Scrappy and Pokie

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 12, 2012

One of the many wonders to be found at the Internet Archive is a run of the Film Daily, a now-defunct, Variety-like publication for the movie trade. It did a remarkably good job of documenting the world of Scrappy, and I'm going to share a lot of stuff from it. (Variety itself, however, rarely mentioned the guy.)

The ad above is from the Film Daily for July 27, 1931, right when the Scrappy series was getting going. The art, I feel certain, is by someone in Columbia's promotion department rather than a Mintz artist. And even for Scrappy, the scene depicted — a black-eyed Scrappy cheerfully assaulting three other boys at once — is strange.

Also strange: The ad refers to Scrappy's dog as “Pokie,” a moniker I've never heard before. Even in the first short, Yelp Wanted, the pooch was named Yippy (or, if The Film Daily was right, Yippi. Then again, Mintz had a casual attitude towards names: Oopy was sometimes Oopie or Vontzy, and Margy was occasionally Margie. It's a wonder that Scrappy himself was never called anything else…as far as I know.

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