by Rick Marschall

Recently the 90th birthday of Mr Snuffy Smith was observed. Technically, it was the 90th anniversary of the hillbilly's debut in Billy DeBeck's classic strip Barney Google.

Comic-strip characters are famous for "growing," or aging, at their own speed, or not at all. Snuffy is one character who has changed over then near-century... but somehow is younger-looking, cleaner, more active, and happier then when he was introduced to readers in 1934. Withal, he and his woman Loweezy (her name, appropriately, of inconsistent spelling) attracted the attention, and affection, of America to extent that he took over the strip. Its title is, formally, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, but Mr Google has become an occasional cast member.

Barney himself had his significant birthday in 2019, marking his strip as one of comics history's longest-lived sagas. Billy DeBeck was a successful political cartoonist in Pennsylvania and Ohio before moving to Chicago and creating strips for the great breeding-gound of talented cartoonists, the Chicago Record-Herald (by then, actually, Hearst-owned as the Herald-American; history and stories for another column). He created an anecdotal strip about about a tall, thin fellow, eponymously and eventually titled Take Barney Google, F'rinstance.

The Herald-American was, as I said, a breeding-ground for the already fertile cartoonist community in Chicago. Another cartoonist sharing his creations in the paper's Sunday color section was "Doc" Willard, whose past and future moniker was Frank Willard. In true Hearst fashion, these two talented cartoonists had their work and themselves headquartered in New York City (soon followed by another Chicago cartoonist named E C Segar...) Some day -- yes, here in Yesterday's Papers and in the upcoming revival of NEMO Magazine -- the parallel careers of the two friends Billy DeBeck and Frank Willard will be told.

They were more than friends, and did not hold each other as deadly rivals. Yet their paths were very similar. Both created wildly popular strips, Barney Google and Willard's Moon Mullins. Both strips starred low-life roustabouts. Both artists became, when humorous continuities became the order of the day in the 1920s and '30, absolute masters of the challenging form. Both artists created colorful and memorable casts of peripheral characters -- in DeBeck's case the hillbilly we celebrate here; Barney's horse Spark Plug; et al. (Willard's Moon Mullins lived in a boarding house, which enabled characters to come and go besides the permanent relatives and neighbors).

DeBeck and Willard were smart enough, or busy enough, or distracted enough by the High Life, or possibly lazy enough (naw) to hire assistants. Lightning struck twice in these instances. DeBeck's wing-man was Fred Lasswell; Willard hired (actually in the first months of Moon Mullins) Ferd Johnson. Lasswell was to succeed DeBeck and draw Snuffy's adventures until his own death, upon which his own assistant John Rose assumed the reins and continues (excellently) to depict the goings-on in Hootin' Holler. (More like DeBeck than Lasswell, Rose has introduced some new characters, and has Barney visiting more often).

One possible dissimilarity between DeBeck and Willard might have been the latter's temper. Rudolph Block was a de facto director of the Comic Art departments in the Hearst enterprises. He was talented enough (in his "other life" he was a short-story and Yiddish-theater writer as Bruno Lessing) and Hearst relied on him. But by a lot of evidence in my research I could find no cartoonist who did not bristle under his tutelage. Block was the real reason that Rudolph Dirks took Hans and Fritz, and his Katzenjammer Kids, to Hearst's rival, the Pulitzer chain. I have a letter by Frederick Opper (Happy Hooligan) to Block's successor expressing relief that Block was gone. When I interviewed the daughter of R F Outcault (The Yellow Kid; Buster Brown) the sweet, diminutive, 96-year-old lady responded to my question about whether she knew anything of her father's relations with Block. She leaned forward and said, "My father though he was a son of a bitch."

And a similar story about why Frank Willard did not remain with Hearst as Billy DeBeck did: Ferd Johnson told me that Block interfered and criticized Willard so much that one day "he punched Block in the face." Of course the cartoonist parted from Hearst; returned to Chicago, and, now with the Tribune, he created Moon Mullins.

But we are here to note the 90th anniversary of Snuffy Smith's debut. By this point, Barney had shrunken to the "height" we know; experienced wins and losses with his race horse Spark Plug; starred in magnificent mock-melodramas around the world, encountered colorful heroes and villains; inspired several famous songs; and uttered nonsensical phrases that swept the nation. On one of Barney's journeys he found himself in hillbilly country and... the rest is history.

Billy DeBeck, who was not lazy, quickly was enamored of Appalachian culture and lore. Surviving from library are books of notes and sketches, annotated books of rural mountain humor (Sut Lovingood, et al.) so there sprang verisimilitude if not similitude in the stories he spun and the characters' dialog he wrote. But he did pursue leisure activities, thanks to his assistant Lasswell (Ferd Johnson became a companion, as the two followed their bosses around the country, from golf course to golf course. They sometimes were joined by Zeke Zekely, as his boss George McManus joined the other two cartoonists researching putting greens and bars...)

I will share here some DeBeck sketches from my collection of Barney and the early Snuffy... and a songsheet featuring Snuffy, not to be outdone by the songs that Barney inspired. Think of them as bodacious snapshots from a Fambly Album of a truly remarkable comic-strip.

Frank H. Willard (1893-1958) worked as a timekeeper, claims tracer and hot dog operator before starting “Moon Mullins” in 1923 at the suggestion of J. M. Patterson, publisher and founder of the New York Daily News. Patterson suggested the name “Moon” and Willard found the last name by leafing through the ‘M’s’ in a Bronx phone book.

