Al Capp
Al Capp | |
---|---|
L'il Abner | |
Spouse | Catherine Wingate (Cameron) Capp (1932–1979; his death) |
Children | Julie Ann Cairol, Catherine Jan Peirce, Colin Cameron Capp (adopted) |
Awards | Inkpot Award (1978)[1] |
Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American
Capp's comic strips dealt with urban experiences in the Northern United States until the year he introduced "Li'l Abner". Although Capp was from Connecticut, he spent 43 years writing about the fictional Southern town of Dogpatch, reaching an estimated 60 million readers in more than 900 American newspapers and 100 more papers in 28 countries internationally. M. Thomas Inge says Capp made a large personal fortune through the strip and "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South".[2]
Early life and education
Capp was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of East European Jewish heritage. He was the eldest child of Otto Philip Caplin (1885–1964)[3] and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin (1884–1948).[4] His brothers, Elliot and Jerome, were cartoonists, and his sister, Madeline, was a publicist. Capp's parents were both natives of Latvia whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. "My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants", wrote Capp in 1978. "Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true – it was no crime to be a Jew." The Caplins were dirt-poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.
In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp was run down by a
"The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else", Capp philosophically wrote (in was, to some degree, a creatively channeled, compensatory response to his disability.
Capp's father, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy. He became quite proficient, advancing mostly on his own. Among his earliest influences were
Capp spent five years at Bridgeport High School in
In early 1932, Capp hitchhiked to
Leaving his new wife with her parents in Amesbury, Massachusetts, he subsequently returned to New York in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. "I was 23, I carried a mass of drawings, and I had nearly five dollars in my pocket. People were sleeping in alleys then, willing to work at anything." There he met Ham Fisher, who hired him to ghost on Joe Palooka. During one of Fisher's extended vacations, Capp's Joe Palooka story arc introduced a stupid, coarse, oafish mountaineer named "Big Leviticus", a crude prototype. (Leviticus was much closer to Capp's later villains Lem and Luke Scragg than to the much more appealing and innocent Li'l Abner.)
Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that eventually became Li'l Abner. He based his cast of characters on the authentic mountain-dwellers he met while hitchhiking through rural
His younger brother, Elliot Caplin, also became a comic strip writer, best known for co-creating the soap opera strip The Heart of Juliet Jones with artist Stan Drake and conceiving the comic strip character Broom-Hilda with cartoonist Russell Myers. Elliot also authored several off-Broadway plays, including A Nickel for Picasso (1981), which was based on and dedicated to his mother and his famous brother.[12]
Li'l Abner
What began as a
"Yokum" was a combination of yokel and hokum, although Capp established a deeper meaning for the name during a series of visits around 1965–1970 with comics historians George E. Turner and Michael H. Price:
It's phonetic Hebrew—that's what it is, all right—and that's what I was getting at with the name Yokum, more so than any attempt to sound hickish. That was a fortunate coincidence, of course, that the name should pack a backwoods connotation. But it's a godly conceit, really, playing off a godly name—Joachim means 'God's determination', something like that—that also happens to have a rustic ring to it.[14]
The Yokums live in the backwater hamlet of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Described by its creator as "an average stone-age community", Dogpatch mostly consists of hopelessly ramshackle log cabins, pine trees, "tarnip" fields, and "hawg" wallows. Whatever energy Abner had went into evading the marital goals of Daisy Mae Scragg, his sexy, well-endowed, but virtuous girlfriend, until Capp finally gave in to reader pressure and allowed the couple to marry. This newsworthy event made the cover of Life on March 31, 1952.[15]
Capp peopled his comic strip with an assortment of memorable characters, including Marryin' Sam, Hairless Joe, Lonesome Polecat, Evil-Eye Fleegle, General Bullmoose, Lena the Hyena, Senator Jack S. Phogbound (Capp's caricature of the anti-
Another famous character was
Dogpatch residents regularly combat the likes of city slickers, business tycoons, government officials, and intellectuals with their homespun simplicity. Situations often take the characters to other destinations, including New York City, Washington, D.C., Hollywood, tropical islands, the moon, Mars, and some purely fanciful worlds of Capp's invention, including El Passionato, Kigmyland, The Republic of Crumbumbo, Skunk Hollow, The Valley of the Shmoon, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, and a miserable frozen wasteland known as Lower Slobbovia, a pointedly political satire of backward nations and foreign diplomacy that remains a contemporary reference.[18]
According to cultural historian Anthony Harkins:
Indeed, Li'l Abner incorporates such a panoply of characters and ideas that it defies summary. Yet though Capp's storylines often wandered far afield, his hillbilly setting remained a central touchstone, serving both as a microcosm and a distorting carnival mirror of broader American society.[19]
The strip's popularity grew from an original eight papers to eventually more than 900. At its peak, Li'l Abner was estimated to have been read daily in the United States by 60 to 70 million people (the U.S. population at the time was only 180 million), with adult readers far outnumbering children. Many communities, high schools, and colleges staged Sadie Hawkins dances patterned after the similar annual event in the strip.[20]
Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. In response to the question "Which side does Abner part his hair on?", Capp would answer: "Both." Capp said he finally found the right "look" for Li'l Abner with Henry Fonda's character Dave Tolliver in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936).[21]
In later years, Capp always claimed to have effectively created the miniskirt, when he first put one on Daisy Mae in the 1930s.[22]
Parodies, toppers, and alternate strips
Li'l Abner also features a comic strip-within-the-strip:
Besides Dick Tracy, Capp parodied many other comic strips in Li'l Abner—including
Capp also lampooned popular recording idols of the day, such as Elvis Presley ("Hawg McCall", 1957), Liberace ("Loverboynik", 1956), the Beatles ("the Beasties", 1964)—and in 1944, Frank Sinatra. "Sinatra was the first great public figure I ever wrote about," Capp once said. "I called him 'Hal Fascinatra.' I remember my news syndicate was so worried about what his reaction might be, and we were all surprised when he telephoned and told me how thrilled he was with it. He always made it a point to send me champagne whenever he happened to see me in a restaurant ..." (from Frank Sinatra, My Father by Nancy Sinatra, 1985). On the other hand, Liberace was "cut to the quick" over Loverboynik, according to Capp, and even threatened legal action—as would Joan Baez later, over "Joanie Phoanie" in 1967.[23]
Capp was just as likely to parody himself; his self-caricature made frequent, tongue-in-cheek appearances in Li'l Abner.
