"A Half-Million Dollar Feature Service."
by Rick Marschall
The history of newspaper syndication -- and specifically the distribution of cartoons and comic strips -- is a story yet to be told, and told well.
There are many misperceptions in the tale(s), some surprising turns, and motivations of various parties. It is a tale that involved creativity on the part of innocent cartoonists having their fun... cigar-chomping businessmen... and casual decisions that set the course of an industry.
Our look at one corner of this world, as it was created by a handful of gods, lifts a curtain or two. And it will provide a look at some of the earliest of cartooning stars in the orbit of William Randolph Hearst. The newspaper mogul was in a real sense one of comic strips' godfathers. Lesser but consequential members of that galaxy are Rudolph Block, who will be represented here; and Moses Koenigsberg, a behind-the-scenes manager of the material we will share.
By the mid-'teens of the 20th century, syndication had become a side-effect of big-city newspapers and the spread of journalistic empires. But its growth was sloppy and disorganized -- or, as some historians might maintain, merely "organic." I will skate through history in generalities, because generalities are collections of truth without being adorned by details and statistics.
Around 1884 the publisher S S McClure introduced the modern concept of syndication by securing agreements from authors like Robert Louis Stevenson to serialize chapters of new books to newspapers. The idea simultaneously promoted new books and attracted newspaper readers, especially if they bought papers to satiate their curiosity about each next episode. Charles Dickens and W M Thackeray had serialized their books in English publications in the same manner, but for weekely and monthly periodicals.
In the United States, small enterprises follow, modestly, McClure's lead, nut major syndication began in earnest almost by accident when newspaper titans Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer distributed their own material, generated by their flagship papers (in, respectively, New York and San Francisco; and New York) to other of their properties in between. The next step: the practice morphed into sales in smaller cities. Rural papers that could not afford their own high-salaried cartooning stars, or print full-color comic supplements, could sign syndication deals that gave them big-city patinas.
Smaller operations were de-facto syndicators: the World Color Printing Company and (ironically) several McClure-owned properties offered pre-printed material and full color sections to rural newspapers.
Another irony, or anomaly, is how the larger concerns of Hearst, Pulitzer, Col McCormack of the Chicago Tribune, and others, long regarded income from syndication as a minor consideration versus publicity, covering their costs of salaries and production, and consolidation of territorial monopolies.
(In a 1952 letter to Al Capp, Harold Gray recalled that long-held priority of syndicates. And in a 1937 King Features Syndicate internal corporate report, it held that even licensing and merchandising income was secondary compared to the publicity that accrued to client newspapers.)
Back to the mid-'teens.
The competition, particularly among their comics and cartoons, between Hearst and his rivals, had become so intense that some services had a surfeit of talent. By 1917 his comics operation filled the daily and Sunday pages of the dozen papers in the Hearst chain. A few years earlier the Hearst organization had spun off Buster Brown, Little Nemo, Polly and Her Pals, and other strips under a purportedly rival umbrella, the Newspaper Feature Service. This enabled Hearst papers to run two comic sections every weekend, perhaps one on Saturday, or to provide Hearst rivals in certain cities with their own comic sections that didn't appear to be generated by Hearst! (In New York City, for instance, Hearst's deadly competitor the New York Tribune was able to run a four-page NFS color comic section that appeared to readers to be the Trib's own.)
By 1917, Hearst's lieutenant Moses Koenigsberg split up the syndicate operations even further. Eventually there was King Features, a sort of holding company or sales agent for all the syndicates; Central Press Association; International Feature Service, Newspaper Feature Service; and others. The material we will be sharing here and over subsequent weeks is from a rare book published for prospective clients by the International Feature Service.
The book in my collection was once the property of the Hearst cartoonist Tom McNamara, whose bio and drawings are featured therein. His name and address (in the Bronx) are featured on the cover, and Tom designed a colophon in colored pencil and affixed it to the cover.
There is also a page devoted to a brief bio and a photograph of one of Hearst's chief lieutenants, an architect of two decades of Hearst comic-strip activities. Rudolph Block was editor of comic sections and cartoons; he suggested many ideas for the cartoonists; and directed promotions and themes. He might be better remembered today if he had not been -- evidently -- a bastard to work with. Some time ago in Yesterday's Papers I wrote about him:
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.... and so forth!
So to an extent this book was a panegyric to Block / Lessing. However, after the first spread, the pages were devoted to the cartoonists (and feature writers) of IFS.
Out of deference to Tom McNamara, this installment will feature his page, his bio and photo. McNamara was not the most accomplished of cartoonists, and his several strips through the years were only of moderate success. Us Boys, On Our Block, and other titles for Hearst were minor presences in the daily and Sunday sections. He later drew Teddy, Jack, and Mary for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate with less credit, losing in a famous poll of readers.
But McNamara was accomplished in other fields. He scripted many plots on the Hal Roach lot, most notably many Our Gang comedies. And he was a great friend and frequent companion of cartoonists. I have letters that Hearst Editor Arthur Brisbane wrote him, suggesting gags for his strips; and George Herriman was a particular friend. He addressed his letters to McNamara "Dear Rubber Nose," and this book was acquired from Herriman's daughter among letters, sketches, and photographs in my collection by the creator of Krazy Kat.
One regret about this great book is the space taken up by the awful drivel of text. What could have been valuable documentary information is a minimum of that, and awful poetry carrying promotional foofaraw. We will, however, take what we can get. After all, this represented a "half-million dollar feature service."
The blank spots and the penciled Xs suggest that McNamara was supposed to draw more of his characters, besides Skinny Shaner and Shrimp Flynn. Perhaps he was out on a bender at deadline time,or simply overslept. He was one of Us Boys in the Hearst stable.