Meanwhile - 100 Years Ago...

art by George Herriman, of course (1919)

Antiques Of Opar

Still having major connection issues, so crossing fingers...

Let's do another 100 year leap back to 1918.
Modern fantasy artists study the works of Frank Frazetta and Roy Krenkel. They were both students of J. Allen St. John. In 1918 the serialized Tarzan And The Jewels Of Opar was published in book form, with illustrations from St. John.

Here's the look of fantasy & space opera 100 years ago -

illustrations by J. Allen St. John for Tarzan & The Jewels Of Opar (1918)

Sunday Morning Antiques

There's a lot of feeling old going on, and i'm going to embrace that today. So the most recent of our Sunday Morning Funnies is 100 years old. Today's cartoons range from 1902-1917, so buckle up those cultural comfort safety belts and let's read on!

It's 1902 and superheroes are not yet a thing. What's a super strong fellow to do? Hugo Hercules had his own unique notions...

Before Smarty Grandpa there was the Merry Pranks Of Foxy Grandpa (1902)-

Even way back in 1904, cats were getting their own comics with Aubrey Of The Tenements-

Our most recent strips today, these Asthma Simpson The Village Queen Sunday comics come from some point between 1915-1917-

And we end up in the middle with a couple of 1907 comics from the surreally odd Loony Literature comic-

I think that last one still works today, though i must admit to a bit of surprise at seeing the telephone in a 110 year old comic. It's easy to forget that Bell filed his patent back in 1876, and phones were big enough business for AT&T's hostile takeover of the Western Union Telegraph  to have occurred in 1911. While it may not yet be a generally accessible device in 1907, it was exactly 30 years after the establishment of the first commercial telephone service in 1877. So it certainly makes sense that a "Princess" would have one at that time.

But i wouldn't have thought in that context if i was creating something that was supposed to exist back then.

Hmm...
I may have rambled off track once again.

Not To Be Confused With Film Funnies...

As mentioned yesterday, we're jumping back a full 100 years today to the February 1917 issue of Film Fun. Early 20th century Hollywood and pre-Tinsel Town is a territory we've visited briefly in the past, and to which we'll return a fair bit over time.

The public fascination with stars started early, and publishers were lining up to take advantage of that. In addition to Film Fun, there were magazines like Silverscreen, Picture-Play, Screenland, Movie Pictorial, Photoplay, Movie Weekly, Pantomime, and certainly more. (But those are the titles i can see while sitting here, and i'm too lazy to go looking for others just now.)

There's also the "Other" Film Fun, the comic magazine featuring strips starring film actors. Not surprisingly, Laurel & Hardy and Abbot & Costello translated well to that format. We'll take a look at those, along with Radio Fun and TV Fun.

There is one other Movie/Comics intersection standing by - Non-Comics from old magazines like Miss America, wherein we can find comic strip adaptations of Hollywood films like Magic Town, with Jimmy Stewart. (A personal favorite old look at social psychology)

But, by this point, you're probably starting to think (and not unrightly) that i'm stalling and avoiding the subject of that cover up there, and yesterday's ponderable - wtf is going on there?

None of the options i suggested yesterday was the actual story, but that's probably no surprise. And while there's no Inter-Species Romance happening here, there is a bit of Love.
You see, the cover painting ties to a two-page spread on stars and their beloved pets:

Things really haven't changed much in a century in this regard. Stars still sometimes have odd pets, and fans still give a pet's ass want to know what they share their lives with.

Now that we've solved that mystery, let's return to the beginning, and the Masthead & Editorial page:
(Go ahead. Take as long as you like absorbing the imagery in that Film Fun title cartoon.)

Definitely some big changes in things on those text pieces. Smaller changes on the masthead.
The President goes out to a motion picture show to help popularize the notion.
No part of that sentence makes sense in today's world. Here they're still trying to convince the public that movies are valid entertainment. Air Conditioning made things so much easier for them when that came along.
And look - no boys/men want to become movie stars. They didn't want to do the job while being paid less than the opposite sex. Who'da thunk it?

Of course, that kind of leads to something that hasn't much changed in 100 years:

Those illustrations come from the first part of a serialized article that would still be quite timely today. In the same issue, the previous serialization was coming to an end - a piece on D.W. Griffith written by his wife, Linda. Bit of a tonal shift there.

One feature reflected a big cultural change over the last 100 years:

It's very hard to picture this spread running in a modern film magazine, and even harder to imagine the stars willing to pose in furs in the age of internet rage. I can hear the cries of "Throw her to the casting directors!"