In addition to creating Li'l Abner, Capp also co-created two other newspaper strips:
Critical recognition
According to comics historian
Over the years, Li'l Abner has been adapted to radio,
Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length scholarly assessment of an American comic strip ever published. Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire by Arthur Asa Berger (Twayne, 1969) contained serious analyses of Capp's narrative technique, his use of dialogue, self-caricature, and grotesquerie, the place of Li'l Abner in American satire, and the significance of social criticism and the graphic image. "One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture," wrote Professor Berger, "Li'l Abner is worth studying ... because of Capp's imagination and artistry, and because of the strip's very obvious social relevance." It was reprinted by the University Press of Mississippi in 1994.
The 1940s and 1950s
During World War II and for many years afterward, Capp worked tirelessly going to hospitals to entertain patients, especially to cheer recent amputees and explain to them that the loss of a limb did not mean an end to a happy and productive life. Making no secret of his own disability, Capp openly joked about his
In 1940, an RKO movie adaptation starred Granville Owen (later known as Jeff York) as Li'l Abner, with Buster Keaton taking the role of Lonesome Polecat, and featuring a title song with lyrics by Milton Berle. A successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956, and had a long run of 693 performances, followed by a nationwide tour. The stage musical, with music and lyrics by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer, was adapted into a Technicolor motion picture at Paramount in 1959 by producer Norman Panama and director Melvin Frank, with a score by Nelson Riddle. Several performers repeated their Broadway roles in the film, most memorably Julie Newmar as Stupefyin' Jones and Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam.[29]
Other highlights of that decade included the 1942 debut of Fearless Fosdick as Abner's "ideel" (hero); the 1946 Lena the Hyena Contest, in which a hideous Lower Slobbovian gal was ultimately revealed in the harrowing winning entry (as judged by Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff, and Salvador Dalí) drawn by noted cartoonist Basil Wolverton; and an ill-fated Sunday parody of Gone With the Wind that aroused anger and legal threats from author Margaret Mitchell, and led to a printed apology within the strip. In October 1947, Li'l Abner met Rockwell P. Squeezeblood, head of the abusive and corrupt Squeezeblood Comic Strip Syndicate. The resulting sequence, "Jack Jawbreaker Fights Crime!", was a devastating satire of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's notorious exploitation by DC Comics over Superman. It was later reprinted in The World of Li'l Abner (1953). (Siegel and Shuster had earlier poked fun at Capp in a Superman story in Action Comics #55, December 1942, in which a cartoonist named "Al Hatt" invents a comic strip featuring the hillbilly "Tiny Rufe".)
In 1947, Capp earned a
Following his close friend Milton Caniff's lead (with Steve Canyon), Capp had recently fought a successful battle with the syndicate to gain complete ownership of his feature when the Shmoos debuted. As a result, he reaped enormous financial rewards from the unexpected (and almost unprecedented) merchandising phenomenon that followed. As in the strip, Shmoos suddenly appeared to be everywhere in 1949 and 1950—including a Time cover story. A paperback collection of the original sequence, The Life and Times of the Shmoo, became a bestseller for Simon & Schuster. Shmoo dolls, clocks, watches, jewelry, earmuffs, wallpaper, fishing lures, air fresheners, soap, ice cream, balloons, ashtrays, comic books, records, sheet music, toys, games, Halloween masks, salt and pepper shakers, decals, pinbacks, tumblers, coin banks, greeting cards, planters, neckties, suspenders, belts, curtains, fountain pens, and other Shmoo paraphernalia were produced. A garment factory in Baltimore turned out a whole line of Shmoo apparel, including "Shmooveralls". The original sequence and its 1959 sequel The Return of the Shmoo have been collected in print many times since, most recently in 2011, always to high sales figures. The Shmoos later had their own animated television series.
Capp followed this success with other allegorical fantasy critters, including the aboriginal and masochistic "Kigmies", who craved abuse (a story that began as a veiled comment on racial and religious oppression), the dreaded "Nogoodniks" (or bad shmoos), and the irresistible "Bald Iggle", a guileless creature whose sad-eyed countenance compelled involuntary truthfulness—with predictably disastrous results.
