The top sketch above is a preliminary piece, obviously. I'm not positive who it's by, but my guess (and hope) is that it was drawn by Dick Huemer, and I suspect it dates from 1931 and was prepared in conjunction with The Little Pest, the second Scrappy cartoon. That short doesn't contain this precise scene, but it does involve Oopy irritating Scrappy and Yippy as they attempt to go fishing.
I wish I knew more about the precise details of both pieces — but it's still nice to have both of them, and I'll bet this is the first time they've ever been published in one place.
One of the reasons Scrappyland exists is to document the amazing world of Scrappy merchandise and promotion — something which is even more obscure than the Scrappy cartoons themselves. Basically, nobody has written about or otherwise acknowledged it, ever.
Or so I thought. Actually, The Film Daily — the Variety-like publication which Archive.org offers in full-searchable scanned form — did a really good job of reporting on Columbia’s licensing and marketing efforts. It covered new products as the studio signed deals, wrote about the many and varied Scrappy-related publicity schemes and even noted the existence of the wonderfully-named Scrappy Franchise Department, headquartered in New York and run by one Eli Gottlieb.
Here are just some of the Scrappy items which the Daily published in 1935 — including mentions of both Scrappy products in the Scrappyland collection and ones I’ve never seen (airplanes!). There’s even a mention of Uncle Miltie and his Scrappy connection. Sadly, the paper never illustrated any of these entertaining news alerts with photographs…but they’ve still got plenty of color.
August 19, 1935:
September 10, 1935:
September 16, 1935:
October 16, 1935:
November 11, 1935:
November 14, 1935 (one day after my father was born):
Among the many odds and ends relating to Farina’s great Scrappy Puppet Theater giveaway of 1936 was a really nice poster. It mentions something called happy-hour entertainments — which, I’m guessing, were programs of Columbia short subjects, including Scrappy cartoons — and was presumably designed to be displayed at movie theaters which gave away the puppet theaters.
Here at Scrappyland, we’ve long displayed an example in an image generously shared with us by Keith Spurgeon. But now we have our own — and here it is:
Note that the two posters aren’t quite identical: The lettering and wording is slightly different. In either version, it’s a swell piece.
I hope I won’t offend anyone by saying this: Columbia may have worked harder promoting Scrappy cartoons than it did making Scrappy cartoons. There were Scrappy clubs and educational aids and clothing and comics and toys and other tie-ins of all sorts. And I’ve always assumed that if there wasn’t a Scrappy radio show, there should have been one.
Now Scrappyologist and radio scholar Andrew Leal has the first definitive evidence that Scrappy did hit the airwaves — or tried to do so, at least. The July 15, 1937 issue of Broadcasting featured the following news tidbit:
“Presentation series” means that the Biddick company created (or intended to create) a pilot for a Scrappy program. I don’t know whether anything it produced survives. I have no idea whether it led to anything. Whatever happened or didn’t happen, it’s good to get confirmation that Columbia made a good-faith effort to put Scrappy on radio. And further research is warranted.
When I read this, I thought for a moment that it was saying that the proposed Scrappy show was sponsored by America’s furriers. Nah — Andrew explained that was a totally different Biddick program. But it’s still a delightful idea.
Bill Turner of ASIFA-Hollywood sent me this amazing image, which he found while going through some papers belonging to Sid Glenar, who ran an animation and title service from the 1940s into the 1970s.
That's Scrappy in the lower left-hand corner. (He is, of course (c) copyright Sony/Columbia.) But we don't know who the fellow in the photo is — if you do, please let me know.
Why did Sid create this? Well, before he had his own company, he worked at the Mintz studio. Here he is in a company photo from 1931 or thereabouts, in front on the far left. (Charles Mintz is second from right in the top row.)
Sid, Bill says, apparently tried his hand at portrait photography in the 1930s — and judging from this example, he offered photos decorated with Scrappy, or at least hoped to do so. I know of no other examples except this one, but I'd like to think there are more lurking out there somewhere.
If you know Dick Huemer’s drawing style, you won’t need to look at the signature to identify this illustration as his work. It’s of President Lyndon Baines Johnson dancing with a dame representing the U.S. voter, and that’s Barry Goldwater cutting in.
The image above is part of the cover of a 1964 LP titled Presidential Primer — full art here — and was shared with me by Andrew Leal. I don’t know much about it except that Huemer wrote part of it. Perhaps Andrew will tell us more in the comments.
I promise not to make a habit of showing items relating to non-Charles Mintz characters on Scrappyland. But the Popeye soap on a rope depicted above — which I recently found in an antique mall outside Seattle — isn’t just any Popeye soap on a rope.
Back in the 1930s, Gaba was everywhere. His soap toys, manufactured by a company called Kerk Guild, seem to have been very popular. And judging from how many of them survive today, many people treated them as prized collectibles rather than as cleaning products.
Here (from a Hake’s Americana auction) is his Shirley Temple(s).
And his Wimpy, Olive Oyl, and Popeye.
And a drawing from his patent for Dionne Quintuplets soap figures.
And here, from Gaba’s book Soap Carving, are some more of his figures — including Scrappy, Yippy, Wimpy, Shirley, and Charlie McCarthy plus a cherub and a little Dutch girl.
Gaba’s soap figurines also appeared on the cover of the old-old version of Life magazine, where they wore clothes fashioned from real fabric and posed in what amounted to three-dimensional cartoons.
But Gaba’s greatest fame — and for a time, it was considerable — came from the Gaba Girls, the department-store dummies he designed. The next version of Life (the famous one) liked them so much that they devoted two extensive photo essays (and one cover) to them in 1937. (You can check out the stories here and here.)
The most famous Gaba Girl, and Gaba’s constant companion, was Cynthia, who he designed for Saks Fifth Avenue. In the 1930s, Cynthia went to fancy parties, attended shows, hobnobbed at nighclubs, and smoked and drank cocktails (or at least held cigarettes and sat near cocktails).
Here are Gaba and Cynthia at Manhattan’s legendary Stork Club, as photographed by Life‘s Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1937.
Cynthia also did radio and TV, and apparently appeared in at least one movie, Jack Benny’s Artists and Models Abroad (1938). Here she is in a publicity shot with Benny, Joan Bennett and a cop.
Gaba may have been seen all around town with Cynthia, but latter-day scuttlebutt pairs him with another celebrity who, like Gaba, started out as a window dresser: Vincente Minnelli.
If you want to learn more about Gaba’s soap toys, read this spread from Soap Carving (click it for a larger version). Sadly, the man doesn’t seem to have been moved to carve a life-sized Scrappy…
I own a copy of a photo of Scrappy with the Three Stooges which I like so much that I’ve posted it repeatedly. But I’ve never seen these additional two shots of Moe, Curly and Larry palling around with his Scrappiness, which were brought to my attention by Scrappyland reader Billie Towzer. Aren’t they fantastic?
Say, I forgot I have another drawing of Zadoc. Actually, it’s a looser rendition of the same drawing–and it’s on a page with some sketches of Yippy, definitively establishing Zadoc as a denizen of the Scrappyverse. As for the gruff kid in the cap, he looks like the bully from Sunday Clothes. A cartoon which Zadoc doesn’t appear in.
I’ll let you know if I come any closer to figuring out just who Zadoc was.