Of course, they had the usual spotlight features with the stars of the day. How many names can you recognize a century later?

I find it interesting to remember that something simple like the white blended image of Dorothy Love Clark on the page above actually required physically cutting the photograph to remove the parts unwanted for the layout. That held true until recent decades. So much more work involved in the simplest things back then.

The big surprise find for me in this issue was a feature on Helen Gibson.
"Who?" some, no doubt, are asking.
Besides being a performer in movies, vaudeville, and radio, Helen Gibson was also a film producer, rodeo & trick rider, and, more to the point here, she was the first Stunt Woman.
They gave her a photo feature page:

A totally unexpected delight to discover here. I wonder what else is hiding in these piles?
Hmm...
That also leads me to wonder how many are familiar with Kane Richmond? Once again, a topic for another time.

I'll leave you with a final text piece from Film Fun.

I wonder if anything ever came of William Fox's "Cinema" notion?

pages from Film Fun #335 (1917)

Premature Speculation

Tomorrow we'll be journeying back a century to the dawn of the motion picture age.
I invite you to spend the interim pondering the nature of this cover:

Avian Passion?
A tease for a new horror film?
Health Craze - eating pre-chewed food from birds?
Exchanging Souls?
A new Musical Act?

Just what is the story with this cover?

Goat? Yak!

As we saw in yesterday's promotional post, Old Doc Yak holds the Guinness World Record for being the First Animal Cartoon. (They leave subjective judgements like "funny" to others)

The man featured on the poster is Sidney Smith, the cartoonist famous for The Gumps - which is credited as the first continuity based comic strip, as opposed to unchanging gag-a-day comics. It's not entirely accurate, but the Gumps are the ones who made it popular and triggered the wave of continuity comics that followed.

Today, however, we're not really interested in them We're here for he who came before - Old Doc Yak and his family. While successful enough to spawn those ground-breaking animated shorts, Yak was only around for 5 years in his own strip. He returned as a Topper for The Gumps for another 5 year stint, from 1930-1934. Old Doc Yak was definitely an Odd Duck at times, but it was also wildly creative when the mood struck. Before we get to the end in 1917, let's jump back to the beginning in 1912.

In the February 5th edition of The Chicago Tribune, he made his 'smashing' debut. Keep in mind that this is 1912 - the comic is still a very young art form, and experimenting with the physical boundaries of comics is a pretty novel idea.

The final introductory strip there ran on 10 February 1912.
And Old Doc Yak's final daily comic ran on 10 February 1917. Just one more odd bit with Old Doc Yak.
It continued to mirror the beginning by having a multi-strip closing to the daily with the Landlord threatening to throw him off the comic page if he can't scratch up some cash:

That was Saturday. On Monday, the new family moved into the House that Yak Built:

We spoke briefly of them last time, and we'll do so again. For now, just note that Sidney Smith had his new strip move into both the vacated newspaper real estate and the home of the previous strip's cast. A most odd, likely even unique, beginning to a highly successful run lasting over 40 years.

Back at Yak -
Here's a half dozen Sundays, the first from 1912, the rest from 1917. They touch on three popular topics for the series:
1) Old Doc Yak trying to get paid...

2) Old Doc Yak trying to cope with his son, Yutch-

and 3) Old Doc Yak loves his #348-

He's a crusty old Goat. That's a common theme, too.
We'll not speculate on what sort of empathetic predisposition that might give me for the strip. I'm going to just presume i like it because this is one Odd critter, start to finish.

Sadly, i do not believe that any of his cartoon survive:

Old Doc Yak (1913)
Old Doc Yak and the Artist's Dream (1913)
Doc Yak's Christmas (1913)
Doc Yak, Moving Picture Artist (1914)
Doc Yak, the Cartoonist (1914)
Doc Yak, the Poultryman (1914)
Doc Yak's Temperance Lecture (1914)
Doc Yak, the Marksman (1914)
Doc Yak Bowling (1914)
Doc Yak's Zoo (1914)
Doc Yak and the Limited Train (1914)
Doc Yak's Wishes (1914)
Doc Yak's Bottle (1914)
Doc Yak's Cats (1914)
Doc Yak Plays Golf (1914)
Doc Yak and Santa Claus (1914)

Note:

Old Doc Yak is unrelated to Old Doc "Yak Yak" Yancy (played by Joseph Kearns) from the old Harold Peary Show radio program. I believe he has no connection to Louie L'Amour's Old Doc Yak, from the story of the same name, but Yondering is not in my collection, so i have yet to be able to ascertain for certain. With a character this old, one can never be sure who might have been a fan.