Li'l Abner was
Capp received the National Cartoonists Society's Billy DeBeck Memorial Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year. (When the award name was changed in 1954, Capp also retroactively received a Reuben statuette.) He was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the NCS by admitting women cartoonists. Originally, the Society had disallowed female members. Capp briefly resigned his membership in 1949 to protest their refusal of admission to Hilda Terry, creator of the comic strip Teena. According to Tom Roberts, author of Alex Raymond: His Life and Art (2007), Capp delivered a stirring speech that was instrumental in changing those rules. The NCS finally accepted female members the following year. In December 1952, Capp published an article in Real magazine entitled "The REAL Powers in America" that further challenged the conventional attitudes of the day: "The real powers in America are women—the wives and sweethearts behind the masculine dummies...."
Highlights of the 1950s included the much-heralded marriage of Abner and Daisy Mae in 1952, the birth of their son "Honest Abe" Yokum in 1953, and in 1954 the introduction of Abner's enormous, long-lost kid brother Tiny Yokum, who filled Abner's place as a bachelor in the annual Sadie Hawkins Day race. In 1952, Capp and his characters graced the covers of both Life and TV Guide. The year 1956 saw the debut of Bald Iggle, considered by some Abner enthusiasts to be the creative high point of the strip, as well as Mammy's revelatory encounter with the "Square Eyes" Family—Capp's thinly-veiled appeal for racial tolerance. (This fable-like story was collected into an educational comic book called Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery! and distributed by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith later that year.) Two years later, Capp's studio issued Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a biographical comic book distributed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.[32][33]
Often, Capp had parodied corporate greed—pork tycoon J. Roaringham Fatback had figured prominently in wiping out the Shmoos. But in 1952, when General Motors president Charles E. Wilson, nominated for a cabinet post, told Congress "...what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa", he inspired one of Capp's greatest satires—the introduction of General Bullmoose, the robust, ruthless, and ageless business tycoon. The blustering Bullmoose, who seemed to own and control nearly everything, justified his far-reaching and mercenary excesses by saying "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!" Bullmoose's corrupt interests were often pitted against those of the pathetic Lower Slobbovians in a classic mismatch of "haves" versus "have-nots". This character, along with the Shmoos, helped cement Capp's favor with the Left, and increased their outrage a decade later when Capp, a former Franklin D. Roosevelt liberal, switched targets. Nonetheless, General Bullmoose continued to appear, undaunted and unredeemed, during the strip's final right-wing phase and into the 1970s.
Feud with Ham Fisher
After Capp quit his ghosting job on Ham Fisher's Joe Palooka in 1934 to launch his own strip, Fisher badmouthed him to colleagues and editors, claiming that Capp had "stolen" his idea. For years, Fisher brought the characters back to his strip, billing them as "The ORIGINAL Hillbilly Characters" and advising readers not to be "fooled by imitations". (In fact, Fisher's brutish hillbilly character—Big Leviticus, created by Capp in Fisher's absence—bore little resemblance to Li'l Abner.) According to a November 1950 Time article, "Capp parted from Fisher with a definite impression, (to put it mildly) that he had been underpaid and unappreciated. Fisher, a man of Roman self esteem, considered Capp an ingrate and a whippersnapper, and watched his rise to fame with unfeigned horror."[34]
"Fisher repeatedly brought Leviticus and his clan back, claiming their primacy as comics' first hillbilly family – but he was missing the point. It wasn't the setting that made Capp's strip such a huge success. It was Capp's finely tuned sense of the absurd, his ability to milk an outrageous situation for every laugh in it and then, impossibly, to squeeze even more laughs from it, that found such favor with the public," (from
The Capp-Fisher feud was well known in cartooning circles, and it grew more personal as Capp's strip eclipsed Joe Palooka in popularity. Fisher hired away Capp's top assistant, Moe Leff. After Fisher underwent plastic surgery, Capp included a racehorse in Li'l Abner named "Ham's Nose-Bob". In 1950, Capp introduced a cartoonist character named "Happy Vermin"—a caricature of Fisher—who hired Abner to draw his comic strip in a dimly lit closet (after sacking his previous "temporary" assistant of 20 years, who had been cut off from all his friends in the process). Instead of using Vermin's tired characters, Abner inventively peopled the strip with hillbillies. A bighearted Vermin told his slaving assistant: "I'm proud of having created these characters!! They'll make millions for me!! And if they do – I'll get you a new light bulb!!"
Traveling in the same social circles, the two men engaged in a 20-year mutual vendetta, as described by the New York Daily News in 1998: "They crossed paths often, in the midtown watering holes and at National Cartoonists Society banquets, and the city's gossip columns were full of their snarling public donnybrooks."[36] In 1950, Capp wrote a nasty article for The Atlantic, entitled "I Remember Monster". The article recounted Capp's days working for an unnamed "benefactor" with a miserly, swinish personality, who Capp claimed was a never-ending source of inspiration when it came time to create a new unregenerate villain for his comic strip. The thinly-veiled boss was understood to be Ham Fisher.
Fisher retaliated, doctoring photostats of Li'l Abner and falsely accusing Capp of sneaking obscenities into his comic strip. Fisher submitted examples of Li'l Abner to Capp's syndicate and to the New York courts, in which Fisher had identified pornographic images that were hidden in the background art. However, the X-rated material had been drawn there by Fisher. Capp was able to refute the accusation by simply showing the original artwork.
