was renamed to the listed title on October 5 of that year. Despite the name change, some of the marketing material for the strip continued to use the original title for years afterward. As an interesting bit of trivia regarding the title, I don't believe Mr. Lanan was ever actually heard from in the strip, though presumably the stenographer that can often be seen in the Saturday episode is our title character.

The strip retold court cases in the space of each week's six episodes, and on Saturdays the final disposition of the case was given in a text column. Our sample above is a pretty typical example of the type of narrative used throughout the life of the strip. The example is, I think, particularly a propos since Obama has been excoriated lately for citing "empathy" as a quality he'd like to see in his Supreme Court candidate. Without empathy, there might be no exceptions made for entrapment in law, and Sally Matson would be in prison for taking pity on some tired soldiers.

The writer, L. Allen Heine, and artist Robert Wathen, have no other credits I've been able to find.

Bela Lanan lasted until at least June 1941, perhaps a few months more.

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me by Carlos Altgelt that the origin of the name Lanan in the title likely derives from reporter William Lanahan, who collected stories about interesting court cases; Heine was in possession of his court case files and used them as the basis for the strip. See this post for more.

Labels: Obscurities

Robert Griffin Wathen was born in Madisonville, Kentucky, on October 14, 1910, according to the 1942 Monthly Supplement to Who’s Who in America. Wathen’s parents were George Francis and Nell Griffin.

In the 1920 census, Wathen was the second of three brothers. Their father was a merchant in a notion store. The Wathens lived in Madisonville at 248 Broadway.

The Monthly Supplement said Wathen graduated from Louisville Male High School in 1927. He attended the Louisville School of Art from 1926 to 1927. In 1928 Wathen was in the art school of the Louisville Conservatory of Music where he studied with Bethuel Moore (1929 to 1931) and Paul Plaschke (1932 to 1934).

A 1928 Louisville, Kentucky city directory listed Wathen as an artist at 1023 South 1st. The 1929 and 1930 directories said Wathen was employed in the engraving department of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. His address was 1023 South Brook.

That address, according to the 1930 census, was the Wathen family residence. Wathen’s occupation was newspaper cartoonist. Wathen continued to live with his parents through mid-1932.

The Monthly Supplement said Wathen married Helen Eugenia Page in June 1932.

The 1933 Louisville directory listing said Wathen was an advertising artist at the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. He and his wife lived at 202 Linden Lane.

Over the next few years their address was 205 North Birchwood Avenue in Louisville. 

The Monthly Supplement said Wathen was creative designer and artist with the Courier-Journal Job Printing & Lithographing Company from 1933 to 1939.

American Newspaper Comics (2012) said Wathen drew the strip Bela Lanan, Court Reporter, aka You Be the Judge, starting July 6, 1936. It was written by L. Allen Heine. The strip was handled by the Carlile Crutcher Syndicate and ran into Fall 1942.

According to the Monthly Supplement, Wathen was an instructor at the Louisville Art Academy in 1935. He served as art director at the M. R. Kopmeyer Advertising Agency beginning in 1939.

1940 census recorded two sons and two daughters for artist Wathen and his wife. They made their home in St. Matthews, Kentucky, at 513 Cornell Place.

Louisville directories, from 1949 to 1960, said commercial artist Wathen maintained a studio at 633 South 5th in room 200.

Wathen passed away December 5, 1988, in Louisville, according to the Social Security Death Index. He was laid to rest in Resthaven Memorial Cemetery. 

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

Ledger Signs "Huck" Finn
1/13/40
"Huckleberry Finn," a new comic strip available also as a three-column box, and which was created by special permission of the Mark Twain estate, was announced in Philadelphia this week by George Kearney, manager of the Ledger Syndicate. Publication is scheduled for Feb. 12.

Drawn by Clare Dwiggins ("Dwig") veteran cartoonist and one-time collaborator with Mark Twain's official biographer, the strip is the first which features "Huck" Finn in the hero's role. "Dwig" is famous for his drawings of kids-boys and girls and dogs and cats and all they do.

"The strip is light continuity, plus humor, depicting the new daily adventures of 'Huck,' " said Mr. Kearney. "These adventures are based on the situations and stories written by Mark Twain.

"All the famous Twain characters are depicted in the strip, including Miss Watson, Aunt Polly, Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, Sue, Injun Joe, Old Pete and many others. It is packed with human boy adventures, spiced with the inimitable humor of Mark Twain."

How A Hobby Became A Feature Is Told
By Stephen J. Monchak 3/30/40
How the musty manuscripts of an old-time reporter, who collected interesting court cases as the basis for short stories and plays, led to development of the present adventure strip, "You Be the Judge," was related to Editor & Publisher recently by Carlile Crutcher, assistant to the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times and president of Carlile Crutcher Syndicate.

Mr. Crutcher first became interested in newspaper syndication when he developed a series of articles on freak patents. The stories created so much interest in the Courier-Journal that he arranged to syndicate them to other papers. He then learned that L. Allen Heine, now author of "You Be the Judge" series, had in his possession a trunk full of manuscripts dealing with unusual law cases.

Now Sold to 87 Papers
The manuscripts were written in long hand by the late William Lanahan, a former Louisville reporter who became an itinerant newspaperman. Lanahan not only worked on newspapers in this country but abroad. He made a hobby of collecting tricky court cases. When he died he willed his possessions, including the manuscripts, to Mr. Heine.
Mr. Crutcher conceived the idea of a panel strip that would tell the story in pictures and a small amount of text. Mr. Heine began briefing the Lanahan manuscripts so the cases could be condensed into a six-day picture serial. Robert Wathen was employed as the artist to illustrate the feature.

Today, the Crutcher Syndicate sells the feature to 87 newspapers, including Spanish, Portuguese and French translations for foreign language papers. In order to get fresh material, Mr. Heine reads law cases continually and each 100 cases usually nets one suit that lends itself to dramatization.

The series is based entirely on actual legal suits, although names are changed. The syndicate offers to furnish citations of the cases, upon request of readers. Many lawyers write. (Allan's note: this strip is more widely known as Bela Lanan, Court Reporter)



UFS Comic Strip Renamed
1/13/40
It appears there's a Washington correspondent for King Features Syndicate called Jack Hazard and he felt it would be embarrassing to him if United Feature Syndicate's new comic strip about a Washington newspaper man called "Hap Hazard," would be syndicated nationally in view of the similarity in names and locale. So UFS this week told this column that the strip's name would be changed to "Hap Hopper."

The strip, scheduled for release around Feb. 1, was created by the "Washington Merry-Go-Round" columnists, Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen. It is drawn by Jack Sparling, a former staff cartoonist for the Washington (D. C.) Herald.

Labels: News of Yore