Mammy Yoakum A much more successful musical comedy adaptation of the strip, also entitled Li'l Abner, opened on Broadway at the St. James Theater on November 15, 1956 and had a long run of 693 performances,[65] followed by a nationwide tour. Ironically, the shmoo's generous nature and incredible usefulness made it a threat to capitalism, to western society and perhaps to civilization itself. |
Ironically, this highly irregular policy has led to the misconception that his strip was "ghosted" by other hands. Mammy Yoakum: I has spoken. The Creator of Li'l Abner Tells Why His Hero Is (SOB!) Goldstein, Kalman, "Al Capp and Walt Kelly: Pioneers of Political and Social Satire in the Comics" from, Inge, M. Thomas, "Li'l Abner, Snuffy and Friends" from, This page was last edited on 30 October 2020, at 11:38. "Daisy Mae" redirects here. "Capp was an aggressive and fearless businessman," according to publisher Denis Kitchen.
", "Al Capp Replies to Critic of Newspaper Comic Strips;", "Li'l Abner Lost In Hollywood by Michael H. Price", "Gov.
There were even Dogpatch-themed family restaurants called "Li'l Abner's" in Louisville, Kentucky, Morton Grove, Illinois and Seattle, Washington. Company Credits Shmoos, introduced in 1948, were fabulous creatures that bred exponentially, consumed nothing, and eagerly provided everything that humankind could wish for. [28] Its hapless residents were perpetually waist-deep in several feet of snow, and icicles hung from almost every frostbitten nose. The razor-jawed title character (Li'l Abner's "ideel") was perpetually ventilated by flying bullets until he resembled a slice of Swiss cheese. After Capp's death, the Shmoo was used in two Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning cartoon series for TV. Other fictional locales included Skonk Hollow, El Passionato, Kigmyland, the Republic of Crumbumbo, Lo Kunning, Faminostan, Planets Pincus Number 2 and 7, Pineapple Junction and, most notably, the Valley of the Shmoon. 15 appearances; Tip Top Comics. Lower Slobbovians spoke with burlesque pidgin-Russian accents; the miserable frozen wasteland of Capp's invention abounded in incongruous Yiddish humor. More recently, Dark Horse Comics reprinted the limited series Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Frazetta Years, in four full-color volumes covering the Sunday pages from 1954 to 1961. Cute, lovable and intelligent (arguably smarter than Abner, Tiny or Pappy), she was accepted as part of the family ("the youngest," as Mammy invariably introduces her). Others include double whammy, skunk works and Lower Slobbovia. Li'l Abner never sold as a TV series despite several attempts (including an unsold pilot that aired once on NBC on September 5, 1967),[68] but Al Capp was a familiar face on television for twenty years. How long this engagement thing last? "The Comics on the Couch" by Gerald Clarke, "Gallery of vintage ads featuring Li'l Abner as spokesman", Filmmakers host premiere for Dogpatch USA documentary. Capp appeared as a regular on The Author Meets the Critics. (1947) and "Little Fanny Gooney" (1952), were almost certainly an inspiration to Harvey Kurtzman when he created his irreverent Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that specifically parodied other comics in the same subversive manner. Would you please help me to find a … Of course Mammy solved the problem with a tooth extraction, and ended the episode with her most famous dictum. Brown, Rodger, "Dogpatch USA: The Road to Hokum" article, explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies & Color Sundays, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, Little Abner "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Daisy Mae "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Mammy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Pappy Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Honest Abe "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Tiny Yokum "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Marryin' Sam "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Kickapoo Joy Juice page at deniskitchen.com, Sioux City Soos at Baseball-Reference.com, Joe Btfsplk "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary - Michael Schumacher, Denis Kitchen - Google Books, Stupefyin' Jones "biography" at deniskitchen.com, General Bullmoose "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Earthquake McGoon "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Evil-Eye