In 1954, when Capp was applying for a Boston television license, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received an anonymous packet of pornographic Li'l Abner drawings. The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) convened an ethics hearing, and Fisher was expelled for the forgery from the same organization that he had helped found; Fisher's scheme had backfired in spectacular fashion. Around the same time, his mansion in Wisconsin was destroyed by a storm. On December 27, 1955, Fisher committed suicide in his studio. The feud and Fisher's suicide were used as the basis for a lurid, highly fictionalized murder mystery, Strip for Murder by Max Allan Collins.
Another "feud" seemed to be looming when, in one run of Sunday strips in 1957, Capp lampooned the comic strip
Personality
Capp, Milton Caniff (
Milton Caniff offered another anecdote (from Phi Beta Pogo, 1989) involving Capp and Walt Kelly, "two boys from Bridgeport, Connecticut, nose to nose," onstage at a meeting of the Newspaper Comics Council in the sixties. "Walt would say to Al, 'Of course, Al, this is really how you should draw Daisy Mae, I'm only showing you this for your own good.' Then Walt would do a sketch. Capp, of course, got ticked off by this, as you can imagine! So he retaliated by doing his version of Pogo. Unfortunately, the drawings are long gone; no recording was made. What a shame! Nobody anticipated there'd be this dueling back and forth between the two of them ..."
Although he was often considered a difficult person,[40] some acquaintances of Capp have stressed that the cartoonist also had a sensitive side. In 1973, upon learning that 12-year-old Ted Kennedy Jr., the son of his political rival Ted Kennedy Sr., had his right leg amputated, Capp wrote the boy an encouraging letter that gave candid advice about dealing with the loss of a limb,[41] which Capp himself had experienced as a boy. One of Capp's grandchildren recalls that at one point, tears were streaming down the cartoonist's cheeks while he was watching a documentary about the Jonestown massacre.[42] Capp gave money anonymously to charities and "people in need" at various points in his life.[40]
Sexual harassment and assault claims
In her autobiography, American actress Goldie Hawn stated that Capp sexually propositioned her on a casting couch and exposed himself to her when she was 19 years old. When she refused his advances, Capp became angry and told her that she was "never gonna make anything in your life" and that she should "go and marry a Jewish dentist. You'll never get anywhere in this business."[43][44]
Two biographies, one about Goldie Hawn and the other about Grace Kelly, describe Capp as trying to force Kelly to have sex with him, and he later tried to do the same with Hawn.[45][46]
In 1971, investigative journalist Jack Anderson wrote that Capp had exposed his genitals to four female students at the University of Alabama.[47]
In 1972, after an incident at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, Capp was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted adultery, while charges of indecent exposure and sodomy were dropped. He was fined US$500 (equivalent to $3,642 in 2023).[48]
In 2019, Jean Kilbourne was inspired by the MeToo movement to publish in Hogan's Alley her own experience of being groped and sexually solicited by Al Capp while doing freelance writing and research work for him in contemplation of a permanent job in 1967.[49]
Production methods
Like many cartoonists, Capp made extensive use of assistants (notably Andy Amato, Harvey Curtis, Walter Johnson, and
No matter how much help he had, Capp insisted on his drawing and inking the characters' faces and hands—especially of Abner and Daisy Mae—and his distinctive touch is often discernible. "He had the touch," Frazetta said of Capp in 2008. "He knew how to take an otherwise ordinary drawing and really make it pop. I'll never knock his talent."
As is usual with collaborative efforts in comic strips, his name was the only one credited— although, sensitive to his own experience working on Joe Palooka, Capp frequently drew attention to his assistants in interviews and publicity pieces. A 1950 cover story in Time even included photographs of two of his employees, whose roles in the production were detailed by Capp. Ironically, this highly irregular policy (along with the subsequent fame of Frank Frazetta) has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. The production of Li'l Abner has been well documented, however. In point of fact, Capp maintained creative control over every stage of production for virtually the entire run of the strip. Capp originated the stories, wrote the dialogue, designed the major characters, rough penciled the preliminary staging and action of each panel, oversaw the finished pencils, and drew and inked the hands and faces of the characters. Frazetta authority David Winiewicz described the everyday working mode of operation in Li'l Abner Dailies: 1954 Volume 20 (Kitchen Sink, 1994):
By the time Frazetta began working on the strip, the work of producing Li'l Abner was too much for one person. Capp had a group of assistants who he taught to reproduce his distinctive individual style, working under his direct supervision. Actual production of the strip began with a rough layout in pencil done by Al Capp, from Capp's script or a co-authored script, and the page passed to Andy Amato and Walter Johnson. Amato inked the figures, then Johnson added backgrounds and any mechanical objects. Harvey Curtis was responsible for the lettering and also shared inking duties with Amato ... To make sure that the work stayed true to his style, the final touches were added by Capp himself. He enjoyed adding a distinctive glint to an eye or an idiosyncratic contortion to a character's face. The finished strip was truly an ensemble effort, a skillful blending of talents.
There was also a separate line of comic book titles published by the Caplin family-owned
Capp detailed his approach to writing and drawing the stories in an instructional course book for the
Frazetta, later famous as a
Public service works
Capp provided specialty artwork for civic groups, government agencies, and charitable or nonprofit organizations, spanning several decades.
