RARE OPPORTUNITY: Some One Alive From 1930s Famous Funnies Office

[BLBcomics-migration]

OK, Guys & Gals here in CGC land. This was sent to the comics-scholars list and the Plat list i co-moderate. I am sharing this with you here as well. Please read this missive, if you have a query, please let me know either here or PM, some of you might be interested in this era of comic books back when an improved mouse trap began to supplant the earlier comic book formats, of which there were many.

 

 

 

Hello Fellow Comics Scholars

 

I recently received an amazing phone call, which i will be following up with a phone interview a few days following the NY comicon Javits show where i will be set up at booth 2503

 

A woman's daughter called me saying her 95 year old mother worked in the Famous Funnies Eastern Color office starting in the mid-1930s thru the late 1940s when her daughter who called me was born

 

Harry Wildenberg hired her after meeting her at a party in Greenwich Village somewhere in 1934

 

She knew Steven Douglass, the editor, very well.

 

She worked with the artists as they bought stuff in.

 

Her mother is in Florida at present visiting a sister, gets back home Feb 5, i am gearing up to do my first phone interview with her Feb 12 or so following my return from NYC

 

This is every one's chance to ask those questions you always wanted to ask from some one who was "there" at the birth of the American comic "magazine" book industry.

 

Email me your questions, or post em here for further discourse, i promise to ask every query submitted to me, plus follow-ups of my own.

 

Reason i am throwing this out on this list is i have to prepare for two comics shows in Feb - NYComicon Feb 5 6 7 8 and Wondercon Feb 27 28 29 March 1

 

My time to sit down and formulate what i want to walk her thru is limited right now - and as her daughter put it, at 95 the lights could go out any time. She seems to be in excellent health for her age, I am looking forward to this interview.

 

She is the last person alive who worked there as far as i know. She worked there about 15 years

 

This is cross-posted to Comic Scholars-List and the PlatinumAgeComics yahoo group i co-moderate.

 

Here is are a couple excerpts with the duaghter from our ensuing email exchange:

 

"I just told her about our conversation and she said she would be happy to share her memories with you.....This morning she told me that she met Wildenberg at a party at his house on E 10th Street and he hired her to be a coloring editor. She was living in Greenwich Village and studying art with Kunioshi at the Art Students League- this was in the 30's.

 

"Wildenberg was a member of the American Abstract Artists, of which my future father was a founding member, tho she didn't know him then. She worked with Janosik, who if I am remembering this right, she said he made them do exercises in front of the open window every morning.

 

"Anyway she was there before Douglass. I remember playing with original prints (on thick paper) of the funnies when I was little- there was the girl who fell into her fish bowl and had adventures. But somewhere along the way we lost the whole pile of them. I also had a huge collection of 10 cent comics, as my allowance was 10 cents, so I could either buy one comic book or two Three Musketeers candy bars. all lost or given away."

...........

"When my mom worked for Funnies, in the beginning, she worked more from home, but then Social Security started and she asked to get it. They said in order to get SS she would have to work in the office, so she did. So she worked there from the mid 1930's to Dec. of 1945 when I was born, and after that worked from home for a few more years...maybe until 1949. She mentioned another women who worked there, named Hildebrand and a secretary with an Irish name who died. I'll ask her about the people on your list."

 

best

 

robert beerbohm

 

Robert Beerbohm Comic Art

www.BLBcomics.com

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[aardvark88]

Ask her what impact, if any, the release of Action Comics #1 (1938) or Superman #1 (summer, 1939) had on Famous Funnies publications. They seemed to add some Bill Everett outer space (Famous Funnies #85, 86) and Frazetta Buck Rogers (1953) covers into their mix much later on.

 

Even Famous Funnies #81 1st Scarlet O'neil (1941) had cartoony or childlike quality to their cover art rather than spandex, mutant superhero.

[Theagenes]

Hi Bob,

What an amazing opportunity! Some things that pop into my mind right away - who really came up with the idea for Funnies on Parade? - that is, putting out reprints in a magazine format. The story of Gaines coming up with idea when he was folding a comics section in half and half again one day always struck me as apocryphal. If she knows more about the creation of FoP I'd love to hear about it.