Fleegle "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Sadie Hawkins "biography" at deniskitchen.com, Fearless Fosdick "biography" at deniskitchen.com, The Shmoo "biography" at deniskitchen.com. Li'l Abner was also the subject of the first book-length, scholarly assessment of a comic strip ever published. Fosdick battled a succession of archenemies with absurdly unlikely names like Rattop, Anyface, Bombface, Boldfinger, the Atom Bum, the Chippendale Chair, and Sidney the Crooked Parrot, as well as his own criminal mastermind father, "Fearful" Fosdick (aka "The Original"). (In his book The American Language, H.L. It can be found in, Brodbeck, Arthur J, et al. Al Capp was an outspoken pioneer in favor of diversifying the National Cartoonists Society by admitting women cartoonists. Comic dialects were also devised for offbeat British characters — like H'Inspector Blugstone of Scotland Yard (who had a Cockney accent) and Sir Cecil Cesspool (whose speech was a clipped, uppercrust King's English). In America's Great Comic Strip Artists (1997), comics historian Richard Marschall analyzed the overtly misanthropic subtext of Li'l Abner: Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. Fans of the strip ranged from novelist John Steinbeck, who called Capp "very possibly the best writer in the world today" in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature — to media critic and theorist Marshall McLuhan, who considered Capp "the only robust satirical force in American life." Various Asian, Latin, Native American and European characters spoke in a wide range of specific, broadly caricatured dialects as well. "), "Neither the strip's shifting political leanings nor the slide of its final few years had any bearing on its status as a classic; and in 1995, it was recognized as such by the, "ABNER" was the name given to the first codebreaking computer used by the, The original Dogpatch is a historical part of San Francisco dating back to the 1860s that escaped the, Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Wolf Gal, Earthquake McGoon, Lonesome Polecat, Hairless Joe, Sadie Hawkins, Silent Yokum and Fearless Fosdick all found their way onto the, Al Capp always claimed to have effectively created the, Li'l Abner has one odd design quirk that has puzzled readers for decades: the part in his hair always faces the viewer, no matter which direction Abner is facing. Comparing Capp to other contemporary humorists, McLuhan once wrote: "Arno, Nash, and Thurber are brittle, wistful little précieux beside Capp!" Charlie Chaplin, William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, Russ Meyer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Bakshi, Shel Silverstein, Hugh Downs, Gene Shalit, Frank Cho, Daniel Clowes[44] and (reportedly) even Queen Elizabeth have confessed to being fans of Li'l Abner. At the San Diego Comic Con in July 2009, IDW and The Library of American Comics announced the upcoming publication of Al Capp's Li'l Abner: The Complete Dailies and Color Sundays: Vol. (Upon his retirement in 1977, Capp declared Mammy to be his personal favorite of all his characters.). Among the original TV characters were "Mr. Ditto," "Harris Tweed" (a disembodied suit of clothes), "Swenn Golly" (a Svengali-like mesmerist), counterfeiters "Max Millions" and "Minton Mooney," "Frank N. Stein," "Batula," "Match Head" (a pyromaniac), "Sen-Sen O'Toole," "Shmoozer" and "Herman the Ape Man.". [48], Capp has also been credited with popularizing many terms, such as "natcherly," schmooze, druthers, and nogoodnik, neatnik, etc. [52] Li'l Abner was also parodied in 1954 (as "Li'l Melvin" by "Ol' Hatt") in the pages of EC Comics' humor comic, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein. From beginning to end, Capp was acid-tongued toward the targets of his wit, intolerant of hypocrisy, and always wickedly funny. Moonbeam McSwine A derivative hillbilly feature called Looie Lazybones, an out-and-out imitation (drawn by a young Frank Frazetta) ran in several issues of Standard's Thrilling Comics in the late 1940s. Comic strips typically dealt with northern urban experiences before Capp introduced Li'l Abner, the first strip based in the South. When Mammy would lift her right index finger to heaven and said that, you knew that was the final word. Filming & Production Natural landmarks included (at various times) Teeterin' Rock, Onneccessary Mountain, Bottomless Canyon, and Kissin' Rock (handy to Suicide Cliff).