- Al Capp by Li'l Abner— Public service giveaway issued by the Red Cross (1946)
- Yo' Bets Yo' Life!— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Army(c. 1950)
- Li'l Abner Joins the Navy— Public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of the Navy(1950)
- Fearless Fosdick and the Case of the Red Feather— Public service giveaway issued by Red Feather Services, a forerunner of United Way(1951)
- The Youth You Supervise— Public service giveaway issued by the U.S. Department of Labor(1956)
- Mammy Yokum and the Great Dogpatch Mystery!— Public service giveaway issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (1956)
- Operation: Survival!— Public service giveaway issued by the Dept. of Civil Defense(1957)
- Natural Disasters!— Public service giveaway issued by the Department of Civil Defense (1957)
- The Fellowship of Reconciliation (1958)[32]
- Li'l Abner and the Creatures from Drop-Outer Space— Public service giveaway issued by the Job Corps (1965)
In addition, Dogpatch characters were used in national campaigns for the
Public figure
In the Golden Age of the American comic strip, successful cartoonists received a great deal of attention; their professional and private lives were reported in the press, and their celebrity was often nearly sufficient to rival their creations. As Li'l Abner reached its peak years, and following the success of the Shmoos and other high moments in his work, Al Capp achieved a public profile that is still unparalleled in his profession, and arguably exceeded the fame of his strip. "Capp was the best known, most influential and most controversial cartoonist of his era," writes publisher (and leading Shmoo collector)
Besides his use of the comic strip to voice his opinions and display his humor, Capp was a popular guest speaker at universities, and on radio
His frequent appearances on NBC's
Capp portrayed himself in a cameo role in the
Capp resumed visiting war amputees during the
In addition to his public service work for charitable organizations for disabled people, Capp also served on the National Reading Council, which was organized to combat illiteracy. He published a column ("Wrong Turn Onto Sesame Street") challenging federally funded
Capp's academic interests included being one of nineteen original "Trustees and Advisors" for "Endicott, Junior College for Young Woman", located in Pride's Crossing (Beverly), Massachusetts, which was founded in 1939. Al Capp is listed in the 1942 Mingotide Yearbook, representing the first graduating class from what is now the 4-year school known as Endicott College. The yearbook entry includes his credential as a "Cartoonist for United Feature Syndicate" and a resident of New York City.
"Comics", wrote Capp in 1970, "can be a combination of the highest quality of art and text, and many of them are." Capp produced many giveaway educational comic books and
In the early 1960s, Capp regularly wrote a column entitled Al Capp's Column for the newspaper The Schenectady Gazette (currently The Daily Gazette). He was the Playboy interview subject in December 1965, in a conversation conducted by Alvin Toffler. In August 1967, Capp was the narrator and host of an ABC network special called Do Blondes Have More Fun? In 1970, he was the subject of a provocative NBC documentary called This Is Al Capp.
The 1960s and 1970s
Capp and his family lived in
Capp became a popular public speaker on college campuses, where he reportedly relished hecklers. He attacked militant antiwar demonstrators, both in his personal appearances and in his strip. He also satirized student political groups. The
Capp's increasingly controversial remarks at his campus speeches and during television appearances cost him his semi-regular spot on the Tonight Show. His contentious public persona during this period was captured on a late sixties comedy LP called Al Capp On Campus. The album features his interaction with students at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) on such topics as "sensitivity training", "humanitarianism", "abstract art" (Capp hated it), and "student protest". The cover features a cartoon drawing by Capp of wildly dressed, angry hippies carrying protest signs with slogans like "End Capp Brutality", "Abner and Daisy Mae Smoke Pot", "Capp Is Over [30, 40, 50—all crossed out] the Hill!!", and "If You Like Crap, You'll Like Capp!"
Highlights of the strip's final decades include "Boomchik" (1961), in which America's international prestige is saved by Mammy Yokum, "Daisy Mae Steps Out" (1966), a female-empowering tale of Daisy's brazenly audacious "homewrecker gland", "The Lips of Marcia Perkins" (1967), a satirical, thinly-veiled commentary on
The cartoonist visited
Despite his political conservatism in the last decade of his life, Capp is reported to have been liberal in some particular causes; he supported
In 1968, a
On April 22, 1971, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported allegations that in February 1968 Capp had made indecent advances to four female students when he was invited to speak at the University of Alabama. Anderson and an associate confirmed that Capp was shown out of town by university police, but that the incident had been hushed up by the university to avoid negative publicity.[61]
The following month, Capp was charged in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in connection with another alleged incident following his April 1 lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.[62] Capp was accused of propositioning a married woman in his hotel room. Although no sexual act was alleged to have resulted, the original charge included "sodomy". As part of a plea agreement, Capp pleaded guilty to the charge of "attempted adultery" (adultery was a felony in Wisconsin[63]) and the other charges were dropped. Capp was fined $500 and court costs.[64] In a December 1992 article for The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that President Richard Nixon and Charles Colson had repeatedly discussed the Capp case in Oval Office recordings that had recently been made available by the National Archives. Nixon and Capp were on friendly terms, Hersh wrote, and Nixon and Colson had worked to find a way for Capp to run against Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate. "Nixon was worried about the allegations, fearing that Capp's very close links to the White House would become embarrassingly public", Hersh wrote. "The White House tapes and documents show that he and Colson discussed the issue repeatedly, and that Colson eventually reassured the president by saying that he had, in essence, fixed the case. Specifically, the president was told that one of Colson's people had gone to Wisconsin and tried to talk to the prosecutors." Colson's efforts failed, however. The Eau Claire district attorney, a Republican, refused to dismiss the attempted adultery charge.[65] In passing sentence in February 1972, the judge rejected the D.A.'s motion that Capp agree to undergo psychiatric treatment.