 

Also, (and this is something she may not know since she didn't start until '34) was anybody at Eastern aware of the Humor books? This is something we've talked about before. Did the Humor books have any influence on the Eastern books or were the creation of Dectective Dan and Funnies on Parade two separate unrelated events, like agriculture being discovered separately in the Old and New World?

 

I'd like to hear about her thoughts on Eastern's early competitors like King and UFS and their Famous Funnies knock-offs like King Comics and Tip Top. Also, were they even aware of the early comic magazines with original material like Comic Cuts or New Fun or were these not even on their radar?

 

To elaborate on aardvark's question above, it would be interesting to see how someone from what would have been the leading publisher at the time viewed the the appearance of the superhero fad. At what point did people at Eastern become of aware of this new craze? Summer of 39 when Superman 1 came out? Earlier? Eastern did get in on the act with Heroic Comics in summer 1940 but a little later thatn some of the other publishers. It would just interesting to see how the superhero boom of 1939-42 was viewed from the point of view of Eastern.

 

I'm sure there are more questions I'd like to ask, but these are the one's that jump out immediately. Thanks for sharing this opportunity with us!

Jeff

[Sharpshooter-migration]

Ask her about the personalties of the people working there. Who was nice, who was nasty, who was funny, who was dour, who was smart and who was dumb.

Any drunks, dope addicts, madmen or suicides?

 

Plus their inter-personal relationships. Who got along famously and who hated whom. Any fist-fights? Lawsuits?

 

Were there any mobsters or gangsters around? Anything mob-related?

 

High points and low points? The best and the worst.

 

Questions like:

 

"What was the funniest thing that happened there? Saddest moment? Happiest time? Shocking moment? Ever scared? Fearful?

 

I'd love to hear anecdotes about the office Christmas party of 1941 where ---- slipped off with ----- and were caught having sex in the bullpen.

 

Or the time ------ played a prank on ----------- and got punched in the face.

[esquirecomics]

See what she remembers, if anything, about Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.

[Jamie Coville]

I would like to know the story about getting newsstand distribution for the comics. Did they have to convince the distributors to do them? How did they do it?

Did they have to shop the comic around to various distributors before somebody took it on?

How was distribution at first. Were there any problems with cities/regions not accepting the books?

What was behind the changing of the percentages between retailer, distributor, publisher?

Any problems, protests from other magazines or newspapers?

What about the creators of the comic strips, any correspondence from them regarding the comics?

Any problems/squabbles pop up with the syndicates regarding the strips being reprinted? Were the Syndicates hands on or hands off? If they did complain, what about?

 

If I think of more I'll post later.

[Monkeyman]

I would be interested in any info on Eastern Color file copies. I have this copy of Jann of the Jungle (obviously published after she left) with the note shown staples to the first page. I'm wondering how it might have got there.

 

Thx, Mike

 

 

[BLBcomics-migration]

hi guys & gals

 

am on the road stopped for the night headed to NYComicon Javits Booith 2503

 

a lot of interesting queries have shown up, to be sure - thanks so far for the input

 

i will be making up a long list of questions incoming from this thread as well as a few other lists i am on

 

Major W-N is one i had not thought of - yes, he is now on the list of personalities

 

I just thought of Sol Harrison, he was a color sep guy on FF #1 before he landed at DC

 

Dell handled distribution scenarios for both Dell/Eastern Color projects re THE FUNNIES 1928-1930 as well as the first seven issues of Famous Funnies before Delacorte sold out his 50% - #8 was first solo Eastern issue -

 

what impact Superman had will also be asked

 

and asking about drunks at parties etc will be fun too

 

re Jann of the Jungle, she stopped working there 1949 so 50s stuff might be beyond her knowledge scope, but i will find out

 

keep the query lines coming, we will ALL benefit

 

and am looking forward to seeing a lot of you again at NYC and Wondercon end of the month

 

best

 

robert beerbohm

 

 

[tb]

I'd like to hear about what kind of experiments they did with the comic book format in the mid- to late 1930s and how they decided whether their changes were successful. Did they do any market research like giving comics to kids and observing their response? Did they copy ideas from other publishers? Did they try anything that failed miserably? Did they consider untraditional distribution channels (like giving comics away at movie theatres)?