July 12, 1954 >

As Westbrook Pegler Sees It:

Brash Impulse at 12!

When I detected in Frank Willard’s ribald comic strip “Moon Mullins” a proud innuendo that he was going back to his old hometown of Anna, Ill., as a triumphant prodigal for civic ceremonies and tributes, I bethought me of one of these conversational evenings which are the bliss of my estate.

Mr. Willard was the first person, to my best knowledge and belief, who ever thought of dropping a salt-cellar into a napkin as a gesture of diplomatic force. By brandishing same at persons unknown in a speakeasy in a viaduct in Chicago, Mr. Willard persuaded our way out of a crisis concerning who had said what to whose babe. I am not the one to say that Theodore Roosevelt’s big stick was more to be respected. Frank Willard, known as “Doc” because in his gallus days he solemnly advised gin as a prophylaxis against the common cold and other vulgar ills of that echelon, never had to wield his salt-cellar. He just waved that napkin with that 3-ounce nugget in the pouch and they even called a cab for us outside and sped us on our way.

That, however, was not the evening when I asked Doc how he had chanced to become a comic-strip artist.

False Step Recalled

That was another evening. That evening, I said, I had made the same false step myself, in my ‘teens but, being a worse artist and incapable of improvement because an arbitrary savant at the art institute had insisted we draw people from the feet up, because who ever heard of building a house from the roof down, had chucked it to hew a career in beautiful prose. Mr. Willard said he always had suspected that there had been some draftsman lousier than he, and he drank to me as his long sought vindication.

“Well,” he said, “I will tell you how I came to be a comic-strip artist.”

“If this is going to drag up your past,” I said, “Let us talk of other things.”

“No, no,” Mr. Willard exclaimed, “I must speak out. I must tell someone.”

So he began:

“I was born in Anna, Ill.”

Mr. Willard prepared another black cow of sarsaparilla and vanilla ice cream. His little boy, Kayo, who somewhat later flew a B-29 in the Pacific, was snoozing in a dresser drawer.

“Anna, Ill. I was living with my Aunt Sadie and my Uncle Watt. They were fine American types, Uncle Watt had answered the bugles and marched with the colors in 1898. He came back from Tampa impaired in health and was receiving from a grateful republic a modest reparation of about $75 a month. We were not rich, as riches go, But neither ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed.”

“You are not getting mileage or space-rates for this recital,” I said.

“You are hearing a saga,” Mr. Willard said.

“I used to take subscriptions for the Youth’s Companion. The revenues from these honest efforts kept me in chewing tobacco and catfish tackle, and life extended before me as a gentle, undulating career until one night, by kerosene lamp in the parlor, I drawed me a picture of Col. Custer in an advertisement in that admirable bladder.

“The ad said, “The boy who sends in the best free-hand copy of this pitcher will get absolutely free of all cost and/or expense one Daisy repeating air rifle and one ounce of BB shot.”

Happy Consternation

“Like those girls who send their pitchers to the beauty contest editor, I never expected to hear any more about it. But fancy my happy consternation when a few weeks later the mailman delivered a notice that I had won one Daisy repeater with one ounce of BB shot. Same arrived by Adams express a few days later. There was terrible carnage, I can tell you, among the cats and robins, and sparrows and chickens, of Anna, Ill., the next few days.”

“Are we getting warm?” I asked.

“You will regret this flippancy,” Mr. Willard said, “This is a story you will long remember. You may write a classic on it when you get old and your cold bones need a little whisky to warm the marrows. But you will not have the decency to thank me.”

“You can’t tell,” I said, “I am erratic.”

“Oh, well,” Mr. Willard went on, “there came a hot Saturday night, and a brakeman, who lived close by, was having himself a wonderful time in the tin wash tub in his kitchen. This brakeman took a bath every Saturday night. I chanced by, stalking whatever prey might be, and observed him standing in this tin tub, squeezing water over himself with a towel.”

A hush fell on the room.

“I had a wicked impulse,” Mr. Willard said. “Satan whispered to me. We did not have wire-mesh screens in those days. We used cheesecloth screens. I dropped to one knee. I drew a bead. I aimed. I fired --

“All went black -- reason tottered -- and this brakeman let out a yell and came right through that mosquito screen at me. My pulses pounded in my veins. I made for the tracks on the C. & E. I., and hopped aboard a soft coal gondola. In the morning, at East St. Louis, I hocked my Daisy repeating air rifle for $2. I bummed my way to Chicago and got a job in the Boston store as a copy boy in the art department where they drew the ads for corsets.

“The rest is history,” Mr. Willard said. “I went to France to conquer the Hun, returned home and asked Captain Joe Patterson for a job drawing funnies. He asked me ‘Any experience?’ I told him how I happened to leave Anna, Ill. He said ‘You are hired.’”

Mr. Willard’s hand trembled as he mixed another black cow. Our third.
“No,” he said. “I have never gone back to Anna, Ill. I left under a cloud. Oh, would that I could prove my repentance of my brash impulse at the age of 12!”

Two Domestic Comedies: The Outa-Luck Club by Frank Willard author of Moon Mullins and Wedlocked by Leo O'Mealia author of Jungle Definitions. Both strips shown from September 1-4, 1921.