The resulting publicity led to hundreds of papers dropping his comic strip,[66] and Capp, already in failing health, withdrew from public speaking. Celebrity biographer James Spada has claimed that similar allegations were made by actress Grace Kelly. However, no firsthand allegation has ever surfaced.[67]
"From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. After about 40 years, however, Capp's interest in Abner waned, and this showed in the strip itself," according to
Capp's final years were marked by advancing illness and by family tragedy. In October 1977, one of his two daughters died; a few weeks later, a beloved granddaughter was killed in a car accident. A lifelong chain smoker, Capp died in 1979 from emphysema at his home in South Hampton, New Hampshire.[69] Capp is buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Engraved on his headstone is a stanza from Thomas Gray: The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me (from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 1751).
Legacy
"Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the
Al Capp's life and career are the subjects of a new life-sized
Since his death in 1979, Al Capp and his work have been the subject of more than 40 books, including three biographies. Underground cartoonist and Li'l Abner expert Denis Kitchen has published, co-published, edited, or otherwise served as consultant on nearly all of them. Kitchen is currently compiling a biographical monograph on Al Capp.
At the
Notes
- ^ "Inkpot Award". Comic-Con International: San Diego. December 6, 2012. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ M. Thomas Inge, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy, Pogo, and Friends: The South in the American Comic Strip," Southern Quarterly (2011) 48#2 pp 6–74
- ^ "Otto Philip Caplin". geni_family_tree. 1885. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Matilda Davidson". geni_family_tree. December 17, 1884. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ See Li'l Abner Official Site: Al Capp biography
- ^ Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) p. 4
- ^ See Review: "Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary," by R.C. Harvey, published March 14, 2013
- ^ see "Inhuman Man," Time, February 6, 1950
- ^ see Life, 23 May 1960, pp. 129–140
- ^ "Web page at Bridgeport Central High School devoted to Al Capp". Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved August 14, 2006.
- ^ A review of the 1934 strips reveals that the earliest strips were signed "Al G. Cap", which became "Al G. Capp" and, finally, "Al Capp". However, the middle initial ("Al G. Capp") appeared from time to time during the first year.
- ^ Klein, Alvin (November 8, 1987). "THEATER; A NEW PLAY EXPLORES FANTASIES OF A MAN AT 60 (Published 1987)". The New York Times. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Berger, Arthur Asa (1969). Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers.
- ^ "Li'l Abner Lost in Hollywood, by Michael H. Price". ComicMix. November 11, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- Life Magazine. 32 (13). Retrieved March 6, 2022.
- ^ Maré, KNS (2002). "The Short Life & Happy Times of the Shmoo by Al Capp; with a foreword by Harlan Ellison". Mountain Area Information Network. Archived from the original on June 17, 2012. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
- ^ Raymond, Ed (November 1, 2012). "The Resurrection of Al Capp's Joe Btfsplk". Duluth Reader. Reader Weekly, Inc.
- ^ Baker, Russell (January 13, 1996). "Hillary in Lower Slobbovia – NY Times Jan. 13, 1996". The New York Times. Retrieved August 29, 2009.
- ^ Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon by Anthony Harkins (2004, Oxford Univ. Press) pp. 124–136
- S2CID 237456812.
- ISBN 9780399111624. Retrieved October 29, 2020 – via Google Books.
- ^ VanHaren, Roger (February 13, 2016). "Remembering the days of Dogpatch". WiscNews. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
- ^ "Al Capp News | Wiki - UPI.com". UPI. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Anything Can Happen in a Comic Strip: Centennial Reflections on an American Art Form by M. Thomas Inge (1995) University Press of Mississippi, pp. 18–19
- ^ Brown, Rodger, "Dogpatch USA: The Road to Hokum" article, Southern Changes: The Journal of the Southern Regional Council, Vol. 15, No. 3, 1993, pp. 18–26
- ^ "Exile in Dogpatch". City Journal. December 23, 2015. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "APE: Spotlight on Daniel Clowes". CBR. October 18, 2010. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Letters of Note: Dear Chip... (Columbus Hospital, 28 May 1964)". Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (December 12, 1959). "The Screen: 'Li'l Abner' (Published 1959)". The New York Times. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Tain't Funny – TIME". Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Poet: Cartoonist Al Capp said in New York ..." quoted in The Argus, May 10, 1954
- ^ The Grio(February 2, 2011).
- ^ "Al Capp's Martin Luther King Comic," Comicon.com's The Pulse (March 7, 2010). Archived March 22, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Die Monstersinger – TIME". Archived from the original on October 6, 2008. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Li'l Abner". www.toonopedia.com. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Maeder, Jay. "Spitting on Pictures Funny Papers, 1955", Daily News, September 18, 1998". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on October 8, 2009. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Maloney, Russell (June 24, 1946). "Li'l Abner's Capp: His Characters are America's Favorite Hillbillies". Life. Vol. 20, no. 25. p. 76.
He is an unostentatious teetotaler, willing to hold a drink in his hand to keep his host from asking questions.
- ^ Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing, p.40
- ^ "Rap for Capp – TIME". Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ a b c Heller, Steven (March 4, 2013). "Li'l Abner's Al Capp: A Monstrous Creature, a Masterful Cartoonist". PRINT. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing, p.243
- ^ Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing, p.244
- ^ "Goldie Hawn Remembers the Casting-Couch Sexual Predator Who Left Her in Tears". People. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ISBN 9781101205327.
- ^ "Cartoonist Al Capp exposed in 'Life to the Contrary'". USA Today. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Kilian, Michael (May 3, 1987). "OH, GRACE, WE HARDLY KNEW YOU". Chicago Tribune.
- ^ "Cartoonist Al Capp exposed in 'Life to the Contrary'". USA Today. Retrieved October 4, 2019.
- ^ "Al Capp Is Fined $500 Plus Costs In Morals Charge". NYTimes.com. February 12, 1972.
- ^ "Dogpatch Dispatch: My Encounter with Al Capp". Hogan's Magazine. April 15, 2019.
- ^ An Interview with Al Capp – Smithsonian Folkways
- ^ "Presarvin' Freedom: Al Capp, Treasury Man," Hogan's Alley Online Magazine, 9 May 2012 Archived July 8, 2012, at archive.today
- ^ a b ""Al Capp Replies to Critic of Newspaper Comic Strips;" The News and Courier, 11 May 1950". Retrieved October 29, 2020.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "The Press: Bane of the Bassinet, Time, 15 March 1948". Archived from the original on October 23, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Al Capp Views the Networks (April 1952) Nieman Reports". Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Al Capp's biography card from the National Cartoonists Society". Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Freedom: Al Capp, Treasury Man," Hogan's Alley Online Magazine, 9 May 2012". Archived from the original on October 14, 2013. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
- ^ "Which One Is the Phoanie? – Time". Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Letters page April 18, 1969 – TIME". Archived from the original on January 14, 2009. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ "Imagine: John Lennon Script – transcript from the screenplay and/or documentary movie about John Lennon". www.script-o-rama.com. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 196
- ^ Anderson, Jack, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," April 22, 1971
- ^ "Al Capp Accused on Moral Counts at Eau Claire U."; The Capital Times, May 7, 1971
- ^ "Adultery is a crime in Wisconsin | Law Offices of criminal defense attorneys Christopher Van Wagner and Tracey Wood, Madison WI". Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved June 30, 2008.
- ^ "Al Capp Admits One Morals Count; Pays $500 Fine"; The Capital Times, February 12, 1972
- ^ Hersh, Seymour, "Nixon's Last Cover-Up: The Tapes He Wants the Archives to Suppress"; The New Yorker, December 14, 1992, pp. 80–81
- ^ Dogpatch confidential – Salon.com Archived March 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Spada, James, Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1987, p.37
- ^ "Mr. Dogpatch – 1979 TIME obituary". Archived from the original on August 9, 2009. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Hendricks, Lynne (September 27, 2009). "Al Capp was here". The Daily News of Newburyport. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Hendricks, Lynne (April 20, 2010). "Town to honor famous cartoonist who lived, worked in Amesbury". The Daily News of Newburyport. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
- ^ Sullivan, James (May 15, 2010). "Amesbury gives 'Li'l Abner' his due". Boston.com. Retrieved October 29, 2020 – via The Boston Globe.
- ^ "IDW Library of American Comics". Archived from the original on May 11, 2010. Retrieved October 29, 2020.
Further reading
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner in New York (1936) Whitman Publishing
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner Among the Millionaires (1939) Whitman Publishing
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner and Sadie Hawkins Day (1940) Saalfield Publishing
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner and the Ratfields (1940) Saalfield Publishing
- Sheridan, Martin, Comics and Their Creators (1942) R.T. Hale & Co, (1977) Hyperion Press
- Waugh, Coulton, The Comics (1947) Macmillan Publishers
- Capp, Al, Newsweek Magazine (November 24, 1947) "Li'l Abner's Mad Capp"
- Capp, Al, Saturday Review of Literature(March 20, 1948) "The Case for the Comics"
- Capp, Al, The Life and Times of the Shmoo (1948) Simon & Schuster
- Capp, Al, The Nation (March 21, 1949) "There Is a Real Shmoo"
- Capp, Al, Cosmopolitan Magazine (June 1949) "I Don't Like Shmoos"
- Capp, Al, Atlantic Monthly (April 1950) "I Remember Monster"
- Capp, Al, Time Magazine (November 6, 1950) "Die Monstersinger"
- Capp, Al, Life Magazine (March 31, 1952) "It's Hideously True!! ..."
- Capp, Al, Real Magazine (December 1952) "The REAL Powers in America"
- Capp, Al, The World of Li'l Abner (1953) Farrar, Straus & Young
- Leifer, Fred, The Li'l Abner Official Square Dance Handbook (1953) A.S. Barnes
- Mikes, George, Eight Humorists (1954) Allen Wingate, (1977) Arden Library
- Lehrer, Tom, The Tom Lehrer Song Book, introduction by Al Capp (1954) Crown Publishers
- Capp, Al, Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick: His Life and Deaths (1956) Simon & Schuster
- Capp, Al, Al Capp's Bald Iggle: The Life it Ruins May Be Your Own (1956) Simon & Schuster
- Capp, Al, et al. Famous Artists Cartoon Course – 3 volumes (1956) Famous Artists School
- Capp, Al, Life Magazine (January 14, 1957) "The Dogpatch Saga: Al Capp's Own Story"
- Brodbeck, Arthur J, et al. "How to Read Li'l Abner Intelligently" from Mass Culture: Popular Arts in America, pp. 218–224 (1957) Free Press
- Capp, Al, The Return of the Shmoo (1959) Simon & Schuster
- Hart, Johnny, Back to B.C., introduction by Al Capp (1961) Fawcett Publications
- Lazarus, Mell, Miss Peach, introduction by Al Capp (1962) Pyramid Books
- Gross, Milt, He Done Her Wrong, introduction by Al Capp (1963 Ed.) Dell Books
- White, David Manning, and Robert H. Abel, eds. The Funnies: An American Idiom (1963) Free Press
- White, David Manning, ed. From Dogpatch to Slobbovia: The (Gasp!) World of Li'l Abner (1964) Beacon Press
- Capp, Al, Life International Magazine (June 14, 1965) "My Life as an Immortal Myth"
- Toffler, Alvin, Playboy Magazine (December 1965) interview with Al Capp, pp. 89–100
- Moger, Art, et al. Chutzpah Is, introduction by Al Capp (1966) Colony Publishers
- Berger, Arthur Asa, Li'l Abner: A Study in American Satire (1969) Twayne Publishers, (1994) ISBN 0-87805-713-7
- Sugar, Andy, Saga Magazine (December 1969) "On the Campus Firing Line with Al Capp"
- Gray, Harold, Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie, introduction by Al Capp (1970) Arlington House
- Moger, Art, Some of My Best Friends are People, introduction by Al Capp (1970) Directors Press
- Capp, Al, The Hardhat's Bedtime Story Book (1971) ISBN 0-06-061311-4
- Robinson, Jerry, The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art (1974) G.P. Putnam's Sons
- Avon
- Blackbeard, Bill, ed. The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (1977) Harry Abrams
- Marschall, Rick, Cartoonist PROfiles No. 37 (March 1978) interview with Al Capp
- Capp, Al, The Best of Li'l Abner (1978) ISBN 0-03-045516-2
- Lardner, Ring, You Know Me Al: The Comic Strip Adventures of Jack Keefe, introduction by Al Capp (1979) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
- Van Buren, Raeburn, Abbie an' Slats – 2 volumes (1983) Ken Pierce Books
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner: Reuben Award Winner Series Book 1 (1985) Blackthorne
- Marschall, Rick, Nemo, the Classic Comics LibraryNo. 18, pp. 3–32 (April 1986)
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner Dailies – 27 volumes (1988–1999) Kitchen Sink Press
- Marschall, Rick, America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1989) Abbeville Press
- Capp, Al, Fearless Fosdick (1990) Kitchen Sink ISBN 0-87816-108-2
- Capp, Al, My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg (1991) John Daniel & Co. ISBN 0-936784-93-8
- Capp, Al, Fearless Fosdick: The Hole Story (1992) Kitchen Sink ISBN 0-87816-164-3
- Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from Journal of Popular Culture; Vol. 25, Issue 4 (Spring 1992)
- Caplin, Elliot, Al Capp Remembered (1994) ISBN 0-87972-630-X
- Theroux, Alexander, The Enigma of Al Capp (1999) ISBN 1-56097-340-4
- Lubbers, Bob, Glamour International #26: The Good Girl Art of Bob Lubbers (May 2001)
- Capp, Al, The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo (2002) ISBN 1-58567-462-1
- Capp, Al, Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years – 4 volumes (2003–2004) Dark Horse Comics
- Al Capp Studios, Al Capp's Complete Shmoo: The Comic Books (2008) Dark Horse ISBN 1-59307-901-X
- Capp, Al, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays Vol. 1 – Vol. x(ongoing) (2010–present) The Library of American Comics
- Capp, Al, Al Capp's Complete Shmoo Vol. 2: The Newspaper Strips (2011) Dark Horse ISBN 1-59582-720-X
- Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from Comics and the U.S. South, pp. 3–27 (2012) Univ. Press of Mississippi ISBN 1-617030-18-X
- Kitchen, Denis, and Michael Schumacher, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (2013) ISBN 1-60819-623-2
External links
- Li'l Abner official site
- Al Capp at the Internet Broadway Database
- Al Capp at IMDb
- Denis Kitchen biography: Al Capp
- Animation Resources: Al Capp part I
- Animation Resources: Al Capp part II
- Animation Resources: Al Capp part III
- Animation Resources: Al Capp part IV
- Animation Resources: Al Capp part V
- Al Capp Deserves a Tribute (Newburyport News, 28 Sept. 2009)
- Dogpatch USA amusement park.
- The Dogpatch Family Band Mechanical Toy
- Dogpatch and Li'l Abner on Broadway in Life, January 14, 1957, pp. 71–83
- Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Art Database